Autocratic for the people
Trump is finally fulfilling his long desire to militarize the streets in the name of power
autocracy
noun
a system of government by one person with absolute power.
We’ve seen the news and images coming from Los Angeles. ICE raids conducted on Friday by jackbooted thugs dressed in full battle rattle showing up to Home Depots and garment factories looking for undocumented “hardened criminals” posing as workers. Maximum shock and awe. A major provocation that very diverse residents in LA would not put up with so several hundred pushed back, as expected.
It should be noted that the first ICE raid at a Home Depot in Cypress Park just north of Downtown LA did not provoke a reaction so ICE moved further south into the heavily Latino city of Paramount.
Well mission fucking accomplished. Trump got the violence in the streets he was looking for. And by end of day Saturday he announced that he was sending 2000 National Guard troops into the streets of LA to “quell the violence” that HE provoked. And not to be outdone, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced that he would potentially deploy ACTIVE DUTY US Marines into the streets as well, in a blatant violation of the Posse Comitatus Act, which prevents the government from using the military as a domestic police force.
Governor Gavin Newsom was not having it. Trump is acting in opposition to Newsom, who under normal circumstances would retain control and command of California's National Guard. “The federal government is sowing chaos so they can have an excuse to escalate,” he posted on X. “That is not the way any civilized country behaves.”
In a follow-up post at 5:13 p.m., Newsom shared news that the federal government was starting to “take over” the state’s National Guard, calling the move “purposefully inflammatory,” saying it “will only escalate tensions.”
California Democratic Senator Alex Padilla agreed with the sentiment, writing, “Couldn’t agree more. Using the National Guard this way is a completely inappropriate and misguided mission. The Trump Administration is just sowing more chaos and division in our communities.”
Senator Adam Schiff said the Trump administration’s calling of the National Guard without the governor’s authorization is “unprecedented.”
The law cited by Trump's proclamation places National Guard troops under federal command. The law says that can be done under three circumstances: When the U.S. is invaded or in danger of invasion; when there is a rebellion or danger of rebellion against the authority of the U.S. government, or when the President is unable to "execute the laws of the United States," with regular forces.
“This action is designed to inflame tensions, sow chaos, and escalate the situation,” he wrote, noting that if the Guard is needed, Newsom would ask for it.
“Violence must stop, and we need to keep the focus on protecting fundamental rights,” Schiff said. “There is nothing President Trump would like more than a violent confrontation with protestors to justify the unjustifiable — invocation of the Insurrection Act or some form of martial law.”
And the language coming from the Trump Regime specifically mentions “insurrection” several times in order to bolster their decision to deploy troops.
Obergruppenführer Stephen Miller had this to say:
"Protesters have surrounded the federal detention center in Los Angeles. California isn’t backing down, this is a full-blown standoff with the feds. An insurrection against the laws and sovereignty of the United States," he wrote.
A “full-blown standoff”. An “insurrection against the laws and sovereignty of the United States.” This is language that is purposefully designed to enflame, not to calm tensions,
Make no mistake. Los Angeles is being used as the first test case to see how this country will react to Trump’s growing autocratic tendencies. It’s by no mistake that Viktor Orban keeps getting invited to CPAC. It’s by no mistake that Vladimir Putin is Trump’s model leader. It’s by no mistake that he has been eroding or destroying every single institution that maintains America as a free nation.
Trump promised to be a dictator on Day One and 77 million American voters said “Yup, I’d love to see this!”
Once those troops show up in the streets of LA a major line will have been crossed. During the BLM riots Trump famously wanted to shoot protesters with live rounds and was stopped by Defense Secretary Mark Esper. This time there will be no adults in the room to stop him as Pete Hegseth exhibits the same bloodlust and lack of impulse control that Trump does.
Shooting peaceful demonstrators with live rounds would be the VERY DEFINITION of an illegal order. In the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ), an illegal order is defined as a directive that violates the law, the Constitution, or lawful superior orders, or one given by someone without the authority to issue such an order. Essentially, it's an order that a person of ordinary understanding would know to be unlawful.
Problem-Reaction-Solution. The autocrat’s favorite tactic. Create a problem, provoke a reaction, then propose a draconian solution that gives the autocrat all the power. For Hitler it was the Reichstag Fire. For Donald Trump it’s his ICE raids. And there is nothing stopping him from getting what he wants.
Soldiers from the California National Guard have now begun arriving at the Federal Building and the Hall of Justice in Downtown LA as of 4:00 AM. Protests are expected to continue throughout the day.
This is a developing story.
Any advice for us Angelenos?
"For Hitler it was the Reichstag Fire. "
Lets be Clear, the Reichstag fire was the beginning, and it wasn't the only thing, and like this attempt at putting Military troops on the street, it wasn't solo; also it seems that it was apparently created by Hitlers elites.
_________________________________
Even more disturbing was the handling of the constitutional question by the totalitarian regimes. In the early years of their power the Nazis let loose an avalanche of laws and decrees, but they never bothered to abolish officially the Weimar constitution; they even left the civil services more or less intact – a fact which induced many native and foreign observers to hope for restraint of the party and for rapid normalization of the new regime. But when with the issuance of the Nuremberg Laws this development had come to an end, it turned out that the Nazis themselves showed no concern whatsoever about their own legislation. Rather, there was ‘only the constant going ahead on the road toward ever-new fields,’ so that finally the ‘purpose and scope of the secret state police’ as well as of all other state or party institutions created by the Nazis could ‘in no manner be covered by the laws and regulations issued for them.9 In practice, this permanent state of lawlessness found expression in the fact that ‘a number of valid regulations [were] no longer made public.’10 Theoretically, it corresponded to Hitler's dictum that "the total state must not know any difference between
law and ethics";" because if it assumed that the valid law is identical with the ethics common to all and springing from their consciences, then there is indeed no further necessity for public decrees. 11
9 See Theodor Maunz, op. cit., pp. 5 and 49. – How little the Nazis thought of the laws and regulations they themselves had issued, and which were regularly published by W. Hoche under the title of Die Gesetzgebung des Kabinetts Hitler (Berlin, 1933 ff.), may be gathered from a random remark made by one of their constitutional jurists. He felt that in spite of the absence of a comprehensive new legal order there nevertheless had occurred a ‘comprehensive reform’ (see Ernst R. Huber, ‘Die deutsche Polizei,’ in Zeitschrift für die gesamte Staatswissenschaft, Band 101, 1940/1, pp. 273 ff.).
10 Maunz, op. cit., p. 49. To my knowledge, Maunz is the only one among Nazi authors who has mentioned this circumstance and sufficiently emphasized it. Only by going through the five volumes of Verfügungen, Anordnungen,Bekanntgaben, which were collected and printed during the war by the party chancellery on instructions of Martin Bormann, is it possible to obtain an insight into this secret legislation by which Germany in fact was governed. According to the preface, the volumes were ‘meant solely for internal party work and to be treated as confidential.’ Four of these evidently very rare volumes, compared to which the Hoche collection of the legislation of Hitler’s cabinet is merely a façade, are in the Hoover Library.
11 This was the Fuehrer’s ‘warning’ to the jurists in 1933, quoted by Hans Frank, Nationalsozialistische Leitsätze für ein neues deutsches Strafrecht, Zweiter Teil, 1936, p. 8
The Origins of Totalitarianism, Ch 12 Totalitarianism in Power, page 393-394 - Hannah Arendt