Testosterone vs Estrogen

“With every act of violence they commit, our numbers seem to grow, people seem to get more angry.” - Luis Enrique Marquez
“I wasn’t even paying attention to the protests at all until the feds came in... When that video came out of those two unmarked guys in camouflage abducting people and putting them in minivans, that’s when I became aware.”- Christopher David, aka @tazerface (account suspended by Twitter)

(By American Zen's Mike Flannigan, on loan from Ari.)

In a quote widely attributed to physicist Albert Einstein, the man who discovered the theory of relativity reportedly said, "I do not know with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones." Whether or not the godfather of modern physics said it or not, the moral of the aphorism is both chilling, timeless and prescient- If we fight a Third World War, it will be fought with nuclear weapons then a fourth World War will betray a human race hurtled back into the Stone Age.

     No one is plausibly saying this is World War III or even a new civil war but several things about the 50+ nights of violent protests in Portland, Oregon do show several things:

     First, that Donald Trump's and Chad Wolf's thugs that were unhelpfully imported to Portland are not only inflaming tensions and fury, they're there to escalate the situation so they can legitimize making arrests that have long been called illegal. (Federal law enforcement cannot arrest people for non-federal crimes unless duly deputized by local police officials. Which isn't gonna happen.)

    Secondly, this extralegal penile implant that Trump's using to show what a tough guy he is is merely stiffening not Ill Douche's fake phallus but the resolve of the city of Portland when they see fascism come to their city in the form of hundreds of camouflage-clad federal cops with no identifying insignia

     Thirdly, in an unconscious nod to Einstein's contested quote, the protesters are essentially fighting against what amounts to an occupying force for which the stupendously stupid June 1st St. John's photo op stunt had served as mere prologue with homemade weapons and body armor.

    In the lead image, you see a Portland mother joining countless other moms in the streets of Oregon's largest city, fist defiantly raised obviously to the occupying force. The moms are there for a reason- Many of the original Portland protesters who are there to protest the open air daylight lynching of George Floyd are young. When they saw the brutality with which federal troops, let's just call them, met the kids, their natural maternal instincts came to the fore and they formed a human shield around the young activists. And, with no access to the body armor sported by the feds, they're making their own out of 55 gallon drums.

     Enter Christopher David, a 53 year-old Navy veteran. David saw the now-infamous video of a woman standing by herself on a Portland street and taken into custody by two other females, thrown into an unmarked van and whisked off. No Miranda, no telling her why she was under arrest, no nothing. So David decided to go to the epicenter of the unrest just to talk to the federal cops and, well, I think we all now know what happened to him. One cop took a baton to him like David Ortiz turning on a fat batting practice fastball down the middle while another pepper-sprayed him in the face twice while David just stood without once flinching, even though they broke his right hand.

     He has hours of painful surgery to look forward to this Friday that will involve pins and screws.

    Chad Wolf, one of an endless series of Trump's "Acting" seat warmers who didn't have to pass Senate scrutiny, has viciously defended the use of federal force that stretches the Posse Comitatus law of 1878 to the breaking point. In fact, just the other night, Wolf made a damning admission to a bubble-headed bleach blonde who was horrified by graffiti that his Bund was making proactive arrests regardless of federal property and jurisdiction. In fact, retired Gen. Russel Honoré even called for Wolf, the Acting DHS Secretary who has no law enforcement experience whatsoever, to be "run out of town."

     Yes, we're now in Minority Report territory.

“Feds stay clear! Moms are here!”

If Americans have demonstrated any one thing over the last two and a half centuries (even though we'd done the exact same thing to Native Americans and Mexicans), it's we don't like being invaded, ordered around and told what to do or not do by an occupying force. In the age before military air travel, that was a physical impossibility due to the United States being protected by massive oceans on either coast.

     But when the police turn against the populace it's sworn to protect, then it is no longer part of that community and becomes an occupying force. So, while we're waiting for Bubba and Karen to show up with their big, scary weapons that they'd sported in Lansing and Harrisburg to honor their sworn promise to defend us from government overreach and mission creep, it's up to the Moms of Portland to form a human firewall separating the original protesters from the federal goons on their streets.

     The nation's in flames because of predictable, thuggish behavior on the part of city, state and national law enforcement. Meeting peaceful African American protesters in Minneapolis on May 26th with riot gear and tear gas radicalized the city then the nation, then the world. And if Americans can be counted on to do one thing, it's to resist violent, extralegal occupation at any level. Like the mythical Hydra, if you chop a head off, more will take its place.

     And who knows what Wolf's thinking was in sending troops in camouflage to Portland, an urban center. But even SecDef Mark Esper wants them to stop wearing it. So does Gen. Honoré.

     It's hard to tell what Trump thinks he's accomplishing up in Portland, his own hand-picked Petri dish of fascism, especially with the general election less than 100 days off. And just today in the East Room, the Mar a Lago strongman crowed that he was going to "surge" more federal troops into Chicago, run by female African American mayor Lori Lightfoot.

     The military term "surge" is in itself worrisome, as it describes sending additional military troops into a war zone. After all, "President" Bush used it to describe doing so in Iraq and years later Obama used the word for his Afghanistan surge. And today, Trump's delusions included believing Democratic mayors such as Lori Lightfoot are so incompetent that they're practically begging Trump to send armed federal goons to take over their streets.

     Yeah, tell that to Mayors Lightfoot and Ted Wheeler, who have both said in no uncertain terms, as well as Oregon Governor Kate Brown, for Trump to keep his distance. 

     What was it Ronald Reagan famously said many years ago?

     "The nine most frightening words are, 'I'm from the government and I'm here to help'."