Trump And His Goons Create Terror Then The Media Helps Him Turn The Reaction Against It To His Dictatorial Advantage

TRUMP CREATED THE CONDITIONS that led to the, at first, relatively small reaction to one of his ICEstapo terror raids in Los Angeles.  For most People who aren't subjected to the conditions of those most vulnerable to that terror,  they have no idea how rapidly the routine reporting of immigrants has turned into part of that terror campaign. 

Just six months ago, an appointment to check in with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement would have seemed routine — go in, make sure the federal authorities have your information, receive a date to return and do it again in a year or so. 

Not anymore.

On this spring day, a 40-year-old woman approached the ICE check-in with trepidation. The woman, who asked that her name not be used for fear of government retaliation, thought it was likely she would be detained and deported.

She wasn't. 

But the ICE appointment itself now sends terror through immigrant families, many who have fled violent gangs and other conditions in Latin America. Many families  came to the United States to live simple lives, remain here legally, closely follow orders from the government, and yet live with the fear that any interaction with ICE could mean the family is separated.

The Trump administration is moving aggressively to remove immigrants across the country. Although it's not everyone's experience, for some, routine check-ins with ICE are turning into ambushes where they are taken into custody and swiftly removed from the United States, according to NCR interviews, immigration groups, members of Congress and media reports. 

Trumps thugs, under the criminals such as Homan and Noem, have been terrorizing everyone from the youngest children - some of them here for life saving medical treatment - to adults of all ages, arresting people in exactly the way some of them fled,  being kidnapped off the street by masked, armed men and dragged into unmarked vehicles and removed to one of Trump's buddies for-profit prisons in Lousiana or elsewhere, maybe thousands of miles from home without any legal representation,  sent to torture prisons in foreign countries - not unlike what the Bush II regime did though on a much larger scale and targeting far more People.   I remind Americans of that because this and the Supreme Court butchery of what we still cynically call the "Constitution" has been in the works through a number of Republican administrations and Supreme Court terms.  

The resistance to that terror by ICE and "Homeland Security" (you just knew that name was chosen by Bush II to normalize fascist terminology) in Los Angeles produced less disruption and violent reaction than a city gets when its home team wins a major game,  as Olbermann pointed out the other day, but Trump's brains,  Miller, most likely, saw it as an opportunity for him to get back at the Los Angels Latino Community for that date refusal in his teen years (Afrikaners needn't worry,  you're white so the racist little pinhead won't target you) and to try to whip it up into another opportunity for the Roberts Court to give Trump even more dictatorial powers - as I said his Reichstag Fire - KNOWING FULL, WELL THAT THE CORPORATE MEDIA IS ALL-IN ON THAT.   

We are a lot farther down the road to fascism than anyone still wants to believe,  we've been a lot farther down that road than anyone wanted to believe for the past quarter of a century and more - led there by the media,  Hollywood created Trump the powerful dictatorial CEO who turned thumbs up or down on the likes of Meat Loaf and then sold him to the racists who were pissed off at Dems for electing a Black Man as president, then nominating a Woman and then, after Joe Biden, a Black Woman, as president.   It was entertainment media that did the most to get us here,  though the infotanement division, the "news" division did its part, as if that's in any way not just part of the same thing. 

I don't know if we'll ever get back to the idea of a democracy but I do know one thing,  if we don't change the most basic parts of our Constitutional order which have brought us here, we will just see it all happen again.   I remember back in the late 1960s and early 70s, many a liberal and even many lefties and certainly moderates, thought that what should have been understood as our long term and powerful form of indigenous fascism, white supremacy, was down for the count and wouldn't get up again.  That was always a stupid notion, largely by white, affluent People who were never targets of American apartheid in any serious way.   Though white workers faced its ally in the other major power holders here,  the super rich,  they reliably focused on those even beneath them in the economic and political ranking.   That major fact of our history is little seen even though white supremacy has, in fact, always ruled a large number of American states and,  I would argue, has, in fact, had the power in just about all of them for most of our history.   I can't name one in which People of Color have not, for long periods, been held in legal second class or lower status and, even when legal discrimination has not been in place, then it was through social ostracism and institutional racism as practiced so notably by employers and lending institutions.   And the free press, the media, has been among the worst in enabling and maintaining that.   The fear and loathing of Latinos was a nightly feature of CNN as spewed by Lou Dobbs, year after year, as, in fact, fear and loathing of Palestinians has been,  "Arabs" to remind you of how the Bush II regime played the same media prepared racism so as to enhance its own power.   

Going back to a status quo which got you into a disaster is a particular lunacy of our Constitutional system.   Relying on the words and sayings of "the founders,"  "the framers" who, as must always be pointed out were aristocratic slave-holders and finaciers AND THOSE WHO HELD POOR WHITES IN WAGE-SLAVERY,  while ignoring the experience of living under the oppression and inequality made possible by Courts imposing those words on us in perpetuity is only a guarantee of getting you more of what you have gotten under it.   The words we live under have to change if you want to get shut of the oppression and inequality that the Supreme Court can always be certain to return us to NO MATTER HOW OFTEN THAT RAREST OF THINGS HAPPENS, THE CONGRESS WITH OR WITHOUT THE EXECUTIVE, TRIES TO MAKE OUR ELECTIONS HONEST OR TO MAKE THE UNITED STATES AN EGALITARIAN, AND SO, GENUINELY LEGITIMATE GOVERNMENT.    The Court has consistently abolished or twisted not only the regular and duly adopted law to turn things back to their favored unequal status quo for the privilege of those already privileged BUT ALSO TO ABOLISH THOSE PARTS OF THE CONSTITUTION THAT DON'T SERVICE THAT PRIVILEGE.     The Roberts Court, the faith stupidly put in such granite false front as Robert Mueller,  the willful idiocy of all those MSNBC style lawyers assuring us that the courts and Court would restrain Trump, and the history of serving that same corruption while posing as a force for progress by the lawyers of the ACLU have convinced me that the professional practices and motives of that profession are almost a guarantee that the end result will be in service of even the overtly violent and fascist status quo,  certainly those who have the most money because, as a number of lawyers I know told me,  they're taught and learn to always go for the deepest pockets.   

I don't trust any of them anymore, certainly not those who are always reassuring us that just getting back to the intentions of the founders and framers are going to get us somewhere doing that in the past has not gotten us yet.   Certainly not those who maintain we are to suffer this forever because of what they wrote centuries ago.   I suspect many a white person, such as myself, is going to be learning that before this is over.    I suspect most People of Color already understand something like that now.   You wonder why any Woman, whose body was put under the ownership of state legislatures in even the most white-supremacist-fascist states doesn't realize it most directly.  Maybe they're so used to terror that it feels normal to them.  Media indoctrination is certainly part of that, too.