It wasn’t all that long ago when the right-wing conspiracy theorists were insisting that Barack Obama was plotting to enact martial law, commandeer farm land and food supplies and lock up his political enemies in concentration camps run by the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
Fox News’ Glenn Beck and the martial arts actor Chuck Norris were all over it and thousands of their followers came to believe it was absolutely true.
This is nothing more than a charade that, less than four months before the presidential election, will be used to create footage for campaign ads to show just how tough Donald Trump is compared to those wimpy mayors who, of course, are deeply connected to Joe Biden.
Then there were the stories in 2015 that a military training exercise being planned in remote areas in Texas that included special forces like the Green Berets and Navy Seals was an elaborate plot by Obama to take over the Lone Star state.
The rightwing internet sites were filled daily with details on how Obama was going to pull off this elaborate and audacious scheme, detaining law-abiding Texans in Walmart stores that had recently been closed — all part of the plot, of course. Who knew that the ultra-conservative Walton family would be in on this dirty deed?
It wasn’t just the nut cakes on the fringe who were sure this was going to happen. Polls found that a full 32% of Republicans in Texas believed the conspiracy and, just to be sure, Texas’ governor, Greg Abbott sent his National Guard troops to keep an eye on the exercise.
Years before Obama, the NRA’s often-unhinged leader Wayne LaPierre insisted that President Bill Clinton, another devious liberal, was planning to send “jack-booted thugs” to confiscate Americans’ guns. Then there were those who insisted that “black helicopters” were hovering to secretly snatch political opponents and whisk them to who knows where.
Surely, no one knew then that the president who would really send a secret force of camouflaged federal agents in unmarked cars into the streets of American cities would be one of their own.
As New York Times columnist Paul Krugman recently pointed out, “Every righ-twing conspiracy theory about President Obama was an indication of what Republicans wanted to do themselves, and would do once they had the power.”
The federal force that was sent uninvited in early July to Portland, Oregon, to ostensibly shut down “violence” in front of the city’s federal courthouse, has been condemned for its disregard for individual rights and its dubious legality. People have been snatched from the streets, thrown into waiting vans and carted off to holding tanks without so much as being told why they were nabbed.
But these people are mere protesters, and as far as Donald Trump enablers are concerned, they have no rights.
The president is now vowing to do the same in other cities run by “do-nothing Democratic mayors,” including Chicago, where gang shootings are as rampant as they have been for the past 50 years.
It would be one thing if sending secret federal cops to Chicago was to actually work with and bolster local police to get a handle on the gang violence, but we all know the truth.
This is nothing more than a charade that, less than four months before the presidential election, will be used to create footage for campaign ads to show just how tough Donald Trump is compared to those wimpy mayors who, of course, are deeply connected to Joe Biden.
Once the publicity and the campaign ads are generated, the feds will be gone.
Then the rightwingers can start worrying again about plots to get them.
This column is from the Progressive Media Project, which is run by The Progressive magazine, and distributed by Tribune News Service.