The Staging Grounds

Budding War Criminal Stephen Miller is a mere
39 years old.  If he follows in the footsteps of his
idol Henry Kissinger, he'll be with us for 61 more

• Charlie Maguire: What did you do?
• Anna Von Hagen: We put them in cattle cars and shipped them east. Always east.
• Charlie Maguire: To the Ukraine, you mean? To the resettlement camps?
• Anna Von Hagen: Ja, we resettle them. We resettle them in the air...  (Fatherland 1994)

 

Stephen Miller may have coined the term for the next American Mass Murder campaign.

Like The Killing Fields, his casual dropping of the term "The Staging Grounds" when speaking of the Republican plan to round-up and "deport" 10 million people has a darker and sinister tone when one actually considers, in concrete terms, what the Republicans actually propose.

Stephen Miller: You establish large-scale staging grounds for removal flights where you grab illegal immigrants and move them to the staging ground and that's where planes are waiting to remove them to go home. You deputize the National Guard to carry out immigration enforcement

One of the things which gives me hope as the Republican Party slowly sinks the Black Hole of Fascism is that actually carrying out the Orders from Nazis like Stephen Miller, Mike Flynn, Steve Bannon or whomever is not something enough Americans are desensitized to do at this point.  National Guardsmen aren't ready, thank god, to be tasked with kicking in doors of trailer park homes and pulling people out to be moved to "The Staging Grounds"...

Certainly, rightwing propaganda has been warping and radicalizing (Red-pilling) a large number of, mostly white, young men.  One of the things which has been the biggest disservice to young men is the Youtube algorithm.  I'll watch Democracy Now!, TYT, Luke Beasley, David Pakman, the Majority Report, and the fucking algorithm will foist Joe Rogan, Jordan Peterson, Charlie Kirk, Ben Shapiro and any number of reactionary shitweasels into my feed.  No matter how many times I choose to block it.  But, Harvard educated Ivy-league elitist lawyer Ben Shaprio's videos "destroying" college kids keep getting in there.  So, these young men alone watching content get sucked down the rightwing rabbit hole of extremism.

But, how many triggered conservative domestic terrorists ready to do violence do we have in the country?  50,000?  100,000?

Certainly, there are some cosplaying guerrilla units out there practicing for "the Boogaloo", and they could do real damage and kill people.  Remember the Wolverine Watchmen and their plot to kidnap and murder Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer?  But, to form a coherent unit structure and perform complex tasks with 5-paragraph orders to infiltrate and extract targets?  And no actual military or law enforcement unit is going to take orders to round-up and shoot LGBTQ people from a Matt Walsh or Michael Knowles showing up in a Trump Commissar uniform.

The danger is that leadership of Police Departments and US Military units will order their subordinates, underlings, and units to perform these tasks.  Fo instance would deputies in upstate Lewis Co, New York simply follow the orders of skinhead Unconstitutional Sheriff Mike Carpinelli, who was just re-elected to another 4 year term and believes he's the most powerful government official in his county?  If, Kris Kobach ordered the Kansas State Police to stop every car to check for migrants and people with unlawful genders listed on their driver's license will the Troopers simply shrug and say, 'Well, we're checking for violations so the innocent have nothing to fear'?

Most likely, the CBP will be tasked as they are near the border and they've already been indoctrinated through reactionary propaganda and working conditions to treat Migrants poorly.  Additionally, this would allow Republicans in far away locales like Iowa and Missouri who claim, for easily deduced reasons, that The Border Crisis is the biggest problem EVAR, while not seeing the day-to-day mistreatment of other human beings, to sagely nod their head and agree with Greg Abbott that immigrant children should be chewed up with saw blades and used for fish farm food.

I suppose the natural evolution would be the so-called "Inkblot Strategy" of couinterinsurgency expanding out from Authoritarian and supportive regions, say Missouri or Texas, into the rest of America.  But, right now I'm not worried because while the Republicans absolutely want to impose a Fascist White Power State with concentration camps and death squads the infrastructure and willpower isn't there...  yet...