Once, the spectacle of a demagogue threatening to send in troops while warning protestors to stay home would earn a rebuke from a stern-faced State Department spokesman.
But we're not talking about some 1970s banana republic reeling under the manic grip of a corrupt strongman leader. This is the United States, where Donald Trump and his sidekicks are playing at dictators.
It's surreal watching the techniques of tyrants being applied in a country that once produced report cards on everyone else's democracies.
Everything happening right now in US streets is a product of the obsessions and grievances of Trump, whose volatile personality and quest for total dominance are fusing into an increasingly authoritarian approach to governance.
After protests erupted against deportation sweeps for undocumented migrants in Los Angeles, Trump leapt at the chance to rush thousands of National Guard reserve troops to the city. Then, he dispatched 700 US Marines.
This was the first time since the 1960s civil rights era that reservists were mobilized against the wishes of a state governor. Back then, President Lyndon Johnson activated troops to protect the right to protest, rather than to suppress it.
Trump claims that protests were raging out of control and that he prevented the City of Angels from being burned to the ground. In truth, while there was some violence, burning of cars and looting, unrest was confined to a small downtown area, and local officials say they had it largely under control.
History is full of stories of wannabe autocrats conjuring excuses to unleash the calvary.
So far, Trump's expeditionary force has largely been confined to protecting federal buildings. But the president made his point. He warned he wanted troops "everywhere" and that if his deportation sweeps caused protests, he'd take even stronger action.
Trump traveled to Fort Bragg, one of the country's largest military bases to deliver a speech in which he had troops cheering at his mocking attacks on his political opponents — obliterating the code that the military is non-partisan and fueling fears that Trump would like to enlist the military as his personal militia. To use American troops to enforce a president's whims on domestic soil against his adversaries would be taboo – but Trump has already said before he returned to power that he'd have no problem using the military against "the enemy from within" in his second term.
Like many other voters in the western world, plenty of Americans sent a message in the last election that they are fed up with leaders' handling of illegal immigration. There's strong popular support for deporting undocumented migrants if they commit crimes. But the Trump administration's extreme approach risks scaring off middle America.
Still, the White House is loving the confrontation. Trump relishes looking tough. The last election was partly fought on the framing that he is strong and Democrats are weak. And his subordinates have endlessly argued this week that by opposing deportations, Democrats are standing with people who – according to the misleading and dehumanizing rhetoric of White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt – are "illegal alien murderers, rapists and pedophiles."
Democrats have never really worked out how to handle Trump. Their outrage often comes across as hapless. But there are a few signs that they're finding some steel as the president plays tyrant. California Gov. Gavin Newsom dared Trump to arrest him and warned US democracy was on the brink in a national address. On Thursday, Democrats seized on an extraordinary scene in California when the state's Democratic Sen. Alex Padilla was bundled out of a news conference by security after he tried to address Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem — one of the architects of Trump's hardline deportation policy — at her news conference.
"This is the stuff of dictatorships," said Democratic Sen. Brian Schatz.
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