Trump, the Spoiled Brat, Tries To Show the Nation He Is a Real Man
Probably since he was a spoiled child, trump has had an itchy trigger finger and a yearning to do John Wayne things, like shoot down protesters.
Trump, the revenge president, is again resorting to violence to get his way.
He has bloviated that anyone protesting at Saturday’s North Koreanish celebration of the founding of the U.S. Army and coincidentally, trump’s 78th birthday, will be met with “very big force.” Trump also threatened to deny the Constitutional rights of free speech and assembly and to jail anyone who burns an American flag.
And while trump has ordered the Marines and National Guard to turn back a trumped-up, exaggerated protest in Los Angeles, millions of Americans are expected to demonstrate Saturday against trump’s policies, in a move labeled as “No Kings Day.” Demonstrations are slated in cities throughout the U.S. and Puerto Rico, with international solidarity events planned in countries like Colombia, Germany, Italy, Malawi, Portugal, and the United Kingdom.
Trump said that protesters, whether they are peaceful or violent, will not be tolerated at his planned birthday party. Such an order flies in the face of the first amendment which was crafted to avoid tyranny, guaranteeing the fundamental American right to assemble, protest and voice concerns.
While trump was threatening people who are legally protesting, Gov. Ron DeSantis, R-Fla., reminded Floridians of their “right” to hit protesters with their car. DeSantis referred to a state policy that allows residents to strike protesters with their car if they feel threatened.
“We also have a policy that if you’re driving on one of those streets and a mob comes and surrounds your vehicle, and threatens you, you have a right to flee for your safety,” DeSantis said. He added that if a protester is hit, that is the protester’s own fault for “impinging” on a driver.
“And so if you drive off and you hit one of these people, that’s their fault for impinging on you,” the one-time GOP presidential candidate said. “You don’t have to sit there and just be a sitting duck and let the mob grab you out of your car and drag you through the streets. You have a right to defend yourself in Florida.”
Violence Abated
Trump has frequently spoken in violent terms about getting revenge against those who disagree with him, but his actions were generally tempered. During his first term, trump was increasingly impatient with protesters, but he was deterred by high ranking underlings who said violence was not appropriate.
On June 1, 2020, federal law enforcement in Washington, D.C., deployed riot control tactics and munitions against protesters to expand a security perimeter so that trump could later walk from the White House to the historic St. John’s Episcopal Church, Lafayette Square for a brief and vulgar photo op. Trump carried a Bible and was surrounded by various cabinet members although General Mark A. Milley, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, later apologized for his role in the event.
At the time, trump suggested that the military open fire on the protesters who were demonstrating in Lafayette Park across from the White House, in response to the killing of George Floyd.
“Can’t you just shoot them? Just shoot them in the legs or something?” Trump reportedly asked in June 2020, according to former Defense Secretary Mark Esper.
Trump’s latest orders for the military and National Guard to deploy to Los Angeles is the largest but not the first time trump has ordered troops to American cities.
Six months after the June 1, 2020, use of federal force in Washington, D.C., federal forces were deployed in Portland, Ore., amid public outrage because law enforcement drove unmarked cars and officers wore camouflage without clear identification badges.
Federal details were also deployed to Kansas City and Seattle. Trump had threatened future deployments to other cities “run by liberal Democrats,” including Oakland, California and New York. Tactical teams were deployed to various cities, including Los Angeles, San Diego, and San Francisco; Denver; Washington, DC; Miami, Fla; Detroit and Port Huron, Mich; St. Louis, Mo; Buffalo and New York City; Dallas, El Paso, Houston, and Pearland, Texas; and Seattle and Tacoma.
Past Protests
Non-violent protests in the United States have led to landmark changes although they have often been met with violence by the authorities.
Trump and supporters have called protesters everything from communists to Antifa to paid insurrectionists. It was the same a half-century ago when President Richard Nixon and Vice President Spiro Agnew used similar tactics and words to defame and discredit millions of people who protested against the war in Vietnam.
Unions and immigrant-rights groups in Los Angeles began organizing events last week after ICE agents arrested more than 100 immigrants. The demonstration led to sporadic violence which Police Chief Jim McDonnell blamed on outsiders looking to cause trouble.
Trump called protesters “animals” while speaking to troops at a large army base in North Carolina. Trump blamed the unrest on what he described as a “foreign” threat and said those involved were attacking peace and order in the country.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth in a House Appropriations Committee hearing said “rioters, looters and thugs” in Los Angeles endangered federal agents. Border Czar Tom Homan warned California leaders, including Gov. Gavin Newsom, that they would risk arrest if they impeded law-enforcement officers from doing their job. Trump gave his approval.
“What you’re witnessing in California is a full-blown assault on peace, on public order and national sovereignty, carried out by rioters bearing foreign flags with the aim of continuing a foreign invasion of our country,” trump said.
Government Responds
Trump is simply the latest tyrant to try to bring Americans to heel and the latest to face growing public anger and protest.
A half-century ago, on Oct.15, 1969, more than two million citizens took part in a one-day national strike against the war in Vietnam. In hundreds of cities, towns and campuses throughout the country, Americans took the day off to march, rally, vigil or engage in teach-ins.
A month later, on Nov. 15, more than a half-million war opponents mobilized at the nation’s capital. It was more than double the number of marchers who participated in the 1963 March on Washington led by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
The anti-war movement began under President Lyndon B. Johnson but it became a massive effort after Nixon was inaugurated on Jan. 20, 1969. By then about 34,000 Americans had been killed fighting in Vietnam. During Nixon’s first year in office, from January 1969 to January 1970, about another 10,000 Americans died in Vietnam.
The Vietnam Moratorium Committee formed and sought the support of “respectable” groups like the civil rights movement, churches, university faculties, unions, business leaders, and politicians. In a speech written by Patrick Buchanan, Vice President Spiro Agnew accused the organizers of being “communist dupes.”
Nixon reacted to the national moratorium, saying “Under no circumstances will I be affected” as “policy made in the streets equals anarchy.” On October 15, 1969, the White House press secretary declared that Nixon was completely indifferent to the moratorium and that day had been “business as usual.”
Four days later, Agnew charged in a speech in New Orleans that “a spirit of national masochism prevails, encouraged by an effete corps of impudent snobs who characterize themselves as intellectuals.” Agnew accused the peace movement of being controlled by “hardcore dissidents and professional anarchists” who were planning “wilder, more violent” demonstrations at the next moratorium.
Undaunted, more than 15 million people took part in marches against the war on October 15. In response, on Nov. 3, 1969, Nixon went on national television to ask for the support of the “silent majority” of Americans for his Vietnam War policy.
Nixon ended his speech with: “And so tonight, to you, the great silent majority of my fellow Americans — I ask for your support. Let us be united for peace. Let us be united against defeat. Because let us understand: North Vietnam cannot defeat or humiliate the United States. Only Americans can do that.”
The appeal to the “silent majority” was a success, boosting Nixon’s falling popularity numbers. As Nixon’s public approval ratings soared, he told his aides in a meeting in the Oval Office: “We’ve got those liberal bastards on the run now, and we’re going to keep them on the run.”
On November 13, in Des Moines, Iowa, Agnew attacked the moratorium declaring that it was all the work of the media who were “a small and unelected elite that do not — I repeat do not — represent the view of America.”
Agnew accused the media of being biased against Nixon and for the peace movement, and that the media “to a man” represented “the geographic and intellectual confines of New York and Washington.” Agnew in particular singled out The New York Times and The Washington Post for criticism.
The civil protests clearly demonstrated that the majority of Americans were against the war. There is no way to gauge the impact of the mass demonstrations but on April 30, 1975, North Vietnamese Army tanks rolled through the gate of the Presidential Palace in Saigon, effectively ending the war.
The Montgomery, Ala., bus boycott began on Dec. 5, 1955, when an African American woman, Rose Parks, refused to give up her seat on the bus to a white man, as was required by local laws. She was arrested, leading to the boycott, a pivotal event in the civil rights struggle. The boycott ended on December 20, 1956, leading the Supreme Court to rule that the Alabama and Montgomery laws that segregated buses were unconstitutional.
“People always say that I didn’t give up my seat because I was tired, but that isn’t true. I was not tired physically, or no more tired than I usually was at the end of a working day. I was not old, although some people have an image of me as being old then. I was 42. No, the only tired I was, was tired of giving in,” said Parks.
A bloody but lesser-known incident involved Kentucky coal miners who were organizing for better working conditions on May 5, 1931, when they were violently suppressed by local law enforcement and private security.
“The coal operators would think they got the union crushed, but just like putting out a fire, you can go out and stomp on it and leave a few sparks and here come a wind and it’s going to spread again,” said Hobart Grills, one of the survivors.
The incident, known as the Battle of Evarts, was a 30-minute firefight between anti-union gunmen and striking coal miners on a rural highway near Evarts, Harlan County, Kentucky. Four people died in the shooting and the battle became the signature event of a violent decade that has been called the Harlan County Wars.
Immediately after the battle, thousands more Harlan County miners walked off their jobs to join the strike. Mine owners held firm, and the national United Mine Workers distanced itself from the strikers. On May 7, Kentucky Governor Flem D. Sampson sent 300 National Guardsmen to Evarts where they disarmed the striking miners. Four days later, strike leaders were arrested and charged. Eight miners received life sentences for conspiracy to murder.
One of the most notorious events in the history of the civil rights movement occurred on March 7, 1965. Hundreds of demonstrators were marching for voting rights and as they crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Ala., when they were stopped and savagely beaten by state troopers and deputized citizens.
Voting rights and citizenship are guaranteed in the 14th amendment to the Constitution. Now, 60 years later, trump is leading an effort to overturn the amendment and so-called birthright citizenship which says that anyone born or naturalized in the United States is automatically a citizen.
The early spring of 1965 was a turning point in the struggle for voting rights. For many months, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) and the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee had conducted a series of non-violent marches and mass meetings.
On Feb. 18, 1965, a group of civil rights workers led a march in Marion, Ala. Police attacked and during the melee, youth leader Jimmie Lee Jackson was killed while trying to protect his mother and grandfather from attack. Jackson was refused medical attention at the scene. He was transported 20 miles to the Good Samaritan Hospital in Selma, where he died seven days later. The day became known as “bloody Sunday.”
The SCLC and SNCC decided to protest the killing and continuing denial of voting rights with a march from Selma to the state capitol in Montgomery, Ala.
At 3 p.m. on Sunday, March 7, 1965, 300 protestors, led by Hosea Williams, John Lewis, Albert Turner and Bob Mants, gathered at Brown Chapel A.M.E. Church in Selma and proceeded through town to the Edmund Pettus Bridge. At that point, around 600 marchers crossed the bridge when they were met by State Troopers and vigilantes on horses under the direction of Major John Cloud of the Alabama State Police. Troopers and horsemen armed with clubs assaulted the protestors who then fled back to Selma. Hundreds were injured in a massacre that drew international publicity and led to President Lyndon B. Johnson to sign the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
In California, Cesar Chavez advocated for peaceful boycotts, protest, and a nonviolent 25-day hunger strike. The actions led to legislative changes to end exploitative abuse of America’s farm workers in the late 1960s.
“I am convinced that the truest act of courage, the strongest act of humanity, is to sacrifice ourselves for others in a totally nonviolent struggle for justice,” said Chavez.
Throughout history, peaceful protests and defiance have led to social and political changes, most notably to changes in civil rights laws in the U.S. but also in other countries.
Among the more dramatic movements, in India, in 1930 Mahatma (Mohandas) Gandhi led a peaceful protest against Britain’s imposed law dictating no Indian could collect or sell salt in the country.
Peaceful protests at the 1913 Suffrage Parade in England gave voice to more than 5,000 women speaking out for the right to vote.
“We are here, not because we are lawbreakers; we are here in our efforts to become lawmakers,” said Emmeline Pankhurst, one of the leaders of the more militant wing of the women’s suffrage movement in Great Britain in the early 20th century.
In California, Cesar Chavez advocated for peaceful boycotts, protest, and a nonviolent 25-day hunger strike. The actions led to legislative changes to end exploitative abuse of America’s farm workers in the late 1960s.
Velvet Revolution
Non-violent resistance movements around the world have sometimes been dramatically successful, as with the Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia and the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa.
Spontaneous protests began in Czechoslovakia in December 1989 calling for freedom and political reform in opposition to the Communist regime. Led by Václav Havel, mass demonstrations filled the streets, combining various groups including students and intellectuals. The Velvet Revolution dismantled the Communist regime and inspired similar movements globally.
The Anti-Apartheid Movement was aimed at dismantling institutionalized racial segregation and discrimination in South Africa. The movement prominently used nonviolent resistance, boycotts and mass mobilization, and engaged millions in acts of civil disobedience and activism against the oppressive apartheid regime. The movement, led by people like Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu contributed to the dismantling of apartheid in the early 1990s.
Not all non-violent movements succeeded as some were ruthlessly destroyed.
They included The White Rose, an effort that led to the Nazi government’s killing of six German conspirators and opponents to Hitler in 1943.
The Sharpeville Massacre was a non-violent protest in South Africa in which police killed 67 protesters.
In Tiananmen Square, between 300 and 1,700 protesters were killed by the Chinese People’s Army in Beijing in 1989.