Look, I'm just gonna spitball here on what I really think happened on Monday, June 1, when protesters at Lafayette Square, right near the White House, were pushed out by a bullshit combination of Park Police, National Guard, and Secret Service, along with various other law enforcement officers. Sure, sure, the story we've heard, that the peaceful crowd was violently ejected to make room for President Donald Trump to undulate a few hundred feet to St. John's Church for a bizarre and worthless photo op, is fuckery of the highest order.
And it's probably just idiotic enough to be the truth. But if you've watched these motherfuckers as long as I have, and if you've seen them devolve into the kind of motherfuckers who will fuck any mother who crosses their path - human mother, dog mother, goat mother, it doesn't matter as long as they're a mother with a place to fuck - then you know that they will not lose a chance to fuck that mother because that's what motherfuckers do. It's right there in the word.
See, Trump was supposed to do his fake tough guy act by giving his pissy little "law and order president" speech earlier than it was delivered at around 6:45. Trump's notorious for never starting anything on time because he's one of those pricks who gets off on making people wait for him. The final time he was scheduled to start was 6:30, but, instead, that was when the big push against the protesters started.
Now, here's where I'm gonna go off into "Huh, maybe" territory: Trump's speech was all about violence in the streets of the United States. "Our nation has been gripped by professional anarchists, violent mobs, arsonists, looters, criminals, rioters, Antifa, and others," he slithered, adding, "We are ending the riots and lawlessness that has spread throughout our country. We will end it now."
I think, sincerely, that Trump and his people wanted to provoke the protesters near the White House to violence. They wanted a riot that could be put down by overwhelming force. They knew that the news networks would play the speech in split screen and what could be better than Trump declaring that "I am your President of law and order" as order was being beaten and tear-gassed into the savages who would dare attack our brave cops and soldiers. Trump wanted to justify his call for violence by showing the world that he could control the burgeoning uprising.
Except that's not what happened. No, instead, the protesters were outraged but they moved. They resisted with voices and with bodies somewhat, but that was it. And the images that were pouring out were not those of brick-throwing "Antifa rioters" being stopped by Trump-ordered force. Instead, they were of peaceful protesters being beaten and tear-gassed. The cops and the troops looked like the savages, the animals, not the protesters.
I think that after ten minutes or so of this, when Jared or Hope or whichever completely amoral puke stain who thought this up realized that they weren't getting their riot, they had to come up with some fuckin' reason for clearing the park (originally, it was supposedly to move barriers), and then Jared or Hope or whichever useless shit smear in the Oval Office quickly said they could walk to that church and take some fuckin' photo and, oh, shit, Ivanka, put this Bible we found on a shelf in your purse to bring because we're takin' a stroll together, all of us, like a group of sheep to the slaughter and hope no one notices how fuckin' dumb this all is.
That's what I believe happened last Monday. And ever since then, Trump has kept making statements and doing things that are calculated to try to push the social, cultural, and historical buttons of the Black Lives Matter marchers. Change the names of forts from Civil War generals to maybe the names of people who weren't traitors? No, fuck that, Trump said, even though the military wants it to happen. First rally since the pandemic shut shit down? Fuck it, let's hold that shit right in the city where white people devastated a successful black community, Tulsa, Oklahoma, and let's do that shit on June 19, Juneteenth, celebrating the emancipation of slaves. And the National Guard's actions at Lafayette Square last Monday? Fuck you, Trump says in a sub-schoolyard taunt, it was awesome because the protesters were pussies.
Right now, the nation - hell, the world - is convulsing in revulsion at what the United States is and has been. We've finally reached a moment when real, actual structural change may happen. At the very least, we're purging our public displays of blatant racism by knocking down statues and banning the flag of traitors. Performative empathy on the mistreatment of African Americans by white people isn't enough anymore, and it's about fucking time. Shit has needed to be burned down for a long time, and it's finally seeming like it won't be the fire next time that does it.
And the presidency of Donald Trump is going up in those flames. So he's going to push harder and harder to cause explosions, real ones instead of emotional ones, in the protest movement. I wouldn't be surprised to see Proud Boys and other racist fucknuts show up to try to provoke it, too, in even greater numbers than they have been. He knows his reelection chancer are plummeting, and he's gotta discredit this movement that is walking all over his stupid face. He's gonna get more and more desperate, like a snarling, cornered rat who thinks it can snap and scamper to its freedom.
Trump's like all those fuckin' yahoos who stand around and watch the marches with their hands on their pathetic AR-15s, itching for the opportunity to use it. Except he's the yahoo with an entire military at his disposal. The greatest hope right now, sadly, is that the military leaders seem like they're just embarrassed by all of this. Let's hope that is enough for them to reject the order that Trump so badly wants to give.
