Trump will unleash troops on you, too
This is an opinion column.
He could just as easily come after you, you know. If he doesn’t like what you say. If what you say doesn’t align lockstep with his commands.
He could deploy federal troops to your doorstep. He could order them to gas, tase or do whatever it takes to squash you. To silence and whatever else you.
Because he doesn’t like what you say. What you do.
Donald Trump wielded National Guard troops — men and women sworn to serve and defend the United States of America — in Los Angeles because he did not like what Americans there were doing.
He sent them there Sunday to gas, tase or do whatever it takes to squash Americans. To silence them.
Because he can’t stand that they abhor his inhumane actions against migrants.
He sent them to Los Angeles against the wishes of California’s governor — the first time in six decades an American president has done so without a governor’s okay.
The first time since March 1965, two months after the Bloody Sunday encounter at the foot of the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, where Alabama state troopers beat protesters attempting to march to the state capital in Montgomery to fight for voting rights.
After Martin Luther King and others planned a second march, President Lyndon B. Johnson sent the Alabama National Guard to Selma to protect the demonstrators, in defiance of Gov. George Wallace.
So yeah, Trump’s a Republican and California Governor Gavin Newsom is a Democrat, but please … 60 years.
And he sent them not to protect Americans but attack them. Squash them.
Of course, Trump snatched the chance to claim credit for something he had nothing to do with.
“He completely lied,” Newsom told MSNBC’s Jacob Soboroff on Sunday as the first small deployment of guardmen hit L.A. streets.
The California governor was referring to a Trump social media post saying L.A. was “safe” due to the deployment before troops had even reached the site of the protests.
“He’s simply lying to people,” Newsome said, adding that the state will file a lawsuit Monday against Trump to stifle further deployments.
Many Los Angeleans are fed up with his command to rip brown people from our streets, from their jobs, from their schools, from anywhere.
All because they are brown. Or foreign.
Because they may not possess a piece of paper that deems them “legal” to be here.
Trump sent troops there because the city and state are the perfect palette for his power lust – for his insatiable ardor for military might (which will be on full, gluttonous display in Trump’s military parade Saturday in Washington, D.C.)
Trump doesn’t care that his deployment only stocked and inflamed the fed up.
Indeed, it just may be what he intended all along.
Many of us are fed up, too. We are incensed that people are being shipped to who knows where and detained for who knows how long, then deported to a nation they’ve likely not seen in years — if at all.
All without a smidgen of due process, a fundamental right for anyone on this soil.
Or it was. And most Americans, I’ll venture, still believe it to be.
I am not alone. Across the nation, Americans have boldly and emphatically told Trump and his cowardly masked ICE babies to leave their neighbors alone. To back off from their co-workers, their employees, their children’s schoolmates and playmates. From the men and women striving with small businesses to fill everyday needs. From folks paying taxes and attending schools and conducting potentially life-saving research, for goodness’s sake.
All because they may not have a card.
Even if they do, what the heck, snatch them anyway, as has happened to U.S. citizens who are legal card carriers. Why? Because Trump made a promise he cannot fulfill – to enact the “largest deportation” in U.S. history.
He’s done no such thing, of course. He’s fallen far short, which is why Trump huffed and puffed and shuttled 2,000 American troops to scuttle Americans, most of whom (though not all, I know) have peacefully protested his heinous edict.
And as just a reminder: Even the most vociferous among the protesters have not matched the mosh of mostly white insurrectionists who attacked the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
Trump not only didn’t Uber the National Guard across town to protect the U.S. Capitol and the men and women conducting the lawful exchange of power following the 2020 election — which he dutifully and lawfully lost — he shamelessly pardoned the rioters.
Pardoned those lawfully convicted of crimes against the Constitution as he bombastically sent troops to squash those whose only “crime” was disagreeing with him.
Was seeing his deportation edict for what it is — an unattainable lie that contradicts who we are as Americans. Or, at least how most of us still perceive our nation to be.
Make no mistake, he’ll just as easily come after you.
As soon as he doesn’t like what you say.
Let’s be better tomorrow than we are today. My column appears on AL.com, and digital editions of The Birmingham News, Huntsville Times, and Mobile Press-Register. Tell me what you think at rjohnson@al.com, and follow me at twitter.com/roysj, Instagram @roysj and BlueSky.