I’m departing from my usual focus on Vermont politics because the scenes from Trump’s Battle Los Angeles cosplay adventure* in MacArthur Park really hit me, and made the Big Brutalist Bill’s funding of a massive immigration enforcement regime feel like the most fascistic element of a broadly fascist administration. I was in Los Angeles just a couple of months ago. One of my stops was MacArthur Park. And to see heavily-armed stormtroopers marching, for no particular reason, through a place I had recently visited was a real smack in the face.

*The movie, which features a gritty band of soldiers fighting an alien invasion, appears to be the narrative inspiration for Trump’s florid fantasy of an L.A. under attack. Looking at clips from the film makes me think Stephen Miller probably jerks off to it late at night after he can’t get it up in bed with his wife:

Ooh yeah, that’s the stuff.

I went to L.A. because Loyal Spouse was attending a conference there, so I could stay in the hotel room for free and bomb around the city. It was a fascinating, enlightening, fun, and occasionally frustrating experience.

For purposes of this blog, I won’t cover the Broad Museum, the La Brea Tar Pits, a great bike trail along the L.A. beaches, the Griffith Observatory, or a wonderful store in Los Feliz called Wacko that specializes in fringe culture of all kinds. I will write about how refreshing it was to be in a truly diverse space where I was often in the minority and I never quite knew which language I might hear on the street, on the train, or at a restaurant.

Also how I never felt personally in danger, even though there was a LOT of poverty and homelessness. I walked along streets lined with tents, tarps, and other ad hoc shelters. There were plenty of sketchy characters on the streets and on mass transit. I kept my eyes open and my wallet secured, but even so I liked the overall experience. There are things in big cities — food, retail, museums, parks, botanical gardens, etc. — that you can’t find anywhere else. I don’t want to live in a big city, but I really like visiting them.

I must also say that my L.A. experience made me less tolerant of the snowflakey hand-wringing about poverty and homelessness in Burlington or Montpelier. It’s nothing compared to L.A. or San Francisco or New York or Montreal or Detroit or even Minneapolis, to name six cities I’ve visited in the last year or so. Vermonters, by and large, are S-A-W-F-T.

Back to my main point, which is: The sweep through MacArthur Park was just a dry run for the oppressive regime that’s coming at us like a speeding train. The sweep resulted in no arrests or detentions. It was just a little exercise featuring heavily armed troops barging through a city park where kids were playing and a community health center was doing outreach. There was no crime to prevent, not even a protest to disrupt. The sole purpose was intimidation in one of Los Angeles’ most ethnically diverse neighborhoods. Hmm, that must be a coincidence, right?

And then there’s the Big Brutalist Bill, which will inject huge amounts of cash into Trump’s border and immigration crackdown. The bill, per CBS News, provides “roughly $170 billion for immigration enforcement and border security efforts… including $75 billion in extra funding for ICE, making it by far the highest-funded law enforcement agency in the federal government.”

Compare that to ICE’s current year budget of about $8 billion. Now, there’s a lot of non-ICE spending in the bill, but ICE itself will get a massive infusion of funds. It will be able to nearly triple its deportation force. There’s also money for a massive expansion of inhumane detention centers built and operated by for-profit companies like our old friends at CoreCivic. There’s $13.5 billion for reimbursing state and local police agencies that participate in immigration enforcement, a nice little gift to red-state governors, police chiefs and sheriffs who cooperate with Trump’s regime.

And those are just some of the highlights, er, lowlights. The result will be an enforcement effort that will make the first several months of this administration look like an etiquette class. You think we won’t see more quasi-occupations of blue-state cities? You think there won’t be more snatch-and-grabs at court hearings, government offices, streets and highways and private homes?

You think there won’t be a harsher crackdown on farm labor? That’s gonna hit home here in Vermont.

I also wouldn’t be surprised if blue-state university campuses get a taste of this, aimed at campus protests and international students. You ready, University of Vermont?

Looking down the road, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if there was a heavy ICE presence at polling places in ethnically diverse precincts. (Name out of a hat, WInooski.) You think a fully-armed squad of federal goons in tactical gear and facemasks wouldn’t discourage voter turnout? Might buy the Republicans a few percentage points in swing districts.

Besides all of that, it’s become crystal clear that the John Roberts Supreme Court will backstop Trump’s radical agenda in almost all respects. They’ll make the occasional trim here or there, but in general they’re going to let Trump have his way.

I realize we know this. But there’s knowing something, and really knowing something. Seeing the footage from MacArthur Park, a place I so recently visited, brought it home for me.