Trump's threat to send federal law enforcement, "Trump's Troops" as Oregon's governor Kate Brown aptly described them, can best be seen as an electoral ploy. They are certainly not helping the situation, indeed their presence is inflammatory. Unfortunately, that's exactly the point. Trump wants to provoke scenes of violence between his troops and protesters to have footage and an emotive issue for the upcoming election. He's already running the campaign ads, and Fox screens little else.
Having military forces act at the behest of a country's leader is generally associated with authoritarian despots; Rodrigo Duterte, Kim Jong Un, Vladimir Putin, Recep Tayyip Erdogan are all leaders Trump seems to regards as role models, people whose unchecked power he appears to envy.
Of course that's not the only similarity in behavior between Trump and your typical dictator. Undermining confidence in the press, intervening in the administration of justice, surrounding himself with trusted fools rather than independent-thinking experts, fawning over the military, and pushing a xenophobic nationalist agenda are also characteristic behaviors. And before we boject that we are a democracy, not a dictatorship, it's worth remembering that not all despots are un-elected.
America isn't quite the Philippines, yet, but what the last three and a half yours have shown is just how easy it is for a president to trample the norms that were once the hallmark of a well reasonably well ordered society and come surprisingly close.
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