Former covert CIA operative and Savannah, GA police officer Patrick Skinner, nails the horrendous irony (his “exquisite paradox”) of what’s happening in Portland:

The exquisite paradox — of protesters demonstrating against being treated as enemy combatants by their local police departments, only to be met with federal forces doing the same thing but with better equipment and zero local accountability — is wrongheaded and unjust all around. Law enforcement knows the power of a name, the power of identity, the power of accountability. It insists on all three of those things from the public in almost every interaction. Yet during a time where identity and accountability are needed most — at the time of most tension — law enforcement says it will provide neither.