Trump has announced that he’ll be violating the Posse Commitatus Act again; this time by sending national Guard troops to patrol Washington, D.C..
Because he got away with it in Los Angeles.
And when there are no consequences for breaking the law, then there’s no incentive to not just keep on keepin’ on.
If the state of California had done anything to prevent the federal invasion of L.A., then there’d be at least some potential consequence to them trying the same thing in D.C. this week.
Though, what with D.C. being a federal enclave, there’s no governor to even try to do something about it this time.
And each time they get away with it, it’ll be harder to stop the next time.
This time the focus is apparently going to be on violent crime, which in D.C. is at the lowest it’s been in 30 years, and homelessness, which isn’t.
It’s not stated what additional benefit federal troops could have on violent crime, and presumably won’t be what with them being clearly forbidden from acting as domestic law enforcement.
Exactly what actual value federal troops could be in dealing with homelessness is … unclear. They certainly know how to put up tents, but it’s unlikely that many of them know how to design and build a real house. And it’s not like D.C. has much land they could be building new houses on anyway.
So that’s pretty clearly not what’s really motivating this.
As many people have figured out, this is pretty obviously just a tantrum brought on by the fact that a Trump loyalist who goes by the handle “Big Balls” was beaten up by some kids on the street last week in what’s been reported as “an attempted carjacking”.
Although calling it “a successful Nazi-beating” would be just as accurate, if there were any evidence that the kids who beat him up even knew who he was.
Both of those things are already illegal, though arguably only one of them is immoral.
The National Guard troops will be joining several hundred actual federal officers, re-assigned from various agencies, who have already started wandering around the nation’s capitol in the new federal uniform of facemasks and machine guns.
I’ve already seen reports of minor traffic accidents drawing crowds of armed agents larger than the crowds of gawkers that usually show up for things like that.
So, that should go well.
As I pointed out on Friday:
So there’s your depressing thought for the weekend: having a good government depends on first having a citizenry that wants it.
And we don’t seem to have that.
Without legislators, judges, and officials dedicated to actual facts and actual law, and without an informed and educated citizenry to vote for them, it really doesn’t matter that this stuff is already illegal. There are people in positions that could stop this from going on, but they aren’t doing it.
So no, changing the laws won’t really help with this situation; this stuff is already illegal.
There are better systems, and I’ve discussed many aspects of them here, where power is distributed more widely to help prevent anyone getting this degree of control over the State. And we should still be using our understanding of these systems to improve the United States.
Or to design whatever States we’ll build here when the United States is done.
But we need to remember that even the best-designed State will fail if the citizens choose to let it fail.
