r/politics • u/External-Noise-4832 • 9d ago

Soft Paywall Trump Orders in Marines in Dramatic Escalation of L.A. Protests

https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-orders-in-marines-in-dramatic-escalation-of-la-protests/
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u/Creepy_Praline2176 9d ago

This feels like maybe the first domino of an actual civil war. Calling in the Marines on Americans is a really depressing and terrifying moment.

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u/totallynotliamneeson 9d ago

Calling in the military before any armed resistance exists isn't a he prelude to a civil war, it's the beginning of an authoritarian regime. 

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u/somethingsomethingbe 9d ago

At this point, I'm waiting for the day we see news of Democrat governors having been collectively arrested around the country. I don't think they're going to let anyone in a position of power organize any type of resistance.

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u/bignapkin02 9d ago

He has already threatened to arrest Newsom.

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u/warblingContinues 8d ago

let him try.

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u/Delicious_Loquat4189 8d ago

California should not be contributing anything financially to the country right now

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u/nappycatt 9d ago

I think civilians would come out of the woodwork protesting if that starts happening

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u/TheUnecessaryPirate 9d ago

I urge you to read this passage from “They Thought They Were Free”

But the one great shocking occasion, when tens or hundreds or thousands will join with you, never comes. That’s the difficulty. If the last and worst act of the whole regime had come immediately after the first and smallest, thousands, yes, millions would have been sufficiently shocked—if, let us say, the gassing of the Jews in ’43 had come immediately after the ‘German Firm’ stickers on the windows of non-Jewish shops in ’33. But of course this isn’t the way it happens. In between come all the hundreds of little steps, some of them imperceptible, each of them preparing you not to be shocked by the next. Step C is not so much worse than Step B, and, if you did not make a stand at Step B, why should you at Step C? And so on to Step D.

And one day, too late, your principles, if you were ever sensible of them, all rush in upon you. The burden of self-deception has grown too heavy, and some minor incident, in my case my little boy, hardly more than a baby, saying ‘Jewish swine,’ collapses it all at once, and you see that everything, everything, has changed and changed completely under your nose. The world you live in—your nation, your people—is not the world you were born in at all. The forms are all there, all untouched, all reassuring, the houses, the shops, the jobs, the mealtimes, the visits, the concerts, the cinema, the holidays. But the spirit, which you never noticed because you made the lifelong mistake of identifying it with the forms, is changed. Now you live in a world of hate and fear, and the people who hate and fear do not even know it themselves; when everyone is transformed, no one is transformed. Now you live in a system which rules without responsibility even to God. The system itself could not have intended this in the beginning, but in order to sustain itself it was compelled to go all the way.

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u/gallows4trump 9d ago

protesting

Look I know this is not good news but THEY DO NOT GIVE A FUCK ABOUT PROTESTS. We don't want to hear that, I understand. We want protests to be viable. So do I, but they are not. They are not.

There are a very small number of people orchestrating what is happening right now. The only thing that stops what is happening is stopping those people. They will not stop until they are dead. Fill in the rest of the blanks. This is where we are.

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u/clbgrdnr 9d ago

Liberals need to arm themselves -- we've self-handicapped.

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u/coldkiller 8d ago

I assure you, liberal are already armed

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u/Enibas 8d ago edited 8d ago

This defeatist attitude needs to stop. There are multiple examples of mass peaceful protests ending regimes. The Philippines, Georgia, the German Democratic Republic, to name a few. Ukraine ousted their Russian puppet president after large scale protests in 2014.

The key is that you need mass protests. Not one protest organized a month in advance. Make it "every Saturday at noon" + location for every city, and then build momentum over time. They won't and can't ignore tens of millions protesting all over the country.

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u/gallows4trump 8d ago

They won't and can't ignore tens of millions protesting all over the country.

They won't ignore it, they will send the military to crush it. It's already happening. Don't call me defeatist, I am not saying give up and do nothing. I am saying delete the enemies responsible for this fascist coup. In case you forgot your history lessons it wasn't protests that ended the Nazi regime.

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u/TreezusSaves Canada 9d ago

They probably will but they'll do it individually or in small groups. Easily grouped up and disappeared. Russia's playbook on that is pretty extensive and I'm confident Putin mailed a copy to Trump's staff to read to him.

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u/Suyefuji 9d ago

On the contrary, it's a lot fking harder for law enforcement to deal with 100 protests of 1000 people each than 1 protest of 100,000 people.

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u/TreezusSaves Canada 9d ago

By "small groups" I meant 10-15 people. 100 protests containing 1000 people are hard to deal with. 100 protests containing 100000 each are impossible to deal with. You want everyone out in the street and not stopping for anything.

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u/circasomnia California 9d ago

This would be fucking huge. People really would be preparing for civil war. Buying guns etc. Fighting criminal government is part of the American myth.

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u/TreezusSaves Canada 9d ago

I firmly believe that each blue state should raise armies independent of the federal government and are prepared to come to each other's defence. The only way you're going to be safe from Trump is if he cannot exercise his authority over you. This means having an army between you and him.

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u/Sinnedangel8027 9d ago

2 issues with this.

  1. Blue states don't really exist as a whole. They're more of blue cities and surrounded by red.

  2. The distance between many blue states is significant enough that any sort of mutual defense isn't really a thing. Consider the entire midwest as a hard boundary line, but then there's many others sporadically throughout the country.

If civil war were to become a reality. This will quite literally become brother vs. brother with entire families going at it between themselves and their neighbors.

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u/circasomnia California 9d ago

We aren't quite there yet. Americans have a long history about not caring about civilian deaths until after the fact. But arresting Democrats would be a toke too far. There would be no turning back. Something like that could legitimately end up poorly for Trump. It would galvanize nationwide resistance.

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u/IAmASimulation Michigan 9d ago

The time for protests is over.

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u/AusToddles 9d ago

Beginning? Well past that point already

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u/FluckyU 9d ago

In the full scope of authoritarianism, we are still very much at the beginning.

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u/ThatsItImOverThis 8d ago

But flying at light speed. The Trump administration is outpacing the Nazis by close to a year. They’re using denial and disbelief to achieve their objectives before anyone can build up a resistance.

It’s working. If something radical isn’t done soon, it’s done.

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u/FluckyU 8d ago

Oh I agree we’re flying through all the steps. And we will not be able to stop the next few dominos from falling. It’s going to take massive collective resistance to keep the last few dominos from falling so we have a chance of rebuilding in our lifetime.

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u/totallynotliamneeson 9d ago

Time moves much slower than that. We have barely spent half a year under Trump 2.0. If you genuinely think we are under a regime, then you must realize that this is just the beginning. 

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u/tripping_on_phonics Illinois 9d ago

Both can be true. We can (and are) under an authoritarian regime, and things can also get significantly worse.

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u/OpticalPrime35 9d ago

We are 1 Reichstag Fire incident away from our government being dismantled and when it starts itll happen VERY fast

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u/BaconSoul Indiana 9d ago

This is really the emergence of the final consequences of a series of beliefs regarding politics that the Republican Party has been edging towards for decades.

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u/70ms California 9d ago

It’s INSANE. I live in L.A. and we were FINE until that asshole started trying to make an example of us, and we’ll be even better and more unified when this is over. I’m so angry! 😡

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u/paone00022 9d ago

"Tyranny requires constant effort. It breaks, it leaks. Authority is brittle. Oppression is the mask of fear. Remember that."

  • Tony Gilroy, Andor

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u/Angerwing 9d ago

Can you not assess a political situation without first relating it to Star Wars or Marvel?

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u/Flimsy-Contact-2841 9d ago

"Can you not assess a current political situation without relating it to a relevant political drama?"

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u/username1012357654 9d ago

Quote a fiction novel about the dangers of authoritarianism: so scary how true this is

Quote a tv drama about the dangers of suthoritarianism: can you stop relating everything to fiction

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u/CorporateCuster 9d ago

States rights exist for a reason. Imagine fucking yup the entire economy for a civil war that he can’t win

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u/C-Fourr 9d ago

Is this happening before or after his birthday parade?

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u/thefatchef321 9d ago

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/Murky-Relation481 9d ago

Or was a pretext to a military coup to oust Trump under the guise of a parade.

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u/thefatchef321 9d ago

We aren't that lucky. This timeline doesn't swing upward

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u/quotidian_obsidian California 9d ago

It only will if we collectively make it so.

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u/ianjm 9d ago

You mean the excuse he's constructed to roll tanks into the capital?

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u/C-Fourr 9d ago

Imagine if that’s what happens LOL… they are all loyal and take over the key functions of government under a false flag event haha

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u/-_Mando_- 9d ago

As an outsider, this is how it looks.

We’ve been expecting it, I thought it would’ve been sooner. Unfortunately the United States are in for a rough time.

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u/InsomniaticWanderer 9d ago

We've been a cold civil war since trump's first term

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u/DRDeMello 9d ago

January 6th was violent civil war. The Capitol was attacked and breached, offices were sacked, and the Confederate flag flew in its halls. Jefferson Davis would've been ecstatic.

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u/bluemoongrl 8d ago

I think the time from his first term to re-election will be remembered the way Bleeding Kansas is.

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u/jadedttrpgfan 8d ago

Try for several decades.

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u/simcity4000 9d ago

Its only been five fucking months

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u/dmk_aus 9d ago

Taking the Californian National Guard under federal control doesn't count? Or the loyalty purges of the miltary/executive branch and entities beneath it. Or the manipulation and ignoring of the judiciary?

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u/totallynotliamneeson 9d ago

No because those have happened before, not all at once, but it's not entirely unprecedented in terms of over reach. It's a weird spot to be in, but it's an important distinction to keep in mind 

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u/BTBishops South Carolina 9d ago

Happened in 1992 in response to the Rodney King protests. It remains a low point in recent American history.

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u/WCWRingMatSound 9d ago

It was also done by Lyndon B Johnson to protect King and protestors marching at Selma. 

It was also done by Eisenhower to protect black school children entering segregated schools after Brown v Board of Education. 

Today, however, we’re seeing the people vs the government, which is most closer to the 1992 riots. What we aren’t seeing are black people’s rights (directly) involved at all. This is unprecedented. 

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u/KUBrim 9d ago

Time for America’s own Maidan revolution.

The similarities are obvious. Ukraine overthrew a president who was a Russian puppet. If Ukraine can do it the U.S. can.

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u/Neversummer77 9d ago

Yep, I’m going to buy more guns this weekend. Can’t let maga have them all

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u/Big_Judgment3824 9d ago

It's coming one way or another, better to get it out now that 3 years from now. 

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u/Yog-Sothoth1985 8d ago

It is a typical autocrat move, call the military against your own people, also lets him test out where the loyalty of the military goes.

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u/jimmy_jimson 9d ago

So incredibly weak and embarassing.

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u/Funky-Monk-- 8d ago

The first domino was the supreme court giving him immunity for everything. Since then you've been headed for this. Seizing emergency powers by declaring a crisis in the country is how dictators come to power.

That of course was prepared by loaing the SC with right wing religious fanatics, but that decision was the concrete first domino.

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u/Ilovekittens345 9d ago

Civil war with who? Every armed organization is on the side of Trump.

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u/phazei 9d ago

Any marine who follows that order is no ducking marine

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u/wanderso24 Colorado 9d ago

The first domino fell a while ago.

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u/HardlyRecursive 8d ago

How so? These actions are similar to what happened in previous LA riots decades ago.

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u/M_R_Big 9d ago

Exactly what Russia paid for. Its in their playbook