American History 101 – Sooner of Later, Using the Military as Cops Massively Fails

Anger over 1765 Stamp Act     

                                            1770 Boston Mascare 

American History 101 – Sooner of Later, Using the Military as Cops Massively Fails

It is precisely what triggered the American Revolution

“Let me observe… how fatal are the effects, the danger of which I long ago mentioned, of posting a standing army among a free people.” 

Then future US President Sam Adams about the Boston Massacre.

“Well, habeas corpus is a constitutional right that the President has to remove people from this country.” 

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, testifying in Congress, butchering the true meaning: to protect citizens from unlawful arrest and detention.

Our Founding Fathers were so repulsed by King George III’s use of soldiers to enforce his civil dictates in domestic affairs that they slowly began meeting, leading to the Stamp Act Congress and so much more. The British had stationed soldiers in Boston in 1768 to enforce these policies and maintain order, but their presence only aggravated the situation. Americans went far beyond the “taxation without representation” captured neatly by the 1773 Boston Tea Party. Americans railed to a more generalized use of troops – British Army soldiers breaking into civilian homes, without warrants, until the pot boiled over with seething American anger. One of the most feared aspects of British rule was the use of armed force to crush domestic resistance to the King’s edicts. It seems that nothing motivated the American Revolution more than the British use of troops to enforce their unpopular edicts.

Look at the United States today. If you don’t live in a culturally diverse city, and you just watch Fox news and its social media ilk, you just might not see the parallels between the forces that angered the Americans so much against their legitimate government that they started a revolution to drive those government forces from their shores. These Americans were mostly volunteer citizen soldiers willing to die to obtain their freedom. Paramilitary ICE has just been funded to be the largest US police force in history, able to arrest wantonly without warrants. And hardly just undocumented aliens. They are supported by Marines, federalized National Guardsmen and, sometimes, by local police. So, I would like to present a refresher course in how the American Revolution responded to an unelected autocrat dictating how Americans could live, earn money, and import goods from England… using military force.

I owe this blog to the inspiration of a July 4th Los Angeles Times editorial written by Eli Merritt, a political historian at Vanderbilt University. The reality of history that led to that Revolution was a slow escalation by Britain in repressive tactics against those who opposed royal dictates imposed by an autocrat thousands of miles away. Even those appointed by the King to became local autocrats, in what was to become the United States, enjoyed abusing anti-royalists immensely. Make no mistake, before this escalation in repression, most Americans were happy British subjects, many with pride in their heritage. Even as the revolution mounted, royalists remained solidly behind their kings. Is history repeating itself?

There is little doubt but that Donald Trump has reached into a plethora of autocratic models as he mounts efforts to be the sole political power in this country. But if this nation does not have the appetite for an armed insurrection, if its massive size (the third most populated nation on Earth) and scattered political leanings suggest less than a uniform civilian aversion to his dictatorial ways, are there any lessons in our Founding Father’s past that might prove useful?

Merritt: “Parliament’s Stamp Act tax of the mid-1760s ignited the Anglo-American conflict. Yet, as historians broadly agree, it was escalating martial law in Boston under different legislation, the Coercive Acts of 1774, that transformed American resistance into full-scale revolution.

“Let’s start by recalling what had happened four years earlier during protests over the Townshend duties, a series of taxes Parliament added to everyday goods, including tea, exported to the colonies. The British ministry responded to the unrest by stationing approximately 2,000 redcoats in Boston… On the night of March 5, 1770, in an accidental bloodbath set off by the pelting of soldiers with snowballs, the British opened fire on a crowd of unarmed civilians outside the Custom House, killing five and wounding others… The problem worsened after the Boston Tea Party. The hacking to pieces of 342 crates of tea owned by the East India Co. in late 1773 was, of course, criminal activity. As such, it warranted the full application of colonial and municipal law against the offenders.

“Instead of leaving justice to the locals, however, Parliament passed the four draconian bills known as the Coercive Acts. To enforce them, in a fatal progression, King George III’s ministers dispatched a military governor and occupying army to Boston, in effect imposing martial law on the entire colony for the unlawful actions of a few… Each of the Coercive Acts struck at the heart of Massachusetts self-rule. The Boston Port Act shut down all trade through Boston Harbor and its surrounding waterways, while the Massachusetts Government Act dissolved the colony’s assembly, courts and town meetings. The remaining two acts allowed trials to be relocated overseas and forced residents to house British troops at the governor’s discretion.

“Taken together, the Coercive Acts constituted an unprecedented assault on the rights and freedoms of the American people. Colonists decried them as ‘barbarous,’ ‘diabolical’ and ‘Tyrannic’ — the work of a ‘Despotic power.’… What followed is familiar to many Americans. Massachusetts, under martial law, summoned the other colonies to a continental congress in Philadelphia. In reaction, the king and Parliament declared the colonies to be in a state of rebellion, ordering thousands of additional redcoats across the Atlantic to crush dissent and make arrests.

“A conflict the British thought they could resolve with boots on the ground only escalated. On April 19, 1775, in another tragedy of unintended carnage — this time triggered by a stray bullet — the king’s troops gunned down eight colonials on Lexington Green, turning protest into civil war.” King Trump does have his super-loyalists, with little or no affinity for the Constitution, a document that few of his enforcers seem to be familiar with. Who are the primary Trump enforcers? Attorney General Pamela Bondi, Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem, Immigration Tzar Tom Homan and Secretary of State Maro Rubio. And now…????

I’m Peter Dekom, and here we are again with a dictator (carrying about the same popularity level enjoyed by King George III before the Revolution), using military (and paramilitary) forces to enforce his orders, with rising resistance being met with military repression… so what are we going to do about it?!