We kinda knew, prior to January 20, what would happen.

Trump put together a collection of some of the worst people who’ve ever lived in this country. And that’s saying something – if their heirs donated to Trump’s campaign, Benedict Arnold, Nathan Bedford Forrest and Al Capone would have been pardoned and/or given jobs.

This collection of pond scum set out with a plan. Go after as many stable, peaceful, prosperous, honorable and – here’s the key word – diverse elements of American life that don’t support their warped view of America. Sow chaos, pick fights with entities that have been as removed from the title “enemy” as you can imagine.

Harvard. Canada. Childhood vaccinations. Bruce Springsteen. Solar energy. Women professionals. School kids of color.

And, of course, Los Angeles.

Now, to be clear, L.A. is not even close to being my favorite city in the United States. It’s not even in the top ten. Seven-lane freeways are an abomination. The Dodgers abandoned the good people of Brooklyn. I’m actually surprised there’s something they consider a downtown.

But there are people who love L.A. Not just Randy Newman. They like the quirkiness of having lots of different cultures mesh together into a spectacle for the senses – music, art, food, clothing, language. Millions of people who work hard, struggle to put food on their families’ tables and enjoy the occasional kimchi taco.

Which is why the city is one of the hubs of resistance to what Trump’s cuckoo coterie wants. Because it is, with Miami and New York, a center of immigrant culture in the United States, it is an easy target. And why so many Angelinos are out in the streets trying to stop ICE, the American Gestapo, from its heinous raids.

Destroying the immigrant idea that built this damn country is their touchstone. MAGAts act as though their families sprouted from the heartland soil and don’t have a long boat trip or plane ride in their DNA.

What they’ve been terrified of is the fact that the United States has gotten closer to becoming a majority minority country. That some coalition of Black, Latino, Asian and indigenous people will soon make up 50.01% of the population. 

And they think that coalition, should it so choose, would wreak on strictly Caucasian people some of the despicable acts that Caucasians inflicted on them since arriving here. Slavery, mass deportation and exclusion acts can go both ways.

For now, the question is how to combat these manufactured outrages, the ones Trump and the gang conjured as he stewed after Joe Biden beat him handily in 2020.

Well, one thing might be to keep reminding him that he lost in 2020. Trump has been plotting revenge against the whole country – not just the states that didn’t support him – since then. Some 81 million of us rejected him and the 74 million who did vote for him didn’t do enough to ensure his return. Even winning last year didn’t make up for that loss, that failure to adore him. 

But rehashing 2020 is hardly a solution to the problem we face now.

As far as Los Angeles goes, continuing the protests, even in the face of the world’s strongest military, is paramount. What’s also true is that the protests can’t be violent – Trump wants nothing more than to bully protesters and show off the force he believes he controls.

Making the people behind the ICE masks pariahs – actually, that would speed up what the rest of their life is going to be like – is one course of action. In Los Angeles and other cities, shun these people. Their money is no good in your store or they need to identify themselves fully in order to use their credit cards. 

I thought about whether or not any family members of ICE agents should be targets. Normally, I would find that heinous. But these are the people who have taken children from their parents and parents from their children. They’ve raided graduations. They’ve raided the legal proceedings that immigrants are required to attend. 

It would be interesting to see how they would feel about being on the other side of their bile.

But then we would be stooping to their level. We would become the same kind of unthinking, heartless being that is defiling the streets of our cities. So leave their families alone – just pick on the ICEes.

This Saturday, June 14, Trump is orchestrating a military parade through Washington. He’ll tell you it’s to celebrate the Army’s 250th anniversary. It’s actually to celebrate his 79th birthday. 

It’s easy to say that you shouldn’t go. But I suspect somebody is going to do something to disrupt it. In any case, there are protests around the nation to counter this massive ego trip. Join, if you don’t already have plans.

My preferred course has always been to come up with a strong positive alternative to Trumpism. A plan that would actually make people’s lives better – accelerating a lot of the ways the world has improved in my lifetime. Promoting clean energy and improved transportation. Health care for all. Support for families no matter how they’re constituted.

But Trump has the money and the manipulated Congressional support to let his mass despicabilities take over the agenda. People are hurting. 

We need to throw sand into the outrage machine.