Hal Brown's Substack (fomerly Hal Brown's Blog)

October 29, 2025

Border Patrol chief Greg Bovino is Trump's Heinrich Himmler only without the SS skull on his hat. Considering Trump's obsession with optics he's done quite well. Hitler in contrast didn't give a hoot about how his henchmen looked.

The article is about U.S. District Court Judge Sara Ellis saying that federal agents must issue two warnings if they determine that crowds pose a risk. It notes that on Friday, “she ordered Border Patrol chief Greg Bovino to personally appear in court this week after he appeared to violate that order, which barred agents from deploying teargas and other weapons against journalists, protesters, and anyone not posing a threat.”

I highlighted three words in the caption to the photo they used: “a police officer” because the man shown with the pepper ball gun is obviously not a police officer. Police officers do not dress like this and wear masks under normal circumstances. It is one of Trump’s enforcment thugs from who knows what agency. All we really know about him is that he likely works out a lot to have massive shoulders and biceps. This, to people like Pete Hegseth, qualifies one to be a soldier. Perhaps Bovino thinks along these lines as well:

Here’s more about him from TPM:

Excerpt:

Bovino himself has a flair for performance. He calls his sector of the U.S.-Mexico border the “premier sector” in flashy, internet-friendly videos. In one, he threatens undocumented border-crossers with an “all-expenses paid trip to Guantanamo Bay.” On X (even his handle is written to tout his rank: @CMDROpAtLargeCA) he cultivates support among right-wing influencers while lashing out at Democratic politicians and sparring with random users who criticize him as an authoritarian; those interlocutors have ranged from actor Henry Winkler to an account with five followers.
Bovino combines Bull Connor’s aggression with Don King’s showmanship: a man willing to oversee violent, aggressive operations like Chicago’s “Midway Blitz” but, just as critically, to promote the fight to as many people as possible.
What’s made Bovino’s tactics so shocking to local officials and observers across the country is not just the way they merge military-style operations with immigration enforcement, but the way in which the spectacle itself is intensely calibrated. It often involves sending CBP and ICE employees to perform work for which they are not trained: the CBP does not prepare its employees for urban policing or crowd control, Kerlikowske said. It’s a different mission from what many officers joined to do, he added.
He’s also been open about something that most law enforcement officials would strenuously deny: he applies racial appearance in law enforcement decisions. He told WBEZ, a Chicago radio station, that people are detained based on “how they look.”

Adolph didn’t give a hoot about how his henchmen looked or how hunky they were the way Trump does. If he did he wouldn’t have had Himmler as the head of the SS:

For that matter, this picture doesn’t look like it was taken in front of a Nazi version of Gold’s Gym:

Leaders conference of the NSDAP in Bad Elster. From left to right in the front row, Heinrich Himmler, Wilhelm Frick, Adolf Hitler, Franz von Epp, Hermann Göring, in the second row, Martin Mutschmann, Joseph Goebbels, Julius Schaub, in the third row, Karl Fritsch. Not pictured is Adolph Eichmann:

Here’s another group photo which includes Heinrich Müller (head of the Gestapo) along with other high Nazi leaders:

None of Hitler’s cadre of ruthless psychopaths had to appear on Fox News or other media to audition for their role in the Reich. I have to begrudingly give Trump credit nonetheless for putting together a Hitlerian assembly who are managing to help him institute a police state in far less time than it took the Führer.

See yesterday's Substack

October 28, 2025

Half the nation is okay, blasé, or in favor of a police state, but what could eventually liberate us from totalitarianism? Could it be a military "hell no we won't go?"by Hal M. Brown

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If you watched Rachel Maddow last night (watch it here) you saw her opening segment about how Trump has a new tool to implement a supercharged Nazi-like police state that even George Orwell hadn’t imagined for Big Brother. She described what the spyware that the government has purchased, which is called Paragon, can do. This is from Wikipedia:

It’s worth going to Wiki again for a detailed explanation of a police state:

A police state is a state whose government institutions exercise an extreme level of control over civil society and liberties. There is typically little to no distinction between the law and the exercise of political power by the executive, and the deployment of internal security and police forces play a heightened role in governance. A police state is a characteristic of authoritarian, totalitarian or illiberal regimes (contrary to a liberal democratic regime). Such governments are not exclusive to simply one-party states or dominant-party states, as they can also arise in a democracy or multi-party system.
Originally, a police state was a state regulated by a civil administration, but since the beginning of the 20th century it has “taken on an emotional and derogatory meaning” by describing an undesirable state of living characterized by the overbearing presence of civil authorities.The inhabitants of a police state may experience restrictions on their mobility, or on their freedom to express or communicate political or other views, which are subject to police monitoring or enforcement. Political control may be exerted by means of a secret police force that operates outside the boundaries normally imposed by a constitutional state.Robert von Mohl, who first introduced the rule of law to German jurisprudence, contrasted the Rechtsstaat (”legal” or “constitutional” state) with the anti-aristocratic Polizeistaat(”police state”).

We also have stories like this:

Unfortunately the word “police” (which you see in the photo above) for the ordinary citizen doesn’t instill the fear it should unless they are hard core felons, or even minor lawbreakers who blow through a red light or speed and their heart races when they see the blue lights strobbing on top of the car behind them.

Trump’s armed thugs do a disservice to real police by having the word on their clothing. Real police are supposed to protect, serve, and to protect people from criminals.

Even the term “secret police” doesn’t lead to terror for those who root for the James Bond types in spy stories.

This is the kind of secret police that Trump wants for the country:

He also wants to expand what he already has on the streets terrorizing people with all the armed thugs that comprise his anti-immigrant army. It used to be called ICE, but doesn’t currently have a name. It is the force that combines armed agents from Border Patrol, the FBI, ATF, Homeland Security, and even the IRS. They aren’t at all “secret” like the often dapperly dressed 007, but they don’t have uniforms like the Nazi SS.

Trump’s SS wears a hodgepodge of outfits, often with jeans or kakki pants, and some kind of weapon festooned bulletproof vest on top. The frequently wear a mask which not only hides their identities but makes them look more intimidating, as if that’s needed what with all the weapons they carry and their reputation for brutality.

These storm troopers are anything but secret. They come in with a bang, sometimes literally with the explosions of tear gas canisters, and they do their dirty work sometimes shooting people with non-lethal weapons or beating them, and then dragging some of them off to be at the mercy of another group of psychopaths who think they are doing God’s work.

They are not. Only about 50% are feeling various levels of concern, from terror to being blasé.

Some, like me, see our democracy, and myself, about to drown caught in a whirlpool from which there’s no rescue, no life preserver that can be thrown to save us.

Others hold out hope coming from the courts or the Democrats winning control of Congress in the next election. I think Trumpism can be slowed down but I don’t see how it can be stopped through the normal democratic proccess.

I have a fleeting sense of hope that there will be a proverbial red line which Trump will cross, probably a confluence of circumtances, which will lead to a decidedly undemocratic resolution. This could eventually restore democracy. It would involve the military saying a very hard “hell no we won’t go” when ordered to turn against American citizens.

If this happens the numbers would have to be exponentially greater than the two soldiers described in this story:

I asked in my title what could liberate us from totalitarianism. It took a concerted effort by the Allies to save the world from the Axis powers. This culminated with D-Day and ended with Hiroshima and Nagasaki. We don’t have that kind of time. I desperately hope that our liberation is non-violent. Perhaps it could be achieved with the “hell no, we won’t go” I used AI to illustrate in this Substack.

I just looked at Sabrina Haake’s Facebook page where she wrote about Democracy.IO:

This is an incredible free resource. It makes it easy to contact your senators and representatives, all you do is enter your address and it populates the email addresses to Congress assigned to your location. A screen pops up, you write your message and it sends it to your elected representatives.
it came from someone urging dems to thank their representatives for fighting back on the budget, and for holding their ground to pressure the republicans not to throw 12 million people off their health insurance plan.

She included this link:

My reply, alas, may look overly pessimsitc to some though obviously I think it is realistic. This is what I wrote:

I am afraid that this is a feel-good excercise. Our Democratic Party members of Congress aready know how we feel. If we have Republican members they don’t care. I might say I hate to throw cold water on optimism, but that would be a lie. I am quite deliberate in doing this. I regret doing it. I feel like I am still a psychotherapist working with clients clinging to wishful thinking or false hopes and trying to figure out how to get through to them in ways that will help them cope with inevitable bad outcomes. My Substack today was prompted by Rachel’s show last night. It was about the government use of spyware. I see this as just one way they are well on their way to establishing a police state. I do see hope for a rescue, but it would be drastic and I am no way sure it will happen.

I refuse to be like this, hiding my head ad my feelings in a happy smile Amazon envelop…