There was never a need for President Trump to send in the national guard to Los Angeles. It was a want. A choice.
All the evidence suggests that the essentially small-scale and non-violent resistance to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials was well within the capacity of the local police, as well as the ICE officers themselves, to deal with.
Much the same goes for the peaceful protests by residents in the area who objected to what they saw as the extra-legal – as well as immoral and inhumane – actions and tactics by sometimes masked ICE officers.
It has to be said that the chief of ICE, Tom Homan – not a man readily familiar with the doctrine of “policing by consent” – was specifically chosen by Donald Trump for the job because of his casual disdain for the law and constitutional niceties. It should be no great surprise that those working for him took their hardline cue from Mr Homan and, indeed, the president himself.
What was happening, it seemed to many protesters, was a process of arbitrary deportation without due legal process – a violation of the ancient right of habeas corpus – as well as the enactment of a cruel policy that was tearing communities apart.
In a recent interview, the president virtually admitted that the legal necessity for due process was being ignored because there would have to be “millions” of cases. But that, as they say in chambers, is not a legal argument, and it merely highlights the impracticability of the approach.
It is one driven entirely by the president’s extreme authoritarian instincts, and by political motives. Division, crisis and violence are things the president thrives on rather than fears.
In that respect, as in so many others, he is a very unusual and highly dangerous person to be in the office he holds.
No one who knows Mr Trump has ever claimed that he spends much time planning things – he is someone who runs on instinct. As the governor of California, Gavin Newsom, points out, he ordered 2,000 armed national guard troops into Los Angeles County not to meet an unmet need, but to manufacture a crisis where there was none.
Disobedience and protest were all it amounted to – but Mr Trump cannot bear to be defied, whether that be by a Democrat in Congress, a rival on the real estate scene, an independent-minded civil servant, or the leader of any foreign country he doesn’t care for.
He’s vengeful with it, too, as his “investigations” into Joe Biden demonstrate. He prefers humiliation to dialogue – which is why an invite to the Oval Office leaves his counterparts in fear of being treated like Volodymyr Zelensky, Mark Carney and Cyril Ramaphosa have been.
Trump doesn’t think or plan, but has an instinct for a path of action that furthers his own interest. That is why he ramps everything up. Sad to say, his base did indeed “vote for this”, and enjoy seeing their perceived enemies – fellow Americans, in fact – hit by rubber bullets, tear gas and generally intimidated by the bully-in-chief of the United States.
In fact, we can see how this script might progress in the coming days. In the chaos and confusion, a protester may be killed. The seeds will be sown.
Trump will refuse to condemn the action, in a sort of replay of Charlottesville, and blame the radical left and illegal migrants.
As in Los Angeles in the past, it will be the city that reaps the whirlwind. It will go up in flames, Trump will send more troops in, eventually it will calm, but huge damage to lives, property and the fabric of society will be left behind.
Red states vs blue states. Race vs race. Maga vs the rest. The Democrats will be portrayed as being on the side of rioters and looters, and long-term migrants grotesquely demonised afresh as violent criminals. And Trump will be well satisfied.
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