He may not have managed to be dictator on day one, but the semi-sentient fascist squatting in the Whitehouse is having a pretty good crack at it on day 254. Speaking in Quantico, Virginia to a room packed with generals and other senior military personnel, US president Donald Trump gave perhaps his most chilling speech yet.
Listing off a series of Democrat strongholds, the would-be despot said:
San Francisco, Chicago, New York, Los Angeles…they’re very unsafe places, and we’re gonna straighten them out one by one, and this is gonna be a major part for some of the people in this room. That’s a war too. It’s a war from within.
Discussing his recent executive order entitled Additional measures to address the crime emergency in the district of Columbia, Trump went on:
This is going to be a big thing for the people in this room because it’s the enemy from within and we have to handle it before it gets out of control.
Rolling Stone reported that the order seems to be the realisation of a Pentagon document calling for:
…a force of 600 soldiers to be ready for deployment anywhere in the country on Trump’s command.
Trump to set US imperial violence loose against home population
Now, some might question whether there is a meaningful difference between the actual US army and militarised police forces that behave like an occupying army when dealing with protestors fighting for justice in Black communities. As over-armed and brutal as American cops are, they aren’t an F35-flying, nuke-dropping vehicle for mass murder like the US armed forces are. The escalation in Trump’s rhetoric justifies increased anxiety around his intentions, however, as he aimed to draw parallels between the foreign targets of American violence, and those he seeks to crush at home. He continued:
America is under invasion from within. We’re under invasion from within. No different than a foreign enemy, but no different in many ways because they don’t wear uniforms. At least when they’re wearing a uniform you can take them out.
The distinction between those in uniform and those without has been one the president has been happy to ignore throughout so-called Israel’s genocide in Gaza. The Zionist entity has deliberately killed civilians en masse since the start of its onslaught, and Trump’s words seem to be an indication that he intends to copy and paste this template on to cities he deems troublesome within his own jurisdiction.
Trump has been testing the waters for such plans in recent months, deploying troops to Los Angeles, Memphis, Portland, and Washington. He has faced legal challenge for their use in the nation’s capital, with DC attorney general Brian Schwalb saying:
Armed soldiers should not be policing American citizens on American soil. The forced military occupation of the District of Columbia violates our local autonomy and basic freedoms. It must end.
Previously, a judge in California ruled that Trump “violated the Posse Comitatus Act,” an 1878 law that forbids the military being used for domestic policing. Trump has been angling to use the 1807 Insurrection Act, which is intended to allow military deployment against US citizens if an act of full-scale rebellion against the state is underway. He might know a thing or two about that, having attempted to sabotage the peaceful transfer of power between elections by goading his supporters into attacking the Capitol in January 2021.
Wokeness and War Departments, his incoherent speech ploughed on
Elsewhere in the typically rambling and incoherent 70 minute speech, the aspiring tyrant maintained his continued obsession with receiving the Nobel Peace Prize, claiming credit for resolving hostilities between India and Pakistan. The man currently arming a genocide in Palestine lamented his lack of recognition as a peacemaker by saying:
They’ll give it [the prize] to some guy that didn’t do a damn thing.
He also gave his thoughts on the renaming of the Department of Defence to the Department of War, a moniker that represents a rare instance of honesty on the part of the pathological-liar-in-chief. Reflecting on the name change that went in the reverse direction in 1949, he said:
Then we went, in a way, woke. That was probably the first sign of wokeness.
Prior to Trump’s appearance on stage Secretary of War Pete Hegseth had delivered a psychopathic oration that fully salivated at the prospect of the renamed Department’s new purpose, saying:
From this moment forward, the only mission of the newly restored Department of War is this: warfighting. Preparing for war and preparing to win.
Staring at the savage on stage, parading in front of an absurdly oversized Stars and Stripes, the assembled soldiers may not have expected to be asked to deploy this new doctrine at home. Trump’s call to abandon their constitutional role followed soon after, however, and now what’s left of American democracy relies on their disobedience of his march towards tyranny.
Featured image via the Canary
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