bele posted:
"I blame Trump for a lot of this. Unfortunately Trump was more worried about getting re-elected instead of invoking the Insurrection Act when all the riots started -- no one was punished. No repercussions. Now here we sit."
I've posted this numerous times since the summer of 2020, and I'm going to repeat it again:
If Mr. Trump had sent in Army troops against the antifa and floyd rioters in places like Portland, and authorized the full use of all necessary force to disperse the rioters (arresting and shooting as necessary), he WOULD STILL BE PRESIDENT TODAY.
By not responding with the use of overwhelming force, the left has become more belligerent and aggressive.
Didn't all the college protests and rioting calm down a bit after Kent State in 1970...?
After the Race Riots of the late '60s, there was a study done on what force levels to use to get the rioters off the streets at what stage of the riot. Once the mob is broken up and sent home, they stayed home, with curfews and 'violators will be shot on sight' rules, and the crap was over. The information is out there.
That said, it is up to the Governor of the State or the Local government to call for the National Guard and get help in quelling the problems in the streets. Like Katrina, when the Governor of Louisiana did not call for Federal help for days, most of the Federal response was tied down with red tape waiting for that request.
The governments of Minneapolis/Minnesota made no such request, and being just another hotbed of the Left, likely would have viewed any attempt by the Federal Government to bring order not as needed help, but an imposition of questionable Constitutionality.
Needless to say, the ABCNNBCNS media would have come down like a ton of bricks on Trump for overreaching use of Federal Power, and the Pelosirats would have had another Article of Impeachment for 'abuse of power'.
If government is to be local or at the State level, then it falls on those entities to solve the problems or request aid if they cannot. They did neither, and their tax base suffered the destruction of over 500 businesses in the Twin Cities (Minneapolis/St. Paul) alone, not to mention the loss of business that occurred when entire store inventories walked off for free and the stores were burned or destroyed. That situation was repeated across the country in leftist hotbeds, and the result of Federal imposition of order without State of Local Government requesting it would likely have been met with hostility by the State and Local Governments, if not the residents of the areas affected.
In effect, Trump was damned if he did, and damned if he didn't, but the onus for that destruction falls back on the State and Local Governments which had the job of maintaining order and failed to do so or request the help they needed when things got out of hand, regardless of how the MSM spun the issue.