Trump goes bananas over Dem message to military re: illegal orders

What's that old saying - "a hit dog always howls." The response of both Trump and his minions to the Congressional Democrats who said this is so over-the-top that it does seem to imply that they are worried that in the future military personnel might not be willing to blindly follow their orders to do blatantly unconstitutional things, including committing violence against US citizens, not just illegal immigrants. That seems to be their worry here.
 
rodoheel said:
I appreciate that position, but respectfully think we're further away from "armed conflict" on anything approaching a widespread scale than this post implies. I don't want to discount that very real and scary possibility. I do think it remains highly unlikely, for a variety of reasons. I think it's important to talk about the threat being real while also not exaggerating either (1) how close we are to that, or (2) how likely it is to happen at all.

I also think we suffer from the natural bias of living in the moment. It is easier to look back at past times with historical context, when we can know "what comes next" which is a virtue we don't have in the present. The future seems scary because we have no idea what it holds. It's easy to look back at, say, 1930 or 1968 and think it wasn't that bad because we knew what was coming later. But I'm confident the people living in those and other moments in our nation's history were every bit as terrified for their future, and the future of the nation, than we are right now. So I think it's important to keep that context in mind; and never give in to the nihilistic impulse to think that the country is doomed, or we're past the point that anything can be done to save our democracy. (not saying you're saying that, to be clear, but I have heard people on the board say it.) Because part of the way we pull through the darkness is to continue to have faith that there can be a better future on the other side.
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I think you are very correct that we have to be careful of thinking that our current time as being worse than what happened in the past because we know how the past turned out.

However, even with that noted, I do think we're closer to armed conflict than any time since the end of the Civil War/Reconstruction.

We have a major political party that fairly routinely advocates for armed responses to governmental actions with which they disagree. We have states openly acting to either undercut the federal government or to ignore the federal government. We have a president who has created an armed force to terrorize communities across our nation and who targets states and cities based purely on their partisan orientation. The bases of both major parties are expressing that they are losing/have lost faith in the government to carry out its duties and both increasing see governments operated by the opposing party as corrupt and often, worse, as illegitimate.

FFS, we had a deep and serious attempt to overthrow the will of the people after the 2020 election, including an armed insurrection that closed the operations of Congress to keep them from certifying the election.

We aren't in uncharted territory, but we are in a place we've only gone once before...the 1850s.

This isn't to say we are fated for a second Civil War and there are reasons to hope that we avoid such an outcome, but we should not downplay how serious the current situation is in order to provide false hope that we will avoid the worst of outcomes.
 
SnoopRob said:
I think you are very correct that we have to be careful of thinking that our current time as being worse than what happened in the past because we know how the past turned out.

However, even with that noted, I do think we're closer to armed conflict than any time since the end of the Civil War/Reconstruction.

We have a major political party that fairly routinely advocates for armed responses to governmental actions with which they disagree. We have states openly acting to either undercut the federal government or to ignore the federal government. We have a president who has created an armed force to terrorize communities across our nation and who targets states and cities based purely on their partisan orientation. The bases of both major parties are expressing that they are losing/have lost faith in the government to carry out its duties and both increasing see governments operated by the opposing party as corrupt and often, worse, as illegitimate.

FFS, we had a deep and serious attempt to overthrow the will of the people after the 2020 election, including an armed insurrection that closed the operations of Congress to keep them from certifying the election.

We aren't in uncharted territory, but we are in a place we've only gone once before...the 1850s.

This isn't to say we are fated for a second Civil War and there are reasons to hope that we avoid such an outcome, but we should not downplay how serious the current situation is in order to provide false hope that we will avoid the worst of outcomes.
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Mark Twain is purported to have said, "history doesn't repeat itself, but it rhymes."

I don't expect another civil war like 1860s. I don't expect 6,000,000 people to be murdered in gas chambers, but I see more current parallels to 1930s Germany than to the American Civil War. Along with differences in weaponry, in both of those conflicts, the US government and military were the good guys. Re the civil war, the "rebels" now control the government and military. Re WWII, the is no international power or alliance strong enough to oppose the fascists today.

The United States is in a place that I didn't think could ever exist.
 
BillOfRights said:
Mark Twain is purported to have said, "history doesn't repeat itself, but it rhymes."

I don't expect another civil war like 1860s. I don't expect 6,000,000 people to be murdered in gas chambers, but I see more current parallels to 1930s Germany than to the American Civil War. Along with differences in weaponry, in both of those conflicts, the US government and military were the good guys. Re the civil war, the "rebels" now control the government and military. Re WWII, the is no international power or alliance strong enough to oppose the fascists today.

The United States is in a place that I didn't think could ever exist.
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We definitely have an “enemy within” and it’s called the GOP! That cult has placed our nation on a road to a place called Disaster . U-turns are not permitted. Outright civil war not likely due to Insurrection Act. A long period of Irish style “Troubles “ is possible.
 
ZenMode said:
Anyone know what orders they're referring to?
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I think they are referring to illegal orders to commit extra-judicial bombing and murder of fishing boats. Sen. Slotkin says that she has been contacted by service men who expressed concern about being ordered to bomb fishing boats outside U.S. waters and are worried that those who follow those orders will face legal jeopardy down the road.

I think ordering military service men to invade cities, attack citizens, and use those city invasions as military training grounds may be illegal orders.

Trump did want the military to shoot peaceful protesters during his 1st term but was told that would be illegal which pissed Trump off. We had ethical military leaders and an ethical White House chief of staff back then. Today ? not so much...

At any rate, the military folks are educated about what constitutes an illegal order, and these 6 ex-military members of Congress are reminding them of their oath to the Constitution and letting them know we support them and have their backs when remaining true to upholding their oath.
 
I think the focus of the training has always been grunts do not have to follow clearly illegal orders from line level officers (lieutenants, captains) along the lines of "shoot the prisoners".

Nobody has ever envisaged the need to figure out how this applies to illegal orders from staff level officers (president, general, etc) along the lines of "go blow up some anonymous civilians in international waters without any shred of evidence that identifies these specific individuals as armed enemy combatants of a force enraged in armed conflict against the United States", because, well, that's just batshit insane.

Still the admonition against obeying illegal orders from line level officers is VERY RELEVANT today because the more dangerous type of illegal order (i.e. fire into that crows of peaceful protesters) is shockingly not off the board in today's political climate.
 
Ddseddse said:
I think the focus of the training has always been grunts do not have to follow clearly illegal orders from line level officers (lieutenants, captains) along the lines of "shoot the prisoners".

Nobody has ever envisaged the need to figure out how this applies to illegal orders from staff level officers (president, general, etc) along the lines of "go blow up some anonymous civilians in international waters without any shred of evidence that identifies these specific individuals as armed enemy combatants of a force enraged in armed conflict against the United States", because, well, that's just batshit insane.

Still the admonition against obeying illegal orders from line level officers is VERY RELEVANT today because the more dangerous type of illegal order (i.e. fire into that crows of peaceful protesters) is shockingly not off the board in today's political climate.
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There's sure international precedent. See the Nuremberg Officers Trials. Since the prosecutor, Robert Jackson, was later an associate member of SCOTUS, I'm think those precedents might well apply here.
 
Could you imagine if Biden/any Dem president had said anything even close to that tweet? Fox News would have gone full Fox News Alert mode with nonstop commercial-free coverage hammering on it until they'd riled up their base to the point where all of them drove to Washington and burned the place to the ground.
 
SnoopRob said:
I think you are very correct that we have to be careful of thinking that our current time as being worse than what happened in the past because we know how the past turned out.

However, even with that noted, I do think we're closer to armed conflict than any time since the end of the Civil War/Reconstruction.

We have a major political party that fairly routinely advocates for armed responses to governmental actions with which they disagree. We have states openly acting to either undercut the federal government or to ignore the federal government. We have a president who has created an armed force to terrorize communities across our nation and who targets states and cities based purely on their partisan orientation. The bases of both major parties are expressing that they are losing/have lost faith in the government to carry out its duties and both increasing see governments operated by the opposing party as corrupt and often, worse, as illegitimate.

FFS, we had a deep and serious attempt to overthrow the will of the people after the 2020 election, including an armed insurrection that closed the operations of Congress to keep them from certifying the election.

We aren't in uncharted territory, but we are in a place we've only gone once before...the 1850s.

This isn't to say we are fated for a second Civil War and there are reasons to hope that we avoid such an outcome, but we should not downplay how serious the current situation is in order to provide false hope that we will avoid the worst of outcomes.
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As I said, my intent is not to "downplay the current situation." I post all the time about terrible corrosive the things we're seeing are, and how our political order is becoming degraded. If the political process stops working entirely, people are liable to turn to force. The Trump admin's lawlessness and aggressiveness, combined with the overheated rhetoric of his supporters (and to lesser extent overheated rhetoric all across the political spectrum, with the flames being fanned by the influence of our broken Internet culture).

So, again, I'm not trying to downplay the seriousness of anything you suggest. But pretty much everything you reference, we've been there before and come through it. "States openly acting to either undercut the federal government or ignore the federal government" - in the 1950s and 1960s southern states openly defied federal law ordering them to integrate, both in court (where they ultimately lost, almost uniformly) and in practice to the point that the US military (not just the national guard, the US Army) had to be deployed to the south to enforce integration through threat of force. An "armed force to terrorize communities across our nation" - this existed for decades in the American South, where mobs, posses, and even sheriff's departments either explicitly or implicitly endorsed by state and local governments terrorized black communities, with the worst example being the Tulsa race massacre that saw dozens to hundreds killed and the destruction of the black community in Tulsa. "A deep and serious attempt to overthrow the will of the people after the 2020 election" - look to North Carolina itself for an open armed coup to overthrow a democratically elected government in 1898, resulting again in at least dozens killed. Not to mention other examples of "armed conflict" either amongst citizens or between the US military and civilians - look to Vietnam War protests including the murder of Kent State students by the national guard; the Rodney King riots in the 1990s that saw dozens killed and were ultimately put down by the national guard; the long history of strike-breaking and union-busting by the US military, such as in the 1894 Pullman railroad strike, the 1914 Ludlow massacre, and most famously the coal miner strike that ended in the 1921 Battle of Blair Mountain, a full-on shooting conflict that included gatling guns and bombs and poison gas being dropped out of airplanes.

Again: everything happening now is bad and concerning and must be resisted. The fact that J6, the most shocking and horrifying political moment in the US in at least several decades, didn't result in the defeat and disgrace of Trump and his movement remains shocking, and horrifying, to me to this day. But America really has been in dark places, and probably darker places than this, since the Civil War. The country is probably not destined to endure forever - and certainly not destined to be the world's most powerful nation forever - but I still do not think its collapse is likely to be imminent.
 
rodoheel said:
As I said, my intent is not to "downplay the current situation." I post all the time about terrible corrosive the things we're seeing are, and how our political order is becoming degraded. If the political process stops working entirely, people are liable to turn to force. The Trump admin's lawlessness and aggressiveness, combined with the overheated rhetoric of his supporters (and to lesser extent overheated rhetoric all across the political spectrum, with the flames being fanned by the influence of our broken Internet culture).

So, again, I'm not trying to downplay the seriousness of anything you suggest. But pretty much everything you reference, we've been there before and come through it. "States openly acting to either undercut the federal government or ignore the federal government" - in the 1950s and 1960s southern states openly defied federal law ordering them to integrate, both in court (where they ultimately lost, almost uniformly) and in practice to the point that the US military (not just the national guard, the US Army) had to be deployed to the south to enforce integration through threat of force. An "armed force to terrorize communities across our nation" - this existed for decades in the American South, where mobs, posses, and even sheriff's departments either explicitly or implicitly endorsed by state and local governments terrorized black communities, with the worst example being the Tulsa race massacre that saw dozens to hundreds killed and the destruction of the black community in Tulsa. "A deep and serious attempt to overthrow the will of the people after the 2020 election" - look to North Carolina itself for an open armed coup to overthrow a democratically elected government in 1898, resulting again in at least dozens killed. Not to mention other examples of "armed conflict" either amongst citizens or between the US military and civilians - look to Vietnam War protests including the murder of Kent State students by the national guard; the Rodney King riots in the 1990s that saw dozens killed and were ultimately put down by the national guard; the long history of strike-breaking and union-busting by the US military, such as in the 1894 Pullman railroad strike, the 1914 Ludlow massacre, and most famously the coal miner strike that ended in the 1921 Battle of Blair Mountain, a full-on shooting conflict that included gatling guns and bombs and poison gas being dropped out of airplanes.

Again: everything happening now is bad and concerning and must be resisted. The fact that J6, the most shocking and horrifying political moment in the US in at least several decades, didn't result in the defeat and disgrace of Trump and his movement remains shocking, and horrifying, to me to this day. But America really has been in dark places, and probably darker places than this, since the Civil War. The country is probably not destined to endure forever - and certainly not destined to be the world's most powerful nation forever - but I still do not think its collapse is likely to be imminent.
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Survivorship bias. By definition, you survive every heart attack too, until you don't.
 
rodoheel said:
As I said, my intent is not to "downplay the current situation." I post all the time about terrible corrosive the things we're seeing are, and how our political order is becoming degraded. If the political process stops working entirely, people are liable to turn to force. The Trump admin's lawlessness and aggressiveness, combined with the overheated rhetoric of his supporters (and to lesser extent overheated rhetoric all across the political spectrum, with the flames being fanned by the influence of our broken Internet culture).

So, again, I'm not trying to downplay the seriousness of anything you suggest. But pretty much everything you reference, we've been there before and come through it. "States openly acting to either undercut the federal government or ignore the federal government" - in the 1950s and 1960s southern states openly defied federal law ordering them to integrate, both in court (where they ultimately lost, almost uniformly) and in practice to the point that the US military (not just the national guard, the US Army) had to be deployed to the south to enforce integration through threat of force. An "armed force to terrorize communities across our nation" - this existed for decades in the American South, where mobs, posses, and even sheriff's departments either explicitly or implicitly endorsed by state and local governments terrorized black communities, with the worst example being the Tulsa race massacre that saw dozens to hundreds killed and the destruction of the black community in Tulsa. "A deep and serious attempt to overthrow the will of the people after the 2020 election" - look to North Carolina itself for an open armed coup to overthrow a democratically elected government in 1898, resulting again in at least dozens killed. Not to mention other examples of "armed conflict" either amongst citizens or between the US military and civilians - look to Vietnam War protests including the murder of Kent State students by the national guard; the Rodney King riots in the 1990s that saw dozens killed and were ultimately put down by the national guard; the long history of strike-breaking and union-busting by the US military, such as in the 1894 Pullman railroad strike, the 1914 Ludlow massacre, and most famously the coal miner strike that ended in the 1921 Battle of Blair Mountain, a full-on shooting conflict that included gatling guns and bombs and poison gas being dropped out of airplanes.

Again: everything happening now is bad and concerning and must be resisted. The fact that J6, the most shocking and horrifying political moment in the US in at least several decades, didn't result in the defeat and disgrace of Trump and his movement remains shocking, and horrifying, to me to this day. But America really has been in dark places, and probably darker places than this, since the Civil War. The country is probably not destined to endure forever - and certainly not destined to be the world's most powerful nation forever - but I still do not think its collapse is likely to be imminent.
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There's no objective way to judge this, so some of this is very much a subjective measure.

But recognize that to show that this isn't the worst it's ever been, you're selecting events from 150 years (the end of the Civil War in 1865 through 2015) against my examples from the last 10 years, most of which have been in the last 5. And the last 5-10 years are holding their own against the previous 150 years of terrible actions.

The takeaway here is that we are in a very, very dangerous situation with our current environment. We are increasingly seeing a significant group of Americans espouse and behave as if other Americans aren't legitimate citizens, with governors taking on other governors (and sending the National Guard from one state into other states they disagree with politically), with greater and greater talk of armed rebellion by a significant minority of the population. We have different states changing state election laws to directly affect the outcome of national elections and we have a Federal government who seems poised to disregard (again) votes from states that do not support the current majority party. We have elected a fascist President who oversees a government that in all 3 branches increasingly bends to his demands and whose only current saving grace is that that President and his administration are largely incompetent and inept. As I said before, these are objective opinions, but it is difficult for me to see another time in the last 160 years of our nation that compare to the variety of dangers we currently face. And the real danger is not only Trump turning the full force of the Federal government against one or more states or against large groups across the nation, but what happens if/when Democrats retake control of the Federal government, particularly the Executive Branch, and try to lead states which have been emboldened by Trump/MAGA to see the Democratic Party, its elected officials, and its supporters as "enemies of the state"? Do those conservative states recognize the legitimacy of a Democrat-led Federal government or do they refuse to recognize the legitimacy of its actions and, if so, to what lengths do they go to do so? (We have to recognize that one thing that has led to keeping current tensions from breaking out into greater armed conflict is that Democrat-led states have not called out their own National Guard troops in opposition to National Guard troops - or ICE/CBP goons - deployed in their states.) The only thing that may be more dangerous than our current fascist Federal government when that fascist party becomes the minority again and is forced into an "acquiesce or rebel" situation (nearly entirely of their own making).

In short, I believe that, in totality, we have not faced a situation in our country like our current one since the end of the Civil War/Reconstruction. But I recognize that there is little objective way to prove when one time period was closer to armed conflict on a mass scale or when the government was less stable vis-a-vis another. Given that, I don't try to prove that our current situation is worse, but I do show precisely how bad our current situation is and recognize the myriad of dangers we currently face.
 
Calheel said:
Keep in mind her job is to play a character. You can say that no one should accept such a job, which may be true, but it is equally true that there are thousands of young, pretty communications majors willing to take that job.

She is just the face -- and a completely impotent face -- of the administration. Your hate should be primarily directed at the people who are actually implementing the bad policies, like Bovino and Miller.
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there's a lot of people that are willing to do a lot of bad things for money... doesn't mean that they don't show her some of the blame of their actions.
 
BillOfRights said:
I don't expect another civil war like 1860s. I don't expect 6,000,000 people to be murdered in gas chambers, but I see more current parallels to 1930s Germany than to the American Civil War.
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Bill, I cut out a lot of your post to concentrate on the quote above. When we were cleaning out my parent's house, I found my father's copy of "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich." It's a huge read, and if any of you haven't read it, I'd encourage you to. I'm just over halfway through, and your comment about the US being close to 1930s Germany is spot on as compared to what I've read in that book. SPOT ON. There have been multiple times that I've stopped and read a quote from that book to my wife and we've both said "exactly what's going on in our country right now."
 
SnoopRob said:
There's no objective way to judge this, so some of this is very much a subjective measure.

But recognize that to show that this isn't the worst it's ever been, you're selecting events from 150 years (the end of the Civil War in 1865 through 2015) against my examples from the last 10 years, most of which have been in the last 5. And the last 5-10 years are holding their own against the previous 150 years of terrible actions.

The takeaway here is that we are in a very, very dangerous situation with our current environment. We are increasingly seeing a significant group of Americans espouse and behave as if other Americans aren't legitimate citizens, with governors taking on other governors (and sending the National Guard from one state into other states they disagree with politically), with greater and greater talk of armed rebellion by a significant minority of the population. We have different states changing state election laws to directly affect the outcome of national elections and we have a Federal government who seems poised to disregard (again) votes from states that do not support the current majority party. We have elected a fascist President who oversees a government that in all 3 branches increasingly bends to his demands and whose only current saving grace is that that President and his administration are largely incompetent and inept. As I said before, these are objective opinions, but it is difficult for me to see another time in the last 160 years of our nation that compare to the variety of dangers we currently face. And the real danger is not only Trump turning the full force of the Federal government against one or more states or against large groups across the nation, but what happens if/when Democrats retake control of the Federal government, particularly the Executive Branch, and try to lead states which have been emboldened by Trump/MAGA to see the Democratic Party, its elected officials, and its supporters as "enemies of the state"? Do those conservative states recognize the legitimacy of a Democrat-led Federal government or do they refuse to recognize the legitimacy of its actions and, if so, to what lengths do they go to do so? (We have to recognize that one thing that has led to keeping current tensions from breaking out into greater armed conflict is that Democrat-led states have not called out their own National Guard troops in opposition to National Guard troops - or ICE/CBP goons - deployed in their states.) The only thing that may be more dangerous than our current fascist Federal government when that fascist party becomes the minority again and is forced into an "acquiesce or rebel" situation (nearly entirely of their own making).

In short, I believe that, in totality, we have not faced a situation in our country like our current one since the end of the Civil War/Reconstruction. But I recognize that there is little objective way to prove when one time period was closer to armed conflict on a mass scale or when the government was less stable vis-a-vis another. Given that, I don't try to prove that our current situation is worse, but I do show precisely how bad our current situation is and recognize the myriad of dangers we currently face.
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I don't think we're really that far apart in judging the danger of our current situation. And you may be right that the combination of factors present now - in particular the role the internet plays in winding us all up and reducing our commitment to fellowship and shared values with our fellow citizens - makes this situation uniquely dangerous compared to any we have faced since 1865.

I do think, however, it's a bigger step from our era of unquestionably overheated rhetoric/discourse (which is, to be clear, hugely problematic and corrosive) to an actual "armed rebellion by a significant minority of the population." I think the modern-day Internet along with the current right-wing populist movement that has swept not just the US but many other nations worldwide have drastically moved the Overton window in terms of what people are willing to publicly say in pursuit of attention or power. I remain skeptical that even a tiny fraction of the people saying these sorts of things have any appetite for real open, armed conflict with their fellow citizens. There is every reason to worry about what Trump or his allies may do if power starts slipping from their grasp (see J6) but there is also every reason to doubt that even their most fervent supporters are actually willing to throw away the relative comfort and convenience in their lives to embrace a horrific and bloody shooting conflict inside the US.
 
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