Reporting in from the Front

According to trump, the insurrection has begun. I thought it would be noisier. I woke up this morning to the same bird calls from my tree out front and the same lizards gliding across my deck as yesterday. I looked out over the city and saw no smoke rising and heard no sirens blaring (even though I live a stone’s throw from a fire station.) No unusual helicopter traffic. Just another beautiful day in sunny southern California.

According to FBI director Kash Patel, my city is “under siege by marauding criminals.” I drove down to West Hollywood to meet a friend for lunch. I saw no evidence of marauding. According to trump, my city is filled with “paid insurrectionists” and said there should be “NO MASKS!” It is strange because the only people I see routinely wearing masks are the purported ICE officials who refuse to show their faces, their badges or their names as they repeatedly violate the civil rights of residents of my city (and probably those in the cities of most of you.)

It got really strange when the Department of Homeland Security tweeted (X’d?) that “Violence and intimidation against federal law enforcement will be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.” So, does that mean they are rescinding all those January 6 pardons?

Last night, trump congratulated the wonderful National Guard for what a great job they were doing in restoring order in Los Angeles. Of course, somewhat problematically, no National Guard troops had yet shown up in the city. I was greeted with a news alert this morning that read “National Guard deploys in downtown LA amid calm.” According to trump, 2000 had been called up, but they could only find jobs for 300 of them—mostly to surround federal buildings no one seemed that interested in.

Was there violence in LA this weekend? Yes. But I have lived here a long time. I lived here during the Rodney King riots—skyline filled with smoke; cars bumper to bumper as people tried to get home; sirens and helicopters filled the air. That was a whole lot of violence. I lived here in the aftermath of the 1994 Northridge quake—Ventura Boulevard looked like a war zone after shop windows had shattered and buildings erupted in fire from the intense seismic activity. We needed help then. I was here a few short months ago when a lot of the city was on fire and we all stayed glued to the Watch Duty app to see where new fires were breaking out, who was being evacuated and grieved with our friends and neighbors about loss and near loss. This weekend was not even close to one of those things.

Over the weekend, trump brought his mask-wearing storm troopers to restaurants, retail spaces and businesses in my city on the pretense of “making us safer.” Over-zealous armed thugs raided and then locked down privately-owned spaces and forced innocent law-abiding residents of my city to “prove” they deserved to continue their lives uninterrupted.

Did they have warrants? Don’t know. They didn’t show them.

Did they have probable cause? Don’t know. They refused to answer.

Did they make anyone safer? Absolutely not. Instead they pulled up their face masks and riot shields, wielded their batons and pepper spray and flash-bang grenades and threw people to the ground, shot them with rubber bullets and pepper sprayed them.

They incited violence with the hope they could find an excuse to start a war here in California. The most populous state in the Union. The most profitable and economically successful state in the country. The blue-est state in the whole United States. Because if they can “get” California, they figure that the rest will be easy.

Now, reports are that, having found nothing for 1700 of the 2000 National Guard members to do, they are now planning on deploying 800 Marines from Camp Pendleton, just south of Los Angeles, to our streets to further protect us from the violence. Here is my idea—maybe all those people could do something about the masked marauders that have invaded our city, those “paid insurrectionists.” They will be able to identify them by the ICE and Homeland Security emblems they are wearing on their clothes as they terrorize our otherwise rather calm city.