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At this point, even the most obtuse Americans have to realize that Donald Trump wants to create chaos and incite violence in “blue” cities and states. Though this may be welcome news for MAGA faithful who want to see some liberal heads bashed in while masked ICE goons try to bag their daily quota of brown people, it should horrify any Constitution-loving patriot.

To those who have been paying attention, all of this has been very apparent for some time now. The playbook is simple: First you take advantage of real crises (or manufacture “emergencies”) and use them to grant yourself more power to address them. And then you use that power to quash your opposition like an insect.

Speaking of: On Sunday, while addressing US service members, Trump likened Democrats to “gnats” that have to be “take[n] care of.”

This comes on the heels of an address to the country’s top military brass in which he warned about an “enemy from within,” adding that “we have to handle it before it gets out of control.”

Of course, Trump is the one who seems hellbent on ensuring that things spiral out of control in the first place by sending soldiers to blue states whose governors have not requested the troops and neither want nor need them.

Essentially, it’s as though he is trying to put out the fire in a residential building by dousing the entire neighborhood with gasoline instead of letting firefighters do their job.

But don’t take our word for it.

This weekend, a Trump-appointed judge found that the president’s claim that Oregon’s National Guard is needed to address some sort of emergency in “war-ravaged” Portland was “simply untethered to the facts.” In case you don’t speak legalese, that’s a nice way of saying that he was making it up.

However, whether it’s with women who don’t want to be pawed or judges (this one happens to be both), Trump doesn’t take “no” for an answer, so he tried to circumvent the order that barred him from using Oregon’s National Guard by calling up troops from California and, when that plan was nixed, from Texas.

Of course, ICE doesn’t need all that much help in escalating things. Kristi Noem’s thugs are doing a great job of putting entire cities on edge by launching military-style raids (and creating snazzy content for the right-wing mediaverse in the process) that sweep up men, women, and children, some of whom are American citizens, some legal residents, and some the “illegals” that this is supposedly all about.

However, the behavior of everybody involved, from Trump on down, shows that the entire point seems to be to create violent clashes that then justify further action.

That is why Stephen Miller, the white nationalist goblin who seems to be pulling the strings here, is having meltdowns on social media in which he calls the court order “legal insurrection” (Note: Since Trump sparked a real insurrection after his 2020 election loss, Miller loves to throw that term around to water down its meaning and significance. He would probably call it an insurrection if a referee called a foul on one of his children during a kid’s soccer game, or whatever Aryan sport he has them play).

That is also why the ICE agents are indistinguishable from run-off-the-mill kidnappers. By acting like criminals and showing up with masks and guns instead of warrants and badges, they are downright begging for someone to escalate the situation.

And who could blame those who are being abducted at gunpoint for fighting back? It is actually remarkable that the naked aggression that government agents display daily and in full view of the cameras of brave individuals has not already led to more violence.

It would hardly be surprising if one of the victims of the ICE brute squads decided to “stand their ground.”

Kudos that none of them have done so, because that is exactly what this administration wants: A justification to act with even greater brutality and to terrorize the people living in places that dared to vote against Trump.

The only saving grace in this volatile situation may be that everybody in this administration is so drunk on power that they overshoot the mark, and that a sufficient number of Americans finally say “enough.”

That is why it is encouraging to see that Democratic governors like California’s Gavin Newsom and JB Pritzker in Illinois are holding firm and pointing out what is really going on.

They realize that this is not for the faint-of-heart, and that Trump wants to plunge the country into a crisis that is certainly going to end in bloodshed.

We can only hope that the president’s lawless and anti-American behavior will rouse the kind of mass response the country hasn’t seen in generations.

For anybody who cares about the rule of law, about democracy, and about the nation’s founding ideals, the time to act is now.