Friday
Yesterday Lafayette Square, today Portland, tomorrow maybe Chicago. Donald Trump is making sure that his secret and unmarked federal troops are stirring things up in what is the 2020 version of sending troops to the southern border (2018) to intercept non-existent migrant caravans. (All talk of the caravans disappeared immediately after the election.) These troops remind me of the outlaws in B. Traven’s 1927 novel The Treasure of the Sierra Madre.
While few people know the novel, many know the line delivered by Gold Hat, the head of a gang posing as mounted police. Desiring the weapons of three gold prospectors, he accuses them of hunting without a license and possessing unregistered firearms. This result in the following interchange, which concludes with X-rated profanity that doesn’t appear in the film:
“All right,” Curtin shouted back. “If you are the police, where are your badges? Let’s see them.”
“Badges, to god-damned hell with badges! We have no badges. In fact, we don’t need badges. I don’t have to show you any stinking badges, you god-damned carbron and chinga tu madre!“
In the film, the Bogart character Dobbs is involved in the interchange:
Dobbs: “If you’re the police, where are your badges?”
Gold Hat: “Badges? We ain’t got no badges. We don’t need no badges. I don’t have to show you any stinkin’ badges!”
Gold Hat ultimately kills Dobbs and then himself is tracked down by actual police and executed.
Our own unmarked police are no more willing to reveal their true identities as they teargas and club non-violent protesters and sweep up random people from the streets. We now know that at least some of them are U.S. Immigration Customs and Enforcement agents, bringing with them their questionable and often violent behavior from the Mexican border into the heart of America’s cities. According to former solicitor general Neal Katyal (on Lawrence O’Donnell’s MSNBC program), they have no more authority than the novel’s outlaws to exert police power, which is reserved for the states. Conservative Chief Justice William Renquist reasserted this principle in a 2000 ruling.
The disregard for local authority demonstrated by the Acting Head of Homeland Security–himself a man not confirmed by the Senate—is an egregious abuse of power. So is the rationale for federal intervention, which is as flimsy as that offered up by the outlaws. Furthermore, the rationale keeps changing: at first the federal troops were there to guard federal buildings (against graffiti?!), then to fight urban crime. Unless various state attorney generals are successful in stopping the incursion of these troops altogether, the rationale will probably change a few more times.
If memory serves me, in the final scene of the film we see Gold Hat’s hat blowing through the empty and dusty street following the sound of the firing squad’s gunshots, a sign that the legitimate authorities have finally caught up with him. Will we see Trump’s troops stripped of their warrior uniforms and held accountable for the shootings, seizures, and beatings they have administered? Will the rule of law reassert itself in America?