Are the Protests/Riots Fort Sumter or a MAGA Sucker Punch?

A trap for the Democrats?

There’s a plausible argument that the current spate of civil unrest in deep blue cities is actually a MAGA setup ultimately benefitting Donald J. Trump. Indeed, the “optics” resemble an over-the-top horror movie for the Democrats: giant Mexican flags brandished over burning car wrecks; chunks of cement dropped on police from freeway overpasses; uncontrolled looting; a curfew ignored; molotov cocktails thrown; childishly scrawled f-word graffiti, and vast arrays of mostly young but physically unattractive people.

Where’s the mass appeal in that picture? Hollywood would reject a script like that as unbelievable and disgusting.

And why is this happening? Because ICE agents are lawfully doing their job as directed by the President to remove the most heinous violent foreign criminals residing illegally in our country — vermin no country would want. In other words: the insensate mob does not want to see a law enforced it doesn’t like. Much like when the Democrats back in April of 1861 didn’t want to see the law enforced regarding the federal reinforcement of Fort Sumter.

This is no longer the Democratic Party I once revered in the idealistic days of 1960s Eugene McCarthy, Bobby Kennedy, and George McGovern. I was a passionate activist against the war in Vietnam. We protesters felt we had the moral high ground in opposing an undeclared war that furthered no legitimate American purpose. Also, that war was killing poor Americans disproportionately. My white middle class privilege: I got endless student deferments by attending graduate school, and then law school.

But the spectacles we now see on TV are devoid of any high purpose. Consistently overlooked by the corporate media is the fact that any foreigner who enters the United States illegally is a criminal. 8 U.S.C. § 1325. They want to ignore that inconvenient fact. A principled resistance would focus on changing that law or modifying policy in the law’s execution. That would be a principled and practical approach, and offers the promise of possibly effective debate.

But, no, that’s not happening. The Democratic Party is still at the mercy of overzealous woke activists and elitist donors who prefer confrontation rather than accepting Obama’s observation that “elections have consequences.” Thus, woke politicians like Governor Gavin Newsom and Mayor Karen Bass put the blame for the civil unrest on Bad Orange Man Trump. His overloading the law enforcement equation with federalized National Guardsmen (as done by predecessors Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, and Bush Jr.) has somehow, according to these two politicians, exacerbated what were otherwise “mostly peaceful” demonstrations.

That, as I like to say, won’t sell in Peoria.

The Democrats are passing up a potentially winning argument. Instead of including horrific gang bangers like Tren de Agua among “our immigrant neighbors” as Kamela Harris has done, focus on those illegal immigrants who benefit our society by their hard work and obeying all laws except the one about why they didn’t legally arrive here. Advocate for that. But don’t advocate for keeping hard-core criminal monsters, terrorists, drug traffickers, and cartels in cities where they intimidate and brutalize others, including decent immigrants our economy apparently needs (though that assumption, too, needs honest open debate instead of violence).

As long as people like Newsom and Bass and other “Sanctuarianists” hold sway, the Democrats will likely dwell in electoral limbo for years to come. Promises of immigration reform got Trump elected, and it remains the number one issue he consistently polls highest at. One poll shows Latino support by 62%.

Don’t be surprised if the White House is licking its chops to see “Summer of Love 2.0” mob excesses in blue cities become, as the LA police chief put it, “overwhelming,” so that sending in the National Guard will be seen as prophylactic and preemptive, i.e. stopping the riots before they start. Which then perfectly sets the stage nationwide to invoke the Insurrection Act of 1807 whereby the military’s gloves come off and it engages directly and forcefully in truly mass deportations.

If that’s the Orange Man Bad’s Machiavellian game plan, the Democrats so far are doing their part to help.

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Larry Johnson is a lawyer and computer forensics expert who for 50 years was a member of the Washington State Bar until retiring from practice this year.