ArcaMax

Now that Washington, D.C., and Los Angeles have been invaded, the Trump administration is threatening to make Chicago its next target for federalization.

The Department of Homeland Security this week asked Naval Station Great Lakes for "limited support in the form of facilities, infrastructure, and other logistical needs to support DHS operations," according to base spokesman Matt Mogle.

President Donald Trump has been crowing about violence in Chicago and hinting that he's going to extend the National Guard deployments to the Second City for unspecified actions. He knows it'll get a rise out of the Democratic mayor and governor. If nothing else, it's already doing a great job of getting the Epstein files out of the news.

"We want you to be able to walk down a city street in broad daylight without getting mugged," Vice President JD Vance told a crowd in Wisconsin, bragging about Trump's deployment of the National Guard in D.C. He mentioned Milwaukee and Chicago as other places where Trump wants to send troops. "We want you to be able to take your family out for a nice meal wherever you want to, without the fear of violence and criminals."

The administration hasn't been quite as vocal about our children being able to go to school without the fear of violence, considering there's another horrific shooting seemingly every week that results in no action on gun reform. After a recent school shooting in Minnesota, Marjorie Taylor Greene actually said on Twitter that the solution is having more, not fewer, guns in schools.

"End gun-free school zones," she posted.

It's all part of a trend toward militarization, getting our nation used to the sight of police, military, National Guard, militia, security guards and even random citizens roving the streets and entering our buildings with weapons drawn.

In Washington, D.C., the National Guard mobilized into neighborhoods that were supposedly worse than Beirut combat zones in the 1980s. They had so little to do in the way of crimefighting that apparently, they wound up doing landscaping work. And while, yes, that's a bit funny, it's even more disturbing.

Those actions aren't just getting Americans used to having the military walking down their streets. They're also getting the military used to marching into American neighborhoods.

My brother went to boot camp at Great Lakes, and I know if he were there now, he could have been forced to mobilize in downtown Chicago on pain of court-martial. If he did, I could hardly blame him or the other sailors, many of whom are young and inexperienced. They signed up not because they were drafted, but because they wanted to, because they thought being in the military would provide them or their families with a better life. Some of them, believe it or not, are immigrants. Though military service doesn't automatically make you a citizen, it can smooth the pathway.

So Great Lakes is not just these young men and women's introduction to the military; it's also their introduction to our American government, our way of life and the way that we treat our citizens.

In every country where the military has been allowed to march on citizens, it has been used by its leaders to stomp out civil liberties, and that's why U.S. law prohibits the practice.

My father served his required military service in Greece as a young man under a brutal junta that used torture, exile and imprisonment to silence dissent. He was sent to one town to oversee a sham election, where he was told to arrest anyone who voted the wrong way.

My dad didn't want to hurt or arrest anyone, so he gathered the town leaders and told them what his orders were. Everyone toed the line.

In its highest and best use, a nation's military fights to defend the rights of its citizens. In its lowest and basest use, the military is used to violate them.

If Trump really wanted to fight crime in U.S. cities, he could offer money to hire, train and outfit new police officers, health care benefits to keep them fit, and pensions with which to thank them after their service had ended. He could upgrade and expand substance abuse programs, pay for better psychiatric services for those dealing with mental illness and support nonprofits that help people get off the streets and into housing. He could fund parenting classes and day care facilities, open job training sites and institute public works projects that would give the unemployed paychecks. He could build parks, gyms, playgrounds and open activity centers for teenagers who'd otherwise be roaming the streets.

Those actions would all be real attacks on crime.

Sending the military into our nation's streets, though? That feels like an attack with an entirely different target in mind.

And, if history has anything to teach us (and we know that it does), we should all fear what that target will be.

To learn more about Georgia Garvey, visit GeorgiaGarvey.com.

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