Quagmire

Portland Is Donald Trump's Vietnam

Asbury Park, a sunset in July.

If Donald Trump leaves Portland, he loses. If he stays in Portland, he loses.

George Washington's great strategic insight in the Revolutionary War was that, as long as he maintained a force in being (the Continental Army), the British could not win.

We got to look at this little paradigm of insurgency warfare from the other side, during the Vietnam War. It was not pretty.

In Portland the resistance does not carry guns. They don't need them. Their job is not to beat the goons but to win the American people. Which they are doing.

Their job is made easier because they are the American people - the kids, of course, as well as older activists, and Portland's mayor, and the moms in yellow t-shirts, and the vets in their baseball caps and t-shirts. 

And then one night the goddess Athena paid a visit. She showed up, took off her clothes, ran through a yoga routine, stared down the goons, and left.

I have a word of advice for the goons. I've read Homer's Iliad. Do not annoy the goddess Athena.

As for the goons in Portland, they are an apparently small group of ambiguously uniformed myrmidons who seem to think that graffiti should be a capital offense. I have questions about their training, discipline, and leadership.

Trump has had trouble pulling together his version of Mussolini's squadristi. His search for an army began in Charlottesville in 2017. The Unite the Right rally brought together a wide variety of right-wing groups, including right-wing militias. Firearms were present in abundance. Then antifa showed up, and they also had guns. I think this perplexed the right-wingers. I'm sure they were willing enough to shoot people, but perhaps it had never occurred them that their opponents might shoot back.

This year, in Lafayette Square, we had an army raised by Bill Barr, mainly from the Department of Justice. The thugs from the Bureau of Prisons seem to have been the worst. Elements of the National Guard got dragged into the mud, and then did their best to extricate themselves.

The actual military took a pass, and even the defense secretary, Mark Esper, slithered away from his boss. After some hesitation.

Barr also backed out of his role of generalissimo, and in strode Chad Wolf, the acting secretary of homeland security. So now, in Portland, it appears the goons are largely from DHS subsidiaries like the border patrol. 

But perhaps not entirely. There are rumors that some of these swamp creatures are actually mercenaries. One of the firms that DHS hires rent-a-thugs from is a descendant of Blackwater. Ah, Blackwater. Will we ever forget their exploits in Iraq?

My sense is that Trump is close to running out of armies to do his bidding.

And he has definitely lost control of the narrative. He was always a clown, but now he is a buffoon and a laughing-stock.

Robert and Rebekah Mercer have apparently backed away from Trump. Is there time for the Republicans to dump Trump, go with Pence, and try to save the Senate? At this point, I think the answer is no.

See also The Problem with Dystopia.