'What Lines Should We Draw? President or Conqueror'

"...Trump’s own argument part of a rollout he envisions for using federal police (ICE, CBP, FBI) and the National Guard to start taking over policing in big U.S. cities, universally Blue cities and in every case in Blue States."

"I was reminded of this when I saw this video clip today of Rep. James Comer (R-KY) saying again explicitly that this is a test case for a future rollout in 'Democrat-run cities,' as he put it. 'We’re gonna support doing this in other cities if it works out in Washington DC. We spend a lot on our military. Our military has been in many countries around the world for the past two decades walking the streets trying to reduce crime. We need to focus on the big cities in America now.' "

"Comer introduces another interesting and telling dimension. We do in fact spend vast sums of money on the military. And the idea seems to be that now that we’re not fighting 'forever wars' abroad it makes sense to start occupying American cities. He’s admirably frank about it. There’s a whole Arendtian story there, how the tools a state uses in warfare abroad get adapted (or not terribly much adapted) for use at home. But I want to focus on the main through-line: the goal of both militarizing law enforcement and treating Blue States as something like conquered territories, as he’s already doing in Washington, DC, which is, yes, the national capital but also an extremely Democratic and plurality black city. Along these lines a senior administration official just told Rolling Stone that a key goal of these deployments is to normalize them in American political culture, especially during times of relative calm."

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/what-lines-should-we-draw-president-or-conqueror