Trump Orders US Troops to Portland, Authorizes ‘Full Force’
Trump Orders US Troops to Portland, Authorizes ‘Full Force’
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67 comments
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Did he even give a reason? There are no active protests.
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“At the request of Secretary of Homeland Security, Kristi Noem, I am directing Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth, to provide all necessary Troops to protect War ravaged Portland, and any of our ICE Facilities under siege from attack by Antifa, and other domestic terrorists,” Trump said Saturday in a post on Truth Social. “I am also authorizing Full Force, if necessary.”
I guess because Portland is "War ravaged," whatever that means and because he says so is as close as we're getting to reason.
Speaking of "whatever that means,"
authorizing Full Force
At the risk of stating the obvious, we are dealing with an unbelievably stupid person here (but this actually makes him more dangerous)
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I think directly ordering the US military to go into a pretty normal US city and use "full force" against the Americans there, actually makes him less dangerous than he otherwise would be.
It is still terrifying, but imagine if it was someone clever enough to just leave things at their current boiling point until there are widespread attacks on ICE agents and cops, real unrest and people laying seige to ICE facilities, all the while he is currying favor with the military and police of the country instead of actively doing everything he can to antagonize them, and then he tries to do the clampdown, while framing it as if it's something else. Instead he's just calling up all these pretty patriotic high level military people and saying "Hey I need you to go shoot my opponents, who are Americans" and just assuming they'll be fine with it, what's the worst that could happen.
It might work. But he's definitely not doing a great job at helping it to be successful.
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This is the kind of pressure that opens the door to a military coup.
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I don't feel like the US military brass would do that, exactly... but they might stick their necks out to make it clear that they're getting illegal orders and they don't plan to follow them. They did do a very mild version of that before (and gave some speeches about the principles involved which some of the current protestors are playing over loudspeakers at their protestors when they encounter the National Guard which I think is fuckin' fantastic).
Of course I'm just speculating, I have no real idea how it might play out. In Ukraine in 2014, retired military people joining up with the protestors and teaching them all about how to fight effectively and win, now that it was a big fight with deadly force, had a huge amount to do with them routing the government forces so thoroughly. I feel like Trump doing everything he can to push US military people that same direction along that same axis is absolutely great.
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In Ukraine in 2014, retired military people joining up with the protestors and teaching them all about how to fight effectively and win,
Let's cover the basics: don't pop up when they're shooting at you, have a lot of friends, flanking wins the battle, lay down suppressing fire for your (lots of) friends to move to better angles (for those flanking wins) (i.e., shoot and scoot), check your corners, height advantages make even more places they need to be looking and they often don't, retreat when you're outnumbered is a really good idea.
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In a strictly hypothetical situation, you left out "slicing the pie"
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Lol, I surely did. I just hate that term, wish we could come up with anything else.
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I don’t feel like the US military brass would do that, exactly
Coups are often executed by very junior officers.
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Specifically in authoritarian or totalitarian regimes since Senior officers both have a lot to lose financially if the regime falls and typically are as guilty as the people they serve.
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Let's see if the military brass are still here next week.
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That's a fair point, I've been thinking about how they're going to get cornered by their own stupidity and then do the cornered animal thing of lashing out even more violently, but maybe a few years of explosive frightening chaos is better than a slowly descending suffocation
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"siege" this fucker; when ICE is calling door dash into their fucking offices I think "siege" is hardly appropriate.
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In the constructed reality that right wing media has built, Portland is an ongoing warzone.
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Right Wing Logic:
Democratic leaning areas are war zones! We must deploy the military and stop this madness by FORCE!
Also, nothing at all of note is occuring in Ukraine or Gaza. Why do you ask?
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It's fairly effective in the outskirts of Portland and Gresham. I had someone ask how Portland was a few weeks ago. They were convinced it was experiencing raging riots for the past 90 days. Their source: "news from the East coast". Not sure what that means, but yeah.
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Right wing media proves that the harm caused by chatbots is not unique. It's just tech companies made the problem way worse.
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they’ve been protesting at the Ice facility there for a while… also there’s lot’s of homeless people to put in concentration camps
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Yeah it's kind of wild that there is barely a whisper of the 24/7 protests and on tiktok they have to refer to them as music festivals to avoid being censored.
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TikTok is owned by the Chinese and they have strong anti-protest biases.
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No, they’re just kissing trumps ass in order to stay online.
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Any reason he could give is fabricated. Also, Portland in particular is more than just the usual "collapsing the Republic into a fascist dictatorship" thing he has going on. He's still butthurt about Portland from 2020.
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ICE operates out of a building south of downtown and there have been a handful of protestors camping out and protesting in front of the building 24/7 since June. The protestors have been for the most part peaceful, the ICE agents however have been violent, beating protestors, aiming guns at them, shooting them with pepper balls and gas cannisters, and deploying a variety of unknown chemical gasses.
The grade school next door to the ICE building had to move because of concerns over exposing the kids to those chemicals. The residents of the apartment buildings across the street aren't so lucky. Portland's own police department recently testified under oath that ICE has been instigating violence over the protestors.
There's a movement to evict ICE from the building. Just the other day, ICE was found to have committed over 20 violations of the agreement they had struck with the city in order to operate from that location this year alone. I wouldn't be surprised if the escalation from Trump is in response to that.
Source: I live in Portland and have been following the situation closely.
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67 comments