trump Normalizing Terror

Update: Thank you again Batocchio, for including this blog at Crooks & Liars' Mike's Blog Round-Up! To everyone showing up, I hope you're getting the vote out for Democrats across every ballot. I'm heading to the Florida Early Voting poll place in a few minutes. Balz to the Walz, America! And uh, please ask your friends to buy my book. (hey if trump can grift, so can I and with better product!) --->

While my part of the world of Central Florida is recovering from the wreckage of Hurricane Milton, other states are still recovering from the damage left by the previous storm Helene. Places like upper Georgia and the mountain regions of North Carolina and Tennessee were ravaged by mass flooding and erasure of entire towns.

At least, some of those places ought to be recovering with help from the federal government, except that recovery officers are avoiding efforts in areas suddenly swarming with so-called "militias" convinced that FEMA is a threat to "their liberty and property" (via Gary D. Robertson and Sarah Brumfield at AP News):

Federal disaster workers paused and then changed some of their hurricane-recovery efforts in North Carolina, including abandoning door-to-door visits, after receiving threats that they could be targeted by a militia, officials said, as the government response to Helene is targeted by runaway disinformation.

The threats emerged over the weekend. The Rutherford County Sheriff’s Office said in a statement Monday that it received a call Saturday about a man with an assault rifle who made a comment “about possibly harming” employees of the Federal Emergency Management Agency working in the hard-hit areas of Lake Lure and Chimney Rock, in the North Carolina mountains.

Authorities got a description of a suspect’s vehicle and license plate and later identified him as William Jacob Parsons, 44, of Bostic, a small community about 60 miles west of Charlotte. Sheriff’s officials said in a statement that Parsons — who was armed with a handgun and a rifle — was charged with “going armed to the terror of the public,” a misdemeanor. He was released after posting bond.

Threatening harm with firearms is a MISDEMEANOR???

FEMA confirmed in a statement Monday that it adjusted operations. It emphasized that disaster-recovery centers remain open and that FEMA continues “to help the people of North Carolina with their recovery.”

Workers from the agency’s disaster-assistance teams — who help survivors apply for FEMA aid and connect them with additional state and local resources — have stopped going door to door and instead are working from fixed locations while the potential threats are assessed, a person familiar with the matter told The Associated Press. The person spoke on condition of anonymity because they could not publicly discuss details of the operations...

The Washington Post reported Sunday that the U.S. Forest Service, which is supporting hurricane recovery work, sent a message to multiple federal agencies, warning that FEMA had advised all federal responders in Rutherford County to leave the county immediately.

The message stated that National Guard troops had encountered “armed militia” saying they were “out hunting FEMA.”

Which begs the question "WHY are they hunting federal agents who are working on RECOVERING devastated communities in their literal neck of the woods?"

Because those "militias" are getting hit by "runaway disinformation" coming directly from donald trump himself (via Barbara L. McQuade at Bloomberg): 

Shortly after the storm, presidential candidate Donald Trump told rallygoers in Michigan that the Biden administration “stole the FEMA money, just like they stole it from a bank, so they could give it to their illegal immigrants that they want to have vote for them this season.” This is not true (and undocumented immigrants can’t vote). Yet these claims have been amplified on social media by billionaire Elon Musk, Trump’s son Donald Trump Jr. and former Trump adviser Stephen Miller. A scroll through the replies to FEMA’s posts on the Musk-owned social media platform known as X shows a slew of ugly insults and statements echoing their lies.

In addition, Trump has also baselessly alleged that the Biden-Harris administration has failed to communicate with the affected states, a claim refuted by their governors, both Democrats and Republicans. Trump has also said without evidence that Biden and North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper, a Democrat, denied relief to Republican communities...

trump is lying because he knows enough members of his wingnut voting base already believe the worst about federal support - thanks to decades of anti-government narratives pushed by conservative Republicans from Goldwater to Reagan to Gingrich to today's GOP leadership - and will believe whatever he says they're doing is criminal even without any proof to his allegations.

trump wants his followers angry: Angry enough to make vile insults and threats on social media and government websites; Angry enough to arm themselves and go "hunting" for those agency workers to commit whatever level of violence they wish to inflict.

trump's objective with demonizing federal relief efforts - more than just trying to weaken those efforts to make Biden (and Harris by proxy) look bad to the national voter base - is to normalize violence towards our government. he's making it easier for these self-appointed "revolutionaries" to go on the warpath should he lose this November.

trump is trying to terrorize us. To make us cower or whimper for his mercy. To make us too afraid to do anything to stop him.

The only honest response is to stop him, and deny his effort to bully and steal his way back into the White House. These threats of violence are acts of desperation: trump cannot appeal to the broad base of American voters and so he's lashing out the only way he can. He's more afraid of us than we need to be of him.

The MAGA factions are already riled up to the point where they will attack their fellow neighbors, their communities, their fellow Americans - in victory, convinced trump will sanction their violence towards Latinos, Blacks, and women; in defeat, convinced they need to force insurrection and ruin - no matter what. In some respects, there's no stopping the wave of violence that's about to hit our communities.

But we need to be ready. We need to prepare to stand up for what we know is right and true about America, to deny trump's angry mobs any power over us.

You want to help people affected by the hurricanes? Provide aid to the recovery efforts as best you can. And get the vote out for Democrats from Harris on down who will deny trump and his ilk any future chance to threaten us again. 

DeSantis and His Minute Men Militia

It's been pretty obvious since trump's fall after the 2020 election results that some of the more ambitious Republicans are positioning themselves to run in 2024 (hoping that trump - who still rules the GOP voting base - will be sidelined with court trials and prison time).

The worst of the lot is my own state's governor, Ron "Let COVID Kill You" DeSantis, whose pandering to the Fox Not-News audiences is starting to exceed the trump himself. DeSantis has been eagerly playing to the anti-vaxxer crowds - hiring every cop or firefighter or city worker who quit their jobs in places mandating vaccines, for example - and demonstrating all of the virulent hatred that trump deployed but with more political savvy.

Which brings us to his latest political move, one that should be setting off every alarm in the system: DeSantis wants his own damn army. Via Steve Contorno at CNN:

DeSantis pitched the idea Thursday as a way to further support the Florida National Guard during emergencies, like hurricanes. The Florida National Guard has also played a vital role during the pandemic in administering Covid-19 tests and distributing vaccines.

But in a nod to the growing tension between Republican states and the Biden administration over the National Guard, DeSantis also said this unit, called the Florida State Guard, would be "not encumbered by the federal government." He said this force would give him "the flexibility and the ability needed to respond to events in our state in the most effective way possible." DeSantis is proposing bringing it back with a volunteer force of 200 civilians, and he is seeking $3.5 million from the state legislature in startup costs to train and equip them.

States have the power to create defense forces separate from the national guard, though not all of them use it. If Florida moves ahead with DeSantis' plan to reestablish the civilian force, it would become the 23rd active state guard in the country, DeSantis' office said in a press release, joining California, Texas and New York. These guards are little-known auxiliary forces with origins dating back to the advent of state militias in the 18th century. While states and the Department of Defense share control of the National Guard, state guards are solely in the power of a governor.

The proposal from DeSantis comes on the heels of Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin's directive warning that National Guard members who refuse to get vaccinated against the coronavirus will have their pay withheld and barred from training. Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt, a Republican, had requested an exemption for guard members in his state, which Austin denied...

I can immediately point out a flaw in DeSantis' reasoning: If he wants to supplement the state's standing National Guard, he could just simply recruit more volunteers to the Guard. He's playing this as wanting to forge a home guard that won't be encumbered by federal vaccination rules, but he could play obstructionist over the pandemic without this kind of power grab. He wants something more, which begs the question:

Q: Why the hell else create a free-standing military unit answerable only to him? 

A: Because it'll answer to him and not to the United States' military chain of command that the National Guard has to answer to. This is DeSantis' chance to make himself into a wannabe field general with his own tin soldiers - brought in without any outside review or oversight, meaning they could be the Goddamn KKK for all we know - to do his dirty work.

Ja'Han Jones at MSNBC has his concerns, mainly that DeSantis can't be trusted:

States technically have the power to establish defense forces that are independent from the National Guard, and 22 states currently do. That’s an issue worth discussing and debating, but the most pressing issue right now is that the right-wing governor of Florida can’t be trusted with a military force of his own. 

DeSantis said re-establishing the state guard would “make sure that we have the flexibility and the ability needed to respond to events in our state in the most effective way possible.”

“Some of that will require us to be able to have access and use support in ways that are not encumbered by the federal government, that don’t require the federal government,” he added. 

Don’t let that hodgepodge of political jargon fool you: There’s no reason whatsoever to believe Ron DeSantis would use his army of militarized volunteers to do anything but wreak havoc on vulnerable people.

This is the same person who hastily deployed the Florida National Guard to patrol anti-racist protesters demonstrating in response to George Floyd’s murder last year. This is the person who championed an “anti-riot” law struck down by a federal judge this year after plaintiffs claimed it was “designed to target those who protest police violence...”

Jones doesn't mention it but DeSantis has been waging a war against his media and pandemic critics, a fight that can easily escalate if he's got 200 Minute Men Brown Shirts Florida Men at his beck and call with the power to detain people and use firearms with little or no provocation from others.

Because abuse of power like this happens. We've seen it repeatedly under trump and other bullies in office.

This is straight out of the playbook used by the fascist villains of Upton Sinclair's It Can't Happen Here. Christ. We're replaying the same goddamn nightmare of having trump in the White House calling on his Oath Keepers and Proud Boys to "Stand Back and Stand By," which we saw come to fruition during the January 6th Insurrection to subvert the 2020 election results.

What DeSantis is doing here can well be replicated by other Republican governors across the nation, and the ones who already have a state-controlled militia to start thinking about how they can turn those troops into their own personal praetorian guards. They can turn these militias into private police rounding up and harassing anybody opposed to the party in any way, from public stances over abortion and police brutality all the way down to refusing to wear those damn MAGA hats.

Think I'm joking? Think back to all the sh-t happening for COINTELPRO... and that was illegal. What's being asked here will be legal, governor-seal-of-approval, all out in the open (just not broadcast on Fox Not-News for public consumption) and nobody will be able to challenge it until too much damage and suffering has happened.  

It can happen here, and it's escalating.

Gods help us.