Tuesday, January 19, 2021

Did the military save the country and forget to tell us?

 
    Are we out of the woods?
     Or will the crazy desperate thing come today?
    Not that 1/6, the rally/clown coup wasn't both crazy and desperate. But you hate to dust your hands and declare Donald Trump finished. Because there always seems to be another handful of crazy dust left in his bag of tricks. 
     But maybe .. just maybe ... the worst thing that'll happen Tuesday is he'll pardon 100 of the lowest of the low, including himself and his family. Olly, olly, oxen free. 
     Then we'll have gotten off light.
     Of course, if Trump's four years of standard shredding marks the low point of our nation's flirtation with despotism, we'll have gotten off light. There are hells below this one, traitors like Ted Cruz in a runner's crouch, waiting to lead us there, and millions upon millions of Americans obviously eager to race right behind.
     Maybe that's why I can't write any grand "What it all meant" column. Because I can't believe it's over. Maybe that's some dilute form of PTSD. The prisoner, freed, crossing his hands behind his back still, as if bound. Because trauma has a momentum. It endures.
     Were the Trump years traumatic? Not in any way like it was for the kids in those cages. Wonder when the full truth of that comes out? Not that we don't know the horrid outlines. But the details, the particulars. That'll start coming out; I'm surprised it hasn't already. Or maybe it has and our blown out senses don't register, don't let us be shocked. Not the way we should be. Or maybe it's just me. I can't tell anymore.
      Okay, let's wrap this up and get back to writing Wednesday's column. Before I go, I will say one thing, and this strays into the predictive, almost always a mistake. But why not? Everybody is saying everything all the time anyway. 
      We should be grateful for the military. As a child of the '60s, I was raised to look askance at the armed forces. The whole Vietnam War, it soured us civilians. 
     And the military hadn't been called upon to really, truly save democracy since they kicked the Nazis out of France. 
      But my hunch is, they did it again—saved democracy, that is—and people don't even know it, yet. I would bet money that once the Trump enormity is sent back to the gold-plated hell from whence it came, and the facts start dribbling out, it will be revealed that he tried to sound out the top brass to attempt a real overthrow of the government, rather than firing up his sedition rabble for their freeform storming of the Capitol. Do you have any doubt Trump did? You can't say it isn't the sort of thing he would do. It's exactly the sort of thing he would do. The sort of thing he has already done.
      I'm not certain. How could I be? Not 100 percent. Maybe whatever aide was in the room wrestled the red phone out of his hand. But call it a hunch. I would bet there is some ugly story of Trump browbeating a general or two, demanding they hand the country over to his tender mercies, and that general just shook his head and said, "Sir, that just isn't going to happen." What's Churchill's line after the Battle of Britain? Never was so much owed by so many to so few.

4 comments:

  1. I think the Armed Forces top brass knew, by last summer, that he was losing it, and getting as crazy as a shithouse rat...more so every day. Especially after that Bible-thumping photo-op. So they weren't going to carry out any executive orders to send Regular Army troops to "pacify" Washington, or to "occupy" Minneapolis, or Chicago, or Portland, or any other city.

    Not only was it obvious that Agent Orange was losing his marbles, but the top brass were probably in agreement that he was just plain...losing. The writing was on the wall by August, and it was just one word: "JOE!" Add to that the old Goldwater snark--"In your guts, you know he's nuts!"--and there was no way any "boots on the ground" fantasies would ever be realized.

    Maybe it WILL be revealed that Sniffy DID rant and rave and bellow about martial law or a military coup, or a "do-over" by force, after he lost the recounts and court battles. Instead of facing reality, he played his " I've been cheated! We wuz robbed! They stole it!" cards, in order to stampede the sheeple. But the military brass (and most everyone else in the room) could plainly see they were dealing with a delusional Baby Huey, a tantrum-throwing orange child. And, no doubt, making certain that Orange Julius would never become the man who would be king.

    There are far too many right-wingers and Trumpsters in the active ranks, but the folks at the top of the chain of command took an oath, long before 2017, to defend the Constitution. Not Dolt 45. Just one more day of his Orange Hell...and then it's Bye, Don. See you in court. And, hopefully, at the Greybar Hotel in Attica, New York.

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  2. The Joint Chiefs issued that statement last week about following only legal orders.
    That must of freaked out drumpf, as they were telling that fat criminal that they wouldn't go along with his invasion of Iran, so he could declare a national emergency & try to cancel the inauguration.

    And I'm betting that the "Football" containing the nuclear codes, that's with drumpf is a fake right now & the real one is with Pence, who is an obsequious fool, but at least retains some sanity.
    They did say there are going to be two "Footballs" tomorrow & that the one with drumpf in Florida will automatically be deactivated at Noon, but again, probably a fake, like so much else in Florida!

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  3. The whole conversation today has a Q-ish feel to it. Not that I would put it past Donald Trump to cook up any scheme whatsoever to retain power and stave off the day of accountability, but courting the generals isn't the way. It's the Colonels you need on your side to implement a successful coup. Generals are generally satisfied with the status quo, whereas Colonels are often eager to cut in line and take over and they often control the means to do so. Fortunately, Trump has pissed off the Colonels as much or more than he has the Generals. Though I too would be delighted to hear the fly-on-wall depictions of Trump attempting to wheedle military officers into betraying their country.

    john

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  4. Your point about the military seems on-target to me.

    We've paid the price for 4 years, and will continue to, given the 74 million, so we might as well appreciate the good with the bad. Meaning there have been a lot of downsides, but one upside of Trump being a lazy, navel-gazing, incompetent charlatan is that when it came time to overturn the results of the election, he just wasn't up to the challenge. Not that he wouldn't have been happy to benefit from other people doing it for him, but he's a dictator-wannabe who doesn't have the skills required of a dictator beyond being able to shoot his mouth and fingers off well enough to delude a remarkable number of marks. (Having the "best people" with regard to the legal challenges be Rudy and Jenna what's-her-face was a very good way to screw that enterprise up, of course, not that better lawyers would have been likely to make a difference.)

    Even in that Georgia phone call, he seemed to be begging for help more than demanding it. I can see him being the same way with the military. Hinting that he'd be happy to continue as Commander-in-Chief if they help install him, but in a kinda indirect way. You know, like the mob boss that he resembles more than a president.

    You know we're well through the looking glass when Dick Cheney was on the side of the angels in standing up to the guy with the open letter that he evidently orchestrated with the 10 former defense secretaries.

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