Trump, Militarizing America

THE ELECTION OF 1876 was one of those weird ones in which nobody won, without some extra help. An arguably corrupt bargain was struck, when the northern presidential candidate, Hayes, was awarded the election over Tilden, in exchange for the north removing its post civil war army of occupation from the south, ending "reconstruction". A smart move by both sides, mutually beneficial, really. The Art of the Deal. As they say, whatever works. As part of that weird arrangement a law was passed stipulating that the United States government may never again use the United States military to police the American people. That's why Trump sending the National Guard to LosAngeles a few weeks back was illegal, a federal judge ruled yesterday. Nowever,the rulingonly applies to the judge'sjuridiction, not the wntire nation, since the Supreme Court recently overturned the American legal process by limiting by lmiting, for the first time, the effect of all federal judge rulings to their specific area of jurisdiction. Nonetheless,sendingin teh National Guard to anywhere in the United States, Washington D.C., Chicago, or wherever, is obviously llegal because of the same law, for the same reason. However, it goes without saying that fear of violating the law has never been a deterrent to anything Donald Trump has ever done,as president or otherwise. No emergency exists in the nation's capitol, and none exists in Chicago, which is evidently doomed and destined to be the next target of Trump's fascist agenda. Trump's "emergencies" are always trumped up, obviously. There is too much crime in the nation's big cities which are governed by democrats, and the feds must stop it, says Trump. Even though the crime rate has been going down considerably in recent years, there is still just plain too much of it, says the fascist....All this, presumably with the full approval of MAGA nation, which doesn't seem to be comlaining about the fascism, but rather, supporting it. Those freedom and liberty loving small government limited government conservative Republicans, Siccing the army on the American people. Who would have thought...The people who swear to God that owning a firearm is a God given inaienable right of all Americans, sending in the military to try to reduce the number of people who get killed or wounded by gun fire in America. You might almost think that a better, more direct, simpler way to solve the problem of gun violence in America, instead of letting it run constantly out of control, accepting the costs, and cleaning up the mess, might be to simply take the guns, the guns intended only for killing people, off the streets, if such a thing is even remotely conceivable in the United States of Attrition. The guard comes to town, and makes a strong presence in the streets, and the violent crime rate plummets, but only for as long as the uniformed well armed soldiers are patroling the streets. Then, when the army leaves town, the violent crime rate, the gun shootings, quickly returns to normal. After all, the military can't stay everywhere at once, in every big city in America, indefinitely. The expense would be prohibitive, and, after all, how long, really, can we freedom loving Americans tolerate living under martial law? It didn't take the good folksin L.A. very long to take to the streets in protest and anger. You somehow sense, based upon what you know about the average attitudes toward personal freedom of the average American, that, no, it wouldn't take very long for an American city, any American city, to get sick and tired of seeing their streets swarming with infantry and armor. Neither the extreme right wing nor the extreme left wing will want this for very long. We Americans generally won't. The courts will at least slow down Trump's militarization of America, and we must hope, and can probably trust, that we the American people will put an end to it,once and for all.