“I anticipated it.”
“This won’t work out.”
When President Trump announced that he had activated the California National Guard and when sources said Marines would provide assistance, those were my first thoughts. I’m not saying I’m very prescient. His decision to use the military against protesters was as predictable as his split from Elon Musk last week. Pretext and timing were the only things that were unclear.
To be clear, I don’t believe that calling in the National Guard (or the Marines) against the will of Governor Gavin Newsom was justified if you follow the history of events in the Greater Los Angeles community of Paramount. When Alabama Governor George Wallace declined to defend civil rights protesters in his state in 1965, it was the last occasion a president sent in the Guard without a governor’s request. Newsom makes a very valid point when he says that the Guard’s presence will needlessly exacerbate the issue. The Trump administration is being sued by Newsom for deploying the Guard unlawfully.
I don’t believe it. At first glance, Trump’s order does not appear to be illegal. He has used Section 12406 of Title 10 of the U.S. Code, which gives the president the authority to send the Guard to protect federal officials while they are carrying out their duties, rather than the Insurrection Act. It does, however, go against one of the most important “democratic norms,” which both parties appear to uphold exclusively when the other party is in control. And it’s a custom that should be respected.
The fact that norm violations lead to further norm violations is one of the reasons it’s important to respect. Yes, that was a portion of what Newsom was saying. Trump’s move is more politically advantageous because the announcement of the Guard’s activation seemed to spark even more chaos.
This leads me to the reason why things won’t work out.
When a protester destroys a glass, throws a rock, or burns a car, they are no longer considered lawful demonstrators and are instead considered rioters. In addition, rioting is not only illegal and bad, but it is also politically unpopular, despite a lot of left-wing romantic rubbish to the contrary. When the 1919 Boston police strike sparked riots and looting, then-Massachusetts Governor Calvin Coolidge made national headlines by deploying the Massachusetts Guard. Richard Nixon leveraged the riots following the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. to win the president in 1968 by promising to restore law and order.
The “propaganda of the deed,” an absurd theory that holds that direct or revolutionary action may win over the masses to their cause, has long been a favourite of the fringe left. It hardly ever works in America. However, too many mainstream progressives, for whatever reason, find it difficult to express a clear condemnation of their fringe.
Because Donald Trump adheres to his own notion of the propaganda of the deed, the political value of domestic instability is significantly more acute and consequential. Trump has always had a fascination with employing the military to put an end to domestic disturbances. He praised the Chinese Communist Party’s readiness to demonstrate “the power of strength” in quelling the Tiananmen protesters in a 1990 Playboy interview. Following George Floyd’s assassination during his first term, he allegedly called for troops to open fire on demonstrators. His government has been promoting political, legal, and rhetorical arguments that he should be given wartime authority since the start of his second term, particularly with regard to immigration and trade.
Based on the law, evidence, and those annoying democratic standards, I believe that most of those accusations are nefarious rubbish. Additionally, the administration is on defence politically when the news headlines are filled with tales of families being split up or legal immigrants being detained for penning opinions for student newspapers. However, the topic is just where he wants it to be when rioters are burning Waymo taxis. While social media and cable TV are inundated with pictures of violence and devastation, Democrats and numerous media personalities are caught mouthing platitudes about the right to demonstrate.
The fact that there will be enough people willing to give Trump exactly what he wants is something I don’t see as questionable. Interestingly, the facilitators are in the White House, not merely the streets, as they were during his first term. The vice president, several Cabinet secretaries, and White House officials are vying with one another by discussing invasion, rebellion, and “liberate Los Angeles.”
I genuinely hope I’m mistaken, but considering the timidity of Congress and the judiciary’s limits, I believe this is perhaps causing an unavoidable competition of opposing views over the propaganda of the deed. Trump may or may not have a good outcome from that, but the United States will undoubtedly suffer.
