Chad Wolf protesteth too much

Acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf took offense at characterizations of the abusive federal officers in Portland, Oregon as "stormtroopers" and "Gestapo".

Wolf also defended the re-assignment of immigration officers and pushed back on accusations the officers were acting without proper oversight.

“These officers are not stormtroopers,” Wolf said. “They’re not the Gestapo, as some have described them. That description is offensive and hyperbolic, and it’s dishonest."

Most police officers in the United States work in uniform, not camouflage; the uniforms identify their departments. They operate in marked vehicles. Officers in plain clothes and unmarked vehicles display their badges and identifications when they have to take official action. They don't accost civilians without identifying themselves as police officers, and if they restrict a civilian's movements it's because they've placed that person under arrest.

The anonymous armed men lacking name tags or large, visible insignia on their camouflage-style uniforms, who assaulted peaceful protesters and heightened tensions with the local populace, who took peaceful protesters into their dubious custody and whisked them away in unmarked vehicles for interrogation without placing them under arrest — they don't operate like any reputable police force in this country. To the contrary, they sure as hell are reminiscent of the brutal thugs who worked for Hitler as far as I'm concerned.

How is the ordinary person supposed to know these unidentified men with no obvious affiliation with any recognized law enforcement agency aren't some extralegal, self-proclaimed "militia" that has decided to take "law and order" into their own hands? White supremacist groups have done that before. Come to think of it, that's how Hitler's Brownshirts started.

(Incidentally, federal police dressed in camouflage so outraged retired Army Lt. General Russel Honoré that he exploded on live TV: "What kind of bullshit is this?!" He demanded the Trump administration stop letting these federal police wear camouflage, forcefully noting that camouflage clothing has a specific purpose that is completely unrelated to the supposed mission in Portland. His obvious subtext was that police personnel have no business playing at being soldiers, and he's right.)

It would surprise me if Wolf knew what "Gestapo" actually meant. It's a German abbreviation for what translates in English to "Secret State Police". That, too, sounds like the amped-up, militarized thugs we've all seen in action in Portland.

So Chad, if you're offended by others calling your pets "stormtroopers" and "Gestapo", good. The rest of us are more than offended by your deployment of goons in camouflage where the local authorities are united in not wanting them, and where every indication is that those goons are worsening tensions.

Of course, fomenting a crisis — creating a shiny, made-for-Fox-News flashpoint of civilian-Gestapo strife — is probably exactly the order you got from your boss, the domestic Dear Leader. He badly needs a distraction from the more than 140,000 dead from CoViD-19 on his incompetent watch.

So I strongly doubt your outrage is genuine.

But ours is. And we will not forget your despicable aiding and abetting of this lawless "president", your ready acquiescence to his worst autocratic instincts. I, for one, am wondering if your actions warrant criminal investigation for abuse of power.

A little word of advice, then, Chad: better keep reminding the boss you've risked criminal charges for him and are counting on being included in his long list of pardons whenever he heads out the door.

Just understand that, pardon or no, you will go down in the history books as an authoritarian enabler, as egregious a lawbreaker and kingly sycophant as Bill Barr. No pardon will rehabilitate your terrible reputation.