The definition of insurrection is a violent attempt to overthrow existing authority, so an insurrection from the existing authority contains a contradiction in terms, an oxymoron. Then again, we are talking about Donald Trump.
J.B. Pritzker, the governor of Illinois just said, "The President of the United States is threatening to go to war with an American city. This is no joke. This is not normal. Donald Trump isn't a strongman, he's a scared man. Illinois won't be intimidated by a wannabe dictator."
To this Trump replied: "Chicago is about to find out why we call it 'The Department of War.'"
So, now, this could get interesting.
Mad Dog thinks of the conflict between Lincoln and the state of South Carolina. When he sent provisions to Fort Sumter, the locals fired on the fort and laid waste to the defenders.
Lincoln, of course, did not want to precipitate a civil war. He had no need to demonstrate his manliness. He was a rail splitter and muscled and sinewy, and he had briefly served in a local war. But in our current President we have a man with heel spurs and the Big Truck/Small Penis syndrome clearly manifest, so anything is possible.
Of course, mention always gets made about Eisenhower sending in the 101st Airborne to escort Negro girls into White schools, past the jeering mob in Little Rock, and Kennedy shoving George Wallace aside in Alabama, with the National guard, but the only thing those histories share is the use of federal troops to over ride local resistance--but this was local resistance which was behavior which violated federal law, namely the Constitution, which is not in play in Chicago or California or DC. Trump never justified the use of federal troops to uphold a particular federal law or the Constitution--he just said there was (imaginary) carnage in the Blue cities and he says he does not like Democratic mayors and governors in states that did not vote for him, and he has said he likes National Guard units from states which voted for him by 47 points. So he is using people he likes to hold guns against people who don't like him and who he does not like. So the comparisons are pure sophistry.
Ideally, Governor Pritzker has been talking with Governor Newsom and with the governors of Washington state, Oregon, Massachusetts, Vermont, Maine, Connecticut and Maryland. But that's ideally. And this is not an ideal world.
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What can these governors do?
Mad Dog does not really know the options, but conceivably, if the state National guard units are under the power of the governors, all of them could deploy their troops to be ready for the Department of War to deploy the federal troops and then we will really see just how tough Trump is.
Is he TACO Trump or Trump of his own dreams?
Push could actually come to shove.
Nobody has yet shown that sort of nerve, on either side.
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But we live in interesting times.
