Trump's War Against the Cities

That snappy line, "Pennsylvania is Pittsburgh and Philadelphia-- and Alabama in between," of course now  applies to every state in the union.

Even as reptilian a brain as resides in the skull of Donald J. Trump can appreciate that if Civil War were to break out in the United States of the 21st century, the dividing sides would not be along the old Mason-Dixon line but between the cities, suburbs on the one hand and the rural areas on the other. 

Ft. Sumter, South Carolina

So Trump has engineered a sort of reverse Fort Sumter, by sending troops to various "federal properties" like federal court houses in "Democrat run cities," those dens of iniquity, and having the federal troops move out to attack the citizens of the cities which surround them. It's as if the feds moved out from the fort to attack the city.

Not Fallujah: Portland, USA

Fort Sumter, sitting in the Charleston harbor, was a cinder in the eye of the nascent Confederacy, which had in December of 1860 declared secession and in April got around to bombarding the federal fort in the harbor. 
Now, it's the feds who are bombarding the city around it.

Bringing Order: The White Supremacist Way

Of course, Mr. Trump must see now more than ever, his strategy of creating tumult is the only viable path to winning re election. Without perturbation, the murderous, inarticulate, seething core of his support would wither. Trump fans live for the violence. 

One might say the citizens of Portland and Seattle have taken the bait.

Richard Nixon used the burning cities of America to cruise to re election, appealing to those who saw the urban disorder as something which had to be ruthlessly suppressed--Nixon's silent majority had to feel personally threatened by the colored people who would burn down America, as he tacitly implied they would.

Trump is playing that same card.

Auxiliary Federal Police

Just this morning Mad Dog listened to a podcast, "The Daily" from the NY Times, in which one callow reporter interviewed another and they were both puzzled, struggling to understand what these camouflaged clad federal "police" from the Border patrol and Homeland Security were doing in downtown Portland.

Portland, Oregon, United States of America

They were not old enough to remember the 60's nor had they read enough history to have any hope of diagnosing the tactic.