Copyright Anchorage Daily News
Forty years ago, during our honeymoon in Europe, my husband and I became lost on a remote mountain road while looking for the village where we planned to spend the night. For miles there had been no landmarks or signs to guide us, and we were beginning to feel desperate when a group of soldiers in camouflage emerged from the woods. Startled and wary, we rolled down the window and explained our predicament. Once it was clear that we were hapless tourists, one young soldier stepped forward to give us directions. As he motioned dramatically with his arms to point the way ahead, the barrel of his machine gun tapped at our window, aiming into the car, directly at my husband and me. Our adrenaline raged, but we smiled back calmly, trying to concentrate on the directions while not at all certain that we would live to follow them. We made it to the village that night, but our fear and trembling lasted for days. Knowing at a gut level what it feels like to be an unarmed civilian surrounded by heavily armed soldiers, it’s no surprise to me that President Trump wants to send the U.S. military into the cities and states of his loudest political opponents. For a lifelong bully, such a show of force offers an irresistible way to instill fear and trembling among his enemies. What’s surprising — and outrageous — is that Alaska’s Sen. Dan Sullivan has endorsed the president’s mission. As a former U.S. Marine, he knows the constitutional limits of using the U.S. military against U.S. civilians. Even more importantly, during national Domestic Violence Awareness Month, he’s surely aware that the president’s use of the military to threaten and intimidate innocent people into submitting to his power and control is the textbook behavior of a domestic violence perpetrator. Through his longtime “Choose Respect” campaign, the senator has spoken up against domestic abuse in intimate settings. It’s time he speaks up against the domestic abuse being leveled by the president against the American people. Sen. Sullivan ostensibly supports the president’s domestic troop deployments because he agrees with the president’s claim that they will help fight crime. “It’s just horrendous,” Sullivan said in describing crime in Chicago, one of the targeted cities. “Most Americans would want whatever we can do to bring down crime rates.” But does anyone really believe that? If public safety was the true reason for President Trump’s military deployments, he would have chosen different targets. Ohio and Louisiana, home states of Vice President JD Vance and House Speaker Mike Johnson, respectively, have higher violent crime rates than Illinois or Oregon, two states where the president is sending troops despite local objections. So what distinguishes these crime-ridden places from those in the president’s crosshairs? Their loyal Republican politics. Their people may not be safer, but his ambitions are. Also, if fighting crime were the true reason for Sen. Sullivan’s support, he would be horrified much closer to home. Surely he knows that the state with the highest violent crime in the country, with a rate 102% higher than the national average, is Alaska. We consistently suffer among the highest rates of gun deaths and rape in the U.S. But as a solidly “red” state with compliant Republican leaders, we don’t meet the president’s definition of a “dangerous hellhole.” The president has also claimed that federal troop deployments are necessary to protect ICE personnel and facilities. If this were true, he also would have chosen different places. ICE protests happen across the country because of rising outrage over the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement policies. One of the most violent incidents occurred at an ICE facility in Texas, where three ICE detainees were shot — two fatally — and the shooter died of self-inflicted wounds. But instead of deploying the Texas National Guard in Texas, where the damage was done, the White House has used the incident to justify sending Texan troops to Chicago. Why? Because Texas is a Republican stronghold eager to do the president’s bidding, even reshaping its voting districts to better ensure his success. Unleash military forces against Texans against their will? Not likely. President Trump’s deployments of the military are not aimed at crime or protecting ICE, but at intimidating and threatening his perceived “enemies within,” which means most of us. Well over half of Americans now disapprove of his presidency. Millions have protested his efforts to dismantle our democracy. He has used the language of warfare against us, threatening “apocalyptic force” and promising to “wipe ... out” his opponents. He has called on his generals to “prepare for war” against us. He has demeaned as “radical left” or “antifa” our efforts to combat his authoritarianism, and his spokeswoman claims that we care only about “terrorists, illegal aliens, and violent criminals.” Day after day, the president repeats the broken record that we are evil. “I hate my opponents,” he has said, “and I don’t want the best for them.” He posts videos blanketing us in excrement. Domestic abuse is generally defined as the use of physical, sexual, emotional, economic, or psychological actions or threats to gain power and control over another person. Abusers may frighten, intimidate, terrorize, humiliate, or cause physical harm to those they seek to dominate. Notably, abuse doesn’t require physical injury. According to Alaska’s Department of Law, emotional abuse is “the use of words and actions that are threatening, intimidating, or scaring you” to force you to do what an abuser wants. It’s considered “just as serious as physical abuse.” Advocates for domestic violence victims have long seen the parallels between the characteristics of perpetrators and President Trump’s behavior. Both seek to destabilize and demoralize their victims so they feel helpless. Both seek to isolate their victims by dividing them from relationships with which they might find common ground. Both create false narratives to justify their actions and lie to maintain them. And both become more emboldened and dangerous, escalating their abuse if not held accountable. The president’s deployment of soldiers trained for combat against domestic opponents he’s identified as dangerous enemies meets each of these characteristics. And his campaign to selectively militarize our streets is intended to serve the same goal of domestic abusers everywhere: submission. Our efforts to defend democracy stand in the way of his dream of one-man rule. Sen. Sullivan, when will you call out the president’s dangerous pattern of abuse? When will you speak up against the lies, the invective, the increasingly crazed insults, and the threats of violence against over half the country? Will it be when soldiers begin arresting and imprisoning people solely for expressing dissent? Will it be when troops are called to violently confront peaceful protesters? Or will it be when the president has worn down the last footholds of our Constitution and declared a police state, at which point Congress will become irrelevant and it will be too late? Sen. Sullivan, what are you waiting for? “Choose Respect” for everyone, and work to end domestic abuse in all its forms. Barbara Hood is a retired attorney and businesswoman who lives in Anchorage.
