It’s obvious what Trump is doing by deploying heavily armed military to Los Angeles: When he’s embarrassed, he pivots to something even more offensive to distract Americans. Last week, he was embarrassed by Elon Musk implying he’s a pedophile, DOGE’s collapse, and his deeply unpopular bill gutting healthcare for millions of Americans. The LA deployments are modern-day bread and circuses for Republicans — spectacles to distract while stripping the poor and middle class of social services so they can give the wealthy tax cuts. The fact that so many Republicans are thrilled for masked government agents hunting down down peaceful immigrants for mass deportations is disgusting. Of course, the entire Los Angeles crackdown is based on a lie — just like Republicans lied about voter fraud (untrue), government fraud (untrue), and immigrants “eating cats and dogs” (untrue). As Immigrants, including undocumented immigrants, commit less crime than American-born citizens. They pay taxes. They take jobs Americans won’t take. Most importantly, they add a richness to American culture that’s woven into the very fabric of America. Republicans have no popular policies — tax cuts for the wealthy, abortion bans, and slashing Social Security and Medicare are all extremely unpopular — so they rile up their base by demonizing immigrants. Now they’re using masked thugs from ICE, arresting people with no warrants and deporting them with no due process. They’re trying to enter elementary schools. They brutally separate parents from children. This is exactly what Project 2025 promised and what Republicans support. All of this is extremely ironic from a party that claims to support “states’ rights” (they don’t), “small government” (they explode deficits), and “legal immigration.”They claim to be the party of “law & order” (the President is a felon). The GOP chant about “small government” is obviously a lie as they deploy the military to American streets and embrace surveillance tech. But pointing out the hypocrisy is irrelevant. Authoritarian governments thrive on hypocrisy. In my comments, you’ll see lots of angry, bloodthirsty right-wing commenters respond to this saying things like “We voted for this” and “We want them gone.” Almost all of them will be anonymous. (At least half of them will be bots.) Reading them, and seeing the people we’re you’re surrounded with, you will understand exactly how atrocities have happened in history. And how they’re happening today.