Letters to the Editor: Where is the outrage over the cost of ‘completely unnecessary’ troop deployments?

To the editor: The latest attempted militarization of American cities in Portland and Chicago is incomprehensible, completely unnecessary and a waste of taxpayer funds (“The Portland ‘battlefield’ Trump describes doesn’t actually exist,” Oct. 7).

The estimated cost of the deployment of the National Guard and marines to Los Angeles is roughly $120 million; the National Guard deployment to the nation’s capitol and now Memphis will be expensive too. As our country is many trillions in debt, how do conservatives in Congress support the president’s blunder to dedicate precious military resources to blue-voting areas irrespective of falling rates of crime generally?

Where is the outrage over the financial cost of these escalatory actions based on a false pretext and at significant taxpayer expense? God forbid guardsmen are placed in even more situations where deadly force is a possibility but without a proper plan of true public safety that normally falls within the exclusive jurisdiction of state and local police.

The police, by the way, are infinitely more trained and prepared to address domestic protests and ordinary American life. The National Guard should only be used as a last resort when other lawful contingencies have been exhausted, a threshold which has not been met in any of these cities.

This has become an unserious presidency that is pushing a federalization of hate.

Anthony Arnaud, Laguna Niguel

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To the editor: I believe in humor when it has a purpose in difficult situations. If you want a good laugh, there’s a protestor in Portland who dresses in a frog suit, and there’s a video online of the protestor walking toward federal law enforcement to urge them to step behind the government line. They actually do step behind the line at his insistence!

This small snippet is indicative of the ridiculous scene the government has orchestrated as a show of strength. A dancing green frog should be in all cities troops are sent to, bringing some humor to the embarrassing position these troops have been put in.

Nancy Freedman, Los Angeles

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To the editor: “Authoritarianism … creeps in through the normalization of absurdities: troops patrolling playgrounds, judges labeled traitors, journalists branded as enemies.” Guest contributor Amy La Porte conveyed what is happening more evocatively than I did in my reply to an Australian friend, who just yesterday ended his email to me with “Hope all is as well as it can be in the States.”

I wrote back that “it’s mind-boggling and embarrassing and shameful and insidious, what’s going on in our country.”

And it is happening so readily, with so little pushback, with a pliant, custom-majoritied Supreme Court — and as columnist Jonah Goldberg wrote (“Congress gave away its power and got nothing in return,” Oct. 7), with a Congress that has ceded its power, thus freeing the president to act on his whims.

Those whims are full of spite and retribution. How could the president declare, following Erika Kirk’s loving and forgiving homage to her husband, that he hated his enemies and will go after them, and not have every Christian in the audience hang their heads in shame? Apparently, the audience hooted and applauded these words, the antithesis to Erika Kirk’s words, for which they also applauded.

The world, or at least our country, feels upside down in a dystopian reality I can hardly fathom.

Jana K. Shaker, Pebble Beach