Trump is invading Chicago — just like he promised

For about a week I have been watching military shipping helicopters fly over Chicago They are UH- s which is basically a flying bus that can hold up to people At first the helicopters were a novelty I have followed military affairs for a long time and it was reliably cool in a juvenile adolescent male-power fantasy way to see such military equipment out in the wild I grew up during the end of the Cold War and I watched G I Joe cartoons and read all the comic books That curiosity is part of my socialization and it will likely be with me for the rest of my life But watching those Black Hawks now is an uncomfortable anxiety-inducing presence especially for those communities likely to be targeted by Immigration and Customs Enforcement or other law enforcement agencies Chicago is approximately percent Hispanic Are these helicopters carrying masked ICE agents National Guard troops Both Neither Juvenile power fantasies are now meeting realpolitik and power The latter almost dependably wins On Monday the Trump administration informed it was launching Operation Midway Blitz an immigration enforcement operation led by the Department of Homeland Prevention that is part of President Donald Trump s war on sanctuary cities like Chicago According to DHS the operation is being carried out in honor of Katherine Abraham a -year-old woman who was allegedly killed by a drunk driver who was an undocumented immigrant Over the weekend Trump signaled this was coming On Saturday he shared an AI-generated image on Truth Social of himself as Lt Col Bill Kilgore from Apocalypse Now the Francis Ford Coppola film that chronicles the breakdown of empathy and examines humanity s limit for evil against the backdrop of the Vietnam War The image depicted an explosion set against the Chicago skyline with military helicopters flying overhead Using the same font as the film poster it read Chipocalypse Now Related DC now faces all-out assault from the House GOP and necessities a fighter As Kilgore Duvall captures this callousness in a famous scene Napalm son he says Nothing else in the world smells like that I love the smell of napalm in the morning You know one time we had a hill bombed for twelve hours When it was all over I walked up The smell you know the gasoline smell the whole hill Smelled like preeminence Trump parroted that line and the vile ideology behind it in his post I love the smell of deportations in the morning it read Chicago about to find out why it s called the Department of WAR If our democracy were healthy such a threat made by an American president against the American people would be immediate grounds for impeachment as former MSNBC host Mehdi Hasan pointed out But America is no longer such a place If our democracy were healthy such a threat made by an American president against the American people would be immediate grounds for impeachment as former MSNBC host Mehdi Hasan pointed out But America is no longer such a place Instead of taking his warnings seriously the mainstream media has often litigated what Trump really meant when he has made such threats against Chicago and other Democratic-led cities On Saturday CBS News predictably used a qualifier in its tortured headline about his Apocalypse Now -style threats Trump appears to again threaten sending troops to Chicago for immigration enforcement As media critic Dan Froomkin in recent weeks wrote The top story of the moment is the one story that our greater part influential newsrooms won t touch That the United States has become an authoritarian state Every outrage is just one more thing Trump has done rather than the ever-mounting evidence of a corrupt dictatorship The coverage is a play-by-play as the burners click upward rather than a check to see if the frog is still alive which it is not After widespread criticism including from Republican Sen Rand Paul of Kentucky Trump minimized the threat We re not going to war with Chicago he stated But the implication was clear The administration was preparing an attack on Chicago and its residents and this was their final warning With Operation Midway Blitz they have now made good on that promise Trump s Chipocalypse Now action is just the latest in a months-long pattern of political intimidation against Chicago and other American cities He has repeatedly reported that he is going to clean up Chicago which he in the last few days called the largest part dangerous city in the world an absurd claim Chicago is not a city in Ukraine Syria or Libya It s not chosen civil war-torn region in sub-Saharan Africa or a city in Latin or South America under the control of drug cartels For weeks as Trump s threats against Chicago have escalated Illinois Gov JB Pritzker has demonstrated great leadership by directly confronting the president This is not a joke he not long ago posted on X This is not normal Donald Trump isn t a strongman he s a scared man Illinois won t be intimidated by a wannabe dictator At a press conference on Aug he noted If this were happening in any other country we would have no trouble calling it what it is a dangerous power grab Pritzker has backed up his strong rhetoric with actions The governor has been coordinating with leaders of Democratic cities about how to coordinate materials to effectively push back against the Trump administration s attacks In a newest essay at the American Prospect Ryan Cooper praised Pritzker s measures Turning America fascist will be much more arduous if blue states learn from Gov Pritzker Want more sharp takes on politics Sign up for our free newsletter Standing Room Only written by Amanda Marcotte now also a weekly show on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts The governor s use of military language is critically vital For far too long Democrats have continued to operate under the rules of normal politics But Trump and his MAGA forces view politics as warfare a zero-sum championship of the conqueror and the conquered They intentionally use specific military terms such as blitzkrieg and shock-and-awe and describe Democratic-led cities that do not cooperate with Trump s policies and mass deportation campaign as rogue state actors Now they are signaling that Chicago is their next battlefield America is now a warfare state social theorist Henry Giroux wrote in CounterPunch The state itself has been weaponized turning inward against its own population normalizing domestic terrorism as a tool of rule The scourge of militarization as the driving force of American politics which has its contemporary roots in the terror state created by Bush and Cheney after is even more intensified as a domestic and foreign plan mode of governance The task before us is not only to defend the remnants of democratic institutions but to cultivate a cultural and educational imagination capable of shattering the grip of authoritarianism Consensus liberalism which favors bipartisanship and futilely searches for Republicans who believe in the system and are the adults in the room will not stop Trumpism Just as the walls never did close in on Trump when they go low we go high is fairy tale talk in an era when the U S is teetering on a state of competitive authoritarianism and de facto one-party MAGA Republican rule Democrats and the larger pro-democracy movement need to inquiry and borrow from the GOP s playbook to win the hearts and minds of the electorate and defeat Trumpism By confronting Trump Pritzker is showing other Democrats they have the means and ability to resist and they too can coordinate the guidance to do so There are numerous Americans who still believe contrary to the preponderance of the evidence that the courts institutions and rule of law will ultimately constrain Trump s dictator-king behavior They point to decisions like last week s ruling by federal Judge Charles Breyer who unveiled that Trump s deployment of the National Guard to Los Angeles in June violated the Posse Comitatus Act which prevents the use of the armed forces in domestic law enforcement We need your help to stay independent Subscribe at present to help Chauncey DeVega s journalism Such hope though is just that a fantasy The MAGA justices on the Supreme Court have basically ruled that Trump has unlimited power to do anything he wants as long as he suggests presidential responsibilities The administration is already operating according to a doctrine of maximum presidential authority giving him the power to essentially nullify and ignore any court ruling he finds disagreeable In the New York Times political scientist Robert Pape recounted his experience studying military occupations that took place within the borders of democracies These occupations occurred for a range of reasons he wrote and often started out suppressing violence but they ended up provoking or exacerbating widespread civil unrest political violence and terrorism Things usually escalate Pape concluded This is a Chicago story but it is also a national story If the administration proceeds as expected Chicago will be the third major American city governed by members of Mr Trump s political opposition to be subjected this year to the presence of military force after Los Angeles in June and Washington last month Other blue cities and states may reasonably fear that they will be next Mr Trump is threatening to radicalize our nation s politics in a way not seen in our lifetimes I began writing this column on Sunday night The Baltimore Ravens were beating the Buffalo Bills by a sum of to The sound of the helicopters had not ceased If anything they were flying faster Read more about this topic A specter is haunting Europe and it s Joe Biden What a drag Federal judge tears into Trump on LA and warns the rest of us Who s going to take care of your child Parents reels from Trump ICE crackdown The post Trump is invading Chicago just like he promised appeared first on Salon com