Abby Zimet: Untethered to the Facts

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Armed terrorism by the White House escalates – What stage of fascism is it when the fuhrer defies the courts to send in troops anyway? – as does the batshit rhetoric about left-wing “terrorism” to hide their own, the fever dream agitprop to buttress the fantasy, and the deranged push for retribution against dissent, by anyone. “Trump has pardons and tanks – what do you have?” asks one troubled patriot. We the people, righteous judges, Portland’s frog, Pritzker’s rage, D.C. wiseguys’ revived pedo besties – and the facts.

Two months ago, the United States made the Human Rights Watch list for the first time in 249 years; rights advocates cited a nation “sliding deeper into the quicksands of authoritarianism” with peaceful protests met with military force, critics treated as criminals, journalists targeted, and support slashed for civil society. Despite a core principle that America’s military not be turned against fellow citizens, they noted, we’ve seen an invasion of ill-trained, hyped-up ICE thugs – and now presumably more professional National Guard – representing an ominous “line that democratically elected leaders aren’t meant to cross.” Add to that a vengeful, demented manchild raving about ”the enemy within“ making bad, lethal decisions based on fake tee vee news – ”Portland is burning to the ground…All you have to do (is) turn on your television“ – and it’s clear, says Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek, ”The only threat we face is to our democracy – and it is being led by President Trump.“

That threat got worse Monday as Trump, who’s long been keen to sic the troops on us all, suggested he’s open to invoking the Insurrection Act ”to put down future civil unrest,“ aka continue inventing fake crises to ”bulldoze what’s left of constitutional restraints“ in an ”unhinged despotism“ free of pesky democratic guardrails. For now, he and his rabid flunkies – cue Press Barbie vowing he’ll ”end the radical left reign of terror in Portland once and for all“ – settled for embarking on a witless weekend ”game of whack-a-mole,” frantically conspiring to send National Guard troops from whatever state they could get away with it to whatever city they decided “needs a little terrorizing,” a brazen end-run around the ruling by Trump-appointed  Oregon Judge Karin Immergut, who he whined “lost her way” by blocking the deployment of Oregon troops to Portland after arguing his characterization of “a burning hellhole,” which he’s never visited, was “simply untethered to the facts.”

So okay, they figured, we’ll send 300 troops from California, a cool two-fer against mouthy Newsom, who swiftly called the move “a breathtaking abuse of the law and power,” and sued. Immergut was not amused: “How could bringing in federalized National Guard from California not be in direct contravention to the temporary restraining order I issued yesterday?” she asked, politely noting the move ”appears (intended) to circumvent“ her ruling. After learning the regime was already looking to send 400 Guard members from Texas (Albania was their next choice), she called bullshit, cited Oregon police reports that protests were small and subdued – ”8 to 15 people, mostly sitting in lawn chairs and walking around“ – and blocked ”deployment, reassignment or relocation“ from any state, given ”neither the facts on the ground (nor) the claimed legal base for the deployments had changed.“ Damn, irksome facts again. Still, Stephen Miller called the ruling a ”legal insurrection.”

And, really, when you look at the Portland protests, it’s understandable. While a handful of people have peaceably gathered – and sometimes done the cha cha cha – on the legal side of a blue line outside the largely tranquil ICE facility since June, their forces often included the terrorist, blow-up Portland Frog, who In one recent tussle was pepper-sprayed in their vent by infuriated ICE agents. Now, the stalwart spicy Frog is back; asked about the assault in an interview, they cheerfully dismissed it with, “I kinda coughed a bit, but that was about it…Just a little pepper – I’ve tasted spicier.” At that point, a phalanx of ICE thugs emerged together and pointlessly fired off clouds of teargas toward the handful of protesters; the Frog danced and sang, “You put your left foot in…” As the troops carefully, ridiculously backed away, the protesters yelled, “Fucking losers” and “We’re supposed to love each other.” The Frog kept dancing. He also shimmied. Truly a burning hellhole.

Having failed in their attempts to liberate Portland, the regime turned its sights on equally offensively blue Chicago, where 400 Texas National Guard members are being deployed despite the opposition of Gov. JB Pritzker, who vowed, “Illinois will not let the Trump administration continue on their authoritarian march without resisting.” The action comes a week after hundreds of ICE agents staged a draconian, jack-booted raid on a South Side apartment building – Pritzker: “They are the ones making it a war zone” – rappelling from Black Hawk helicopters, tossing smoke bombs, busting down doors, zip-tying sleepy residents, including crying naked children and U.S. citizens. Later, ICE Barbiereleased a histrionic, Call-of-Duty-esque video, martial music pounding, presumably to showcase their heroism in the face of terrified children. Text on one version threatened, “To every criminal illegal alien: Darkness is no longer your ally. We will find you.” A second one read, “Chicago, we’re here for you.”

Maybe because even some of the regime’s sociopaths have a discomfiting sense they’re on the wrong side of history and feel the need to compensate – or because, per Patriot Takes, it’s ”a complete clown show“ – their weird, incendiary agitprop keeps coming. A baffling meme shows race cars on a track that promises, ”Victory is within reach. Recapture our national identity.“ Say what? A collage of Democratic leaders, including Biden, proclaims, “THE PARTY OF HATE, EVIL, AND SATAN.” Oregon Republicans posted a flashy image of rows of police riot shields against a smoke-filled, blood-red night sky to celebrate Trump saving ”burning-to-the-ground“ Portland with California troops, except he was blocked because it was illegal and didn’t, and the image is fabricated, combining two earlier, real-life photographs in South America, nearly a decade apart, of riot police in Ecuador and Brazil respectively.

Still, nothing approaches the awful – the inhumane, the sadistic, the sick – of Kristi Noem’s Homeland Security’s obscenities, which keep proliferating. Ever since her grotesque performance before an El Salvador prison cell packed with unfortunates – which led to charges of her ”sadistic eroticization of power“ – and echoing her famed, makeup-slathered photo-ops – Barbie firefighter, Barbie cow-girl, Barbie-fake-ICE-agent-holding-a-gun-aimed-at-her-colleague’s head – she’s seemed to revel in the theatrical glitz of a once-pedestrian job, turning every atrocity into a chintzy action movie. In that, shamelessness is her super power: She seems so proud of her Chicago assault on an apartment building of sleeping families she keeps returning to it. One eerie new video mixes scenes from it with other arrests as singers declare, ”We’‘re having an All Night Revival.“ Another shows multiple heroic thugs seizing their victims with the text, ”Bag it. Tag It. Take it down.“ Yes: human beings.

Then there’s the cruel insanity of an AI video using Blue Oyster Cult’s “Don’t Fear the Reaper” to portray Project 2025’s Russell Vought as the government shutdown’s Grim Reaper declaring, “Now their time has come…Here comes the reaper….He wields the pen, the funds, and the brain” as Trump plays cowbell and Vance plays drums in their deathly band. It also features presumably DOGEd or furloughed federal workers – fraud, waste, and abuse all – as zombies hurtling past an unemployment office, and Democrats speaking as so much, “Blah blah blah blah.” Veterans of the U.S. national security community, part of The Steady State: “A president posting a video depicting his opponents as prey for the Grim Reaper and zombies outside the unemployment office is the opposite of what we expect in a healthy democracy.” George Conway: ”We elected a pathology.“

Along with weird cosplay, we also elected a party of brazen, relentless liars. Facing anger over the shutdown and spiking health insurance costs, MAGA Mike announces he’ll ”look right into the camera“ and tell you the GOP is ”working around the clock every day to fix health care“ when, in fact, he sent the House home until Oct. 14 and they’re cutting CHIP and Medicaid. Armed with canned attacks, a bellicose, amnesiac Pam Bondi just lied and blustered through four hours of testimony. Trump told sailors ”we will get our service members every last penny“ (not) during a shutdown he blamed on Democrats, randomly posted: ”JUST OUT: Good news for the holiday season. EARLY PRICES ARE DOWN,“ though they don’t exist, with ”NO INFLATION,“ and told reporters, ”You have Black women with MAGA hats on in Chicago. All over the place. They want the Guard to come in.“

Elsewhere, America pushes back. In Chicago, Gov. Pritzker declared, “We must now start calling this what it is: Trump’s Invasion.” Citing armed, ”rogue, reckless“ goons roaming the city, Mayor Brandon Johnson established ”ICE free zones“ that forbid them from using city-owned land as staging areas: ”If Congress won’t check this administration, Chicago will.“ On the South Side, residents and passersby honked, hassled, wrestled and ran off – ”Get the fuck outta here“ – a couple of ICE thugs trying to detain a guy. In New York, the Bar Association vowed to legally pursue regime officials justifying attacks on Venezulean boats that constitute ”illegal summary execution,“ or ”murder.“ In D.C, The Secret Handshake resurrected their prancing Epstein/Trump statue ”to stand gloriously on the National Mall“; when a second permit was suddenly, temporarily revoked before they got their third, the group released 3D-printable versions of the statue online.

In a searing, 161-page ruling, District Judge William Young, an 85-year-old Reagan appointee, blasted the regime for violating the 1st Amendment rights of pro-Palestinian and other protesters, charging they targeted a few people for speaking out and then used ”the full rigor“ of immigration laws to deport those few and silence others; Young specifically slammed ”the President’s palpable misunderstanding“ that he cannot simply ”seek retribution for speech he disdains.“ Marcy Wheeler reminded listeners that, ”The main scene of crime in Washington, D.C. is the White House,” that Vance, Miller, Noem, Patel, Bondi are all “working hard to paint Trump opponents as violent terrorists to distract from the crimes they’re committing (as) part of a criminal conspiracy” run by Trump, “a career criminal.” At Public Notice, Lisa Needham echoed her: “The terrorism is coming from inside the government.” And someone, somewhere, flipping the GOP’s florid AI script, made this paean to resistance.

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First published in Common Dreams. Licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.

Abby Zimet has written CD’s Further column since 2008. A longtime, award-winning journalist, she moved to the Maine woods in the early 70s, where she spent a dozen years building a house, hauling water and writing before moving to Portland. Having come of political age during the Vietnam War, she has long been involved in women’s, labor, anti-war, social justice and refugee rights issues.