Cynthia Gonzalez, vice mayor of Cudahy, California, wants to know where LA’s street gangs are: “You guys are always tagging everything up, claiming [the] hood, and now that your hood’s being invaded by the biggest gang there is, there ain’t a peep out of you …. We’re out there fighting our turf, protecting our turf, protecting our people and, like, where you at?”

By “the biggest gang there is,” of course, she means US Immigrations and Customs Enforcement and its co-conspirators in the occupation of Greater Los Angeles.

A few miles away in Huntington Park, mayor Arturo Flores has instructed his city’s chapter of the Blue Line Gang to “begin verifying the identities and authority” of masked marauders attempting to abduct alleged immigrants on his city’s streets.

The move comes after masked hoodlums, accompanied by gang shot-caller Kristi “ICE Barbie” Noem, terrorized a 28-year-old pregnant mother of four (and US citizen) in a publicity stunt gone awry.

“Men dressed in tactical gear, operating unmarked vehicles without displaying credentials or agency affiliation,” he says “have infiltrated our neighborhoods in direct violation of our community’s values, civil rights, and the basic principles of due process.”

Naturally, supporters of US president Donald Trump’s “mass deportation” scheme and his order for an ongoing military occupation of the LA area, now in its third week, want Gonzalez’s and Flores’s heads on pikes.

But they’re not wrong.

Flores knows what an occupation looks like, having participated, as a US Marine, in the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan.

Based on her statements, Gonzalez seems familiar with the local gangs and how they operate. She knows gang activity when she sees it.

Letting this mess escalate to full-on civil war wouldn’t be good for anyone involved.

On the other hand, ICE, the California National Guard, and the US Marine Corps need to read and heed the sign LA is hanging out. It says: NOT WELCOME.

Until they take the hint and leave, they should be shunned as individuals and resisted as a group.

Local businesses should refuse their patronage.

Citizens should hide immigrants when they learn — from ad hoc early warning systems already operating — that ICE is coming.

Activists should  relentlessly impede and harass every organized movement of the ICE gang’s street troops.

They should do it for themselves and for their friends, but inflicting utter defeat on ICE and its co-conspirators will also constitute a victory for America.

Thomas L. Knapp (X: @thomaslknapp | Bluesky: @knappster.bsky.social | Mastodon: @knappster) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

In 1938, five years into Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s “New Deal,” the US remained mired in the depths of a “Great Depression.” Real income still hadn’t regained its 1929 level. Unemployment stood at six times at level. The nation languished in economic failure with no end in sight, making even the far-from-free-market policies of his predecessor, Herbert Hoover, look attractive by comparison.

Then, in 1939, a miracle! Europe went to war!

FDR saw that as a way to put America back to work. He instituted a “Lend-Lease” program, spinning up manufacturing to provide England with arms. He instituted the first US peacetime military draft. Americans opposed direct US involvement in a European war, so he went to work antagonizing Japan with oil and steel embargoes, knowing — or at least hoping — he’d get a war on THAT side of the world. Which, on December 7, 1941, he did.

US involvement in World War 2 didn’t end the Great Depression — it merely masked the symptoms for a little while, at the cost of 400,000 American lives.

What ended the Great Depression was widespread destruction across most of the world’s manufacturing capacity, while America’s remained untouched. We didn’t so much create our own fortune as gravy-train on the rest of the world’s misfortune. Global militaristic folly turned the US into an economic, as well as military, “superpower.”

Donald Trump calls himself a “peace president” abroad, even as he does his damnedest to devastate the economy at home with ruinous tariffs and an all-out attempt to deport the immigrants who constitute the backbone of American agriculture, construction, and manufacturing. The resulting dissatisfaction and unrest prompted him, earlier in June, to militarily occupy the country’s second-largest city.

Donald Trump needs two things very badly right now: A distraction from the consequences of his disastrous policies going forward, and some good economic news — even if it’s entirely artificial in nature — to cover up those consequences in retrospect.

His decision to order an unjustified and unprovoked June 22 attack on Iranian nuclear facilities answered that first need, at least for a moment.

Will he try to leverage the matter in pursuit of the second need as well? Time will tell.

As tariffs and deportations continue to decimate our ability to buy food, housing, and other necessities, it becomes more and more likely that he’ll try to pull an FDR.

Even if that temporarily “works,” the price ain’t right. Only freedom can produce prosperity — or peace.

Thomas L. Knapp (X: @thomaslknapp | Bluesky: @knappster.bsky.social | Mastodon: @knappster) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

On June 21, US president Donald Trump ordered airstrikes on Iranian nuclear facilities. You may have heard. As I write this, we’re in the “boasting about how splendid it all is” phase of Trump’s cyclical foreign policy approach.

Phase One: Pretend to be “anti-war” and feverishly “negotiating” to avoid escalation of this or that long-term conflict.

Phase Two:  Escalate.

Phase Three: Brag about what a genius he is.

Phase Four: Backtrack and maybe whine a little when it blows up in his face — or, rather, in the faces of the troops he puts in harm’s way.

It remains to be seen whether we’ll get the usual Phase Four (a la the ignominious but long overdue US surrender in Afghanistan after his “surge,” the Iranian strikes on US bases in Iraq after his operation to murder Iranian general  Qasem Soleimani, etc.), or whether he’ll really screw the pooch and set the Middle East on fire this time when the Iranians retaliate.

In the meantime, let’s talk about the US Constitution.

This morning, I received an email from Defending Rights and Dissent, a pro-Constitution organization with a history stretching back to the era of McCarthyism.  Subject line: “Trump shreds the Constitution. Bombs Iran. TAKE ACTION.”

DRAD wants you to write “your” US Representative and US Senators, urging them to support a “War Powers Resolution” requiring Trump to stand down, on the clear and irrefutable constitutional claim that only Congress has the authority to declare war and that Trump’s actions are therefore illegal.

Okay, yeah, I did that.

But realistically, Congress isn’t any more likely to reassert its power over US war-making this time around than it did with Korea, Vietnam, Grenada, Panama, Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, and numerous other belligerent actions/involvements.

We’ve been living in a “post-constitutional” era, featuring an “imperial” presidency, for at least 80 years, with Congress exercising about as much power as the Roman Senate under the Caesars.

How do we know that?  The latest unimpeachable evidence for the claim is that Trump wasn’t impeached on the evening of June 21 and convicted and removed from office on the morning of June 22. The prosecution rests, and the defense has no case.

As Lysander Spooner noted in 1870, “whether the Constitution really be one thing, or another, this much is certain — that it has either authorized such a government as we have had, or has been powerless to prevent it. In either case it is unfit to exist.”

Whether the Constitution was a good idea and whether it ever “worked” are interesting questions, but for all practical purposes, it ceased to exist as anything other than low-quality toilet paper decades ago, if not longer.

Self-help gurus agree: The first step toward solving your problem is admitting you have one.

Until we face the cold, hard fact that the “America” we learned about in high school civics classes is a myth — created by, and maintained for the benefit of, an imperial political class at humankind’s expense — we won’t be able to move on to anything better.

Thomas L. Knapp (X: @thomaslknapp | Bluesky: @knappster.bsky.social | Mastodon: @knappster) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY