Schwab: With Pinochet in Portland, where are liberty’s defenders?

Published 1:30 am Saturday, July 25, 2020

By Sid Schwab / Herald columnist

Maybe it was a dream. When Barack Obama was president, and now it sure seems like a dream — intelligence, integrity, competence, humor, nice family, no indictments — weren’t a bunch of self-described “patriots” hoarding guns and ammo like toilet paper in a pandemic? Predicting government troops would be rounding up civilians and hauling them away? Building bunkers, promising to defend our “freedoms” with their lives?

Funny thing: What they predicted with the certainty of Covid-hoaxers and climate-change deniers has come to pass, just down I-5. Anonymous, heavily-armed federal agents, uninvited, snatching citizens off the streets, hauling them away in unmarked vans. Citizens who, for the most part, had been protesting non-violently. No identification on those armed government kidnappers, no warrants. Swinging truncheons, gassing, shooting rubber bullets. Maybe I shouldn’t have said “funny.”

Unlike those fevered “patriots,” people having more than two Betz cells to rub together knew this would never happen under President Obama. Same with those imaginary “antifa” demonstrations, to which the tumescent, mega-armed, MAGA-hatted have been showing up, ready to lay down their lives for Old Glory, Confederate flags and the occasional swastika. That those events were obvious troll-jobs didn’t occur to them, even after the third or fourth time.

Maybe those heroic one-minute men knew President Obama was never going to lead UN tanks and ISIS soldiers up their driveways; knew they’d not need make good on their rodomontade. But where are they now, as Portland is Pinocheted? Citizens are being disappeared, though less permanently, as if America were 1970s Chile. As if our “president” were the third-world strongman to which he aspires, against which those faux militias promised defiance. Having claimed resistance as its primary purpose, the NRA is missing, too. Moms are there, though, arm in arm, braving the gas. Who are the real patriots?

Our heavily-armed, Obama-hating heroes weren’t really concerned, then, about out-of-control government coming for people exercising their rights. Turns out it’s fine when a tyrannical leader kidnaps and batters citizens, as long as they’re libtard commies. Some might call that short-sighted collaboration.

A brave guy is Donald “Found-a-dementia-test-difficult” Trump. Afraid to serve in Vietnam, as this columnist did, he’s courageously ordering troops into Democrat-run cities, unleashing beatings, gassing people who seek only fairness, to galvanize his base. Anxious to have them forget his disastrous pandemic response and the Russian bounty disgrace, this he’ll do. And, more blind than those he gassed, Trumpists are delighted. Beating up liberals absolves 140,000 American deaths, Constitution be damned.

Because of the “Patriot Act,” some say Trump has authority to send troops to protect federal property. OK, fine. Deploy them to steps of federal buildings and pedestals of statues, to hold off the chalk, doughnuts and spray cans. But assailing peaceful crowds; breaking bones of a Navy veteran whose offense was challenging them to uphold their oath; beating on-scene medics; firing tear gas at resolute, non-aggressive moms? That’s what history’s Pinochets do. And when enough citizens excuse it, because it’s not them, that’s how they consolidate power.

America was built on protest. Dumping tea into Boston Harbor; women marching, year after year, for suffrage, assaulted, jailed; MLK Jr., John Lewis, and other brave souls, risking lives for equal rights, paying with life and blood; Stonewall. Absent the right to assemble to petition for redress of grievances, who would we be, and who will we become? First among the ten, that right is inseparable from America’s greatness. Or was, before Trump began striking at the heart of it.

Though he and his “news” liars pretend otherwise, Portland wasn’t being overrun, nor were people hiding in their homes, local police overwhelmed as terrorists roamed a city in flames. Like Seattle, it’s a couple square blocks of inconvenience, as city life otherwise goes on as usual. If there are situations that might justify Federales overtaking local law enforcement, this isn’t. And what has Trump’s banana-republic despotism accomplished? More resistance. Which he’ll turn into context-free doomsday ads.

If Trumpist-Republicans are unconcerned when their “president,” sinking in the polls, turns federal troops upon pro-equality demonstrations; if they ignore the ominous implications because it’s a “liberal” city and the demonstrators aren’t red-hatted, they’re deaf to America’s death-rattle.

Every American, including Trumpists, should be horrified by what’s happening. Those who aren’t, because it’s only “lefties” being brutalized, are anything but patriots. They’d have ratted on the Boston tea-dumpers, thrown rocks at suffragettes, and taunted innocent Black children as they bravely integrated schools.

Email Sid Schwab at columnsid@gmail.com.