Senior Democrats in US cities are preparing to defend their communities in the event of Donald Trump’s return to the White House after the former president has repeated threats that he would use presidential powers to seize control of major urban centers.
Trump has proposed deploying the military inside major cities largely run by Democrats to deal with protesters or to crush criminal gangs. He has threatened to dispatch large numbers of federal immigration agents to carry out mass deportations of undocumented people in so-called “sanctuary” cities.
He also aims to obliterate the progressive criminal justice policies of left-leaning prosecutors.
“In cities where there has been a complete breakdown of law and order … I will not hesitate to send in federal assets including the national guard until safety is restored,” Trump says in the campaign platform for his bid to become the 47th US president, Agenda47.
Trump provoked uproar earlier this week when he called for US armed forces to be deployed against his political rivals – “the enemy within” – on election day next month. But his plans to use national guard troops and military personnel as a means to attack those he sees as his opponents go much wider than that, spanning entire cities with Democratic leadership.
I feel like this is something that won’t really happen. Despite conservative rhetoric and posturing about closed borders, the reality is that major parts of our economy - like agriculture, meat packing, restaurants and construction - are utterly dependent on undocumented immigrant labor. Mass deportations would be insanely difficult to actually achieve, and would cause enormous economic upheaval, what with the fact that fucking food and housing are apparently important to people. Not to say that conservatives would really give a shit about that, but the people hiring all these undocumented workers and exploiting their cheap labor are generally conservative and wouldn’t want their cash cows disrupted.
On the other hand, I didn’t think they would really do anything much about abortion either, since that’s such a major thing to fire their base up about. I should probably never underestimate their willingness to destroy the whole country in order to hurt what passes for the Left here.
Oh that’s actually the easiest part. We are very very good at logistics in the US. The hard part about deportation in the past has been the red tape, like court hearings and moving people around to different agencies depending on their exact case details.
They don’t want to deal with any of that. They want the Proud Boys to grab your non English speakers and put them into a short term camp. There will be no checking of papers for naturalization or anything like that. If you’re not white and you can’t speak English well they’ll take you, and they will ignore any lawyer, court, or law enforcement orders to stop. From the camp you’ll be put on a chartered flight to wherever they think you’re from with a “Do Not Return” note on your travel documents.
The truly scary part is what happens when they find out other countries won’t just accept American citizens. But they’re imagining Operation Wetback, not anything from the Bush or Reagan era.
Similar things were said about abortion.
Maybe read my second paragraph?
I think we should take them at their word. They are insane enough to do a wide variety of terrible things and ruin the country. As far as their rich backers go, everyone thinks they can control the monster they’ve unleashed until it’s too late.
I think it’s the threat that is the point. Maybe the efforts won’t reach the critical “mass deportations” but the purpose is to make migrants scared.