John Stoehr notes Chad Wolf’s use of the abuser’s language when he says that because the feds don’t have “that local law enforcement support”, we’re asking for it; then he notes where we are in the mission creep.
[…] Wolf did do something useful with his remarks. He connected points of causation, obliquely but still, between official acts of the past and official acts of the present, illustrating the creep of authoritarianism from the margins of our society to its center, and that without broader awareness—without public acts of witness—the end can come quickly.
[…]
What we are seeing in Portland is part of an ongoing effort to push the envelope of acceptable behavior on the part of the Trump administration. At each stage, he has identified new enemies and found new means of crushing them. The process is ad hoc but inexorable—as long as most people, most white people, believe they are immune to an ever-expanding scope of conflict seeking to subordinate everything to a totalized state. […]
What he calls “ad hoc” David A. Graham recently deemed “improvisational”. Either way, it’s authoritarian; it’s beyond me to tell whether a making-it-up-as-you-go version is more or less dangerous.
Bonus read: Brentin Mock on the Philadelphia district attorney preemptively threatening prosecution of Federal officers if ever they try their Portland routine in his town.