‘If you haven’t broken the law, you have nothing to fear from the army” and, “Why wouldn’t you welcome the army helping to end crime in Chicago?”
That’s what a MAGA relative visiting from the Sunbelt told me this weekend in response to President Trump’s plan to order the National Guard to occupy Chicago. Or as the President himself tweeted over the weekend: “Chicago is about to find out why it’s called the Department of WAR.”
My gut response would be to ask the relative to name one functioning democracy where the military occupies major cities of a country (LA, DC, Chicago and counting). Like, that’s an authoritarian thing that might happen in Russia or China or North Korea.
And don’t forget that Trump’s military action could be a dry run for a more general military action in Blue cities during the upcoming mid-term elections in order to suppress voter turnout. Ask Little Goebbels, the presidential advisor Stephen Miller.
MAGA says its appeal is only to the law. Or at least the law as they imagine it. Not that our high-octane Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth, has read it, but the U.S. Constitution has a war powers clause.
Remember the Constitution? It gives the Congress power to declare a war and the President the power to execute the war Congress declares.
But here’s the funny thing about the war powers clause. It’s focused on foreign enemies. And not turning the military loose on U.S. citizens. In fact, after fighting to defeat the tyrannical King George of England, using the military on the streets of Boston or New York against its citizens after 1776 would have been unthinkable to the Founders.
But not for MAGA.
The rumor went out this weekend that ICE was assembling cars in Oak Park on Roosevelt and Ridgeland for an action nearby. That turned out to be false. Still indications from our President are that something militarily will happen in Chicago soon so that he can totally “own the Libs.”
Here’s the funny thing about norms, even constitutional norms, once they are broken, let’s say by turning the U.S.’s formidable military power on its citizens, they don’t automatically snap back into place.
Norm-breaking can become a two way street. Today, the military is gunning for Chicago. Tomorrow, under a different President, could that same military turn on MAGA?
Jack Crowe is an Oak Park resident and a longtime columnist for Wednesday Journal.