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Comment by schaefer | Hacker News Reader

Donald is openly dehumanizing US citizens that have political views contrary to his own (and indeed, contrary to HIM).

But more than that, he is using Federal Officers to inflict violence on protestors. True, some protestors have been violent(mostly to property, but not entirely), but Federal agents are also using force on clearly peaceful protestors.

As a US citizen myself, I am speechless. How is this our reality?

But it doesn't go without my notice that this is EXACTLY the treatment that African Americans are protesting. And now, allies of the BLM movement are subject some of the same dehumanizing and violent treatment from law enforcement that we are protesting against, regardless of race.

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> As a US citizen myself, I am speechless. How is this our reality?

This is exactly how many Russians felt when they saw the constitution effectively annulled in 2003.

Back then nobody could've believed the USSR can return, and people were laughing at the few who were smart to freak out about that.

Democracy is a really fragile thing. It really can disappear overnight.

One day, you wake up, turn on the news, and you drop your jaw. Just like this.

It happens when the oversight has been pared back over the years and finally outright ignored. It happens when an administration decides to exploit those vulnerabilities and "norms" (ie, loopholes because there isn't an actual law that holds a government officials accountable).

> Donald is openly dehumanizing US citizens that have political views contrary to his own

That's true, but somewhat beside the point. He's using the flimsiest pretext to do things in the most provocative way possible as a deliberate attempt to cause violent radicalization on both sides and provide pretext for further escalation and executive authoritarian action, and deliberately targeting locations that will assure that the resulting chaos and it's hoped-for adverse effects on election administration redounds to his electoral advantage and, failing that, that the chaos itself provides a pretext for his openly-telegraphed backup tactic of rejecting the election results.

I really hope you're wrong. But it's not a good sign that this is the best counter-argument I could find: I'm not sure that he's smart enough to do that, and I'm not sure that he thinks long-term enough to try.

But it would explain a lot if this administration were deliberately trying to destabilize things, instead of just blundering...

> I'm not sure that he's smart enough to do that, and I'm not sure that he thinks long-term enough to try

Individually, he may not be and he may not, but the people who work for him and recommend policy actions to him are and do, and while there seem to be frequent conflicts of goals between his close advisors (though that's been less visible since the last few shakeups, whether because it's not happening as much or because less is leaking), this is one where the factional interests are aligned.

The article highlights the warrant and application of Feds is to investigate and eliminate gangs, not the protests. It might end up targeting protestors anyway, but they're using the cover of Chicago's annual summer murder rate spike (which has been going on since I was a child in the early 90s at least).

99% of the non-property violence has been conducted by the police

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