Resistance Grows - ICE Vigil at SF Court House

Photos: Leon Kunstenaar / Pro Bono Photo

(San Francisco, August 12) - Trump is too ignorant to know how dictatorships get set up. Most are not be fooled by his preposterous claims be a "stable genius" and a great "deal maker." However, he's got a couple of very clever ideologues in the ways and means of fascism in Bannon and Miller who are guiding him. It is they who are "flooding the zone" with a torrent of steps on the way to dictatorship. And it is working. He is, with very weak opposition, converting the U.S. military into a national police loyal not to the constitution or to the rule of law, but to him and his whims.

He has successfully cowed the nation's system of higher education, the media, and the legal establishment. He is even shaking down corporate America into cutting him in on their business. Now we see him converting the nation's financial system to crypto to no doubt, his huge financial advantage.

This systematic and successful attack on the nation's centers of power was made possible because their power is illusory, the result of looking the other way, not willing to recognize that the expensive lawyers, star journalists, professors in elite schools were all bit players in a corrupt, sham political system. A system whose economy is devoted to creating the machinery of war and repression, where lip service is given to democratic rhetoric but in fact is driven by money and not by votes. Big money runs the show. Now, a skillful con artist has seen the weakness and made the implicit explicit. As with the collapse of the Soviet Union, the fraud, when exposed, led to collapse. It has become impossible to keep pretending.

To those of us who thought the courts would stop him, forget it. With few exceptions, he has pretty much gotten away with everything. He has the bought, corrupt Supreme Court in his pocket.

All the traditional centers of power, legal, military, media, financial, corporate, and academic, in their emptiness, have buckled. Is this the end of the republic?

Salvation can only come from where it has always come, when it has. Ordinary people. As the outrages multiply, so do the protests. The activism from below is multiplying. As militarized goons grab people off the streets, groups of patriots are forming response teams.

Case in point: A deliberately loosely organized group that identifies itself as "Autonomous" is holding vigils at courthouses and buildings where ICE is attempting to intercept immigrants as they go to legally pursue immigration. The group has no military force and is unable to prevent arrests but they can make a newsworthy scene and in our image driven culture, that makes a difference. More and more people will notice and may start to ask "what happened to the Constitution and the rule of law."

As patriots organized in ways that ultimately led to a successful U.S. revolution (with a litle help from its friends), we see that history can indeed rhyme.

The photos below are of a small group standing guard at the court house building at 100 Montgomery Street. Photos have avoided clearly showing faces. See all high resolution photos here.