This week America arrived at the secret police stage of its fascist descent, and that should horrify us all. Yet all I can think about it that not nearly enough people are paying attention.
In the past month we’ve seen two major episodes that signal alarm: First there were the unidentified federal officers from the US Bureau of Prisons who were patrolling the streets of Washington D.C. during June protests. The lack of clarity about which agency deployed those personnel––and what their real mission was––raised disturbing questions about accountability and public trust.
This week those concerns leveled up when unidentified federal agents were deployed to Portland, ostensibly to protect federal buildings under “threat” from ongoing daily protests that have spanned the better part of two months. I put threat in quotes because, at this point, it’s not really clear who is a threat to whom.
Consider a distrubing story published by Oregon Public Broadcasting yesterday. According to OPB, Mark Pettibone and his friend Conner O’Shea were walking home in the early a.m hours on July 15 after a night of relatively peaceful protesting. What happened next is a vignette of a dying republic. Picture this…
An unmarked minivan pulls up in front of Pettibone and O’Shea, and five men in camouflage gear jump out. These are the unmarked federal officers who are defending… well it’s not clear what federal building they were defending at that specific moment in time. O’Shea runs away, and is only able to avoid detention because he hides from a second minivan in pursuit. Pettibone isn’t as lucky.
Then this, according to OPB:
“Blinded by his hat, in an unmarked minivan full of armed people dressed in camouflage and body armor who hadn’t identified themselves, Pettibone said he was driven around downtown before being unloaded inside a building. He wouldn’t learn until after his release that he had been inside the federal courthouse.”
The story goes on:
“Pettibone said he was put into a cell. Soon after, two officers came in to read him his Miranda rights. They didn’t tell him why he was being arrested. He said they asked him if he wanted to waive his rights and answer some questions, but Pettibone declined and said he wanted a lawyer. The interview was terminated, and about 90 minutes later he was released. He said he did not receive any paperwork, citation or record of his arrest.”
It’s kind of thing you’d expect in Myanmar or China or the Galactic Empire. And now, I guess in America too. Here’s how our government is justifying it:
“The city of Portland has been under siege for 47 straight days by a violent mob while local political leaders refuse to restore order to protect their city. Each night, lawless anarchists destroy and desecrate property, including the federal courthouse, and attack the brave law enforcement officers protecting it.” Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf said in a statement regarding what’s happening in Portland. “This siege can end if state and local officials decide to take appropriate action instead of refusing to enforce the law.”
A siege? Really? That’s not the intel I’ve gotten from friends in Portland. But the whole sequence of actions and the rationale behind them do raise lots of other questions.
Why are agents in vans being deployed to Portland, despite the objection of the mayor and the governor? Why are American citizens being detained without a proper charge? Who authorized these officers? What agency do they work for?
Still, the scariest is me isn’t just that fact that we have unmarked officers, (more or less secret police) snatching up protestors off the street without due process (which is terrifying obviously) but that there isn’t more uproar about it. The media should envelop Portland with a swarm of reporters so thick you can’t move your raise you elbow without hitting a microphone. The cameras should be out in force. The faces of the storm troopers in the minivans should be on every T.V. screen in the country. Every person should be posting about this on social media.
Because this is one of those things where if it can happen in Portland or in D.C., it can happen anywhere, to any of us, at any time. This is way past slippery slope territory. We are literally sliding down the mountain.
If you start disguising who the cops are, then anyone could be a cop. And anyone could pretend to be a cop. Any doofus with a camo jacket and an assault rifle could rent a van from Hertz and start handcuffing protestors… or worse. And when this guy and his six militia buddies starting patrolling the streets, the end game is chaos, which I guess is kind of the point.
Trump’s two major strategies all along have been fear through intimidation and the normalization of lies. And he dispenses both at high frequency, and to great effect. Think of just a few of the highlights from the last four years: Putting kids in cages, banning Muslim travelers, gutting federal agencies, threatening life-long federal officials, underplaying COVID-19… you know, the classics.
Even if the terrorization of Portland is more political stunt than authoritarian takeover, it sets an alarming precedent for future administrations. And if this is some kind of trial balloon for later authoritarian action, we have to shoot that fucker down. Because mark my words, the worst is yet to come.
Trump, for all his bluster, is still sort of a blundering, accidental fascist. His political actions are directed by his narcissism and greed, and not necessarily by idealogical conviction. That still makes him plenty dangerous, especially with cretins like Stephen Miller in his ear.
But what truly terrifies me is when a worse version of Trump inevitably rises to power. Imagine a savvier, more calculating version of Donald showing up in 2024. Someone who has media flair and panache, and can galvanize the white nationalism sect and the always-Trumpers into a thick coalition no GOPer will oppose. Someone without as much baggage. Somebody people know from T.V., like say Tucker Carlson. A man who definitely has ideas about things, even if those ideas are terrible.
Americans think our roots in democracy will save us from fascism, sort of how we sidestepped it in the 1930’s while less fortunate other countries fell into hyper nationalist traps. But we are in a much different place now than we were then. We are much more vulnerable. And, at least for the moment, we have a madman at the helm with about 30% of the country who thinks he can do no wrong.
Scared doesn’t begin to define how I feel right now.
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