That's not my question in the headline, it's the question asked by Joan Walsh at the Nation yesterday. Based on how the story opens, you'd think the answer to that question must be No.
What exactly is Donald Trump doing with the 800 National Guard soldiers, plus ICE officers, Drug Enforcement Authority officials, and US Park Police, he deployed to patrol the streets of Washington, DC, almost two weeks ago? Attorney General Pam Bondi boasts that they arrested 68 people on Saturday night, but the Metropolitan Police Department averages 68 arrests a day. In less than two weeks, Bondi claims, they’ve arrested 300 individuals on charges ranging from drug dealing to traffic violations. But based on its daily average, the MPD would have made almost 900 arrests on its own in the same period...
Trump’s troops have mostly shown up in touristy places and lively neighborhoods, in what is largely a show of farce. They’re writing people up for public drinking, smoking weed, and broken taillights. They’ve succeeded in reducing business at bars and restaurants by almost a third compared to the same period in August 2024. So much for the pro-business GOP.
Issuing public drinking tickets and clearing out homeless camps sounds more like broken windows policing than the start of a civil war. Nevertheless, Walsh's mind wanders toward something more dramatic.
I think a lot about writer Jeff Sharlet’s conception of a “slow civil war” unraveling the United States, especially since the January 6 insurrection. On Bluesky he wrote: “I’m gonna say armed troops from red states descending on a blue city is just a few inches—or maybe one exchange of gunfire—short of a civil war’s opening stages.”...
It’s clear: The addition of 1,000 red-state National Guard troops to the 800 already in DC, all untrained in urban policing, raises the odds of a “mass casualty event,” at minimum. We used to say people who described Trumpism as “fascism” were exaggerating, though now even mainstream media regularly uses the F-word. Right now, we should be wary of talking blithely about “civil war.” But these moves on the capital by Trump and his red-state cronies seem like an acceleration of danger to democracy, meant to familiarize Americans with the sight of federal forces patrolling blue American cities, as Trump has already said is coming.
The first bullets fired in the civil war might be fired by National Guard in DC? I guess it's possible but so far the National Guard deployed in DC aren't even carrying weapons, thought that could change.
The Army had said last week that Guard members would not be carrying weapons and would not be making arrests.
But on Sunday, Army Senior Master Sgt. Craig Clapper told NPR in a statement that "Guard members may be armed consistent with their mission and training."
"Their presence is focused on supporting civil authorities and ensuring the safety of the community they serve," Clapper added. "The DC National Guard remains committed to assisting the District of Columbia and serving its residents and visitors whenever called upon."
As of yesterday, when Walsh's civil war musings were published, they still weren't carrying weapons. It really seems like a stretch to worry about a mass shooting that will lead to civil war by people who aren't armed, but I guess someone on the left has to do it.
What would really happen if law enforcement in DC killed someone? I think we already know because we saw it over the past decade in the form of Black Lives Matter. The media would rush to a) blame Trump directly and b) assume law enforcement was in the wrong before any actual information was available. It would be the Michael Brown case all over again.
Was the summer of 2020 a slow-motion civil war? There were some people on the right who thought so and some of the left who hoped so, but in the end not much changed. There was arson and looting and vandalism totaling billions of dollars but it passed. More police have body cameras now than before. Defund the police was briefly popular before everyone realized it was a stupid idea. A few autonomous zones (sans police) were set up and all of them ended badly. It's hard to imagine anything happening in DC that would be worse than what happened nationwide in the summer of 2020.
Finally, I've said it before but I think there is one thing that could legitimately set off violence. In fact, I think we came really close to things breaking down in a new and dangerous way in Butler, PA last July. Had a certain presidential candidate not turned his head at the exact moment to avoid a passing bullet, everything would look very different right now. We witnessed a miracle and everyone should be grateful for it, including the people who don't believe in miracles.
There is a path that leads to anger and violence and it starts with killing a president or maybe a Supreme Court Justice. We've come pretty close in the past few years to stumbling down that road, but thankfully we've avoided the very worst outcome.
