Trump, who seems to have lived most of his adult life in a state of heightened paranoia, has finally erected a physical tribute to his victimhood—a fortress to keep his perceived enemies, such as Monday night’s peaceful throng of protesters, at bay.
Attorney General William Barr has been more than happy to oblige Trump’s fantasies, ordering the violent show of force against peaceful assembly outside the White House and “flooding the zone” with an armed, unmarked battalion of random federal troops in the District of Columbia.
None of this warmongering is by accident. It’s ripped straight out of the playbook of autocratic regimes and is fully intended to convince Americans that the nation’s capital has turned into a war zone, that protesters are out of control, the White House is under siege, and the commander in chief is reclaiming the streets of America.
But that’s not what’s happening. Just like Trump hoisting a Bible over his head was pure stagecraft (as cringeworthy and poorly executed as it was), so is the amassing of unidentifiable federal troops in fatigues and riot gear.
In fact, the scenes of actual protest in D.C. ever since Barr’s unwarranted Monday massacre don’t resemble the fraught images that Trump and his allies are trying to advance. They are also a complete distraction from all of the truly positive and heartwarming moments that have emerged from the around the country this week, particularly before police began rioting against protesters Thursday night.
In short, Trump’s reality is not America’s reality. He and most Republican lawmakers have sealed themselves off from the conversation the rest of the nation—in all its diversity—is having about race and reform and solidarity.
As former president Barack Obama remarked about the diversity of the crowds we are witnessing from big cities to small town America, “You look at those protests, and that was a far more representative cross-section of America out on the streets, peacefully protesting, and who felt moved to do something because of the injustices that they had seen. That didn’t exist back in the 1960s, that kind of broad coalition.”
As former Defense Secretary James Mattis wrote, “The protests are defined by tens of thousands of people of conscience who are insisting that we live up to our values—our values as people and our values as a nation.” Mattis called protesters’ search for equal justice under the law a “wholesome and unifying demand.”
Indeed, much of the imagery from across the country is a study in solidarity, rather than the division and mayhem Trump and Barr are trying to imprint on America. What follows are several recent pictures from the streets of D.C. followed by a collection of protest images from around the country. Some of the things are not like the others.
Washington D.C.
Here’s the D.C. they’re not showing:
The rest of America:
Source: http://feeds.dailykosmedia.com/~r/dailykosofficial/~3/7eH1_q-tnTc/-Trump-s-manufactured-war-zone-doesn-t-resemble-what-s-happening-in-most-of-America