They, whoever they are and nobody knows for sure, are pulling protesters into unmarked rental vans and disappearing them.
I was careful up there not to exaggerate. Nobody is exaggerating this horror movie. Government jack-booted thugs are yanking people off the streets of an American city for no plausible reason whatsoever. Except, of course, making the paranoid claim that the protests are a violent mob. Which they are not.
The only violent mob is the federales. Who claim they must bring order to Portland. To Bill Barr’s federal troops, political protests are “disorder.” To me, they’re righteous and First Amendment-protected.
Jack-booted thugs and hovering black helicopters — the ones that came too close to protesters in Washington, D.C. when they were being tear-gassed and pepper-sprayed?
Now, let’s see, when did we last hear about jack-booted thugs and black helicopters?
Here’s what’s going on today in Portland:
On Thursday night and into Friday morning — the 50th straight day of demonstrations — a line of federal officers in gas masks walked down Portland’s Third Avenue. They filled downtown corridors with tear gas, which a federal judge has barred the Portland police from using except in the case of a safety risk, and they also shot less-lethal munitions, which left people limping in pain.
The aggressive federal posture has complicated the mission of the Department of Homeland Security, an agency that has spent much of its history focused on foreign terrorism threats and is supposed to build collaborative relationships with local law enforcement partners. And it raises questions of whether it is appropriate for federal authorities to take up the policing of an American city against the wishes of local leaders.
Any of us who knows something about European 20th century history grabs at the apt comparison to Hitler’s Stormtroopers, his brownshirts, his original paramilitary mob, which…
…played a significant role in Adolf Hitler’s rise to power in the 1920s and 1930s. Its primary purposes were providing protection for Nazi rallies and assemblies, disrupting the meetings of opposing parties, fighting against the paramilitary units of the opposing parties…
I highlighted the most significant purpose and actions of the brownshirts.
Trump and Bill Barr — and all the other co-conspirators – -are following Hitler’s playbook specifically. The federales in Portland are, of course, wearing brown. Maybe not dark brown, maybe olive-beige but still.
Fucking insane and fucking awful. Awful, awful people.