Under Abraham Lincoln, the armies of the Confederacy, despite strenuous efforts, never managed to take Washington, D.C. Donald Trump, by contrast, has invited in the neo-Confederates twice: once on January 6th, 2021, when a racist rabble carrying Confederate flags seized the Capitol, and now, over the past week, when National Guards chiefly from the Deep South are arriving to occupy D.C.

As the governors of South Carolina, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Tennessee have now all proclaimed, crime is out of control in the nation’s capital—so sayeth Trump and hence it must be true—so they’re sending in their states’ troopers.

The irony here is that crime rates in the cities of their own states are markedly higher than they are in D.C. The murder rate in Washington, D.C., last year was 17 for every 100,000 residents.

The actual numbers, to state this gently, aren’t reflected in these governors’ pronunciamentos.

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