Disillusionment

It should not have been this close.

Although it took a few days to count them all, Joe Biden defeated Donald Trump once all the votes came in. A lot of people predicted that this is what would happen, so this part's not a surprise. What is a surprise is that Trump did so well.

In a sane world, this election would have been a thorough repudiation of Trump. His incompetence, his cruelty, his corruption, his racism, his stupidity. All of it. It should have been a landslide, both in the popular vote and the electoral college. Instead, Trump got several million more votes than he did in 2016, and until the early/mail-in votes started getting counted, it appeared that Trump could win. Nearly 70,000,000 voters looked at his behavior and decided another four years of that seemed good.

Additionally, a cluster of newly-elected Republican candidates are bringing their unique brand of crazy to the table. Two QAnon-spouting wingnuts were elected - Lauren Boebert in CO and Marjorie Taylor Greene in GA, plus a suspected racist/sexual predator in North Carolina. Yes, there have been racists and wingnuts in Congress before, but it's hard to dispute the claim that they wouldn't be there if Trump hadn't paved the way.

Trump has poisoned the country's political process. Not that it was perfect before, but he made it exponentially worse. He co-opted one of the two major political parties and dialed everything repugnant about it up to 1,000. He allowed the Republican Party to unapologetically embrace its worst behaviors. He weakened multiple democratic safeguards against abuse of power, which will make it harder to block the next Trump-like figure from coming along. It will take a decade or more to undo the damage that Trump has inflicted on the country. 

There's no justification for voting for him a second time, not after the last four years. 2016 can be partly excused, because everything bad about Trump was mostly theoretical. He had never held office, so voters didn't have a track record to judge him on. And the media did the country a disservice by playing up his most sensational failings while refusing to dig too deeply into the most unseemly parts of his life. We don't have that now. Trump has been an absolute failure and will go down in history as one of the worst presidents in the country's history.

Yet roughly one-fifth of the country saw that as a net positive. They were comfortable with Trump's many moral failings, so much so that they deemed him worthy to run the country for another four years. They were okay with the racism, the willful ignorance, the pettiness, the lying, the divisive rhetoric. Some explained it away, some ignored it, and some applauded it. 

 I feel like this election revealed the true character of a giant swath of the country.

And it breaks my heart.

Proportionality

"They attacked *me*!"

"They threw a cowpie at you, so you decided to kill them all! They're starving, you fool - all because of a war you started!" 

     -- Joffrey and Tyrion

 

I started with a snippet of dialog from Game of Thrones because I think it contains a lot of insight about the appropriate use of force when restoring order--questions that are especially relevant given recent real-world events.  I also used it because Tyrion slaps Joffrey about two seconds later, and who doesn't love seeing that, right?

 

I could watch this all day

But I'm getting sidetracked.  Here's the question I was getting at: when is it appropriate to use force to combat crime? To answer this question, you have to ask a bunch of other questions: What kind of crime? How much force, and gets to wield it? What do you mean by "combat" - are you using force after the crime has occurred, or is it a preventive measure? Are there other methods you could use? 

Think hard about those questions. 

Now, think about them in the context of the recent mass shooting in Kenosha, WI.  Here's a quick overview: there's been several days of civil unrest there, a teenager named Kyle Rittenhouse traveled there from Illinois with an AR he somehow (!) acquired, then he murdered several alleged looters.  That's the short summary.

We still don't know what crimes made Rittenhouse travel to Kenosha - looting, vandalism, or something else - but I suspect we'll find out shortly.  But based on what we know, Rittenhouse was responding to a property crime of some sort.  So now the question becomes, is it okay to use force in response to a property crime?

But what kind of property crime? That's a pretty broad term, covering everything from arson to vandalism.  So let's start with arson.  It's a pretty serious crime, after all.  It can cause up to several thousand dollars in damage, and possibly kill people unfortunate enough to be in whatever building the arsonist targets.  I guess an argument could be made.  On the other hand, does killing an arsonist put the fire out? Does it repair the damage the fire caused? Obviously not.  So let's leave arson as "I don't know" for right now.

Now let's move on to less serious forms of property crime.  How about vandalism - is it okay to shoot someone for throwing a cinder block through a window? Spray-painting the front of a building? Does that seem like a justified response?

How about theft? Taking anything that belongs to someone else seems like a property crime.  Is it okay to shoot a looter? Let me phrase the question another way.  Are people more important than property? Because I can't think of many things valuable enough to justify the use of lethal force in response to their theft. Maybe items that could be used to destroy property or kill people, like, say, explosives.  Or a tank - remember that guy in San Diego a couple decades ago? I could see lethal force being justified in that situation.  But the stuff that you see on most store shelves in malls, business districts, or downtown shopping areas? No.  To my mind, none of that is valuable enough to justify killing someone over.
 

No, this doesn't mean I'm saying the thieves and looters should be let off the hook.  There's a lot of space between saying "kill them" on one side of the spectrum and "let them walk free" on the other side.

So what is the solution? Well, for me, that old saying about letting the punishment fit the crime is a pretty good guideline. If you steal or destroy property or merchandise that doesn't belong to you, then you should be penalized financially in proportion to the value of what you stole or destroyed.  And if the damages run into the tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars, like a burned-out building might, then you pay that bill off with your time.  I.E., prison.  

 

Yes, I recognize this system isn't perfect.  Sometimes people can't pay, or maybe police can't identify the guilty parties, or this incentivizes repeat offenses.  I don't have an answer for those things, and it's definitely not fair to the business owners or the insurance companies to absorb the costs of stolen merchandise or damaged property.  Regardless, I'd rather see it this way than have someone lose their life over a $75 microwave or a shattered $200 store window.

Now, a fair number of people might call this too lenient.  I don't know what percentage of the population they represent, but it seems like a decent-sized one.  I see them in Youtube comments and overhear them in public places, making offhand remarks about how looters deserve to be shot.  "It's one way to prevent repeat offenses." "They were tearing the place up, they deserved it." "When the looting starts, the shooting starts." There's a certain percentage of Americans that thrill to that tough-guy talk.  If you look at American pop culture over the years, it's a recurring theme: Dirty Harry, The Punisher, The "Death Wish" movies, Robocop.  Personally, I think it's the attitude you have when you're a testosterone-fueled (because it's usually guys) teenager and think every problem can be solved by the application of force. People usually grow out of that mindset once they realize the world is more nuanced, but I guess some of them hang on to it well into adulthood.  "Law and order" sounds great - we all want that, right? To be able to walk to our cars without being jumped and leave our doors unlocked at night, right? That legitimately sounds great. I'm all for it.  But thinking you can punch or shoot it into existence is a simple and inaccurate way of looking at the problem.

But then you have professional assholes like Tucker Carlson stoking that vigilante mindset by defending Kyle Rittenhouse, casting a brainwashed teenager who traveled hundreds of miles with murder on his mind as some sort of hero who fought to restore order when Kenosha's elected officials wouldn't.  

 

Let's be clear: Rittenhouse is a murderer, not a hero.  Period, full stop.

Carlson is smart enough to realize this, but he's also savvy enough to know his audience.  He knows he's tapping into the desire to be the "noble outlaw" that his viewers all possess.  The ones holding the line against the legions of monsters and barbarians hellbent on raping and pillaging and destroying society.  I'll bet any amount of money that Tucker's broadcast (the one I linked to) has got at least two dozen or so of his viewers fantasizing about doing the same thing.  They're probably at a gun store right now, looking over the rack of ARs and deciding which one they want.  Carlson is flicking lit matches at a stack of tinder, and it's a decent bet that one of them will eventually ignite the pile.

I started this piece with a Game of Thrones quote, and I'm going to end with another one, because it seems appropriate.

"The man who passes the sentence should swing the sword. If you would take a man's life, you owe it to him to look into his eyes and hear his final words. And if you cannot bear to do that, then perhaps the man does not deserve to die."

Rights, Risks, and Responsibilities

I've been seeing a lot of news reports about anti-quarantine protests in several states, and truthfully, I don't see a lot of daylight between most of the people attending these protests and spoiled children screaming "You can't tell me what to do!"

Look.  I get that these sheltering-in-place measures are hurting a lot of people economically.  A lot of small businesses are teetering on the precipice of going out of business, and the income they're losing might mean not being able to put food on the table or pay for essential medicine or save for retirement or a kid's college fund.  If you're protesting because your economic livelihood is at stake, I sympathize and I understand.

But if you're protesting because you're tired of being cooped up and you miss your favorite sports bar - too bad.  Suck it up and act like an adult.

And if you're piggy-backing on the protest to promote your pet cause--like these guys, who appear to be celebrating the right to bear arms, even though these quarantine measures have nothing to do with the 2nd Amendment. . .

. . .you're a dumbass.

And if you're waving around a sign like this to express your political beliefs:

. . .punch yourself in the face. You fail at life.

"But the 1st Amendment says people can gather in public."

That's true.  It's right there: "Congress shall make no law. . .of the right of the people peaceably to assemble. . ."

But here's the thing about rights: NONE of them are universally absolute.

There's a certain tolerance for risk built into the Constitution. One of the potential negative consequences of living in a free society is that someone will misuse that freedom, and we're constantly struggling to balance preventing people or groups from exercising their Constitutional freedoms in malicious ways with protecting the average person's rights.  For example, free speech isn't really free if it only protects banal topics of discussion like sports or TV shows.  If it doesn't protect controversial speech such as protesting the government or even making public speeches that advocate the violent overthrow of the government (aka sedition), the 1st Amendment is meaningless.  There's a certain level of tolerance for rebellious anti-government speech baked into the 1st Amendment.

But that risk tolerance for malevolent abuses of one's Constitutional rights only goes so far.  If you commit a violent felony, and your 2nd Amendment right is curtailed. It's right there on ATF Form 4473--Question 11c. You use your 1st Amendment right of free speech to spread malicious lies about someone, and you're open to criminal or civil liability.  You're not protected by the 4th Amendment in certain ways if law enforcement has probable cause that you're committing a crime. And so on. Even the right to peaceably assemble comes with caveats: ever heard of maximum occupancy regulations?

I'm no Constitutional scholar, but the general rule seems to be that a person starts losing their rights the moment they misuse them in a way that's harmful to others, whether maliciously or recklessly.

"But I'm not hurting anybody! I'm just showing up and protesting!"

Are you sure? Do you know for certain you're not a Covid vector? Infectees take up to two weeks to exhibit symptoms, so maybe you feel fine today, but you could have been exposed and you just don't know it. And even if you haven't been exposed, what about the ten people standing next to you? The country's infection rate has kept rising for several weeks, so there are a whole lot of someones unknowingly spreading the virus. And since the US still doesn't have enough detection tests or PPE. (Side note: I don't think it's a coincidence that nobody seems to be protesting that, even though it's where most of the blame lies. But I'll address that in a bit.), we have to do what we can with what we have. Which is making people stay at home.

Of course, there are certainly some officials who are taking it too far and venturing into draconian territory, and that undermines the ability to enact sensible measures.  And history isn't too kind to people who overreact in these situations. Some of America's most shameful moments sprung out of a panic-driven compulsion to infringe on people's rights in the name of safety and security: the Japanese internment camps, COINTELPRO, the NSA's bulk data collection, to name a few.  Once the dust settles and the inevitable lawsuits are resolved, we'll have a handful of elected officials to hold up as examples of what NOT to do, as well as a better understanding of how to handle a crisis like this in the future.

So, the legality of these "stay at home" measures will probably be decided in a future courtroom.  But for now, here's a little test. Replace "go out in public" with "get drunk and drive as fast as I want" and see if you sound at least a little irresponsibly stupid.

Now remember where I rhetorically asked why there aren't any protests over the lack of testing kits & PPE? That's because these protests are partly an "astroturf movement". They're being bankrolled, organized, and publicized to a decent degree by the GOP and right-wing media in order to remain in power in 2020.  They want the economy back open because bad economies hurt reelection efforts, possibly more than any other issue.  And they're using words and phrases like "freedom", "violation of our rights", and "Unconstitutional" because they know those terms resonate with some people.  That's all there is to it.  They're pushing so hard to reopen the economy because they want to get Trump reelected, not because they're so concerned about America's values or about the mom & pop businesses at risk of folding or the thousands of people who may go broke because of this quarantine.

They don't give a rat's ass about the American public.

And they're hypocrites. You can see for yourself: go back through their social media posts, their press releases, and their legislative records.  You'll find that their stances about public protests were markedly different when those protests were about the Dakota Access Pipeline or Black Lives Matter.

Weird, huh?

So do me a favor: stop listening to bad-faith pundits, politicians, and "experts" who are using you as pawns. Think before you exercise your rights in a reckless, potentially harmful way.  And unless you have a legitimate reason, park yourself on your couch and stay home. The more people who break the "stay at home" guidance, the longer the Coronavirus will keep circulating among the population.

You're adults. Act like it.

The Carnival Barker President vs the Coronavirus

I've said this on social media several times: the office of the President of the United States, and the person occupying that office, carry a high level of seriousness.  The responsibilities of the President demand a high degree of seriousness.  The President is not just another average citizen, like Bob the bartender or Joe at the local diner.  His (since all the presidents to date have been men) words wield substantial influence: they can either avert or pave the way to war, they can influence the stock market, they can determine the outcome of an election, or they can shape foreign policy.  A considerable number of people hang on the President's (any president's) every syllable like they were the Words of God themselves.

So when the current President of the United States calls efforts to raise alarms about a potentially global pandemic a politicized hoax, I get more than a little angry.

Here's Donald Trump at a rally in South Carolina last night (Feb 28, 2020), doing his usual disjointed rambling thing: "Now the Democrats are politicizing the Coronavirus. You know that, right? Coronavirus. . .they're politicizing it.  We did one of the great jobs - you say, 'How's President Trump doing?' They go, 'Oh, not good, not good'. . .and this is their new hoax. . ."

And here he is on Twitter: "Anti-Trump Network @CNN doing whatever it can to stoke a national Coronavirus panic. The far left Network pretty much ignoring anyone who they interview who doesn't blame President Trump." @trish_regan @FoxNews Media refuses to discuss the great job our professionals are doing!"

Now, you can interpret those remarks any one of several different ways, but the most generous interpretation is that Trump is calling any criticism of his response to the virus and/or attempts to warn the public about its severity a hoax meant to weaken him politically.

Here are some Coronavirus facts:

• It's already infected somewhere around 80,000 people worldwide
• China, South Korea, Iran, and Italy have all reported outbreaks of varying sizes
• In the past 48 hours, there have been four cases of unknown origin (meaning, none of the victims had recently returned from a country where there was a Coronavirus outbreak) reported in the United States
• One of those four victims has died 

Does this sound like a hoax to you? Or does it sound like something that should be taken seriously?

Trump's "hoax" comments might be believable if he didn't already hamstring America's ability to respond to the Coronavirus by making deep cuts to the CDC, slashing its global disease response budget by 80% and disbanding its global health security team in 2018.  And if he wasn't already getting bipartisan pushback from Congress over these budget cuts.  See, the possibility of a global pandemic has already been on the radar for a while - even the most clueless members of Congress have been aware of that.

But not Trump, evidently.

Here's what could very well happen, thanks to Trump's irresponsibly stupid comments: some people - probably some of Trump's followers -  will believe him when he says the virus is a hoax, so will ignore or mock all the information from public health officials.  They won't practice any of the suggested preventive measures, and we'll have several what should have been easily-preventable cases of Coronavirus in the United States. This isn't that farfetched, when you consider that Trump's "hoax" remarks are being amplified and repeated by the likes of Laura Ingraham, Fox & Friends and Rush Limbaugh, or sitting US Senators are repeating debunked conspiracy theories.

And it's already shaping people's reactions:

What's going to happen if (possibly when) people start getting infected in large numbers? The most optimistic scenario forecasts dozens of infectees and a 1-2% fatality rate. That's a lot of victims.  What about the potential economic hits due to missed work, disrupted global supply chains, the strain on the country's health care network?  We've already seen the effect the Coronavirus is having on the stock market.

Do you feel better about Trump's lackluster approach to tackling the disease, his disdain for many essential government programs and services, or his uninformed, seat-of-the-pants approach to running the country now? I sure as hell don't.

This is why a buffoon like Trump should never have been allowed anywhere near the White House.  The job of President of the United States is no place for the mediocre, the lazy, or the willfully ignorant.  Unfortunately, Trump is all of these things. And if you try to say "We couldn't have known," I'm calling bullshit.  We did know.  After five seconds of hearing Trump give a speech or respond in a debate, we knew.  It was obvious. Trump was thoroughly unfit to be president.

And the inadequate preparation for/response to the Coronavirus is yet another example of his unfitness on display to the entire world.

The Wanna-Be American King

The concept of accountability has gone missing in Washington DC.

Donald Trump was never going to be held accountable.  He's probably never been held accountable in his entire life.  Certainly not since being sworn in as president.  The day after Robert Mueller testified in Congress about his involvement with the Russian government in the 2016 election (in which he only escaped being indicted due to DoJ guidelines), Trump was putting pressure on the Ukrainian government to uncover (or fabricate) "dirt" on the man who he assumed would be his opponent in the 2020 election.  Where a normal person might choose to lay low after such a close call, Trump decided to double down on his corrupt behavior.  He never made a secret of it.  Hell, he openly talked about it in televised interviews.  None of Trump's aides, advisors, or cabinet officials have been able to restrain his worst impulses except around the edges.

And Congress? The co-equal branch of government specifically designed in many ways to act as a check on the Executive branch? The House of Representatives took its responsibility seriously and impeached the president. But the Senate is refusing to do its job.  It ignored the evidence, refused to hear witness testimony, and will very likely acquit Trump in a speedy sham trial a few days from now.  The Senate didn't just fail to hold Trump accountable, it - specifically Senate Republicans - flat-out refused to do so.

So Trump will face zero punishment for attempting to interfere with the 2020 presidential election.  Sure, he's been impeached, and that will be a stain on his legacy forever.  But as far as him suffering any immediate consequences that will prevent him from trying to rig it in his favor?

Zip. Zero. Nada.

Of course, there's the 2020 election itself.  Vote him out of office, right? That is, vote him out of office through the election he's actively trying to cheat in? Sure, piece of cake.

Now, I'm not telling anyone to give up in despair and not vote.  For god's sake, VOTE.  Because this election is probably the most important one in your lifetime.  But don't expect it the Trump campaign to play fair.  Don't be surprised by the traditional Republican tactics like voter suppression, selective voter ID measures, and limited polling sites in Dem-leaning districts.  Don't be surprised if Trump pulls out all the stops - like, say, deploying ICE to polling sites for the purpose of intimidating voters to stay home.  Or worse.

Additionally, Trump will probably do a whole bunch of idiotic, amoral, and illegal stuff between now and November.  And if the past has taught us anything, it's that Trump's antics will push his previous fiasco out of the public consciousness.  It's a well-established pattern at this point: Trump generates a controversy, it dominates the news cycle for a couple days, and is promptly forgotten once Trump makes another bonehead mistake.

Here's an example: have you heard anyone mention Trump's drone assassination of the Iranian general in the last 2-3 days? Trump nearly blundered the United States into a war, and hardly anyone is talking about it now.

Acquitting Trump will be giving him a green light to do whatever he wants, without consequences.  And given some of the things Trump has shown himself to be okay with doing (roughing up protestors, declaring martial law, curtailing the First Amendment, jailing his political opponents) make me extremely nervous.

I'm not saying it's certain that any of these things will happen.  But the chances that they do are a lot further away from zero than they should be.

So. . .thanks, Senate Republicans.

Speaking of that pack of worthless, unprincipled weasels - guess who else won't be held accountable?

Yeah, yeah, I know there's a lot of pent-up anger at the Senate over the impeachment trial's likely outcome.  There sure was after the Senate voted to not allow witnesses, therefore paving the way for the acquittal.  But will that translate to meaningful results at the ballot box? I'm not so sure.  First, there was a lot of anger in the 2018 midterms, too; but despite Democrats making significant gains (the much-hyped "blue wave"), Republicans managed to pick up two seats in the Senate.  They're probably counting on maintaining, if not increasing, their lead in the Senate.

Because despite all the angry phone calls and emails, and the op-eds rightly calling them cowards and worse, they have pollsters who have gauged the public's sentiment and know how their constituents feel.  They've known for a while, which is why they voted the way they did.  So aside from a few vulnerable Senators, they're not sweating reelection.  And if they do unexpectedly lose, they're not worried.  They can find a pundit gig, or a position on a consulting firm, or even just retire.  And in eight or twelve years, "Republican" won't be a dirty word anymore and they can reemerge from the political wilderness.  And Republicans have some experience being the minority party.  If Democrats do retake the Senate, they'll just go into opposition mode and make it incredibly difficult for the Senate (and the White House, if a Democrat gets elected) to do its job.

No, the only thing they're worried about is being excluded from the Big Club, and that only happens if they defy Trump.  Mitt Romney and John Bolton are quickly becoming cautionary tales.

So, to sum up, we've got a president who's unaccountable because his subordinates can't keep him in check, and the Senate simply won't; and fifty-three Senators who are unaccountable because they know the worst outcome for them is the unlikely chance that they don't get reelected.

Where does that leave the country going forward? Well, if Trump loses in 2020 (and that's a big "if" for multiple reasons), expect Republicans to "suddenly" rediscover all the principles and ideals they've been uniformly ignoring since January 2017.  And that creates a dilemma.

A Democrat president (and/or Senate) acting the way Trump has done will further erode the concept of presidential accountability and co-equal branches of government, so the right thing to do would be to heed those calls for accountability.  However, to anyone who remembers Republican behavior throughout the Obama administration knows that Republicans aren't making good faith arguments.  They only care about accountability to the extent they can use it to weaken Democrats and get themselves back into power. Consequently, there's a strong, justifiable argument for telling Republicans to sit down and shut up.  Additionally, if Republicans obstruct simply for the sole purpose of denying Democrats a legislative victory (it was Mitch McConnell's entire strategy from 2010 - 2016), a Democratic president may have to act unilaterally just to keep the government functioning.  It's happened before.

Thus, the Democrats' (and America's) predicament.

Of course, this all depends on the election's outcome.  If Trump gets reelected, it could very well mean the end of Constitutional democracy in America.  And that's not a dramatic exaggeration.  He's already been sent a message that he won't be held accountable no matter what he does.

How far do you think he'll run with that if he gets another four years?

Choose wisely this November.  Because a president that's not accountable to anyone is a king.

The Price of Intellectual Laziness

Donald Trump just kicked a hornet's nest in the Middle East.

A few days ago, the United States, via a drone strike, assassinated the head of the Iranian military's Quds Force.  To understand the significance of this, imagine if a hostile foreign nation assassinated a high-ranking US general or admiral.  Not only that, but one who was deeply admired and respected by the public.  The Iranian government is predictably pissed off about this, and is sure to respond.  How exactly it will do that is unknown, but Iran has a lot of possibilities, ranging from a cyber attack to disrupting the global oil supply by choking off the Strait of Hormuz to terrorist attacks against US overseas installations.  But there's sure to be some form of retaliation, and even a restrained Iranian response could inflict significant damage.  Perhaps even a war.

And this was all set in motion by a man with no long-term strategy, no contingency plans for what might happen next, no national security staff in place to handle the crisis, and no interest or understanding of the world around him.

This is why a president doesn't make seat-of-the-pants decisions.  A good president, anyway.  The job of leading the nation is unimaginably complex, and in reality a president has very little power. There's very little room to maneuver on just about any issue without nudging something else off in a direction you don't want it to go. Sure, a lot of those concerns turn out to be overblown - many of the worst-case "what ifs" the Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson administrations had about America supporting France/getting directly involved in Vietnam ended up not coming to pass, and the chances of them occurring were far less likely than any of those presidents believed them to be.  But presidents don't have a crystal ball, though, so it's important to carefully consider the consequences of any given decision.

(For example: Saudi Arabia. We all know eleven of the nineteen 9/11 hijackers came from that country, and there's good reason to believe that the Saudi Royal Family had advance knowledge of the plot.  Maybe they even provided logistical support.  So if anybody deserves an American ass-kicking, it's probably them. But what happens next? Say the US finally does target Saudi Arabia. Really bombs the shit out of it, to the point that we even wipe out the rats and cockroaches. Where does that leave our country? America still depends a lot on Saudi oil, despite efforts over the past few years to develop alternatives. That oil supply dries up if we attack them, which would harm our economy and our day-to-day lives in a big way.  And that's why the US hasn't attacked Saudi Arabia in retaliation for 9/11.)

Of course, maybe nothing bad will happen.  Maybe cooler heads will somehow prevail, and aside from a little chest-thumping rhetoric from both sides, things will revert to the status quo.  Maybe.  I don't have a crystal ball either.

Regardless, Trump's impulsive decision-making process isn't reassuring. At all. He's easily provoked and is more concerned about what kinds of headlines his policies and actions generate than the effects of those policies and decisions.

Not to mention the optics of trying to be a strong, decisive leader is a good way to distract from his impeachment.

And that's why you don't vote for a narcissistic, stubborn, willfully ignorant man-child to serve as president.

When Feudal Fealty Meets Democracy

Quick question.  Who remembers who Eric Shinseki was?

(. . .pause. . .)

Anyone?

(. . .longer pause. . .)

Really? Nobody? *sigh*

Okay, quick recap. Shinseki was an Army general who served from the mid-1960s until 2003.  He had a fairly distinguished career - three Bronze Stars, a pair of Purple Hearts, a handful of combat tours, along with the prerequisites needed to attain the rank of four-star General - but I'm bringing him up because of something that happened at the tail end of his career.

See, Shinseki's final assignment before he retired was Chief of Staff of the Army. For those not familiar with the military's organizational structure, that made him the Army's representative on the Joint Chiefs - which means Shinseki had a fair amount of interaction with the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, the Secretary of Defense, and the President.  And for the back half of Shinseki's term as Chief of Staff, those three individuals were Richard Myers, Donald Rumsfeld, and George W Bush.

Shinseki and Rumsfeld had a disagreement over a little event known as Operation Iraqi Freedom. Specifically, the number of troops that should have comprised the initial invasion force. Rumsfeld thought it should have been between 100K - 150K troops, while Shinseki believed the mission would require several hundred thousand troops.  History eventually vindicated Shinseki, but contradicting Rumsfeld (before Congress, no less) ended up putting him on Rumsfeld's bad side: from then onward, Shinseki was persona non grata with Rumsfeld and the cabal within the Bush Administration who were eager to invade Iraq. Besides making Shinseki a "lame duck," Rumsfeld's very public rebuke had the effect of cowing other senior officers who might have disagreed with one of Rumsfeld's policies, or have given him advice he didn't want to hear.

Okay, you all still with me? You in the back: wake up!

Questions? Oh, you want to know why I'm bringing all this up.  Right, I was just getting to that.

I brought that incident up for two reasons.  First, to illustrate the consequences of politicizing the military.  By undercutting Shinseki, Rumsfeld made it more likely that people would give him advice he wanted to hear, rather than what they believed would work. Look at what happened as a result: the U.S. invaded Iraq with far fewer troops than necessary.  Combined with a handful of other bad decisions, such as bypassing weapons caches and ignoring widespread looting, this meant that the United States lost control of the situation very early on.  Had Rumsfeld gone with Shinseki's recommended troop levels, the U.S. could have had enough personnel to prevent many foreign insurgents from sneaking across the border or maintain civil order.  Now, it's not certain that the additional troops Shinseki recommended would have been enough to contain Iraq, but those troops would have made success more likely. Yet Rumsfeld rejected Shinseki's advice, and that decision came back to haunt the military throughout OIF.  Thousands of people died as a result.

The second reason I brought this up was to tie it to a recent event that probably hasn't gotten as much attention as it deserved.  In the aftermath of Navy SEAL Eddie Gallagher's court martial for murdering a civilian (quick recap of those events here), President Trump announced on Twitter that he would be instructing the Secretary of the Navy to rescind Navy Achievement Medals for two Navy JAG officers who prosecuted Gallagher's case.

(Quick tangent: before I get to my main point, I want to detour briefly for reasons that will become obvious very quickly.  It looked pretty clear to me that Gallagher used excessive force against an unarmed noncombatant - if I were a juror, I would've voted to convict him - but here's the important part: I think the rumors of excessive force swirling around the case were what caught Trump's attention.  I'm speculating, but based on Trump's past behavior, I think he heard about the case and thought, "That's how we need to start treating enemy combatants. None of this PC, Geneva Conventions bullshit. Brutalize them, kill them, torture them - they're subhuman anyway!")

[Reminder: This is what I think Trump believes. Definitely NOT what I believe.  For an interesting piece on the thought process of people like Trump, click here.]

Okay, now to my main point.  I hope you're all still with me.

It is wildly inappropriate for the president to involve himself with this case, especially by directing the Secretary of the Navy to rescind the prosecutors' awards, which were likely earned for something unrelated to the Gallagher case.  Besides the very blatant micromanaging and flagrant pettiness, it sends a signal to the armed forces: "You get your awards thanks to my generosity.  Make me unhappy, and I'll take them away."

What's that? You think I'm reading too much into this?

I don't think so.  Consider the following:

• Trump's meeting just a few months after his term began, in which the members of his cabinet took turns praising him
• He has a habit of firing any appointee who disagrees with him (Dan Coats) or makes him look bad (Ryan Zinke)
• He's expressed the belief that the heads of government agencies - most notably the Attorney General - exist to serve him, not the country or the agency they oversee
• The USS John McCain incident 

So, if Trump can get away with revoking the awards of someone who displeases him, what's to stop him from doing the same with a promotion or a career-boosting assignment? What's to stop him from meddling with official doctrine or overruling a commander's battlefield decision? What about adding his name to the oath of enlistment, right after the "bear true faith and allegiance to" section?

Trump is under the impression that the armed forces belong to him, not the country or the office of the president.  He's thought so for a long time, and while there's nothing wrong with thinking that, his recent actions subtly bring that thought closer to reality.  It's another tiny crack he's made in the country's democratic foundation - namely, that the military belongs to the office, not to the person occupying it.

So to sum up: yes, I think Trump is gradually trying to make the military loyal to him and him alone. No, I don't think that's a fringe idea anymore.

Class dismissed.