By Dave Lindorff
It’s been less than two weeks since the murder by cop of George Floyd in Minneapolis, and in that short time, an astonishing rebellion has sprung up from the angry grass roots. It began among a black population for whom this vicious videotaped slow and casual killing of a non-violent black suspect of a minor alleged crime by a calm and clearly unthreatened white police officer was the last straw.
In no time, the protests spread across the country from Portland east to Portland west, from Chicago to Miami and points in between, often with mostly young white protesters outnumbering black ones, as the target of the anger and frustration spread from Floyd’s killer and the Minneapolis Police to all police, and to the governments that employ them in the name of “law and order” instead of peace and justice.
Meanwhile the response of the Trump administration has been to call for more repressive police action at all levels, and more proactive violence against protest. This has been particularly true in the nation’s capital, epitomized by President Trump’s ordering of a brutal assault by Federally-controlled National Guardsmen and National Park Police on peaceful protesters in front of the White House, who were told to clear a path for the president to waddle across from that building to a small historic church across Lafayette Square park for a photo-op with a Bible as a prop.
The assault on the protesters, which began with tear gas, flash-bang grenades and the firing of rubber bullets, was shocking and unusual, since it came with no warning and without a shred of justification, and was clearly intended to show a “toughness” against protest, even peaceful protest. Before making what had to be one of the longest transits by foot that this president has taken in his whole three and a half years as president, Trump announced that he was President law-and-order, and called on governors of the 50 states to join him in “dominating” the streets with force and mass arrests.
Martial Law Suddenly Seems Conceivable
All of this — the deliberately fascist imagery of the Great Leader sternly holding up a Bible like a talisman, the stench of tear gas still hanging in the air, and camo-clad soldiers standing shoulder to shoulder establishing a perimeter to keep the area around the president clear of protest — had even mainstream media commentators speculating whether the country was heading towards martial law and an upending of constitutional government and First Amendment freedoms.
Those speculations were bolstered by Trump’s talk of using the hoary 1807 Insurrection Act to suspend those freedoms, and his threat to the nation’s governors and mayors to
“send in active duty US military troops” if they didn’t take sterner action to put down uprisings and “rioting” in their jurisdictions.
Meanwhile, Trump seems to be testing those ideas in Washington, DC…
For the rest of this article by DAVE LINDORFF in ThisCantBeHappening!, the uncompromised, collectively run, six-time Project Censored Award-winning online news site, please go to: https://thiscantbehappening.net/is-trump-using-the-nations-capital-as-a-test-site-for-scrapping-constitutional-government-and-establishing-martial-law/