The Situation: Standing Around in Washington, D.C.

The Situation on Tuesday made fun of the president’s deployment of the National Guard and takeover of federal law enforcement in Washington, D.C. 

Today, I went for a walk to find the National Guard.

I found some of them standing around outside of Union Station:

I found some of them standing around on the National Mall:

I found some of them standing around protecting the portable toilets:

I found some others hanging out with the denizens of Dupont Circle:

Others were standing around waving at me in a friendly fashion in the DuPont Circle Metro station:

Still others were standing around at Metro Center:

I can’t say I found them threatening, though I am admittedly not an undocumented immigrant living in fear of ICE. While a few were armed, they weren’t arresting anyone or pursuing anyone or, actually, doing much of anything. They were all, well, just standing around. 

I am not the only one who has captured photographs of this deployment of National Guard being really boring.

A friend, jogging on the Mall today, noticed this gaggle of them at the World War II Memorial. Notice all the crimes they are not stopping:

Here’s a pair, photographed at Union Station, busily ascertaining the time of day: 

The common theme here is that this deployment isn’t really about doing anything. It’s not going to do anything about D.C.’s crime problem, though I’m sure the president will make up whatever numbers he needs to to claim otherwise. And while I’m sure it is creating fear among Washingtonians who have reason to worry about immigration detention and deportation, I don’t think it’s really about that either. It adds relatively little to the ICE raids in the way of menace, after all; the ICE agents are actually doing stuff. They are not just standing around looking bored or friendly or just out of place. And they are not doing landscaping duties or picking up trash.

So what is this really about?

The answer, I think, is nothing more or less than chess thumbing machismo. It’s a dog and fire hydrant thing. Putting troops on the streets, even bored troops who aren’t doing anything except helping people navigate public maps, is a form of dominance:

It’s a way of showing who owns whom.

And doing it over nothing, for no reason other than that the president can do it, shows who’s boss in a way that doing it for a reason never could. Were there some natural disaster or civil disturbance, calling in the National Guard would be unremarkable—only what one might expect the president to do. Doing it for no reason, by contrast—making a bunch of people stand around looking dumb—now that’s power.

It’s power over the military, and it’s power as well over the District of Columbia. Because if you can humiliate the National Guard by making a couple thousand guardsmen stand around to assert power over the nation’s capital amidst the simmering anger of the overwhelming majority of the capital’s residents, what else can you get the guard to do if need be?