Imagine living in an urban setting and witnessing people being dragged off the streets and driven away by uniformed agents who can’t be identified. Almost sounds like Nazi Germany or today’s communist China. Well, this is what recently happened in Portland, Oregon, where federal agents, including several from Homeland Security, were employed in a kind of protest crackdown. Next, President Trump, joined by Attorney General William Barr, announced a plan to send federal agents to the Democratic-run cities of Chicago and Albuquerque to crack down on violent crime. All of this grand gesture appears to be part of an escalation of his “law and order” theme heading into the final months before the presidential election. How convenient!
Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot for one rejected the use of federal agents for the kind of protest crackdown seen in Portland, saying such actions were deemed unconstitutional, an infringement on peoples’ liberties and would be met with legal action. Like other mayors around the country, she does not want to see authoritarian, unnecessary and unaccountable military-style ‘crackdowns. Instead, as in the past, local police forces are quite willing to have the help of the federal law enforcement agencies, such as the FBI, to work alongside them when needed in resolving outstanding criminal cases, including homicides. Unlike the national guard units in each state, most federal law enforcement agents are not adequately trained and equipped to deal with protesters as witnessed in Portland. Even the use of the national guard is seen as a last resort under certain conditions.
One has to ask, with everything going on in the U.S. including a pandemic and protests against police shootings of unarmed civilians, why the President would launch such an far-fetched initiative at this time? In two words: ‘political tactics’. Trump is down in the polls by double-digit numbers in his bid to be re-elected. Extreme desperation has set in, especially now that the on-going battle against the coronavirus is in wretched straits. As for the President’s actions, let us remember what Lord Acton once declared: “Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” He also stated: “Liberty is not a means to a higher political end. It is itself the highest political end.”
FROLITICKS 