Forests and Trees

The people at The Atlantic are having a case of the vapors because “Trump’s eagerness to send troops into American cities is at odds with the country’s well-established antipathy toward domestic military deployments.” The staff is either unaware of or has conveniently forgotten the numerous times when this has occurred:

· 1957, when a federalized National Guard was dispatched to Little Rock, Arkansas, to enforce desegregation.

· Several times in the 60s to integrate universities in Mississippi and Alabama, to protect civil marchers, and in the aftermath of MLK’s assassination.

· 1980, when the Coast Guard Reserves were dispatched to help with the Cuban refugee crisis.

· 1992, when Bush the Elder sent the Guard into LA after the first Rodney King verdict.

· 2005, when W sent the 82^nd Airborne and other elements to New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

This doesn’t even touch the widespread use of local SWAT teams and street cops who were used to shut down churches and arrest people on otherwise empty beaches during Covid, while standing down as looters and rioters ran roughshod during the riots of 2020. So, take the pearl-clutching at The Atlantic in the same vein as that of The Intercept, NPR, and The Associated Press, a form of hand-wringing that has nothing to do with the action and everything to do with who is behind it.

Probably no American relishes the thought of using soldiers in a law enforcement capacity. That role is already limited by the Posse Comitatus Act and for good reason. Cops and troops are not interchangeable; they are trained for completely different roles. But the same people who are squawking now said nothing when illegals poured into the country by the millions or when the criminal justice system essentially stopped functioning.

In that scenario, anything that resembles enforcement will come as a shock to the system. But this is how a pendulum works. When it reverses course from its setting at “anarchy and chaos,” it will swing right past the mid-point of civil equilibrium and land on what looks like extreme action from the opposite end. To be fair, sending in the National Guard and other elements of the military is an overcorrection. So is filing federal charges in a local murder case.

Both steps, however, are a necessary pushback against the institutional rot that has gripped virtually every major city in the US and several mid-sized towns. Govt has no higher calling than to protect public safety. When mayors and governors sue the administration for daring to do what they refuse to do, that’s not an FU to Donald Trump; it’s an FU to every law-abiding taxpayer who is told that the rights of criminals and illegals matter more than those of citizens.

At some point, the toxic obsession with Donald Trump has to pass. Every action and decision cannot first be filtered through the irrational hatred of one man. When stories of illegal immigrants raping, killing, or assaulting Americans appear daily, or when similar stories feature repeat offenders who should have been locked up, that is a far larger concern than any personal dislike for Orange McBadman. But blue cities and states are gonna do what they do.

They and the people who voted them into office are dealing with a self-created problem. By not demanding that officials police the streets and patrol the borders, a mess was created for someone else to clean up. Well, that someone else is here. The alternative to using the Guard, ICE, and other federal agents is for the public to become its own police force. Absolutely no one should want that scenario because if you think masked feds are an issue, just wait till the Bubbas and homeboys become the enforcement mechanism.

The salient question is, how long will this continue? Using the Guard is not sustainable. It is also not a strategy; it’s more of a tactic meant to produce the political gamesmanship that lets state and local officials puff their chests about resisting Trump while their constituents suffer. It’s easy to say that people in deep blue cities are getting what the govt they deserve. But what of the residents who did not vote for dysfunction? Those are the people who broke ranks in places that are hostile to the GOP, like New York City and Philadelphia. And many are black, the population that is most harmed by the refusal to treat crime seriously.

These residents do not care if the prison population is a proportionate representation of their cities as a whole. They just want safe streets where their kids can walk without fear of catching a stray bullet and not live in communities that tally up the week’s shootings, as Chicago does. But they do not have the luxury of rising and sleeping with visions of Donald J. Trump in their heads. They cannot afford that approach; they are the people who feel the effects of policies that look designed to create chaos, but that’s probably just conspiracy talk. Elected officials would never do something like that, would they?