Walking Into Munich
By 
America’s definitively awful 21st century governor elected to lavish Daddy Trump with a nice rim job over the latter’s courageous decision to…walk across the street to hold a bible like a puzzled baby encountering bubble wrap for the first time after the surrounding area had been cleared via war crimes:
I’ve seen some pathetic things on this website, but treating Trump’s stroll across the street after he had peaceful protesters attacked like he was in the first wave at Omaha Beach is probably the most pathetic, obsequious thing ever.
Have some self-respect. https://t.co/3m40HqEqh7— Matt O’Brien (@ObsoleteDogma) June 2, 2020
The particularly disturbing thing here is that Trump deliberately attacked the protestors when they had an indisputable legal right to gather peacefully because he could, and federal law enforcement officers complied with a blatantly illegal order because they wanted to:
Monday evening’s images of peaceful protesters in Washington, DC’s Lafayette Square being attacked and gassed by federal law enforcement officers were chilling.
Reflecting on them, what’s even more alarming is the context. The officers began their assault just after 6:30 pm — less than half an hour before a 7 pm curfew that had already been ordered by DC Mayor Muriel Bowser was set to take effect. Legally speaking, the crowd should have dispersed then and there would have been no problem with the president strolling across the park to do his photo op at St John’s Church. Realistically, the odds are good that the crowd would not have dispersed. But starting at 7 pm, a group of officers forcibly expelling protesters from the park would have been enforcing the law.
Doing it at 6:36 pm or so served no real purpose except to make the law enforcement action flagrantly abusive. And that itself sends a powerful message.
As Yglesias says, making people prove their loyalty by surrendering their integrity is fundamental to Trumpism — it’s been a consistent feature of his presidency since he sent Sean Spicer out to tell a baldfaced lie about the size of his inaugural crowd. Whether it involves a trivial matter rather than state-sanctioned violence, it’s the same authoritarian mindset — and as Walker’s Wisconsin also makes all too clear, it’s now Republican dogma.