Toronto           Most of us were taught that when you go looking for a fight, you’ll find it without too much trouble.  Trump has been spoiling for any excuse to mobilize troops against US citizens and on US soil for years, both in his first term and in statements he made from the wilderness before the current term.  He also has a huge chip on his should about the fact that many governors of so-called “blue” states still don’t kowtow sufficiently to him and his imperial presidency.  So now, in the wake of demonstrations in Los Angeles and Los Angeles County protesting immigration raids, no one could keep his hands off the button this time.  He was bound and determined, hell or high water.

Needless to say, there were some protests, but there are protests of one sort or another in Los Angeles almost every day.  Federal immigration agents and others, along with local police in the city and county made arrests and handled business the way they do whenever things get out of hand.  Any who remember Rodney King will remember this is not a force that plays pattycake in these situations.  Trump even got a bit confused and complimented the LA police force over the weekend, thinking he was throwing bouquets to the National Guard for the good job they were doing without seeming to understand that he couldn’t just beam the troops in there and none were there nor would they arrive for a couple of days.

California’s Governor Newsom derided the action as escalating the conflict, which is certainly correct, because inevitably more military on the streets will mean more protests now about their presence.  No president has called out the Guard without a request from the governor since the 1965 integration opposition by stand-in-the-door governors in Mississippi and Alabama.  Trump’s justification, once again, is that this is invasion.  Hegseth from the Pentagon called in an insurrection.  Really?  Come on guys.  They hate protests, they hate California, and they are more than willing to hassle and arrest anyone who isn’t white and pretend they are immigrants or aliens and asking for a beatdown.  Outside of the White House, there may be some elderlies in the rural regions of the country who find this frightening, but for most of us, it’s just life in the city.

There’s a pattern to all of this.  The Federal Trade Commission is now investigating nonprofits and ad agencies around the advertising boycott called by activists and the suspension of some advertising for Twitter after Elon Musk took over and stopped doing much of any fact checking or monitoring of extremist hate speech and conspiracy content.  That’s not surprising, but like the “invasion” in Los Angeles and elsewhere, the allegation embedded in the FTC inquiry is that these groups and ad agencies were coordinating and therefore violating anti-trust statutes.  Are you kidding?  How could a boycott by outside parties be anti-trust?  In a wild stretch you could call it “restraint of trade,” because that’s what a boycott of a business over business practices is, and, frankly, that’s only when it works well, which is a long shot too.

For the White House, Trump, and his minions this whole constitutional protection of free speech and assembly is just something that the founders got wrong and has been out of control for hundreds of years, which is why they want to substitute autocracy for democracy.  Mobilizing troops, first in Los Angeles, and who knows where next, is another nail in the coffin of the basic rights of Americans.  That’s what is really out of hand.