Thoughts on an Uncivil War
An Army Called ICE Is Already Waging a Domestic War
(This is a series of short essay-reports, beginning with the worst – ICE and attacks on immigrants and ending with the best – what we can do and a brief homage to Jane Goodall.)
A lot of us have assumed that somehow the line that would be crossed would be when the military was used against civilians inside the USA. In some ways sending the National Guard to be part of anti-immigrant campaigns already did that. In others that matter, ICE and other policing units–the Border Patrol, the FBI, and the ATF--are now acting as now an army of sorts, stormtrooper outfits, helicopter raids, big guns, and all, as the dystopian attack on an apartment building in Chicago Tuesday showed. Stories of children awakened by goons who broke into their homes and dragged them out naked to throw them into U-Haul trailers demonstrate how ruthless this army is, how dehumanizing the attacks. Homes in the building were trashed, belongings strewn around and thrown into hallways. The usual excuse of Venezuelan gangs was given; even US-born citizens were arrested, including one who was left tied up outside the building for three hours.
Like the people of Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., before them, Chicagoans have protested ICE steadily and fiercely. An outlet called Block Club Chicago reports, "A 14-year veteran of the National Guard, [Demi] Palecek has been attending the Broadview protests every Friday, she said. She criticized federal agents’ lack of restraint at the facility.“ICE has no regard for any human life. And let me be clear, these are not trained professionals. As a military member, I can tell you the way they are handling weapons is reckless and dangerous.”
The border between policing and militarization has always been blurry: a lot of cities got armored personnel carriers and other junk inappropriate to domestic policing from Bush-era military surplus, and the L.A. of the 1980s was full of war-on-drugs police choppers that gave the city a Vietnam-war vibe (they still exist but they're not as ubiquitous). It's still important to know how actual US military leaders will respond to illegal orders, and people who have contacts and influence with officers and enlistees should be reaching out, including to remind them that they should not obey illegal orders. Journalists should be doing more to cover what's going on inside the major institutions – the FBI, CIA, NSA, the military, and other branches of government – in response to the corruption of those entities and the partisan idiots like Kash Patel now heading them.
On the Mediocrity of Team Trump and Malice of MAGA
Like the Nazis before them the Trumpists insist they're all about some sort of master race physical magnificence that is first of all white (and male, with subsidiary white-lady concubine/succubus/breeding stock to perpetuate the race and serve the coffee), but like Hitler, Himmler, Goebbels, etc. the men at the top of the regime are mostly a pretty pathetic lot physically, and even the ones who are gym rats are pretty far from their own fantasies of dominance through manliness.
Trump himself is in dramatic physical and mental decline, which makes him more malleable for the people manipulating him. It's been striking how he has repeatedly acknowledged he doesn't understand what's going on, from gaffes about which countries are at war to believing old footage of Portland protests is current to some confusion over cuts to the New York state budget. The New York Times reports "President Trump was blindsided by the decision to defund the police, not learning of the cuts until Gov. Kathy Hochul of New York called him on Sunday to protest the change after the fact, according to three people with knowledge of the call."
During his mumbled, meandering speech to the military leaders Tuesday, Trump made it clear he lacks the self-awareness to realize he was making an admission that walking is a challenge for him (a bit like all his boasts about doing well on tests for cognitive decline that are just confessions he needs to be tested for it). The course of history may be shaped by a more dramatic and sudden decline in his functionality (though of course he should be Amendment 25'd already).
If Trump cannot serve out his term, I have high hopes for the impact of Vice President Vance's superlative, almost astonishing, and maybe unparalleled unlikeability, which has been demonstrated in any number of ways including by his signal achievement so far (aside from his eight vacations so far this year): being told off by two popes in one year. He's also an outrageous liar who tried to get people to hate the undocumented by blaming them for crowded and financially flailing rural hospitals. (The Trump administration's threats to Medicare and other healthcare programs is a major threat to rural hospitals, though.)
Pope Leo XIV seems to be targeting Vance again with his declaration this week that "Someone who says I'm against abortion but is in favor of the death penalty is not really pro-life. And someone who says I'm against abortion but I'm in agreement with the inhuman treatment of immigrants in the United States, I don't know if that's pro-life." He did so while also blessing a bit of glacier (which would melt into holy water) and speaking up about climate. A Chicago native, he seems very aware of the persecution of immigrants in this country and committed to continuing Pope Francis's strong advocacy for climate action.
Speaking of pro-life, Jessica Valenti, whose newsletter is called Abortion Every Day, reports on the next activity for Turning Point USA, the organization Charlie Kirk headed: "On October 7, TPUSA will host a panel at the University of Alabama titled “All Human Life is Valuable,” featuring Jeff Durbin, head of End Abortion Now, and Bradley Pierce, president of the Foundation to Abolish Abortion (FAA). In case you need a refresher: FAA is the lobbying group responsible for the rise of ‘equal protection’ bills—laws that would charge abortion patients with homicide, including capital punishment. This isn’t something they’re shy about. Durbin has said explicitly that women who end their pregnancies should be killed: “If you take the life of a human being, unjustly, then what the state owes you—if it’s proven and it’s true—is capital punishment. You forfeit your right to live.”
It's part of the criminalization of pregnancy and, really, the criminalization of being a woman in your fertile years who consorts with men, since women are put on trial for having miscarriages and denied access to life-saving medical care for pregnancies gone wrong, while the administration also attacks access to birth control and, of course, abortion.
The Corruption Is Coming from Inside the House
It is important and underemphasized that a lot of this would not be happening if we didn't have a Republican-majority house and senate that have decided to surrender their power to the administrative branch and thereby throw the Constitution out the window. This is relevant to, among other things, all the misuse, misallocation, and withholding of funds by the Trumpists. It's also shocking and should have been treated as such by the US news industry that House Speaker Mike Johnson is taking major actions specifically to protect Trump from whatever's in the Epstein files (which kind of confirms that something's there and it's not good for him and we should know). This includes closing the House for the summer and delaying swearing in Congresswoman Adelina Grijavla who'll be the 218th vote and final one necessary to release the files.
Another way mainstream media are failing us is by treating the most corrupt things we've ever seen in the history of the country as no big deal, such as the Trump family's billions raked in in cryptocurrency scams, some of which must be bribes and buying favor, some of which may just bankrupt suckers. Cory Doctorow recently wrote an illuminating essay called "Conservatism Considered as a Movement of Bitter Rubes," looking at how often they get suckered by their idols and leaders. He writes: "A key aspect of conservative ideology is hyper-individualism, and the rejection of systemic explanations for one’s problems. Poverty, unwanted pregnancy, abusive workplace situations and worse can all be blamed on “bad choices” — not systemic factors. Likewise, the MAHA [Make America Healthy Again] movement blames chronic illnesses and contagious diseases on personal failings, such as the failure to “eat clean” and exercise regularly. As Naomi Klein writes in Doppelganger, there’s a short, greased slide from this belief to a eugenic, let ‘er rip response to pandemics. (“Why should I shut down my yoga studio just because you didn’t take care of your immune system?”) People who are steeped in this belief are easy marks for supplements, fad diets and quack exercise gadgets like the Thighmaster and the Abflex, which promise to “spot reduce” fat (what better expression of the rejection of systemic explanations than the belief that you can reduce the fat in one part of your body?)."
The Economy: It's All Downhill from Here
One really important part of resistance is being loud and insistent that "they did this" in a "you break it you pay for it" way. It should be a refrain response for a lot of headlines that'll be coming our way about jobs, businesses, products, and the economy overall. We may see it collapse thanks to Trump's delusional mismanagement, and we're already seeing it decline significantly. The building industry is impacted by both tariffs on materials and by loss of a huge portion of the workforce, terrorized out of showing up by ICE. The agricultural industry is likewise impacted, which will manifests as untended fields, unharvested crops, food shortages and already-rising food prices and for the soybean and other industries, the loss of foreign markets thanks to blowback from the tariffs (prompting a bailout for soybean farmers who lost their main customer when China suddenly stopped buying). In fact tariffs and terrorization of a swathe of the work force is going to impact a whole lot of stuff across the nation.
Something similar may happen with public health with the attacks on vaccine science, vaccine access, and affordable healthcare. Terrorizing immigrants in ways that prevent them from seeking care while RFK-backed contagious diseases spread is one dystopian scenario that could emerge from this. The hollowing out of most branches of government will likewise be impactful. They did this.
We Have Not Surrendered and It Is Not Over
I think a lot of people would like to do a lot more but are waiting for leadership on what and where and how (and some of that can be got from Indivisible). You probably already know all the basics: show up for protests and demonstrations, No Kings on October 18, yell at your reps, organize your own protests if there aren't any to join, be informed and bring that up in your conversations and social media, donate to the organizations doing the work, including the ACLU and immigrant-rights groups, and be ready to respond when things escalate, which they almost surely will.
It's important to speak up and call things by their true names – exercising rights keeps them strong, holds the space in which they take place, and lets others know that you care, you dare to stand on principle, and they're not alone. Calling out what's illegal, destructive, inhumane, corrupt, and not letting it all be normalized is part of our work. They would like us to feel frightened and believe that they've already won and there's nothing we can do. Do not comply. However you feel (frightened is sensible, but can coexist with defiance and bravery), they have not won and there is so much we can do.
Jane Goodall died this week, at the age of 91, after revolutionizing her field of science while still very young and spending the later decades of her life as a champion for nature, environmental action and education, protection of endangered species, and hope. She seems like the right place to end this essay, while remembering that we're only in the middle of the story....
