The Stagger Litany, 17th Day of Summer, 525 M.E. (Atlas): Sometimes, as a sort of thought experiment, I wonder how the late Howard Zinn (1922-2010), my old poly-sci professor at BU, would have viewed the current shenanigans of the Trump administration.

His People's History of the United States, if written now (or at some future date) would certainly have focused on the anti-ICE protests across the U.S. and the government's current response to the protests in L.A. Heather Cox Richardson, in many ways Zinn's heir in documenting the resistance, notes that ICE agents encountered a few hundred protesters after Trump instituted aggressive immigration sweeps in L.A. ICE responded to the protests with violence and of course, that violence only resulted in more protests. Still, the protests were mostly peaceful and local officials maintained they could handle the situation, but Trump insisted that L.A. was staggering under widespread violent unrest. Then, over the protests of both L.A. mayor Karen Bass and California governor Gavin Newsom, Trump federalized 4,000 members of California’s National Guard and ordered 700 Marines to Los Angeles. He also threatened to arrest anyone who does not cooperate with ICE, including Bass and Newsom. 

Trump has described Los Angeles as “invaded and occupied by illegal aliens and criminals,” and said “violent insurrectionist mobs are swarming and attacking our Federal Agents to try and stop our deportation operations.” Yesterday, in a speech at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, Trump claimed the U.S. was under a “foreign invasion,” aided by “stupid people or radical Left people or sick people.” Kristi Noem called L.A. a “city of criminals.”  The news outlets have shown a driverless Waymo car that was set on fire on a near-continuous loop, creating the impression that L.A. today is similar to cities like Ferguson, Missouri or Minneapolis during 2020's George Floyd riots. Even liberal comedian Jon Stewart asked in his Daily Show monologue if there was ever a time when L.A. wasn't on fire, creating an unfortunate and inaccurate comparison between last year's wildfires and today. 

The narrative that L.A. is under siege, Cox notes, is incorrect. Economist Paul Krugman notes that “Los Angeles right now is probably as safe as it has ever been.” The protests have remained small, and protesters have been filmed dancing in the streets to live music. Yesterday, a small group of protesters surrounded by overwhelming ICE forces peacefully submitted to arrest, approaching the police walking backwards with hands crossed behind their backs to be handcuffed or zip-tied. So where are the supposed violent insurrectionist mobs?

Nevertheless, ICE agents have been using non-lethal flash-bang stun grenades and tear gas on the crowds, and have shot rubber bullets at individuals, including an Australian journalist who was speaking live on camera when she was shot from behind. Activist David Huerta was charged with conspiring to impede an officer, yet the official complaint states that he merely walked and sat on a public sidewalk before an officer pushed him to the ground and arrested him. 

Zinn would have seen these protests as a continuation of the long American resistance to fascism, drawing a direct line from the anti-ICE protests of 2025 back to the American Revolution against the King of England. 

He probably also would have associated Trump and the current crop of tech plutocrats to the robber barons (Mellon, Carnegie, Roosevelt) of the 19th Century and the Gilded Age, when high tariffs were imposed by the government to protect the business interests of those robber barons. 

Personally, Trump's shameless desire to institute a new American royalty reminds me of Francis Higgins, one of Ireland’s most prolific grifters. Though he was semiliterate and born into poverty, Higgins used his skills as a forger to weasel his way into 18th Century Dublin high society by forging papers claiming he owned an estate in County Down. The paperwork was so convincing that he persuaded a family of good reputation to allow him to marry their daughter. After it was discovered after the wedding that Higgins in fact owned no estate whatsoever and was in fact penniless, he served a few weeks in jail. 

Following his release from prison, Higgins again took up various fraudulent schemes to make money, another attribute he shares with the relentlessly grifting Trump. Although the sentencing judge dubbed Higgins the “Sham Squire,” a nickname that plagued him the rest of his life (And here comes the sham squire himself! professor MacHugh said grandly), he knew that commanding the press would influence public opinion and restore his influence in Dublin’s high society. He then became the editor of the Freeman’s Journal, and although the paper was staunchly opposed to British rule in Ireland prior to Higgins, he slanted the paper’s coverage to the favor of the pro-British establishment. Although this move was arguably more Murdoch than Trump, Higgins also made a lucrative practice of sharing secrets with the pro-British government in Dublin Castle, similar to Trump's betrayal of our NATO allies and Ukraine to curry the favor of Putin.

 History, a nightmare from which we're trying to awake.