Is Trump’s Legacy Destined to be a Police State & a Decimated Economy?

 

Is Trump’s Legacy Destined to be a Police State & a Decimated Economy?

The View from Los Angeles

“The violent mob assaults on ICE and Federal Law Enforcement are designed to prevent the removal of Criminal Illegal Aliens from our soil. A dangerous invasion facilitated by criminal cartels (aka Foreign Terrorist Organizations) and a huge NATIONAL SECURITY RISK. Under President Trump, violence and destruction against federal agents and federal facilities will NOT be tolerated.” 

Major Pete Hegseth, now Secretary of the Department of Defense, June 7th.

I’ve lived in Los Angeles virtually my entire adult life. My son was born here. My granddaughter (who just turned one) was born here. I attended UCLA Law School and have worked in the entertainment industry since I graduated. Raised till I was almost 13 in Washington, D.C., living for 4 years in Beirut, Lebanon as a US Foreign Service brat and with 4 more years in New Haven, Connecticut, I knew what “apizza” was, but I couldn’t tell a taco from an enchilada. A scholarship kid with white Protestant European roots.

When I drove across the country and entered Los Angeles County, I could not pronounce Cahuenga, Tujunga or even Sepulveda. 35% of this city is Hispanic, and that includes my wife. The food, the culture is saturated with Mexican wonderment. I never met a “lazy Mexican,” only a kind people with deep family traditions. And even before the United States was born, the above map tells you what we were in 1700. Sure, there are parts of LA where gangs predominate. Latino, Asian, Anglo and Black. But they do not prevent LA from being a great city with its own mixed culture. New York, Miami, New Orleans, Houston, Chicago have gangs too, but they do not define those cities.

Funny how those who are not in states with major Hispanic populations forget that most of the Southwest was part of Mexico, with what us now US territory lost in war or by purchase. Few Americans know that my beloved Santa Fe, New Mexico (even the license plates have “U.S.A.” on them) was once the capital of the entire regional area of Spanish “Mexican” holdings, vast and once populated mostly by indigenous peoples. So, when a rich white boy from New Yawk, arrogant, ignorant and blithefully uneducated (apparently blowing the opportunity by ignoring his classes in Philadelphia’s Wharton (part of the University of Pennsylvania, an Ivy) sees crushing an angry Los Angeles, with undocumented workers forming a significant economic and cultural backbone of a city that was once part of their legacy homeland, maybe you can see why we (white, Back, Asian and Hispanic) push back.

Our cops are good enough. You reach your ugly racist hand to subjugate our city to your misshapen concept of the meaning of the US Constitution, we push back… harder when your autocratic intentions lurk behind the military vehicles, angry threats and rhetoric that defy who we are. Your puppet cabinet loyalists, perverted to do your bidding, demand our fealty and uniformity you seek to impose. Never! No! Leave us alone! Mexicans are not invading California; but misinformed Trump-ordered troops are. They rely on the Enemy Aliens Act of 1789 which allows the federal government to remove those involved in “any invasion or predatory incursion shall be perpetrated, attempted, or threatened against the territory of the United States, by any foreign nation or government..." What’s the foreign nation, Donald? Mexicans, becoming essential workers in our land, invading what was once Mexico? Foreign Terrorist Organizations? Seriously? Nobody likes those cartels, here or anywhere else. But they are NOT invading the United States.

Clinton era cabinet member, Robert Reich, writing in the Guardian (UK) on June 9th, describes the autocratic pattern of coopting the police to ensure opposition is neutralized if not crushed:

History shows that once an authoritarian ruler establishes the infrastructure of a police state, that same infrastructure can be turned on anyone.

Trump and his regime are rapidly creating such an infrastructure, in five steps:

(1) declaring an emergency on the basis of a so-called “rebellion”, “insurrection”, or “invasion”;

(2) using that “emergency” to justify bringing in federal agents with a monopoly on the use of force (Ice, the FBI, DEA, and the national guard) against civilians inside the country;

(3) allowing those militarized agents to make dragnet abductions and warrantless arrests, and detain people without due process;

(4) creating additional prison space and detention camps for those detained, and

(5) eventually, as the situation escalates, declaring martial law.

We are not at martial law yet, thankfully. But once in place, the infrastructure of a police state can build on itself.

Those who are given authority over aspects of it – the internal militia, dragnets, detention camps, and martial law – seek other opportunities to invoke their authority.

As civilian control gives way to military control, the nation splits into those who are most vulnerable to it and those who support it. The dictatorship entrenches itself by fomenting fear and anger on both sides.

Right now, our major bulwarks against Trump’s police state are the federal courts and broad-based peaceful protests – such as the one that many of us will engage in this coming Saturday 14 June, on the No Kings Day of Action.

Trump has provoked angry and occasionally violent anti-ICE protests here in Los Angeles, under LAPD control, to grow angrier and more violent by sending federal troops here. Hard to believe he does not intend to spark a civil war. Where were the federal troops on January 6, 2021, when armed insurrectionists took over the US Capitol and began attacking the police? Yes, Donald, those violent criminals you pardoned! They are openly organizing again to support you! 

I’m Peter Dekom, and Trump has already set our once successful economy on a destructive path, seeks to rob from the poor to give to the rich, has alienated most of our traditional allies, and now seeks to decimate anyone who may oppose him and crush our culture here… rob us of our soul… and our liberty. Written On June 9th after a violent weekend in Los Angeles.