It's not quite as bad as in horror movies yet, but the pictures tell the story as Trump gives DC tourists photo-ops of nascent fascism in action.

 

The photo above was used to illustrate a letter in the opinion section of The Washington Post disputing the accuracy of reports that the federal takeover of DC resulted in fewer people eating out. No doubt it was used because it showed four (really at least five) of these Trump SS walking in front of a restaurant.

As horrified as we should be by this utterly obvious, unnecceasry, and downright absurd display of meant to intimidate performance art, I saw three positives in the photo. Can you guess what they are?

Here they are: 

• None of the Trump SS are wearing masks.

• One of the members of the Trump Schutzstaffel1 has his name on his uniform.

• This shows interagency cooperation.

We can only guess what the four people whose faces or heads are visible are thinking.

The three that we see all look serious or oblivious. It is hard to tell which. Are they really on the alert for criminal activity or people who look like they are illegal immigrants? I’d like to believe that at least one of them is thinking “what the fuck am I doing this for?” Either that or they may be worried about how they’ll react if someone throws a sandwich at them.

We don’t know why one is looking over his shoulder. Perhaps he passed someone eating a sandwich.

There’s a fifth Schutzstaffel who we can identify because of his body armor, but all we can tell is he has massive biceps and is wearing the requisite tight t-shirt. 

Apparently being buff and showing off upper body muscles by wearing tight short sleeved shirts is a Trumpian requirement. Hegseth, RFK Jr., Margorie Taylor Greene, and AI images of Trump sets the standard for this.

The article 'It’s an affront': DC tour guide rips Trump's troop surge as a tourist 'spectacle' in RawStory used a photo that should be disturbing to any caring human being. 

Click here to enlarge just the photo.

Unfortunately people, like the two in this photo, will continue to be intimidated by the Trump SS for no other reason than they have black or brown skin. 

Look at their faces:

Waiting under a bus shelter used to protect you from the elements like rain and snow. This one doesn't protect you from ICE and their partners. The police still have the audacity to wear the uniform of DC police (who are supposed to protect and serve everyone) 

Meanwhile, Trump's next target city is supposedly going to be Chicago!

Read: ‘Your political circus isn’t welcome here’: Trump eyes federal crackdowns in more cities.

US President Donald Trump said Friday that Chicago is the next city in his crosshairs for the kind of federal invasion and occupation currently underway in Washington, DC—a threat that sparked defiant pushback from officials in the Windy City and beyond.

"After we do this, we'll go to another location, and we'll make it safe also," Trump told reporters in the Oval Office, referring to his federalization of Washington's Metropolitan Police Department and deployment of National Guard troops from the district and five Republican-controlled states.

"We're going to make our cities very, very safe. Chicago's a mess. You have an incompetent mayor. Grossly incompetent and we'll straighten that one out probably next," the president said, referring to progressive Brandon Johnson. "That will be our next one after this. And it won't even be tough."

Hopefully it won’t happen, but it’s possible that visitors to Millennium Park will end up getting interesting, and disquieting, photos of Trump’s SS lingering around the famous Cloud Gate sculpture, otherwise knows as “the bean.”

The Britannica explains why Chicago is called The Second City.

Chicago is called the “Second City” due to a combination of historical and cultural factors, primarily stemming from its rivalry with New York City and the name of a book by A.J. Liebling, who coined the term in the 1950s.

Now it looks like it is poised to become the second city Trump unleashes his SS on.

The photo on the top of the page is the famous shower scene from Alfred Hitchcock’s classic thriller “Psycho” which you can watch here.

Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

This post is public so feel free to share it.

Share

Leave a comment

Previous Substacks

1

While it may sound like the name of a German strudel Schutzstaffel was the name of the Nazi SS.

With Trump's ordering his armed thugs to emulate the Nazi Schutzstaffel, or the Waffen-SS, we might as well call the country the USSA. By Hal M. Brown There could be 10 million cold-hearted people diagnosable as psychopaths in the country to take jobs in Trump's SS.

 There are updates to this on Substack.

I made the SS illustration above by adding a U and an A to an SS. The motto of the SS was telling in the context of today's Trump regime. It was Meine Ehre heißt Treue. This translates to My honor is loyalty. Of course their loyalty was to Adolph Hitler. Certainly not all, but some of Trump’s armed thugs, whether in ICE or other so-federal law enforcement agencies, are loyal not to the Constitution despite taking an oath to uphold it. They are loyal, like the Nazis, to one person. That person is Donald J. Trump.

The Trump SS are not upholding the law unless you consider Trump’s law, “The Law.”

They are not what I’d call real cops who protect, serve, and enforce the law. A real cop may write you a speeding ticket, hopefully making you a safer driver, but they also protect you from real ciminals. They get drunk drivers off the road. They help you if you’re in a traffic accident or if someone breaks into your house. 

If your child is doesn’t come home from school you call your local police. You don’t call ICE unless you think they were arrested in a raid. I wouldn’t be confident that you’d get a reassuring response in the later case.

The people who may or may not be members of violent gangs are being treated like they are bloodthirsty beasts who, were they not chained and bent over, might turn and rip the throats out of their captors. Who wants to treat fellow human beings this way?

Whenever I see pictures, like the one below, of an ICE officer wearing POLICE on their uniform it enrages me because they don’t deserve to be called police.

I take this personally because I have had lots of experience with the police. This is because I was an auxiliary police officer for 20 years in two different cities.

I feel strongly about this because I knew dozens of police officers. In the two departments where I was an auxiliary officer I rode with regular officers countless times. What we did most of the time on late night shifts was look for drunk drivers. In Mason, Michigan our department was honored by Mothers Against Drunk Driving with their Lifesaver Award twice. As a psychotherapist one of my specialities was police stress. I had the number one website about this for years, Police Stressline, and some of my articles were published in police magazines.

Today the ultimate boss of federal law enforcement has broken, bent, or ignored the law. He is their role model. They not only don’t have an incentive to consider that what they are doing defies the Constitution, but that there would be swift retribution if they refused to follow an unconstitutional or illegal order. As for them being a decent person who feels empathy for everyone except the most brutal criminals? Fuhgeddaboudit.

Trump has a group of people roaming the country with guns many of whom have charateristics which would fit the textbook defintion of being psychopaths. So do their bosses.

Studies show that 1-3% of the US population (3% of men) are psychopaths. While this may seem like a small number, if we say the total population is around 350 million this adds up to over 10 million people. There are certainly enough of them to take jobs in one of Trump’s SS agencies.

Addendum:

This is related to this Substack: Combine DOGE and ICE and we could have an American Gestapo armed with both guns and computers. Trump could be Hitler with a giant mainframe database of undesirables who are poisoning the blood of America.

Thanks for reading my Substack! Subscribe for free to receive new posts by email.

Read my previous Substacks.