That Knock in the Night

On the public record Roger Stone is a colorful and even somewhat flamboyant person who has spent his adult life as a lobbyist and political operator.  One gets the impression that he is at least a little shady, though it is hard to tell how much of that is due to prejudiced and slanted reporting, since he has worked mainly with Republicans and against Democrats.  I have no idea if he is guilty of real crimes,  insignificant technical violations amplified by Mueller’s  team of Democrats for political reasons,  or nothing at all.  I do know that he is a sixty  six years old public figure, has a permanent address that is not a bunker or fortified compound, and shows no evidence of being either Bonnie or Clyde, let alone John Dillinger.

Yet when the Mueller gang decided it arrest him, they did not have a couple of people knock on his door at a reasonable hour and serve him with a warrant or arrest him while he was out in public.   Instead an armed squadron of enforcers in tactical gear stormed his house around dawn one morning and carted him off in chains while a crew from CNN filmed the whole thing. It is hard to think of a purpose in that except intimidation – intimidation of Stone, of Trump’s other associates, of people who may support Trump, of anyone who might think of crossing  the establishment or “deep state” in Washington.

One should be careful about likening  things happening here  to the tactics of the Gestapo or the KGB, but sometimes and to some degree, the shoe fits. This is one of those times. That should worry and infuriate Americans of liberal sentiments, regardless of their politics or what they think of Trump, Stone, or anyone in the present administration. That knock on the door in the middle of the night  and a cowered populace’s terror of it are things  out of the dark days of Europe in the 20^th Century.  We don’t want a return to the practice or a reappearance of the fear here.  Americans need to make  their refusal to  allow it plain to those in the government who want to try it.