War at Home, 'Peace' Abroad, Truth in Neither
Disentangling Trump’s contradictory brands.
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In world affairs, Donald Trump wants you to see him as a peacemaker.
You already know that Trump’s “peace” is just a rhetorical flourish. It’s not about peace. The president is interested in a piece of Greenland, a piece of Venezuela, a piece of Gaza and of Ukraine. Short-term conquests at the cost of long-term isolation.
But he has made a real, consistent effort to turn “peace” into the brand of his second-term foreign policy. The President of Peace. The Board of Peace. The Nobel Peace Prize (Sore subject? How about the FIFA Peace Prize?).
Given how badly Trump wants to be seen as a man of peace abroad, it’s striking how openly warlike the White House’s messaging is on the domestic side.
“Invasion” crows Stephen Miller.
“Defend the homeland” the ICE recruiting ads call out.
“Domestic terrorists” the apologists in government and media sneer when agents spill American blood. The next victim will face the same posthumous slanders as Renee Good and Alex Pretti.
There’s as little integrity in those bellicose slogans as there is in Trump’s “peace” campaign. America faces complex security challenges, but the country is not beset by a domestic terrorist threat from the president’s opponents.
ICE’s ongoing operations in Minnesota look more like a foreign military occupation than a domestic law enforcement action. They are the sequel to the National Guard deployments in major cities over the last year.
Federal agents killing and brutalizing Americans is what happens when a government treats its people like enemy combatants. How easy it is to forget that the individuals wearing badges and uniforms are supposed to protect you from criminals who would hurt you, not do the hurting themselves. The administration is replacing the social contract between state and citizens with loose rules of engagement for masked troopers.
Why fight a war at home?
Trump appears committed to wrecking the alliances that elevated US power in the last 80 years. Because he has chosen retreat abroad, he needs another way to project strength. After all, a strongman must look strong in order to live up to the moniker. A demagogue needs enemies.
So the administration wages war on his own country. Authoritarians often cut their teeth on weaker opponents. Before Russia overplayed its hand in Ukraine, Vladimir Putin savaged tiny Chechnya and Georgia.
War is also an opportunity to consolidate power. Trump’s war on Americans is a manufactured crisis aimed at compromising the upcoming midterms. Demands for voter rolls and intimidation by armed men all point to an effort to influence the outcome of November’s elections. Every crime the president’s lieutenants commit opens them up to prosecution should they lose power, so each escalation in this war creates new perverse incentives to interfere in the democratic process.
After World War II, the United States built the most powerful military on the planet. You can agree or disagree with Washington’s policies in those decades, but it’s indisputable that the US largely reserved lethal force for dictators and actual terrorists, not American citizens.
This administration has flipped the script, accommodating the bad guys in foreign capitals while training the guns on Americans. We should all be asking why the president is quick to threaten civilians on US soil yet shrinks from confrontation with dangerous dictators like Putin. Donald Trump speaks enthusiastically of “peace” abroad while making war at home. There is truth in neither cause. Only compensation for authoritarian fragility.
Two and a bit decades ago, I was working in Iraq as a humanitarian. Some of what I saw was... let's say that what was done in Americans' names was not what most Americans would have approved, except perhaps the MAGA types. It was unapologetic, however, and it was also done in the name of freedom, liberation of the people, etc. etc. "We're the good guys", they said, and they truly believed that, even when they were beating the shit out of someone (that someone might have been a quintessential "bad guy" or an Iraqi patriot, or some poor bugger caught up in the net). I remember thinking at the time that if that attitude and heavily militarised presence were to turn inwards, things would go really badly for the US. It's sad to see it play out, just as it's sad to remember the exactions committed in Iraq.
Lifetime Minnesotan here, and so proud of how my state has grown since George Floyd. Would any of this GOP condemnation going around the media in the last few days be happening if Minnesotans had given Trump video of police stations going up in flames? I don't think so.
In hindsight, Minnesotans were dangerously naive in 2020 to autocratic tactics. Smart young people that should have known better fell for terrible protest advice that was meant to maximize violence. I was 25 at the time, and literally everyone I knew was taking to social media to call for abolishing the police and proclaiming "ACAB." "All cops are bad." I think images of protesters in Hong Kong were freshly burned into our minds. Specifically, UnicornRiot is an outlet that comes to mind that seriously perverted Minnesotan understanding of effective protest tactics at that time. Confrontation and acts of violence against the police were glorified.
The current protest movement's meteoric rise here in the suburbs of Minnesota demonstrates that our state has learned many lessons (not academic lessons penned to paper, but lessons in winning the court of public opinion).
I'm blown away at how rapidly the resistance gained traction here in Minnesota. 2 days ago I was sitting in a huge line of cars in Burnsville dropping off truckload after truckload of groceries for immigrants. Ready to be shuttled away immediately by even more volunteers. Never had the mainstream media consensus been so out of touch with the consensus on the ground. I've never seen my city mobilize on this scale before. Word got out that Pretti was murdered while we sat in that lineup of cars. This mobilization all happened before that news even broke. Every single person there was taking a risk. It was already known that ICE was trailing grocery shuttles back to immigrants. Innocent US citizens were already being violently ripped from their cars and held at gunpoint.
I think the George Floyd crisis galvanized us for the fight at hand today. Lessons from George Floyd can be felt everywhere in the cities, from comment sections to street corners. We will keep *peacefully* fighting for the safety and happiness of our neighbors. That is the secret to defeating Trumpism. "Don't you dare hurt my neighbor."
It turns out that when you see someone unjustly holding a gun to your neighbor's head, your morality surges back to life. I wish more people could experience how rewarding this resistance feels. This last month in many ways has renewed my faith in the American people. My faith in the people of Minnesota has never been stronger. But it is emotionally and physically exhausting...