Many have proposed that ICE aggressiveness, brutality, and the shootings are all part of a plan to instigate a strong reaction, which would then enable them to declare martial law and bring in the US military.
There does seem to be some truth to this thought, since the White House today threatened to use the Insurrection Act to suppress what’s going on in Minnesota.
If this is the plan, what are the next steps, and what is the end game?
What are the steps after ‘Deploy troops to Minnesota to “stop the insurrection” ’?
Do they depend on other states protesting enough in reaction to the above to action, so that they use the Insurrection Act in other states too?
Is the end game to cancel the midterm elections?
And given any of the above possible plans, what likelihood do they have of succeeding, especially something like cancelling midterm elections?
You’re assuming there is an endgame and a plan. I don’t think there was a plan for regime change in Venezuela; it just happened. I believe this is the same thing. They keep ICE pressing until there is enough violence to declare martial law. What happens after that is anyone’s guess.
They won’t cancel midterms, for the very reasons you gave.
What they’ll do is strategically deploy ICE around inner-city polling locations. They won’t prevent anyone from voting, but they’ll certainly act like they might. By the time they get told they can’t do that, it’ll be too late to do anything about it- the election will already be decided.
They don’t have the manpower to do it at scale. Just this surge in Minneapolis has pushed them to the breaking point if they’re already threatening the Insurrectionn Act. It also wouldn’t work in a number of states, such as mine, where there aren’t any “polling locations” to speak of since we do all our voting by mail, and the fact that they’re giving away the game in January gives vulnerable states plenty of time to expand voting periods and absentee voting as they did in 2020. For that matter, I wouldn’t be surprised if by November we have citizen militias organized to PROTECT polling places from ICE intimidation.
To try to pull off such an operation at thousands of precincts in dozens of cities is beyond their level of competence or practical ability.
This image was stolen and is actually a piece of art by the Japanese artist Hiroshi Nagai.
47 million of the United States’ 340 million population is foreign-born, the majority of those being legal immigrants. To do 100 million deportations they’d have to deport [US] citizens.
Not sure why I thought that was worth posting. I think the fact it was stolen.
I was watching a Mussolini documentary. He kinda invented the modern fascist movement and it’s shockingly similar to Trump. Down to the slogan which broadly speaking was Make Italy Great Again (Italian translates to Rome will rise again). It’s all the same styles: Us vs. Them; Return to Greatness; I’m always right; delegitimize institutions; constant manufactured crisis situations; govern by emotion - policy has nothing to do with it; etc. etc.
I realize I’m very much preaching to the choir. Whether we quibble over the ultimate goal being to stay in power and deportations are a means to that end, or deportations are the ultimate goal and Trump needs to stay in power to be able to see it through, I’m not sure if the distinction matters.
I was about to say, “My state too!” Then I remembered we live in the same state.
Yeah, I wonder if threats to shut down voting are so that months from now, Trump can say he wanted to, but people wouldn’t let him. Sometimes Trump just wants fuel for victimhood. It’s sometimes hard to tell with him. He has a lot of vile motivations for things he does, and you can use a Magic 8 Ball to figure out which one is driving him this time.
What a weeeeeeiiiirrrd message. “America After [don’t title-cap a preposition you ignorant motherfuckers] 100 Million Deportations” is… a totally empty beach with palm trees, and an abandoned 60-year-old sedan?
That doesn’t look very economically productive, or even emotionally appealing. Just deserted and creepy.
ETA:
Oh, I see. Yeah, as a meditative “dreamscape” landscape, the picture’s kinda nice. As a would-be inspirational image of a post-deportations USA, though, it still looks creepy and depressing, with a post-apocalypse vibe.
If not for the filibuster, they could and maybe would pass a law outlawing mail-in voting. Think about that if you want to abolish the filibuster.
I had a friend who lived in Ohio in 2000. He believed that that state was where the election was stolen. The Ohio legislature passed a law that removed a large number of voting booths in cities (where they were needed) to rural areas (where they weren’t). He said that in Cleveland, especially in black areas, some people waited in line past midnight to vote. And many gave up. There are many ways to steal an election.
As for the end game, it is simply to have a secret police answering only to the president.
Here is an article on SCOTUSblog about this case. The question here is whether ballots that arrive within 5 business day of the election can be counted as current law in MS and 30 other states & DC allow.
Is it really that difficult to see SCOTUS ruling that only ballots arriving by Election Day can be counted? How difficult will that make it for DJT and his minions to slow mail delivery in certain locations to a crawl and disqualifying enough ballots to cost the Ds the election? That is just one easy way to fuck with things that I could see happening.
Keep telling yourself that. These people are much more devious and evil than the last time DJT was in the WH. Mail ballots, drop boxes, etc. are all under greater threat by this regime.
I have a feeling that the concept of TND (and if you don’t know what that is, keep it that way, although it’s not hard to figure out) appeals a lot to quite a few ICE members, and their wannabes.
MAGA is a cult of personality built around Donald Trump. Whenever he dies or becomes incapacitated, it will wither and die with him. There simply isn’t anyone else in the party with the bizarre combination of animal magnetism, chutzpah, and immunity to factual criticism to pull it off.
In the meantime, Republicans are all but certain to lose the House this year. House Republicans know it, which is why so many are choosing not to run for reelection. Trump is likely oblivious, but his admin knows it too. To get back to the OP, that’s a large factor in why they’re trying to do so much all at once right now - they know a point is fast approaching where Congress won’t just be a rubber stamp.
Yes; MAGA is just the latest manifestation of the white nationalist faction that has been heavily influential in the US since before the Civil War. Short of the US being metaphorically razed culturally to bedrock, they are permanent.
