Garden work shortly after sunrise (to beat the heat), and other projects, but still unable to focus on much beyond the state of the nation.

It’s not just the U.S. military occupying the streets of Washington, D.C., but also a number of heavily armed and equipped “officers” with no visible identification. According to the Washington Post all insignia and nameplates are absent or have been removed, with members of this force unwilling to identify their branch of service or chain of command.

What we have here is an incognito, unaccountable black-ops force “dominating” the streets of D.C. —controlling and threatening legitimate protesters.

Insistent investigation by a number of news organizations eventually identified this stealth force as coming from the Justice Department’s Bureau of Prisons, under the direction of William Barr.

This is absolutely terrifying—possibly the American equivalent of the Nazi SS or the Soviet KGB—in our nation’s capital.

Clearly, the Trump administration has strong totalitarian tendencies. I don’t think it far fetched to imagine that another four-year Trump/Barr term could see unidentified black-ops forces breaking into American homes and “disappearing” dissidents.

This line of reasoning brings me to a very strange place—something of an alignment with organizations like the Posse Comitatus, Sovereign Citizen movement, and other ultra right-wing militias that fear the federal government.

But of course, that’s absolutely wrong. The most likely scenario in a totalitarian takeover is that these paramilitary organizations become enlisted in the effort; after all, they share the same fundamentalist, anti-democratic, authoritarian, white supremacist motivations. Just like the SS.

No, the best way for me to deal with my fear of a police state is to work to make sure that Trump (and his gang of thugs) is removed from office.