It’s always been about putting down those uppity Negroes and their race traitor friends. Just come out and admit it, Republicans.
As top federal law enforcement officials arrived in Oregon on Thursday, Gov. Kate Brown accused President Donald Trump of deploying federal officers to Portland to crack down on protesters as a way to boost his flailing reelection prospects.
In an uncharacteristically harsh statement, Brown responded to Trump’s deployment of federal officers to quell Portland’s protests against police violence. Those officers sent one demonstrator to the hospital July 11 with a munition to the face.
“This political theater from President Trump has nothing to do with public safety,” Brown said. “The president is failing to lead this nation. Now he is deploying federal officers to patrol the streets of Portland in a blatant abuse of power by the federal government.”
Secret police roaming around in unmarked cars, shooting unarmed protesters in the face, with the state propaganda organ, Fox News, cheering them on. All those dystopian novels and video games sure failed to capture the flavor of the real thing, didn’t they?
Did you know that Kate Brown is from Minnesota, a graduate of Mounds View High School, class of 1978? And amazingly, also in her graduating class was Jack Ohman, Pulitzer Prize-winning political cartoonist of the Sacramento Bee. Also in their class, Dan Buettner, author of “Blue Zones.”
Why do you have federal law enforcement officials at all? Why even state-wide ones? What is it that local county or city services can’t sort out that these people do?
I’m trying to translate this into non-American terms so I can understand it. I came up with the idea that if Boris Johnson sent the London Metropolitan Police to Edinburgh to assault protesters, then we’d see Scottish secession from the United Kingdom within the week.
Why is this a thing that happens?
It is the same thing that the people of Central and South America have experienced at the hands of our minions for generations. You can’t continue to do this to others without it coming back on us at some point. They’ve got the tools and toys and they are going to use them here now.
As I am living in Europe I can see two bright spots concerning the situation in US.
Atlantic and Pacific.
Gorzki,
True. You might have seen a third bright spot in the gulf, but it’s too polluted with oil to reflect much light.
I was just reading a story on this very subject.
Allow me to put my counterterrorism perspective in here. I literally terrorized terrorists for a living and suffice it to say, we were extremely discouraging for them.
Try that shit around me, the officers are toast, but not before they learn that their families will be executed summarily. Period. Then, it’s hunting time, hunting their families until they turn on their imPOTUS themselves or they become extinct.
This isn’t a developing nation, it’s supposed to be a motherfucking developed nation, where a Constitution is iron clad, not rust laden. If we can’t have our Constitution back, well, the folks that terrorized terrorists can and will turn on the de novo terrorists and no civil behavior will ever result from that.
Well, at least not until Trump is, via the traditional method, hanged, drawn and quartered by his own people.
@cartomancer, I’m from Pennsylvania, a fair part of our state is unincorported and hence, would have absolutely no police presence in an emergency if we didn’t have state police. Even in incorporated areas, some towns are sufficiently impoverished as to be unable to afford their own town police force, so they rely upon state police.
County police are rather rare here, largely working for the courts, more than anything else.
Now, why we have so many federal lawless enforcement Constitution suppression officers, well, we like wars and one war that can and will never end is our war on drugs, as well as the other perpetual war on crime. They normally go unseen and unheard from, but we have a fascist in the offal office and they’re fully in the light.
And now that they’re fully in the light, it’s time to pick up a can of Raid.
WTF? ? That kind of Rambo shit will get you banned here. Only warning: stop now.
It’s good to see the state of Oregon finally on the right side of a racism issue. Given everything happening these days I’m tempted to count this as good news.
@cartomancer interestingly South Korea has a system opposite to that found in North America and the UK. The National Police Agency is in charge of general policing at all levels. The exception is Jeju Special Self-Governing Province, which has its own Municipal Police.
drew @9: I’m sorry, did you just say that anonymous federal agents grabbing people off the streets and disappearing them without presenting badges or warrants and refusing to tell anyone what they’re doing with the people they’ve grabbed is a good thing? What the hell is wrong with you?
It is about states’ rights, once you understand that Republicans define “states’ rights” as “oppression of uppity not-rich people”. Mostly people of color but poor whites get caught in the same traps (I come from a rural area of Texas where poor whites are the targets because there are almost no people of color).
The reason this doesn’t resemble all the scifi and postapocalyptic and cyberpunk literature that deal with this is because for the most part, the literature posits a stealth mode rope-a-dope to put fascism and authoritarianism in place. But in reality, right now, it’s happening in broad daylight with voice-over narration and real-time coverage. We knew it could happen, but we thought it would happen with deviously clever legal arguments, vampiric levels of charm and charisma from leaders, and devilishly detailed legislation. Instead we got half of congress saying “Yeah, Constitution, we don’t care, fuck you” and installing SCOTUS nominees who are also “Yeah, Constitution, we don’t care, fuck you”, and a grotesquely-cosmetically-altered president with the IQ of a ficus plant who can’t even spell “Constitution”, all put in place by voters with the IQs of ficus plants who install candidates who agree with their life philosophy which is “Hey, yeah, fuck you.”
wzrd1
(I’m not going to try and unpack what you were trying to say there?? Maybe hold back on the caffeine a bit…?)
cartomancer
Yeah, run away speciation of law enforcement critters seems to be a thing here.
So far as I know, the systems have evolved from the original colonies and territories being separate self-governing entities before becoming part of a large, unwieldy nation.
The situation is complicated by various overlapping districts and juristdictions that have their own purposes and in some cases, I believe, taxing authorities…Federal lands, parks, tribal lands, state owned lands, local etc. etc.
In Pennsylvania, power tends to be concentrated at the top and bottom levels, with counties being small and relatively weak. Other states don’t have townships, but do have large powerful counties that are arms of the state’s government, or parishes, or who knows what else.
Anyway, different agencies have different specialties, just as in medicine where not all doctors are GPs.
I keep thinking that the people who get angry about having to wear masks are the epitome of what the Right is all about.
And I don’t see Republicans disavowing them.
They look like the people pretending that their guns are about militias. They look like the people who are angry that we think Black Lives Matter. They look like people who claim liberals are selfish thieves who only want to take their money and freedoms.
They’re so very picked on, no wonder they like Trump.
I found that piece of video with the unidentified guys in camo “arresting” a protester to be absolutely terrifying. Who were the guys? They wouldn’t say. Who did they answer to? Ditto. They were driving an unmarked rental van. Where did they take the protester? Did they take him to a police station/jail/prison? Nobody seems to know. Did he have access to an attorney? Again, no info. In Latin America, in the 70s, this was what happened to people who ended up being disappeared. Is that what happened here? Was this protester interrogated? Was he abused? Was he informed of his rights, allowed a phone call, allowed an attorney? This is stuff that I remember seeing in “Battle of Chile” and hearing about from Latin American friends. What’s going on here?
I’m not remotely the first person to say this, but: If we are going to live in the cyberpunk dystopia, can I please get the orcs, trolls, cool fashion and slang, rocket.powered pizza delivery, and true immersive open VR Internet to go with it?
BUT HER EMAILS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
BUT BERNIE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
We told you. Yes, we did. Hell, SHE did.
And now Ruth Ginsburg’s cancer is back.
@#17, velociraptor:
And we told you that, even had she been competent, running a candidate who absolutely maximized Republican turnout was suicide. Everybody who supported Hillary Clinton is a damned idiot.
Sunk-Cost Fallacy by The Vicar.
Double-down much? Hillary told you what would happen too.
Who’s the idiot now? The guy you see when you look in your mirror.
velociraptor’s right. WE TOLD YOU SO.
Vicar, fuck outta here with that.
The emperor has unleashed the Praetorian Guard to deal with the malcontents who think they have rights. One of the Praetorians took a potshot at an innocent plebeian standing there doing nothing and fractured his skull, requiring surgery. That ought to teach him that there are no innocents except the guilty in Trump’s Empire.
@Vicar
In 2012, HRC was the most popular politician in America. And then, after four years of Republican slander, she was the least popular politician in America. Literally anyone who ran would have received the same targeted abuse and by the time of the election would also have become “a candidate who absolutely maximized Republican turnout”. And despite that, she still won the popular vote, and only lost the electoral vote due to rampant fraud.
Does this mean that Dems should never run any candidates, because Republicans will lie about them and make their base hate them with a burning passion? Should the Dems only run candidates whom the Republicans fully endorse?