You're on edge. Why wouldn't you be? Masked police are rounding up people on the streets of American cities. Those detained are shipped to private detention centers that exist in a blank zone beyond judicial oversight or regional supervision. This weekend, The Guardian described a CoreCivic prison in the California desert as hell on earth: crowded, unsanitary conditions, dirty water, torture, unconscious inmates denied medication. Shirsho Dashgupta of the Miami Herald reported that more than two-thirds of the men incarcerated in Alligator Alcatraz cannot presently be accounted for. Shortly after delivering a speech that echoed Joseph Goebbels's rhetoric, Stephen Miller celebrated NSPM-7, a White House directive that criminalizes dissent and empowers federal investigators to lay a dragnet and start the engine. In this febrile environment the President has announced his intention to send the army — the United States armed forces — to Portland, Oregon, treating it as a rebellious province that needs to be subdued.
