By Ray Mueller
Folks, a dictatorship is being imposed on the United States. What are WE going to do about it?
The national protest upheaval since Memorial Day has given the Trump administration another opportunity to concoct its own extremely misleading version of reality.
While condemning the violence as such but without providing any leadership to address and counter the causes of it, the Trump administration’s henchmen and women are assigning all of the violence to what they define as Antifa (anti-fascist). Whether it’s an organized group or not, it’s safe to say that most people who hold the views associated with the Antifa movement don’t agree with Trump and would consider him to be employing fascist tactics.
Whether or not blaming Antifa for igniting violence has some validity, the Trump crew’s insistent view that Antifa is guilty of all the incitement for violence has been countered by local officials in Minnesota and elsewhere. They point out that many of those at the core of the riots have been members or sympathizers of white nationalist groups.
What prompted the attack on the CNN Center building in Atlanta? Was it because there were police in the building or because CNN exhibits a point of view that’s contrary to that of white supremacists? Through the first week of the protests, the police themselves were seldom physically attacked.
There are reports that white supremacists, not surprising, have been representing themselves as being part of Antifa. Anyone watching the live coverage on multiple networks could see that whites were often the persons who wielded hammers, clubs, rocks, skateboards, or other weapons to smash storefront windows. Once that happened, it was mainly blacks who rushed into the buildings to run off with the merchandise they could carry.
In-effect, those incidents and the setting of vehicles and buildings on fire hi-jacked the peaceful purpose of most of the hundreds of thousands of people who gathered to protest around the country. So what will be the effect of the hundreds of hours of video showing blacks and others misbehaving by looting the stores?
Among observers, it will re-inforce the view that many blacks and people with brown skin are incessant lawbreakers. If that was the purpose of the whites who broke the storefront windows and doors, they succeeded magnificently.
Meanwhile, Trump and his deputies blamed the governors, county sheriffs, and mayors for the breakdown that allowed this to happen. Granted, they were a day late in many cases in reacting to what was likely to be done by those bent on vandalism and destruction.
What else do I see in what happened during the last week of May and June? For whoever made up the criminal element, it was a rehearsal for disruptions both before and after the presidential Election Day in November.
Trump would probably welcome such disruptions. Why do you think he’s so opposed to mail-in voting with the false argument that it would result in rampant fraud? He might well welcome havoc that would deter people from voting in person.
Since mail-in voting would depend on a well-functioning postal service, why do you think Trump is also maneuvering to hamper the efficiency of the postal service? One of his first steps was to appoint as the new head of the postal service a political crony who could do the dirty work of not allowing the agency to properly handle a likely heavy increase of mail-in voting volume.
The best outcome of the current protests would be to have the energy now being exhibited on the streets carry over into the November election – if Trump doesn’t come up with a way to create widespread disorder instead.
This country is in serious peril. A dictatorship is not the way to solve it.