The Grand Illusion
Trump has made no secret of the fact that he’s vindictive, and recent events continue to illustrate that, but they also suggest that he’s also biased and sexist.
In firing the Chief of Naval Operations (Admiral Lisa Franchetti), the U.S. Coast Guard Commandant (Admiral Linda Fagan) U.S. Navy Vice Admiral Shoshana Chatfield, Trump removed the most senior women in the U.S. Military. He also removed General C.Q. Brown, Jr. (who is black) as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Trump then fired General Tim Haugh, commander of U.S. Cyber Command and director of the National Security Agency, as well as Haugh’s civilian deputy, Wendy Noble.
The way matters are going, it appears likely that all will be replaced by white males.
Trump has also renewed his attacks on Chris Krebs, former Director of the government’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), because Krebs had the temerity to say that the 2020 election was fair and free and not stolen. Trump’s latest attack on Krebs consists of removing his security clearance – as well as the clearances of all the employees at SentinelOne, where Krebs is now the CIO — and then issuing an executive order launching an investigation of Krebs.
This follows Trump’s removal of Secret Service protection for Mike Pompeo and John Bolton, former high officials in his first term, for being insufficiently supportive of him, i.e., failing to applaud his every move.
Yet Trumpists follow their Fuhrer like sheep, seemingly unaware that sheep always get shorn or slaughtered.
The creeping – okay, not really creeping, more like sprinting – fascism overtaking my country is just leaving me more and more furious. Waiting for the midterms is less and less likely to be effective. I’m sure an executive order banning them is on the way.
We’ll have to act. Peacefully, of course. But if we don’t resist, we submit.
Agreed. We’ve fully entered the “what can be done?” stage of authoritarian rise where history looks back at us as passive sheep enabling something truly terrible. I only hope there will be some act that jolts enough of the country into action that another outcome becomes possible.
I knew things were going to be bad, and I was on the pessimistic side of my friends’ opinions, but I hadn’t expected things to be this bad.
I can understand people in the USA thinking that they can wait for the midterms, but that may be too late.
I have seen two variants of the same thought attributed to Martin Niemoller and Dietrich Bonhoeffer and I never expected it to be something which I would seriously have to say to US citizens. I had read about the 1930s islotaionists and McCarthyism in the 1950s.
First they came for the Communists, but I was not a Communist so I did not speak out. Then they came for the Socialists and the Trade Unionists, but I was neither, so I did not speak out. Then they came for the Jews, but I was not a Jew so I did not speak out. And when they came for me, there was no one left to speak out for me.
The US has always claimed to be a nation ruled by the people for the people and its citizens being exceptional. That is why even now people around the world who have seen and accepted both premises cannot believe that the US is after all just human and thus just ordinary. Caving in to a bully seemingly supported strongly by an anarchical ideology whose leaders behaved in the same way.
Being fearful is a human defence mechanism; but a weak and a strange one for the home of the brave. Alistaire MacLean wrote how “Fear is the Key” is the way authoritarians’ rule.
There has never been a US President so diametrically opposite to George Washington.
Not Andrew Jackson who has been variously described as a frontiersman personifying the independence of the American West, a slave-owning member of the Southern gentry, and a populist who promoted faith in the wisdom of the ordinary citizen. He has been represented as a statesman who substantially advanced the spirit of democracy, and upheld the foundations of American constitutionalism, as well as an autocratic demagogue who crushed political opposition and trampled the law.
Nor Richard Nixon. James MacGregor Burns asked of Nixon, “How can one evaluate such an idiosyncratic president, so brilliant and so morally lacking?” Evaluations of his presidency have proven complex, contrasting his presidency’s domestic and foreign policy successes with the acrimonious circumstances of his departure.
Perhaps not even the 45th US President!
The time to show just how exceptional and brave we are, is now, and not tomorrow. This is starting in the judiciary but it is past time for it to be shown by congress; specifically the majority of the US House.