EAST MONTPELIER – Political historian Heather Cox Richardson, author of the daily newsletter “Letters from an American,” opined the other day that the news of the past week has seemed to be breaking faster than ever. From the invasion of Venezuela and kidnapping of its president and first lady, to the terror campaign being waged in the streets of Minneapolis, to the murder by a trigger-happy “government agent” of a perfectly harmless local woman in her car with her partner and dog, to the open threats by our president to annex Greenland “one way or another,” to another Department of Justice “investigation” of a government official who’s refused to bend to the president’s will (and all of this this is barely scratching the surface), our senses and attention have been overwhelmed by a cascading fortissimo of news demanding our reaction.
In the past months I’ve occasionally felt my optimism about the future of the president, of democracy, and of my beloved country slipping a bit as I listened to the national media treating the Trumpian shenanigans as if they were merely the peccadilloes of a poor player, who would strut and fret his hour upon the stage, and then be heard no more. The media seemed to consider him a gift from the gods, a daily lede who’d keep the news lively. Our international standing and credibility would be seriously tarnished, but a few generations (people really do have short memories) would repair that. But, slowly at first and then faster and faster, the puppet masters who give the president his lines for the day apparently took a look at his probable shelf life and decided to get their agenda accomplished sooner, before any semblance of rational speech became impossible for him. They took a look at their bench, and knew they were going nowhere with that guy.
Thus the war on immigration, the culling of “the worst of the worst” from among us. Like many of the administration’s grand ideas, it was sweeping in concept, but woefully inadequate in practice. It’s relatively easy to comb the streets of any city and scoop up everyone who looks different from yourself. But then you’ve got to house, feed, provide basic sanitary facilities and medical services. You’ve got either to deport them willy-nilly and let the chips fall where they may later, or provide judges to weigh their cases thoughtfully before deciding their legal status with respect to citizenship. With a commander-in-chief who routinely treats the law as a troublesome inconvenience, it’s easy to see where that can go off the rails.
Last, you need to hire “agents” who’ll execute your wishes, and send them gleefully into cities run by Democrats. When, after an initial round of vetting, you find you still haven’t enough tough-looking characters to sweep the neighborhoods, you simply lower your standards for admission, raise the already generous bounty for signing up, and issue really cool warrior gear, so that the dullest bully-boy can feel like a real warrior, even if (as I noticed on one) his bare belly is hanging out below.
There’s no doubt the tactics are effective. I have a young friend in Minneapolis who looks Hispanic (perhaps because he is), and has a Hispanic name and an American passport. He’s literally afraid to leave his house, even though he has the credentials to prove citizenship. They’d, like the law, likely prove a troublesome inconvenience.
But in the midst of this chaos and lawlessness, in which it’s clearly lethal even to look cross-eyed at the storm soldiers, I see reason for hope. The public, who I had thought supine and unengaged, have now seen it with their own eyes and followed it on the television news. They’ve seen the brutes standing by with their trigger fingers at the ready while their superiors (or betters; it’s hard to tell) do the dirty work of demanding identification and ordering people out of their cars (both illegal) for possible removal on suspicion of not belonging here. And finally they’ve begun to act: marches and rallies, prayer meetings, and acts of disobedience. Almost everywhere the goons go, they’re met with cell phone cameras and hostile stares.
One of my favorites is the all-night charivari outside the hotel where the troops are staying. Citizens spend the night in shifts, beating on pots and pans, blowing horns, and playing saxophones. I’d love to be there. I’d play a well-known tune on a trumpet or tuba, and deliberately flat a couple of notes in the chorus. The one thing autocrats hate most (Hitler was a prime example; I suspect Agent Orange is another) is ridicule.
All this distraction! The good news is it can’t last. Somewhere there’s an audacious reporter waiting for the moment to ask, “Excuse me, but about the Epstein files . . . ”
