In the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode “Shakaar” (season 3, episode 24; first aired May 22, 1995), a new political leader clashes with a political rival over the return of some farming equipment. The rival and his fellow farmers are using the equipment; the leader thinks it would be better used somewhere else. The leader, Kai Winn, asks Major Kira to talk with her friends—Shakaar and the farmers—to return the equipment, thinking that Kira’s prior relationship with them will turn the tide. Kira is unsuccessful, so Winn calls out the militia to take the equipment back by force, deeming Shakaar’s continued reticence a threat to the stability of the government, and a test of her set by the gods. She eventually calls on Commander Sisko to bring Federation forces to support her efforts. Sisko tells her this is an over-reaction, noting that she has done everything to escalate the situation far beyond reason, rather than acting as a leader to calm things down. Eventually, our heroes are able to bring a political counter-punch, and Winn backs down to end the episode.

The whole story is ringing in my ears today as I’m watching the outrageous escalation in Los Angeles, brought about through President Trump’s nationalizing and sending in the National Guard to deal with protests against policies that he himself set. Once again, we’re looking at an outrageous over-reaction apparently designed solely to solidify the over-reactor’s political position. California’s Governor Newsom and Los Angeles’s Mayor Bass have both said there is no need for federal troops to calm the protests, and that they will only inflame the situation. But Trump seems to see it as either a test set by his god, or an opportunity (akin to his forthcoming military parade) to show he is the power, he is the strength, he is the ruler. Once again, he is showing us he has no interest in being the president of a democratic republic, that he would much rather be the strongman in a dictatorship that benefits only himself and his friends.

The situation in Los Angeles is indeed a test. It may be the first volley in a test not unlike the one Abraham Lincoln described in his Gettysburg Address, when he spoke of a nation conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. “Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure.” We are engaged in the struggle to guarantee that “government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

[Edited a day later to add:]

A friend pointed out to me that I might not have been clear in the above. I wasn’t saying the entire situation started with the call for troops, that that was the only escalation. It was merely the tipping point that prompted me to write.

But the Kai Winn “escalating the situation out of all legitimate proportions,” in the current situation is Donald Trump’s unceasing cries that undocumented farm workers, manual laborers, anyone who speaks Spanish and has slightly more melanin than he is a threat to the United States and our way of life. The crisis he has manufactured began with the terror he tried to instill in us: terror at the presence of the very people he frequently employed in his various real estate businesses. The violation of Posse Comitatus is only the latest step in his long con to make Americans so afraid of anyone other than Trump and his cronies that we allow them to rob us of our fortunes and freedom.

For today’s chilling extension, see Secretary Noem’s comments and actions in this article.