This Is Fascism

Good morning, folks.

Another quick one, though I know in these times we're all looking for guidance–I am, too.

I'm writing this from a few days ago, but today I saw two things that really underscored the state of the country. I want to be very clear and reiterate what I have always said, which is that the United States is not new to fascism, that its white supremacist roots are what created the rotted foundation from which grows our current predicament. But we have reached a new tier in the past few weeks as Trump has deployed all manner of federal police to Washington DC in order to "clean up the streets" and fight crime, which has decreased without his help by a wide margin in the past few years. These feds are patrolling DC streets and accosting people on porches, arresting people for smoking. DC, as you know, is predominantly a Black city. That's not a coincidence.

Then there's the new-news, which is that Border Patrol agents rolled up to Governor Gavin Newsom's (who sucks, by the way) press conference in Little Tokyo on Thursday en masse, swarming the area with a hundred or so agents just as a show of force. Political intimidation of this type (we've already seen arrests of small fry politicians) is new, not unexpected, but shows the rising temperature.

The last thing I want to say goes with something I said previously. We've entered a period of time in which we don't know, if we're faced with an arrest, whether or not we will be released. This goes for everyone, but is especially true of the undocumented or any people of color. Last week, a white federal employee threw a sandwich at a fully-kitted cop. He was charged with a felony. If you can get charged with a felony for something this minor, with no guarantee of release, then, well.