In Front of Our Noses: War Zones!
Hyperbole? Dishonesty? Distraction? Fantasy? Too much cable TV?
As we wait and see if the Trump administration can win on appeal, the power to deploy the National Guard to Portland, Trump himself keeps carrying on about the war zone in Portland.
And here’s the DHS Secretary.
I mean, is this a reference to using secret weather control technology to make it rain less?
Meanwhile, Portland:
I suppose it is possible that the dancing animals are in the one part of Portland that is not on fire. And while I cannot 100% confirm that Mercado is in front of the ICE facility, Google map searches confirm that that is what the building looks like.
Still, I am sure that the following was totally necessary:
The Darth-Vader-ordered-from-Temu voice just adds to the ambiance.
For an eye-witness account, see this piece from The Atlantic: Portland’s ‘War Zone’ Is Like Burning Man for the Terminally Online. If only war zones really were only as bad as what is described in that piece. No doubt, veterans of real conflicts dealing with PTSD would like a word.
All of this reminds me of when Trump called Chicago a hellhole back in early September and then, somehow, the Chicago Bears and the Minnesota Vikings managed to play a Monday Night Football game.
Here is a photo I took of my TV that night, with the grim images of downtown Chicago that I sent to fellow OTBer Michael Bailey with the caption “Hell. Hole.”
It was a miracle, I guess, that local law enforcement was able to keep both Soldier Field and Millennium Park free of hellishness without the aid of federal forces. Although now that I look at the picture, there does appear to have been some kind of beastman in front of the Bean. Scary stuff!
All flippancy aside (although this is all truly absurd), all of this is serious and speaks to a number of things about the administration, although I am not sure exactly how to ultimately assess it all. As with most things Trump, there are truly scary ways to assess this situation, but also the reality, as problematic as it is, thankfully tends to be far from real worst-case scenarios.
I am trying to sort my thoughts out on this kind of stuff. What is the real threat being posed here? How much of this is a serious attempt to militarize our cities and how much of it is performative gaslighting? What does Trump actually believe about these places? What are his aids and advisors telling him?
Let me be crystal clear on one thing: I think it is dangerous, and a waste of resources, to deploy the National Guard in this manner. So whatever else I say in this post, please keep that in mind. The Guard is not a law enforcement agency, and using the military as regular law enforcement is inappropriate and leads to a situation in which the military will start to view US citizens as “the enemy.” This is not healthy for any society, let alone an ostensibly democratic one. Further, it is provocative to deploy troops in this manner, especially when the targets are predominantly cities run by Democratic leadership, and the president is explicit about that being part of the logic (I use that word advisedly) for the deployments.
So, the good news is that these deployments, to date, have not been so much a real militarization of cities as much as it has been a lot of sound and fury signifying very little. For example, the LAT reported the following about the LA deployment: National Guard came to L.A. to fight unrest. Troops ended up fighting boredom. Axios, likewise, noted, Troops deployed to LA have nowhere to sleep and lack supplies: Newsom.
In DC, we know that members of the Guard picked up trash and did landscaping work.
On the one hand, I continue to believe that we have people in this administration who are correctly described as fascists. And things like the young woman in the clip up above being pepper-sprayed for, you know, talking, is thuggish at best. This is neither healthy nor good. But it also isn’t full-blown militarization.
The fact that Trump allows himself to be blocked by the courts in these deployments is a good sign and shows that there is some level of constraint.
I am not saying that we shouldn’t take all this seriously; we should. Still, I am cautioning that we need to be balancing the maximalist rhetoric that comes out of the mouths of this administration with what is actually happening.
There is also the whole cable-TV angle.
First and foremost, the obsession over Chicago is a long-term, right-wing, media-fueled narrative. To be clear, there is crime in Chicago. But not as much as the rightwing media narrative likes to pretend is the case. Chicago is far from a hellhole. Indeed, it is a lovely place and one of my favorite cities to visit.
Second, this whole situation really does bring into question Trump’s mental capacity in ways that other stories don’t for me. I have mentioned over the years, mostly in the comments, that I have my doubts about Trump dementia theories. I mean, they were rampant in his first term, and yet here we are. As much as his speeches at the UN and Quantico were rambling and ridiculous, I resist diagnosis at a distance, especially by non-experts. I resisted diagnosing Biden, and I do the same with Trump. If anything, as I have noted before, blaming his behavior on dementia lets him off the hook to some degree in ways I am unwilling to do. When my Grandfather thought I was at his house to rob him, rather than helping my grandparents move out, I gladly blamed the dementia. In Trump’s case, his long-term record of intellectual chaos, weird syntax, and general lack of knowledge about the world makes it hard to determine when there has been a real change. I say this, agreeing that he is clearly showing signs of aging.
My general theory of Trump is that he is a huge narcissist who actually managed to become the most important person in the world, which is an unfortunate overlapping reality. And in term two, there is clearly no one who will tell him “no” on anything.
But this Portland thing has gotten me to seriously wonder what is going on. There are reports that Trump said the following to NBC’s Yamiche Alcindor.
“I spoke to the governor, she was very nice,” Trump said. “But I said, ‘Well wait a minute, am I watching things on television that are different from what’s happening? My people tell me different.’ They are literally attacking and there are fires all over the place…it looks like terrible.”
All of this has led many to conclude that he is referring to video from the BLM protests in Portland from his first term. Deploying the guard based on b-roll from a half-decade ago is, well, nuts.
Here’s the deal: he is the President of the United States. He has the capacity to get real, immediate information that transcends what is shown on TV, and yet he not only seems to get a lot of his information (such as it is) from television, but he appears incapable of understanding what he is seeing.
This is disturbing, to put it mildly.
To be more direct, either he truly does lack the capacity to know what he is looking at on TV, or he is simply lying and hoping other FNC viewers will misinterpret what they are seeing so he can use it as a justification for Guard deployments. Neither is a good option. Worse, the former seems the most likely explanation. And even worse, that means those around him are unable or unwilling to disabuse him of these notions.
I have made multiple trips to Portland, Seattle, San Francisco, and NYC over the past several years. Everything is fine. Walking downtown areas was fine, even at night. I always felt generally safe using the same caution I use in my own city. And I always encountered friendly, helpful people. I have observed a few happenstance protests on occasion during these trips, and they were peaceful. MAGA uses outsized fear and smear to manipulate its members, roping in the uninformed. In this, MAGA pursues a strategy of psychological terrorism. Plus, they are full of crap.
Have we considered dementia-related psychosis? I’ll leave that to our resident medical experts.
One common thread with Trump is narrowing: everything must be made smaller more cramped. Less diversity, less education, less access to media, fewer functioning institutions, less medical research, less medical care. He is straining to fit the world into a never-capacious and now declining mind. He is adjusting in his own way to declining faculties, declining health, the rather belated awareness of approaching death, incontinence and likely impotence.
It’s hard growing old. Actually, no it’s not, growing old happens without any assistance. But it’s hard for a lot of people to accept that with age you are physically weaker, even physically smaller*, slower, less adaptable, less able to learn and process new information. You become invisible. You are easily ignored.** Trump is abusing his power to prove to himself and his imbecile cult members that he is not what he quite obviously is: an old man circling the drain.
At the same time he keeps telling on himself, raving about how jealous he is that Obama could walk down a set of stairs, while he might someday fall.*** He’s talked about getting into heaven. He’s obsessed with outward signs of masculinity and hires bimbos, all to cover for the fact that he can’t get hard.****
*I used to be an inch taller.
** I know longer get wary looks when I walk into a room. I no longer make people nervous. I have never before experienced being ignored. It’s an adjustment.
*** Yep, I use handrails now.
**** Cialis, my dude, you’ll feel better about yourself.
Robert Reich had a substack a few days ago where he focused on the felons decision making by television, very disturbing.
Also, he’s threatening to arrest Pritzker and Brandon Johnson.
edit: Pritzker is saying the felon is deploying troops due to dementia and obsessive fixations.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/gov-jb-pritzker-says-president-233400557.html
I think that some incident with real blood being spilled is almost inevitable. The ICE officers seem to have little inhibition about using “nonlethal” weapons such as night sticks and pepper canisters, and those things can produce lethal results at times. The National Guard has shot protestors before. The Secretary of War has said that RoE are effete. On the other side, the anti-ICE people are Americans; Americans have 1.2 to 1.6 firearms per capita, and they are not trained in anything including fire control. Put enough tinder and fire starter together, and fire becomes inevitable.
That Pritzker is a real no-shit guy. He does not mince words when warning America that potus is non compos mentis.
My non-expert medicla diagnosis is El Taco suffers from hoof-in-mouth disease, complicated by congenital assholery and the intellectual level of a brain damaged sloth.
@Kathy:
“hoof-in-mouth disease”
Inquiring minds want to know whether Trump’s hooves are cloven or not.
Nah Kathy, it is a huge deal that Steven put up a post talking about Trump’s mental acuity, a I sense a disturbance in the force type of big deal.
As Steven notes he kinda hates the armchair diagnosis posts from folks declaring President Trump suffers from dementia, so it is a BFD that Steven is willing to to acknowledge that it does seem that President Trump is perhaps showing very clear and very public signs of being mentally unfit to do the job of being President of the free world.
I remember when President Bush admitted to not being very curious, but this goes way beyond being uncurious/willfully ignorant, and I think the GOP is going to do their best to keep Trump in the White House until the 2026 Midterms have passed because they need Trump to keep up the enthusiasm on their side and be willing to get out and vote, but shortly after the midterms I think we could see JD Vance being sworn in as our next President.
I certainly do not envy the task the GOP has of propping up Trump over the next year or so.
I think there’s another scenario that just seems to make more sense: he’s deploying the national guard to cities because he wants to, and he doesn’t give a shit about reasons. He’s also wants to make people like him and when they don’t he gets mad.
He may also have dementia, be surrounded by shitheads*, be getting spoon fed false information, be trying to provoke a reaction, be tryin to distract people from the Epstein files, and have trouble getting it up, but I think there’s another scenario key thing is that he just gets mad that people don’t like him. “Reasons” come later.
So many things in life are just powerful people making decisions for petty, emotional reasons.
*: he is definitely surrounded by shitheads.
I think the lesson of the last several months is that authoritarianism is easier than one would have thought. Bullheadedness without regard to norms or consequences seems to work surprisingly well. And as Steven points out, the Constitution is less of a bulwark than expected. Especially when more thoughtful elements of your Party have already bought the constitutional court. Also, too, no one is accusing Miller or Vought of dementia.
The real test comes with the ’26 and ’28 elections. Will they be free and fair? Again, authoritarianism isn’t turning out to be that hard. With the EC, gerrymandering, the unrepresentative senate, the filibuster, and a friendly court, it will only take a little bit of vote suppression in a few battleground states to succeed.
@Moosebreath:
The ones that can best support swollen ankles, of course.
@inhumans99:
largely it’s very, very hard to pass up an opportunity to insult and belittle El Taco (who, BTW, remains King of the Covidiots).
The only way El Taco leaves the White House before 2029 is feet first. It might eb the only way he leaves after 2029, too, if he wins an unconstitutional third term, or suspends the 2028 elections and gets the remnants of Congress to declare him president for life.
At this point I give high odds that no one on his party will dare lift a finger to even slow him down, even if he deteriorated into a drooling, babbling figure who can’t even be understood and were to shit his pants at every public appearance.
@Gustopher:
It may be that he he, or some minion, has a well thought out plan, as Pritzger alleges, to ease a few Guard troops into a few locations, then slowly escalate, until he has the 82nd Airborne in full battle-rattle checking for birth certificates at polling places. It may be that you’re right, he’s indulging his whims and ego by showing he’s the boss and come election time will find it easy to stroke his stolen election fixation by having the 82nd Airborne in full battle-rattle checking for birth certificates at polling places.
@gVOR10:
Californians will vote in a few weeks on whether to allow their congressional map to be redrawn. Remember the fixer court said partisan gerrymandering was not unconstitutional? I expect they’ll find a California exception by December.
@Sleeping Dog:
From the Yahoo article you’ve cited:
It seems to me that the dictated judicial review of the Insurrection Act that looks at “bad faith” or “honest judgement” in POTUS’ invocation of the act would provide a great opportunity for Pritzker and cohorts to shine a bright spotlight on how Trump is untethered.
@inhumans99:
It is definitely not my favorite. I even have a draft post that was focused on his narcissism as an explanation for a lot of his behavior. But this Portland thing, and the real possibility that he can’t tell the difference between B-roll from 2020 versus what is happening right now, is hard to ignore.
The man has always relied too much on TV for his information, but this is just a different level if it is accurate.
@gVOR10:
Easier in many ways, but also still not as easy as he would like, else there would already be troops in Portland.
@Gustopher:
Except, he isn’t exactly. He has thus far not deployed to Portland. And the deployment in Chicago was delayed for weeks. DC was easy and Memphis was by invitation. LA kind of fizzled.
I am not saying it is unimportant, but there is a definite disjuncture between his maximal rhetoric and his actual actions.
@Scott F.:
Strategically, El Taco should invoke the insurrection act the Sunday evening before the midterm elections. He can then do just about anything from suspending the elections in blue states, to intimidating a lot of people not to vote (how that would work in vote by mail states in the west is less clear). He could go further and dissolve state governments and place them under military rule. Then dissolve Congress (either all of it or just the reps and senators from blue states), and have the governors, emphatically including the military governors, appoint a full set of reps and senators.
All this would be illegal, and that would be irrelevant.
@Steven L. Taylor:
That’s a problem, though. There are still a few hundred National Guard deployed in LA and the nightly news is not showing them standing around federal buildings picking up trash. Military presence a blue city is normalized.
I feel that Trump knows he’s bullshitting.
At the same time, I think dementia may be an easier sell to MAGA. It also calls attention to how easily the statements he’s making can be checked.
@Steven L. Taylor:
On the topic of Trump’s information sources, it seems some of the BS is coming from his own party. The Guardian reported on the use of pics from some South American riots years ago, presented as pics from Portland. Might be the source of Trump’s “Portland is burning” nonsense.
Notice the Oregon GOP’s utter shameless about their lying. Stunning.
@Kathy:
I sense an insult to the brain damaged sloth segment of society
This struck me as an informative insight into Trump’s mental decline:
Sudden random impulses coupled with irrational priorities are not symptoms of mental health.
A plausible explanation of the way the regime is deploying the military domestically is that it’s testing the water, gathering intelligence about the way courts, blue state and city governments, and Americans themselves, react. It’s all a kind of dress rehearsal for October 2026, when an extensive, co-ordinated operation will be launched to ensure the wrong people are deterred from voting in the mid-terms.
Per AI, “The Pritzker family’s collective net worth was estimated at $43.1 billion in 2024, although individual family members have their own net worth, with some as high as $6.7 billion in 2025. The family’s wealth stems from the Hyatt hotel chain and other ventures, with members like J.B. Pritzker” I see the Pritzker’s as Noblese Oblige. Trump is envious, he isn’t in their league. And it all about him. His lasting wealth came from Reality TV (The Apprentice) where it is all about appearances and being able to look good on TV. He actually failed at most businesses that depended on actually producing something (excels at marketing, appearances).
Trump is a pretender to being (super) rich. He resents that. As a real estate guy in NYC, he was not high finance (he was 2nd tier and resented it). {BTW, I call BS on and Clinton or Trump connection to Epstein – however their supporters, do not know, and NYC billionaire world is corrupt).
This reminds me of South American novels where reality does not matter, just appearances (I recognize this as valid, don’t like it).
.
@Richard Gardner: Trump is legitimately wealthy now, thanks to his benefactors in the Middle East, his participation in the crypto Ponzi scheme, and his followers’ willingness to hand over ridiculous amounts of money to buy everything from his crappy watches to his meme coins.