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Camouflage uniforms are somewhat incongruous in the lush gardens of the Texas State Capitol.
Fully armed and heavily armed law enforcement officers lounging on park benches and strolling in the warm winter sun among the monuments to military heroes of the past.
There were no angry protesters to confront. Not yet, anyway.
But the increased security presence on Capitol Hill in Austin reflects a national nervous mood with protests threatened here and in similar legislative buildings across the country ahead of the inauguration.
A small gathering of armed protesters had turned up at the Texas Capitol Tuesday and peacefully made their point. Security was increased the next day.
But the military imagery on a building that should be a symbol of civil democracy is an alarming statement of the feverish atmosphere in America.
In that context, one of the state’s top Republicans is in no mood to lower the tension. “Without question, we are now in what I call an ideological civil war,” Allen West said.
As a lieutenant colonel in the US Army, West served in Iraq before becoming a congressman and fire expert on Fox News Channel. He is now chairman of the Republican Party of Texas.
The impeachment processNot protests pose the greatest threat to the United States, he says.
“It is a very divisive thing and I think it is a very vindictive thing. It is not going to help heal this country. What it looks like is taking punitive action against a person because you hate them.”
Allen West says impeachment poses biggest threat to America
It’s an opinion shared by Trump supporters taking a tour of the historic site of the Alamo site, seventy miles from Austin in San Antonio. The 13-day battle between Texas independence fighters and Mexican forces in 1836 has become synonymous with defiance.
Trump fans say impeachment will simply reinvigorate the faithful.
“I hope it doesn’t get violent,” Father Schyler Edwards said, “but the way they keep pushing things that don’t make sense, it seems like they’re doing it just to annoy Americans, just to dig the knife deeper and twist it. “.
Back at the state Capitol in Austin, the only protester at the gates was not a fan of the outgoing president.
He paced up and down with an effigy of a child Trump on his shoulder. On the doll’s orange shirt, only one word: “Jail”
