No Kings, No Occupations — Toward a Democratic Opposition Politics

We see today many news on the occupation of the Washington Police Service, DC and the President of the Metropolitan Police Department (DC), as well as clear signals that it plans to extend this program to other major cities of the Blue State. I want to step back from details to try to see the situation as a whole and consider the political means to react to it. This is based on the point which was born from my conservation with a TPM reader a week and a half ago, that is to say that the close problems of legality are mainly next to the point-not out of words, but at best secondary. The president considers the states and the municipalities controlled by political opponents as something that is similar to the conquered territories which must be folded to his will by force. This includes budgetary coercion and as close as it can happen to military occupation. It is not American, apart from the constitutional order and, in particular in importance, unpopular.

He did this by exploiting various shortcomings, taking advantage of a compliant and corrupt supreme courtyard and using expedients in which his power is the most invisible despite his actions clearly violating the intention of the laws in question. None of these technical details change the fact that these are all violations of freedoms to which the Americans are entitled.