The President Pushes US Further Toward Autocracy

In response to the peaceful demonstration in Washington earlier this week, the Administration unleashed federal forces,** complete with riot gear, rubber bullets and gas. Across from the White House, they waded into the protesters, pushing them out of Lafayette Park — the iconic location of thousands of peaceful groups over the years — where the demonstrators had gathered in constitutionally protected protest against the Minneapolis killing of George Floyd a week earlier.

Attorney General William Barr had called out the law enforcement in order to make way for President Trump and his entourage to walk from the White House across the park to St. John’s Episcopal Church for a photo opportunity. Trump gathered a few administration officials around him, held up a Bible as a prop without comment and returned to the White House.

So, following the murder of a black man by white police, the President has responded to the demonstrators not by condemnation of the homicide but by violent force against them. What is clear is that the President has no conception of the history of violent racism within the country nor any plan to deal with it except through overwhelming violence … against those protesting the racism. What is also clear is that the President is willing to use the full range of physical, even military, force against domestic unrest.

President Trump has demanded that the governors use more force to “dominate” the streets, called for massive police presence, promised the use of “vicious dogs” and “ominous weapons,” and threatened to use US military force.

But the events this week are different, action rather than threat.

Time reports:

Multiple cargo planes, carrying active duty soldiers and supplies from North Carolina and New York, have flown into a military airfield. Members of the National Guard have rumbled around the capital region in armored vehicles to predetermined positions. And twin-engine UH-60 Black Hawk and UH-72 Lakota helicopters on Monday swept just above the tree-line over the capital’s streets, blasting an awestruck crowd of protestors below with a downwash of air, debris and fuel exhaust.

This is a new, extraordinary escalation of the President’s attack on democracy since long before his election.

Yes, the President has the legal right to do what he has done. But he is violating the constitutional rights of citizens and the most basic norms of our American democracy.

General James Mattis, Trump’s former Secretary of Defense who has until now felt it “inappropriate” for a former Cabinet member to criticize a sitting president offered a broadside worth reading in full:

The protests are defined by tens of thousands of people of conscience who are insisting that we live up to our values — our values as people and our values as a nation.” He goes on, “We must reject and hold accountable those in office who would make a mockery of our Constitution.” …

“When I joined the military, some 50 years ago,” he writes, “I swore an oath to support and defend the Constitution. Never did I dream that troops taking that same oath would be ordered under any circumstance to violate the Constitutional rights of their fellow citizens — much less to provide a bizarre photo op for the elected commander-in-chief, with military leadership standing alongside.”

The President’s actions have brought us significantly closer to autocracy.

Greg Miller of the Washington Post writes

The scenes have been disturbingly familiar to CIA analysts accustomed to monitoring scenes of societal unraveling abroad — the massing of protesters, the ensuing crackdowns and the awkwardly staged displays of strength by a leader determined to project authority.,,,

“I’ve seen this kind of violence,” said Gail Helt, a former CIA analyst responsible for tracking developments in China and Southeast Asia. “This is what autocrats do. This is what happens in countries before a collapse. It really does unnerve me.”

Helt … said the images of unrest in U.S. cities, combined with President Trump’s incendiary statements, echo clashes she covered over a dozen years at the CIA tracking developments in China, Malaysia and elsewhere.

In his march toward autocracy, the President has crossed too many “red lines” for the metaphor to be adequate. This is a mark of the autocracy to which Trump has already brought us.

I’ll close with the words of General Michael Hayden, Director of the CIA under President Obama, who said after the debacle in Lafayette Park:

If Trump serves one term, it’s very, very bad, but I think we can stand it, and we can come back sooner or later. Two terms, we’re done. America will not be the same. Period.

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** The Justice Department said that mounted U.S. Park Police along with other law enforcement from National Guard units (from several other states); FBI; Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives; Drug Enforcement Administration; U.S. Marshals and Bureau of Prisons had all been involved.