US Becoming a Dictatorship?
- fionacsweet
- Jul 23, 2020
- 2 min read
President Donald Trump deployed more than 100 federal law enforcement agents last week in Portland in order to enforce order at the Black Lives Matter protests. Critics have accused the president of actually creating more conflict amid these national protests. Some say that Trump chose Portland due to its majority white population, so federal agents would not have to "come in direct confrontation with many more Black activists." With Portland, Trump can take race out of it.
When some of these protests turned destructive, Trump blamed the cities' Democratic mayors for not shutting the protests down. Then, the media got a hold of images of armored agents in Portland beating and gassing unarmed protesters (including a Navy veteran), and reports came out of anonymous agents snatching protesters from the streets into unmarked vans. Many of the agents are wearing Department of Homeland Security patches but not name tags. This obviously spurred a debate about the use of federal forces against US citizens. As Oregon Gov. Kate Brown said, "This is a democracy, not a dictatorship. We cannot have secret police abducting people in unmarked vehicles."
In response to this national backlash, Trump has vowed federal agents to other Democrat-led cities. He said this: "We're looking at Chicago, too. We're looking at New York. All run by very liberal Democrats. All run, really, by the radical left."
The one upside of this situation is that the presence of federal agents has fueled renewed support for the protests.
This is especially concerning as the agents are not wearing name tags, and therefore cannot be identified or taken accountable for their questionable methods of removing protesters from the streets. Protests are a form of free speech, and getting rid of these protesters by throwing them into unmarked vans is a violation of our 1st Amendment rights. Instead of realizing this, Trump is politicizing the problem by blaming on the radical left. This deployment of federal agents in order to limit people's self expression is the act of a dictator that wants to control his people by only promoting his rhetoric. Trump said nothing when the protesters that were against masks endangered others (by not wearing masks) but suddenly brings in federal agents because Black Lives Matter does not fit in with his racist, misogynistic, xenophobic, transphobic, homophobic agenda. For the love of all that is good and beautiful in this world, please register to vote and vote for Biden. Here is a parting message from the Broadway star turned rapper and actor and overall amazing social activist Daveed Diggs:
Listen to Chapter 319 by clipping!
Comments