Donald Trump’s taking control of the Washington D.C. police force has gained much of the country's attention. I just thought it was just a power move to show how tough he is, but now I think it goes a little deeper than just trying to look like a badass. Historically, Washington, D.C., has always been kind of a sanctuary city. He hates sanctuary cities and has threatened to cut off funds to some of them unless they conform to his bigoted agenda. I am sure that was one of the reasons why he wanted to take control of the Law Enforcement of Washington. To Trump, all sanctuary cities were harboring undocumented criminals, which Trump considered “Hardened Criminals”. The problem with that is that it is mostly untrue.

Trump and most of the Republican Party love to call our undocumented immigrants criminals. Do you know that crossing the border illegally is not even a felony? That's right, it's just a misdemeanor with the maximum penalty of 6 months in jail or a fine. We are sending people to concentration camps for misdemeanors. Only repeated with offenders can it be considered a felony. To put it another way, the man who is sitting in the White House, who was convicted of 30-some felonies, is a bigger criminal than any illegal immigrant who is mowing your lawn or picking your tomatoes. If a person who overstays their visa or remains in the U.S. without legal status but entered legally is not even a criminal. Doing that is considered unlawful presence, which is not a crime but a civil violation. The main consequence is just deportation, not jail time. Do you know what some civil violations are? Traffic and parking tickets would be a civil violation. Your dog crapping on your neighbor's lawn could be a civil violation. Trump has used hatred, bigotry, and fear to manipulate the people into thinking that they are in danger and that he is the only one who can fix it. We have seen people like that throughout history, and it doesn’t end well.

We have also seen the mobilization of the military to act as a police force over a civil population. In 1768, the British troops arrived in Boston to enforce the Townsend Acts. Its purpose was to protect royal officials and maintain order amid the growing resistance by the colonies, and particularly in Boston, the site of much resistance to the unpopular laws imposed by King George. The troops' physical presence led to many encounters with the colonists. The idea of a standing army is historically associated with tyranny, and that is what the colonists thought was going on. They feared the erosion of their rights and liberties, which they held so dear. The Boston print media portrayed the troops as an instrument of oppression whose real purpose was to enforce the will of the crown, not protect the people. The Bostonians didn’t see the British troops as liberators but as a symbol of the British government's overreach. When Trump called up the National Guard and federalized the police force, he called it “Liberation”. Like the colonist more than 250 years ago, I am pretty sure that much of Washington D.C. doesn’t think of it as a “Liberation” at all.   

Even as far back as the 1770s, media images were used to sway public opinion, such as Paul Revere’s engraving of the Boston Massacre. That image had the British soldiers firing at defenseless colonists, exaggerating the violence and completely omitting the provocations of the crowd in a deliberate attempt to frame the British as murderers. You had Philip Dawe’s Broadside, which was a print that showed the violent tar and feathering of a customs officer in an attempt to portray the colonists as a lawless mob. The colonists employed a great deal of symbolism, such as the Liberty Trees and the upside-down Stamp Acts, which became symbols for opposition and resistance to British rule, as well as bloodied colonists. Both sides used fear, outrage, and moral righteousness to try to sway public opinion. The occupation of Boston became the motivation for legal thinkers like John Adams to give the colonists the vocabulary of rights and liberties. The symbol of the British occupation became the symbol of our liberties and rights being taken away, and that attitude still lives on today. Today, we see many symbols on social media trying to sway the public. We have seen images of Trump all buff, storming the beach at Normandy, even though he refused to serve. But you also have seen images of Trump hiding in the bunker below the White House. We have to stop looking at images meant to manipulate at keep searching for the truth. Republicans are good at spinning situations, like calling the occupation of Washington “Liberation Day”. That is why the data, like the crime rate in Washington D.C., is so important. Real numbers can show us when we are being lied to, and right now, we are again being lied to by Trump and the Republican Party.

Trump is pushing his executive power so much that you can’t help but assume he is trying to burn the Constitution.  When the Constitution is burned, it is all burned, and that includes the 2^nd Amendment. Where is the outrage by the NRA, the great defenders of the 2^nd amendment? No Constitution, no 2^nd Amendment. The NRA will tell you that its core mission is to defend gun rights. Those rights come from the Constitution. I have read gun rights activists stating that we need to have guns so we can rebel against a tyrannical government. I was once told that it was people with guns that were the only thing that stood between the public and an authoritarian government. I can now say very confidently that saying guns are to protect us from an overreaching government, or even because they are protecting the 2^nd amendment, is just a lie.  It is all about greed, power, and guns, and it has nothing to do with protecting the Constitution of the 2^nd amendment.

I am afraid what we are witnessing is just the beginning of the end of our republic. Tyrants who are hell bent and gaining power are people who are hell bent on burning the Constitution. When you are taking over cities like Trump has taken over Washington D.C., you no longer have a “Government of the People, by the People, for the People”.