Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker and Philadelphia’s DA have warned troops they’ll face charges that Trump can’t save them from if they violate residents.
As Donald Trump floats expanding his authoritarian military crackdown to liberal-led cities beyond the nation’s capital, troops deployed to carry out his anti-democratic schemes might be at risk of prosecution themselves — and the pardon-happy president may not be able to save them.
Thus far, by my count, two Democrats in states that may find themselves targeted have vowed to spur local or state prosecutions — which couldn’t be overturned with a presidential pardon — for anyone who violate residents’ rights if and when the Trump administration expands its troop deployment.
Biden’s biggest, and most enduring mistake was not ordering the arrest of Trump and his henchmen within minutes of his Inauguration. The entire criminal mob should have been detained in Gitmo as National Security threats, and undergone extensive interrogation regarding their nefarious dealings with Russia and others.
Sure, MAGA would have gone crazy, giving Biden the perfect excuse to put them down HARD, and then use their violence to declare them a violent terrorist hate group. In addition, any of their propagandists, from Fox News to Charlie Kirk and Hannity, would be rounded up for encouraging violence, this destroying the Conservative Propaganda Machine, and leaving the only coordinated messaging to the Democrats to justify the MAGA purge.
And don’t forget, at that point we didn’t know about his scheme to steal hundreds of classified documents yet. So while he was in custody, with the Biden administration saying that he was being investigated for treason, they would have discovered all those stolen documents, and EVERYONE in America would finally understand what traitors they are.
But instead, they did literally NOTHING. They ran a competent administration, which never once tried to promote their accomplishments, preferring to modestly let their successes speak for themselves, which was impossible in the wake of ferocious conservative propaganda.
Just weak, all the way around. Dems need to grow some balls. Dems show up to play middle school junior varsity softball, while MAGAs show up to the same playing field ready to play major league football.
Arresting trump would have started the civil war. And you can bet that basically the entire news media would range from “This breaks historic norms. Nixon got pardoned!” to “Hilary Clinton and Barack Hussein Obama are actively using the military to attack Republicans!”
I genuinely don’t know what the answer should have been. Yes, trump led a violent insurrection… that (pulling numbers out of my ass based on reading previous polls and studies) probably a third of the voting populace actually supported and a bit over half weren’t overly bothered by.
I have a LOT of problems with the Biden admin and agree that a major problem was the idea that doing a good job would make people like them but not doing the PR to explain why the IRA was so great (never get tired of that) and so forth. But the trump problem is a lot like our 9-11 response where… I genuinely can’t think of what the right answer would have been.
Of course the loser MAGAs would fight back, which would have been great. Shoot as many as possible in their riots, gather up the rest, along with the Jan6ers, execute their leaders, and toss all the rest in prison for decades.
And when the stolen documents scandal came to light, it would have proven to the world that they were genuine traitors, and it wasn’t just Democrat lies.
Sure, there would have been a lot of trouble, and a lot of clean-up, but now we’re going to have that anyway, and a lot more, IF we ever emerge from this nightmare. It would have been a lot easier in January 2021 than it’s going to be in January 2029.
…
Look. We are all subject to it and I am not going to pretend I haven’t watched (the Scott and Stonebridge seasons of) Strike back closer to four times than not but… life is not an action movie.
Those magats who “fight back”? They aren’t going to only shoot at the cops and soldiers coming to arrest them. They are going to shoot at “purple haired trans people” (just with a lot more slurs). They are going to shoot up the schools that are teaching kids to use litter boxes and the libraries and daycares that dare to put fricking Miss Rachel on the TV. They are going to shoot at the people who have those “in this house we don’t discriminate” lawn signs and so forth.
And ACAB isn’t just a fun dance. We have seen, time and time again, police departments actively refuse to enforce Democratic/left-leaning laws they don’t approve of. The few attempts at gun control are a “great” example of this where cops actively refuse to enforce them and actively call for the removal of government officials (New Mexico had a big one of those two or three years back).
Life isn’t Call of Duty. Civil war is going to reach the suburbs. And it is going to be really really bad.
The scenario you’ve described sounds far superior to the reality we’re living in now due to Trump’s presidency. The things you’re talking about are happening already, but now with the complicity of the state. Trump in power is worse than his most extreme fanatics getting riled up.
I do fear we are going to see things go hot to some degree or another before 2028 (maybe even 2027…).
But it is the difference between guaranteed slaughter and hoping that people choose sanity. And, even more cynically, it is the difference between “expendable” groups (e.g. Trans folk) being slaughtered versus white middle class liberals. Which is obviously a long standing issue with Democrats (and most mainsteram left leaning political parties) but also aligns with the “Just let them start shooting and we’ll fight them back and fix everything” fantasies that are so common in these discussion spaces.
Would be a lot LESS bad if we had a sane administration running the government, though.
Surely it would have been better to have had a Democrat in the white house when the civil war started than having trump there.
I like the idea. Democrats would have been 100% justified in doing exactly that, and as you say, use the bully pulpit to explain EXACTLY why they are right in doing this and how the right wing terrorists that say otherwise are enemies of the people.
Like Taco is doing now, the Democratic administration should have acted first, and then let the courts try to stop them later, AFTER Taco and pals were in Gitmo.
That’s not how the Constitution and our legal system is supposed to work. The DOJ and FBI are supposed to be independent and enforce the law in a non-partisan manner and a POTUS is not supposed to be able to tell them who to arrest or give the appearance of indicating who they should arrest. Trump of course doesn’t respect any of that, but Biden was doing it the way it’s supposed to be and has always been done, and expecting law enforcement agencies to do the investigations and make any arrests (they actually did arrest many people, but not the ringleader). Had Biden ordered trump’s arrest all hell would have broken loose socially and courts would have ordered his release.
So in reality Biden’s “biggest, most enduring mistake” was putting milquetoast Merrick Garland in charge of the DOJ. Garland was a namby-pamby little wimp who was so afraid of the appearance of partisanship that he piddled around and did nothing. The country waited around (because we had no power not to) saying hopefully, “he’s being very thorough so the case is sure to hold up in court” but in reality he was a useless piece of crap who didn’t do his job.
Dems never planned to fight hard. They don’t want to piss off their “real electorates”…