Today should be the last Veteran's Day of the Trump Era. We should be getting our exit physicals, making the rounds of the VA shop and the other ETS stations that GIs have to cycle through before hitting the street as civilians again.
We should be the shortest of short-timers.
Instead we stand, appalled, as the gang of grifters, con-men, criminals, and wannabe fascist assholes try to steal an election like the caudillo's goons in some sort of third-rate banana republic and barely a voice is raised to tell them to sit the fuck down, shut the fuck up, and act like citizens in a democratic republic that is also the global super power.
Four years ago on this day I was furious:
"A large minority of my fellow citizens has chosen to put over me as my nation's Chief Executive a man that I would have done my best to chapter out of my Army had he come through my training unit when I was under the hat; a compulsive liar, a man who shirked his own service then boasted that prancing around in some sort of silly military school uniform was "just like serving", a bully and a con man and a thief.
This man, and his party, will over the next four years attempt to destroy the America I grew up in. They will attempt to reverse, repeal, and destroy the liberal and progressive and egalitarian and regulatory acts that have changed the face of this nation since 1929."
If anything that man and that party have turned out to be worse than I ever imagined. They were all that AND the First World equivalent of a gang of thieves running a small-time con on some sorry dirt-road Third World shitshow of a country, and I don't know if that's more embarrassing or humiliating, or both.
But I know this; I didn't plan to spend twenty-two years as part of the Guardia Nacional for some tinpot banana dictator.
Nope.
I knew that war was a racket. I knew I was just another imperial legionary, pushing the empire's writ on those people in those places the empire wanted things.
The one thing I never pictured myself as, though, is some sort of shithole-country uniformed thug, like the gangsters in the Fuerza de Defensa I knew in Panama back in the Eighties.
And yet, here we are.
I hope everyone else who wore the tree suit or the crackerjacks or the flightsuit is as furious about this as I am. Like I said; I don't give a shit how much you love your God or your guns or your tax cuts. Some things transcend our petty preferences, and the Great Promise of the United States - equal justice under law - is one and the most important one of them.
What's going on now in this country makes a mockery and a hollow sham of every citizen's vote and every serviceperson's oath. It is a slap in the face of our promise to "support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic."
If stealing - or trying to steal - an election is not being an enemy of the Constitution, I don't know what is.
So spare me today the homilies about veterans and service, and instead go spend some time shouting at Republicans to STFU and be actual small-r republicans instead of fucking banana republicans.
Because there is nothing I can say or do today suits the times better than what I wrote the year after my 2016 rant.
The current state of the nation makes a joke of the idea that it is currently capable of "honoring" anything or anyone. The best we can do is stand ashamed of what we are doing to the work of those who have served in - and especially out - of uniform to preserve the promise of this nation, so I will conclude now as I did then:
"For those of you who have come here seeking grave words hymning this day, weighted with honor and glory of the service I and mine have done and do, I have none."
5 comments:
I am confused. There is a legal process and every state needs to follow it before they can certify results and nominate electors. Trump (just like everyone else) has the right to launch a court case. Given the reported election results the electoral math will clearly indicate that Biden won but it is the states themselves who have to make that determination.
Furthermore, given the distributed nature of the system, there is really no way for Trump to overturn the election in enough states to swing the electoral vote.
Why not cool the jets and wait a bit? All this outrage accomplishes is to feed more energy at Trump and ensure enough Republicans show up to vote in January to keep the Senate out of Democratic hands.
Umm...what part of "trying to steal an election" don't you get? What is "confusing" you? That the GOP is lying and trying to game the system? You haven't been paying attention over the last 40 years? I dunno if that's really a good excuse.
It literally doesn't matter if the efforts aren't going to succeed. There's NO evidence of "vote fraud", there never has been, and the entire business is simply a continuation of the GOP effort to replace what little functional democracy has been left here with their own herrnvolk version so White can continue to be Right.
The point is that in a nation where roughly 47% of the voting public is happily fascist all these "court cases" that Trumpy has a "right" to launch are the political equivalent of throwing shit against the wall. Pretty soon nobody wants to have anything to do with that shitty wall, and just assumes that it's ALL shit. And then the real competent fash move in and it's game over.
So the idea is to fire UP the jets and body-slam these bastards hard so the idea of fucking with popular democracy gets hammered down, hard, the moment some treasonous ass even thinks about it. The GOP should be doing it now - they are the ones who should be shutting Donnie up and preparing to be the obstructive sonsofbitches they will be for the next four years - but they're the ones who benefit from discouraging popular democracy. Their agenda is widely loathed, so the worse they can fuck up the idea of the People actually running the joint, the better for them.
And "wait a bit"? Who ISN'T "waiting? You'll notice the silence in the press about all this theft, and that the only people "outraged" about this grand theft auto are ignored little bloggers like me?
This guy (https://twitter.com/JYSexton/status/1326178439716610048) makes my case better than I do:
"The whole point is this: Trump and the GOP are playing a dangerous game. The coup might not work, but they see an advantage at flirting with a coup.
The coup might work and they see an advantage with grasping power for themselves.
It's a win-win for them while we lose.
I don't think Trump or the GOP truly believe they're going to manage to overturn the election, but peddling these conspiracy theories help them regardless.
But the frightening thing? If it does work and they carry out a coup? They're more than happy to accept that.
If the coup works, we're in a whole world of trouble.
If it doesn't, Trump and the GOP have turned the temperature up, radicalized numbers of supporters, and possibly inspired terroristic acts by their supporters.
It's unconscionable and dangerous on a whole other level.
People are going to tell you there's nothing to worry about. That's absolutely wrong and irresponsible.
You can recognize there's no legal ground here while understanding these people are bad faith actors who rage until they find weakness in the law and systems."
THAT's why I'm so furious. This is the culmination of every damned shitty thing about the GOP over the past four years. They'll do some utterly insane, vicious, stupid, rule-, norm-, and law-breaking thing...and then turn around and say "What? What's your problem here?" and one more barrier falls.
So, no. I'm not cool with that. As a Canadian you don't have to give a shit, and, obviously, you don't. As an American, I do, and I do. So, no. Fuck these people. They need to get what the last bunch of traitors got when they pulled shit like this.
Is it true that Trump was late for the Veterans Day observance @ Arlington? I read this in Australian press today (Rupert Murdoch's New Ltd):
But the President did attend a ceremony at Arlington this morning, alongside First Lady Melania Trump, Vice President Mike Pence and Second Lady Karen Pence.
According to Mr Trump’s public schedule, he was supposed to arrive at 10:55am, with the ceremony starting at 11am and his entourage departing at 11:20am.
The group didn’t actually show up until 11:24am.
Mr Trump stood in the pouring rain for the ceremony, during which he saluted to show his respect for America’s fallen soldiers.
He then approached a wreath which had already been placed at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier (contrary to some media reports, he did not lay it himself; a military serviceman did that at 11am on the dot).
The President placed his hand on the wreath and stood silently for several seconds.
Mr Trump was there for a total of about six minutes, and did not make any remarks. It was the only event on his schedule for the day.
Regards from Down Under
OzGuns
Wotcha, mate.
I've never had an issue with the Trumpkins' enthusiasm for all things play-Army (other than it'd be nice if they'd, y'know, give a shit about actual soldiers rather than the Rambo-fantasy that's widespread in the country), and it's good that Orange Foolius took time out of his busy OANN-watching-and-tweeting schedule to spend some time with the dead.
(Although, again...11/11 is supposed to be about veterans, the living - it's Memorial Day that's about the dead. I know that the Commonwealth does it differently, but here it'd have been more appropriate for him to spend some time in a VA hospital comforting guys with long-term disability (or COVID) but we know he can't speak words of comfort. It's just not in the man.)
And it still doesn't absolve him from the not-doing all the things he should be doing other than public pageantry. His "leadership" during the pandemic has been, to put it in military terms, the equivalent of Napoleon's at Waterloo. He's slugged around in a torpor and let his subordinates get his people killed in pointless tactical mistakes - hard to tell who his Ney is, maybe Kushner? Pence? There really IS nobody trying to figure out the simple public health measures that Japan and South Korea have got wired and have been using for a year...
So I'd call that whole thing as good a metaphor for MAGA as any; a trite and pointless public show, devoid of real meaning, while all around the world is burning.
Post a Comment