The view of America Donald Trump wants to portray is one where the cities are rife with violence and crime, unsafe for people to walk along the streets, and where no property is safe.

In multiple interviews, he spotlighted violence in cities like Portland, Chicago, Baltimore… and even Philadelphia and New York.  He’s threatening to send federal agents to all of these cities… and more! … apparently unaware that the federal agents he sent to Portland are stoking violence.

In his campaign commercials, Trump touts cities “run by liberal Democrats” that are out of control, although this claimed chaos is happening under his presidency.  He claims it’s the view Biden and Democrats want for all America.

In another commercial, an elderly woman calls 9-1-1 after a break in, only to be told that the police will return her call within a number of day, because Joe Biden wants to stop all law enforcement.

And on Fox “News” primetime shows, video from protests that happened weeks ago is interspersed with violence incited by federal agents deployed to Portland, giving the impression that it’s contemporaneous actions.

This is the view of America Trump believes will propel him to reelection.

As a story in The New York Times points out, this dystopian view of the United States is the intended image Trump wants to paint for voters, regardless of the accuracy of the picture.

Trump is spending $20 million in running these ads in the coming weeks to make people afraid.  It’s an effort to paint Trump–a president who was impeached and who had numerous aides and campaign workers sentenced to prison terms–as a “law and order” president bent on upholding the laws of the land, violence against citizens by unbadged police be damned.

Yes, you read that right:  Trump thinks he abides by law and order.  Trump thinks he alone can stomp out dissent and protests against police violence… by utilizing police violence.

The problem for Trump, however, is that the reality doesn’t match the rhetoric.  The images coming out of Lafayette Square in Washington, DC or BLM protests in Portland portray Trump’s camouflaged federal agents–without badges, without department patches, and without personal identifiers–as assaulting a Navy veteran and kidnapping a young man walking peacefully down the street.

While Trump wants to gripe and whine about the problems–which he claims can only be solved by force–his campaign has yet to release a single policy to address the underlying problems:  racial inequities, an unfair justice system, food insecurity, housing insecurity, education inequities, pollution, lack of health insurance, and of course, the pandemic.

Fear is a powerful motivator, undoubtedly.  But Trump is making the American people fear the anonymous federal agents he is threatening to deploy around the country.  They are shown assaulting and kidnapping citizens.  The damage done by their “less than lethal” weapons is being photographed and passed around Twitter and Instagram.

That will motivate voters… to vote against Trump, because we don’t live in a dystopian America.