The city’s officials brace
President Donald Trump posted a meme on social media Saturday saying that Chicago “will find out why it’s called the Department of WAR,” as the city’s officials brace for an immigration crackdown.
“I love the smell of deportations in the morning … Chicago about to find out why it’s called the Department of WAR,” the post reads. Trump signed an executive order Friday to rebrand the Pentagon as the “Department of War.”
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Democratic Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker on Saturday called Trump’s post “not normal.”
To say the least.
On the one hand it’s absurdly childish, which I suppose is why my first reaction was to laugh, but on the other hand it’s outrageously fascist, which is not remotely funny.
“The President of the United States is threatening to go to war with an American city. This is not a joke. This is not normal,” Pritzker wrote on X. “Donald Trump isn’t a strongman, he’s a scared man. Illinois won’t be intimidated by a wannabe dictator.”
That depends on what the wannabe dictator does, I think.
The Trump administration has also reserved the right to call in the National Guard if there is a reaction to the operation that warrants it, the officials said. The Chicago operation is being modeled [on] a similar operation carried out in Los Angeles in June. A judge ruled this week that the June deployment broke federal law prohibiting the military from law enforcement activity on US soil in most cases; the Trump administration has appealed.
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“The President’s threats are beneath the honor of our nation, but the reality is that he wants to occupy our city and break our Constitution,” wrote Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson on social media. “We must defend our democracy from this authoritarianism by protecting each other and protecting Chicago from Donald Trump.”
If we can. It’s not a slam-dunk that we can.
Illinois Sen. Tammy Duckworth described Trump’s post on X as “Stolen valor at its worst,” writing, “Take off that Cavalry hat, you draft dodger. You didn’t earn the right to wear it.”
Rep. Mike Quigley, who represents part of Chicago, said Saturday afternoon on CNN that the post is an example of Trump “edging more and more toward authoritarianism.”
“This is a scary time. For those who haven’t paid attention, it’s time to watch what this president is doing,” Quigley said.
It’s scary and it’s sickening.
The day before the inauguration, I started writing a book in which the US president begins to bomb places he doesn’t like. He starts with Paris, but then bombs go all over Europe. He plans to wipe the slate clean of non-Americans and start over. He also has plans to bomb a number of American cities, but my protagonist interferes before he can. At the time I was writing, I thought ‘no one’s gonna believe this’. I believed it as a possibility, but…not quite.
I hate it when I’m right…even if I started with the wrong city.
America’s enemies rejoice. While Trump thinks this makes him look strong like the dictators he so admires and seeks to emulate, it only shows how weak and insecure he is. Crushing internal dissent is usually done secretly, because admitting there is strong, domestic, internal opposition goes against the favoured narrative of unity and national purpose which the Strong Man is supposed to embody. Once again, Trump goes for the image rather than the reality. He thinks if he looks tough, that makes him tough. Poorly thought out, half-baked, half-heartedly executed, half-measures, sudden reversals of course, and deadlines never enforced, have been a constant enough feature of this regime that they have resulted in the TACO acronym: Trump Always Chickens Out. Let’s hope that’s the case here, too.
@iknklast,
Inspired by Randy Newman? (“Boom goes London, and boom Paree, more room for you and more room for me…”.)
People aren’t going to “get it” until we have another Kent State.
WaM, I hadn’t actually heard that song. Now I’ll have to track it down…
Iknklast,
It’s called “Political Science”. It’s hilarious, and prescient.
https://youtu.be/R5mAuPg1ZZw?feature=shared