Try as we may, we just can't avoid the escalating drama in our federal government. This, in part, is due to what appears to be the intention — to create that drama. Both by rhetoric and show of physical force, trying to ignore it is no longer an option.
Unbelievably, the President of the United States is making wholesale references to American citizens who protest as 'animals':
The use of this term, in this context, is an overt attempt to pit those referred to against what would otherwise be the case. In other words, to describe human beings as animals is overtly dehumanizing. Trump must think that doing so is effective – that it will garner something in the audience (as it has in the past by other leaders with a lust for power).
Further, and against that backdrop, it appears that anyone who protests (not just in LA) will be subject to "...very big force":
If there’s any protester wants to come out, they will be met with very big force…. For those people that want to protest, they’re going to be met with very big force.
-- Donald Trump
We didn't seem to take him seriously the first time around; will we now (maybe, we finally are)? ...more facts / less theatre (a parade?!?) here and here.
Democracy is under assault right before our eyes. This moment we have feared has arrived. He’s taking a wrecking ball…to our founding fathers’ historic project: three coequal branches of independent government.
I know many of you are feeling deep anxiety, stress, and fear. But I want you to know that you are the antidote to that fear and that anxiety. What Donald Trump wants most is your fealty, your silence, to be complicit in this moment. Do not give in to him.
-- Gavin Newsom
The correct way to connect the authoritarian presence in LA and the Big Beautiful Bill is that the bill gives the government the resources to do this in dozens of cities at once. So if you don't like what's happening in LA, it's coming to your town if the bill passes.
-- David Dayen, The American Prospect
