Considering the penchant for bored federal tactical teams to practice their snatch and grab techniques with their rental vehicles, it’s a good thing to take down that statue. Chicago will feature at least 200 members of the miscellaneous DHS protection squad this weekend.
The bronze, beaux arts statue shows Columbus standing and gesturing into the distance with one hand. In his other hand, he holds a scrolled map at his side. On the sides of the statue's art deco pedestal are carved depictions of: one of Columbus' ships, the Santa Maria; astronomer and mathematician, Paolo Toscanelli, who plotted the course to the "New World;" the explorer, Amerigo Vespucci; and the seal of the City of Genoa. In the four corners of the pedestal are busts allegorically representing, Faith, Courage, Freedom, and Strength. Despite appearances, Brioschi's son has denied that the figure holding a fasces representing Strength was a portrait of Benito Mussolini.[3]
The statue was vandalized on July 17, 2020 in the ongoing George Floyd protests.[4]
The surge has come home.
Using language borrowed from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, President Trump on Wednesday unveiled an open-ended deployment of Justice Department, FBI, and Homeland Security officers to Chicago—a place whites have often described in euphemistic and racist terms—and, to a lesser extent, Albuquerque.
Trump, joined by Attorney General Bill Barr, Acting Secretary of Homeland Security Chad Wolf and FBI Director Chris Wray, previewed a much-heralded “surge of federal law enforcement into communities plagued by violent crime.”
The way Trump and his officials described the coming operation built on the “American carnage” theme of Trump’s inaugural address, even as Barr recognized a current spike in violent crime is nowhere near the highs seen in the early 1990s. Sounding as if they were describing an urban counterinsurgency in America, they said federal law enforcement would aid local police—whom they repeatedly hailed as “heroes”—in taking back American streets from enemies as varied as violent criminals and what Trump called “the lawlessness pushed by the radical left.”
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