Reading or listening to or watching the news these days is a daily exercise in incipient fear. What harebrained, self-aggrandizing falsehood will Mr. Trump come up with today to post on social media, to include in yet another executive order, to ram down the throat of Congress or rush over to the Supreme Court to put on the shadow docket for a speedy judgment in his favor? Whom will he attack next, what federal judge, what government official, what member of House or Senate, what foreign ally? What territory might he threaten to annex? What country bomb or leader snatch?
When he realizes he has gone beyond what even his base will stomach, he shrugs and says, “It’s a joke!” As Lady Mary Crawley riposted to that malicious excuse, “The bully’s defense.”
In all this craziness, it’s easy to miss things seemingly negligible that might be of great import down the road. Here’s one:
There are still National Guard troops roaming around Washington, D.C. After a year people in the nation’s capital have grown accustomed to seeing them. But did you know they have all been deputized by the U.S. Marshals Service? That they have been issued handguns? That while they cannot actually arrest people, they can detain them? What does that mean? Although the deployment was ostensibly to fight crime — despite being at its lowest in 30 years — violent crime has instead gone up in the past year.
Meantime, it is costing billions. That DOD funding request for the Iran war also includes $1 billion for the National Guard.
Worryingly, but hardly noticed, the number of troops has been incrementally increasing from about 800 initially to now nearly 5,000. Do not forget Mr. Trump has spoken in the past of deploying troops to polling stations. Will he find it sufficient to undermine trust in the outcome of the midterm election if the results don’t go his way, or is voter suppression the goal?
Possibly most alarming of all, the deployment has been “quietly” extended to Inauguration Day 2029. Now, why would that be? Do you think Conman Trump, who has made over $2 billion off the presidency so far, spent money on “Trump 2028” hats for nothing? If that extension to 2029 doesn’t scare the bejeebers out of you, you haven’t been paying attention.
Michele Margetts, Salt Lake City