Values, you say?
In the wake of the police murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis on May 25, 2020, protests broke out across the country, some involving looting and vandalism. In the Los Angeles area, California officials called in the National Guard to assist local police. Similar protests occurred in Chicago. At the mayor’s request, Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker dispatched his National Guard to assist police, but not to engage in police work. The damage was significant, yet state and local officials handled it, as they did in California, Georgia and elsewhere.
Donald Trump, then president, blustered, “when the looting starts, the shooting starts.” But he did not put U.S. troops on the streets. Now he has in Los Angeles and threatens to across the country.
Isolated protests against Trump’s ICE raids in Los Angeles broke out on June 6. A few hundred protesters. The city and state had handled much larger protests before, some as large as 100,000. Over the heads of the city’s mayor and California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D), Trump ordered National Guard troops into Los Angeles the next day, Saturday (take note).
Los Angeles Times veteran Jim Newton explains what he thinks is different now at Politico:
If a place as big and diverse as California can be said to have a coherent set of values, those today would include respect for the environment, benevolence toward immigrants, support for living wages and insistence on civilian control over police. And if those values prevail, they do so at the expense of Trump, who is on the opposite side of every one of them.
Trump’s maligning and threats have not worked against the world’s fourth largest economy and the source of “one-third of U.S. vegetables and three-quarters of its fruit and nuts” plus ” nearly 20 percent of the nation’s milk.”
From Trump’s perspective, California is thumbing its nose at his program for America. He’s right about that. What seems to confound him and his allies is that it’s not California’s political leadership that’s behind that contempt — it’s not Newsom or Bass or the state legislature — it’s the people of the state, in overwhelming numbers and relying on deeply held beliefs. Those leaders are merely reflecting back what their constituents demand. Again, Trump lost to Biden here by almost 30 points — more than 5 million votes —- despite all the state’s struggles and all the former president’s flaws.
In fact, Trump’s attacks on Newsom and Bass — including his empty threat to arrest Newsom — may be the best thing that’s happened to either in some time. Before all this, Bass was seen as having foundered in the face of the wildfire, which erupted while she was out of town; now, she’s the mayor standing up to a deeply unpopular and dangerous president.
That helps explain why Trump picked this fight in California, not just to be a bully but to force a showdown of values, to bring California to heel, or least to score points by trying.
If Los Angeles really were burning, Trump would sit back and let it if he thought it brought him political advantage, just as he did on January 6 with the insurrection he inspired just down the street from his residence.
On Saturday morning, the same streets that had been tense the night before woke to calm. Diners lined up at the Grand Central Market in downtown Los Angeles for breakfast. The March of Dimes held a rally across from City Hall. LAPD officers had a booth; one joined the line dancing. Children played cornhole and munched on crushed ice.
Despite the protests concentrated in a couple of downtown blocks, Trump could not allow California to return to normal. That would mean its values would prevail. Trump ordered 700 Marines to deploy to Los Angeles on Monday amid claims that the city was on fire, in chaos, occupied by insurrectionists. You could have fooled city residents. They were going about their everyday business.
Newton continues:
If the goal is to calm Los Angeles, the solution would be simple: Withdraw federal forces and let the LAPD and Sheriff’s Department do their jobs.
But that’s not the goal. The unrest goes on because Trump needs it to. He’s not just fighting for deportations. He’s fighting for his values in a state that rejects them.
Newton is being generous in ascribing to Trump values. What he has is a feral instinct for domination.
Does Trump need a national distraction from his reconciliation package that’s floundering in the Senate? Yes. But that is policy he cares about less than losing. California and immigration are personal. Trump means to exert the full extent of his authority, and to exceed it in the absence of congressional and judicial pushback.
Ev’ry knee shall bow. Ev’ry tongue confess. That Donald Trump is Lord king. Or he’ll huff, and he’ll puff, and he’ll blow the republic down. He means to bring the country to heel. Especially places that find him repugnant. That’s half the country. (Meaning people not acreage.) But not until after his Red Square moment this Saturday.
Trumpism, the MAGA movement and Christian nationalism, have revealed not just how many of our flag-waving neighbors are secret monarchists, but how many are poseurs when it comes to the values they claim not only to revere but to embody (more than you, Dear Reader). It’s not all for show. But a lot is righteous posturing aimed at convincing not only the rest of the country of their superiority, but themselves.
Newsom clapped back on Wednesday at Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders’s (R) claim that in her state, lawlessness would never happen like in that lefty bastion of California. Newsom points out (correctly) that the homicide rate in Arkansas is twice that of California’s.
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