The living and live-streamed tragedy titled “Trump in Ignorance, Anger and Revenge” continues to play itself out on the national and international stage, causing the great suffering, sorrow, destruction and distress the word was coined for. His latest iteration of embodied and imposed tragedy is his staged lowdown showdown in DC, making his entrance as the new, nasty and noxious sheriff of Rottingham. It was widely rumored and eventually announced that Trump was going to “take back” a city, DC, that was never his; reduce crime in a city whose political leaders, police and people had already achieved this to a notable degree; and save a city that had no need of a savior, and even less than “no need” of a smash-and-grabber looking for vulnerability, valuables and a quick profit of any kind.
So, here comes the sheriff, mean, mad and malicious as always, not there to lower the crime rate but to artificially raise himself up; not to save a city, but to sack it of its gains, seize its self-control and prance and parade on the streets and in the media until some new fancy, fantasy or illusion pops into his still to be charted head. Playing with his executive order pen, and stirring his desktop pot of warlock and warmonger brew to see what new destructive and disabling concoction he can conjure up, Trump signed an executive order granting himself control of Washington, D.C.’s police force, calling out the National Guard and claiming in fig-leaf fashion a non-existent emergency. Moreover, he renewed his open attack on the homeless, denouncing and denying their right of presence in their own city, and while providing no federal aid for them, renewed his hunting, removal and terrorizing them and his underhanded attack on Black people.
Although people rightly ask why he would do this, in their hearts, they already really know at least one enduring reason. And that is, he craves to be relevant, feeds on scams and is always looking for ways to disable and destroy designated enemies and vulnerable people. Constantly needing to be relevant and praised, he seeks to deny and undo what has been done and then claim he is doing something no one else has done. He is the firestarter presenting himself as a fireman, the problem maker pretending to be the problem solver, and the walking hoax and ham actor hoping to play the role of hero. Therefore, he creates an imaginary frontline of danger and pretends to rush to it, trying to upstage and undermine the real and effective performance of the people working and solving life and death problems every day. His unannounced hope seems to be to provoke an action he can put down and in his and other vulnerable and malleable minds prove in a media moment, Trump, the savior, has come.
Secondly, Trump is not only doing this as routine scam so central to his gansta regime and lumpen style of life, but also as a needed diversion from a series of political and moral failures and atrocities that he would like to be forgotten or paid less attention. One of these is his desire to turn attention from the demand for the Epstein files whose release he once clamored for and used against enemies and opponents “great and small”. Certainly, there is reason to suspect they further indict him, otherwise, as even his MAGA members and fellow travelers ask, why won’t he release them now that he himself has control of them. Another need for him is diversion from the decline of his popularity, becoming a Teflon don that is losing his Fifth Ave. sheen and shine.
He has pursued his private interests masked as public interests, with a seemingly incurable addiction to greed and has cut needed funds and programs that reduce and eliminate assistance, support, employment and income, and thus endanger people’s health, well-being and lives. And they are beginning to view and value him in less supportive ways. Trump also wants the Israeli genocide against the Palestinian people in Gaza, Palestine and the deadly, destructive and savage Israeli settler violence in West Bank, Palestine to be removed not only from the media, but also from the minds and moral consideration of the people. He wants to erase Palestine and the U.S. complicity in Israel’s genocide against the Palestinian people, its use of starvation as a weapon of war and its morally monstrous destruction of not only human lives, but also the conditions and capacities for Palestinian life and recovery.
Thirdly, one cannot rationally or morally miss that there is the racial and racist character of this perverse performance when he singles out DC and promises to intervene in other cities with Black mayors and sizeable and politically active Black populations who are not only democratic, but dare to be defiant in the midst of so much compromising, cowering, colluding and collaborating from others. These cities include, he says, not only DC, but also Baltimore, Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, and Oakland. Here it is good to remember that these are cities who have reduced crime on their own in spite of Trump’s helping to create conditions for crime to flourish. And he has done this by cutting and denying federal aid for community programs of intervention and prevention, preaching and practicing police and National Guard suppression and harsh punishment for everyone but his partners in crime, including his January 6 mob, whom he pardoned and gave one a job in the Department of Justice (?). Moreover, he does multiple crimes in broad daylight himself and thus provides an example, at least from his point of view and vantage point, that crime pays and pays well. In this case, as others, he has sought to racialize crime and therefore criminalize the race, equating crime with Black and teaching even its victims to say Black crime rather than naming as it is, American crime in the same way that all the White ethnic mafias are called national problems rather than racial ones.
Fourthly, Trump’s constant use of the military in civilian situations and federalizing the police is a clear sign of emerging and unfolding fascism. Preying on different levels of concern about public and community safety and crime, he seeks to expand his use of ICE, police and military in surveillance, silencing and suppression of dissent and resistance. Like all the actual and would be fascists, he needs a scapegoat, a false claim of threat to mobilize and maneuver the police and military against the people they are sworn to protect. He pretends that it’s only against the targeted scapegoats that he is directing his force and violence under the color and camouflage of law. But he is actually and always mobilizing the people against themselves, conning and cultivating them against their better sense of the moral, the rational and the real.
Stoking their fears and anxiety and enlarging their hate and sense of grievance, he draws them into a web of fantasies and fears of others and unseen dangers purportedly caused by these marginalized different, devalued and vulnerable people. It’s in this muddle that Trump and company can with no moral qualms talk law and order and pardon insurrectionists and crime partners, criminalize and practice brutality against Black people and other peoples of color, immigrants, the homeless, and others different and vulnerable, attack police and pretend they support them and reward genocidists with weapons, intelligence, and military and political cover.
Finally, Trump is also testing the water with the courts, with Congress and the American people in terms of how far and how fast he can realize his dream of dictator-in-residence. Indeed, as he said during the election that if you vote for him this time, you may not have to vote anymore. Thus, the real “crime emergency” which he should have declared with his executive order should have been issued long ago, not for DC, but for the White House where crime is conceived, committed and carried out daily and nightly at home and abroad. For the sake of reason and record, let’s be clear, the real problem in America is its current leadership and its supporters in high, low and ordinary places, and a systemic sickness with a pathology of oppression. Thus, we need to reject the Hollywood hype and false hysteria, to set aside all illusions, to forego all fantasies about a more perfect union when we have such an imperfect one, and intensify the struggle to resist oppression in all its forms, to affirm ourselves and the good in righteous and relentless struggle, and to actively aspire for a new world of expansive, inclusive and shared good for everyone, everywhere.
