Dr. Know Has a Modest Proposal for How to Greet the Troops

So now Donald Trump is trying to send the military into Portland to break up protests. How is this even legal? —Appalled

By any rational reading of U.S. Code Title 10, Section 12406 and the Posse Comitatus Act, it’s not. Indeed, a federal district court found just that in June when California Gov. Gavin Newsom sued Trump for a similar stunt in Los Angeles. Unfortunately, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals has stayed that ruling while it pontificates about the case, a process that makes the FDA’s approval of the COVID vaccine seem speedy. (Decisions typically take six months to a year, so expect a verdict sometime between Christmas and the Fourth of July.)

But all this has been ably reported elsewhere—including on page 6 of this very newspaper! The real question is how Portland will respond. It seems obvious that Trump is hoping to goad protesters into violence he can use to justify further incursions. Indeed, this view is so widely held that a news event with local leaders last Friday was dubbed “the ‘don’t take the bait’ press conference” by attendee Sen. Jeff Merkley.

Will this message reach the usual suspects? Maybe! WW recently received a press release from something calling itself “Squid Pro Quo” urging protesters to thank the troops for their service “in the great molluscoid navy of peace” and to respond to the occupation with “donuts...notes of gratitude [and] art,” which is the right idea. I don’t know whether there’s a lot of overlap between devotees of goofy street art and the protest community, but it certainly seems possible.

Or maybe we can go one better, while also reviving a beloved tradition from Portland’s past. My younger readers (both of them) may not remember Rose Festival Fleet Week’s “Host-A-Sailor” program,* but from 1976 to 2005 Portland families could temporarily adopt a sailor or two for a home-cooked meal, a Beavers game, a tent revival or whatever else they were into. Why not do that again?

Imagine how disappointed Trump will be to find the belligerents he hoped would be at each others’ throats playing cornhole and eating barbecue together like a modern version of the 1914 Christmas Truce. And in the meantime, let’s never forget that this whole enterprise was conceived by the White House solely to run out the clock on the Epstein mystery. (Too bad for them enigmas never age.)

*Originally “Dial-A-Sailor,” the name was changed in 1989 to avoid salacious misunderstandings.

Questions? Send them to dr.know@wweek.com.