By now, one might think most of us Americans who aren't mesmerized by the charms of the Orange Fool, would be somewhat inured or even wholly immune to the blathering that comes out of his 'hooter'. But, then, along comes his comment that if things don't go his way as the future unfolds, his followers in law enforcement, the military......and bikers for Trump gangs, will become violent and it will be, "...very bad, very bad".
It doesn't take much effort to deduce what he's aiming at: we should be terrified that if we stand up to this asshole, he's going to have his trogs in these groups use violence against the American people at large. Really?
For starters, he wants us to believe that 'his followers' in the police and military are numerous, perhaps comprising the majority of these groups. And, then there is the astonishing implication that he'll turn his 'bikers' loose and let them commit mayhem.
This is where I am calling BULLSHIT. Yes, there are some far-right people in each of these groups, but when you get right down to the numbers, they are not what the Great Orange Porker wants us to believe they are. Commanders in the armed forces--all five services--are not going to look on as their commands go rogue. If there is one thing the military understands, it's that people have jobs and there is a chain of command. Everybody is expected to do their assigned job, whatever it may be, and to do so to the best of their ability.
In every army unit that I was assigned to, there were slackers, non-conformists and goldbrickers, but they were few, and the great exception. Most units have competent leadership, and it is an ongoing process to weed out those, at all levels of leadership, who either don't have the mustard, or are just not on board with the unit's mission. If there is one thing the U.S. Army is very good at doing, it is recognizing leadership potential and finding ways for those who exhibit it to fill slots where it is necessary and even essential.
I was in the infantry. The infantry soldier is the figure around which the entire rest of the army revolves. Tanks are great, as long as they're supported by infantry troops on the ground. By themselves, tanks are terribly vulnerable to all sorts of very efficient anti-tank weapons, some small enough to be easily concealed and carried by individual enemy soldiers. Artillery is awesome, so able to project explosive power even beyond the horizon, but, the only reason it can perform it's mission is because infantry units are going to move into the area they have just shelled.
No grunts....nothing happens.
And, all of the other branches of the army, the signal corps, the aviation units, the quartermaster corps, the military police...and on and on.....all exist to make certain that the infantry has the support and materials to get the job done. An infantry division....like the Big Red One, is an awesome gathering of skills and tools, all focused on getting one job done: transcending any enemy resistance and winning the day. If you were to see the army's flag, it has battle streamers, i.e. ribbons, attached to the top of the flag's staff....and one cannot help but marvel at how many there are, and what battles they commemorate. From Valley Forge to Belleau Wood, to Guadalcanal, to Normandy, and Bastogne, to Inchon, to the central highlands and Hue, to Fallujah and Baghdad, and so many more....the U.S. Army has a very proud history. Yes, it has had it's shortcomings and failures, but not due to the lack of quality of personnel, so much as to the quality of our politicians.
I am proud to be a veteran of the U.S. Army, and I tell you here and now that it will NEVER follow the orders of an insane idiot to attack the American people in the streets, forests and fields of this country. It will not happen.
You may rightly ask how I know this. I know it because the army is full of people just like myself....men and women who love this country and have a deep respect for integrity and honor. They will always find a way to sort out the confusing elements of a given situation and then find a way through that is as humanly close to 'doing the right thing' as possible.
Many of the pundits out there have speculated on how Trump aspires to become a full-blown dictator, and what it would take for that to happen. He has been frequently been compared to Mussolini and Hitler...among others...and his call for 'his followers' to become violent if he doesn't get his way, is certainly alarming on multiple levels. Hitler had his 'Brown Shirts', the Sturm Abteilung, SA, and Mussolini had his own Blackshirts. Both were organized mobs, made-up of street thugs and ne'rdowells who were happy to jump on the Nazi bandwagon, or the Fascist train, because it was not merely adventurous, but held out the promise of opportunities to break heads and even to kill those who were identified as 'enemies of the people'.....yes, the same term applied to the press by the despicable Great Hog in the White House.
If things do get chaotic in America, and it's conceivable that His Giant Egoness could actually create such a situation--like the Reichstag fire--in order to be able to declare an actual national emergency, which would come, part and parcel, with martial law and rigid controls. There may indeed be some groups on both the far-right and the far-left that are ready, even eager, to jump in and apply violence to the situation. There may even be 'death squads' such as those in Chile, Argentina, etc. who are telling themselves that they are acting 'patriotically' as they go about terrorizing the people in order to dominate them. But, there is another reality that most of the journos and pundits seem blithely unaware of: citizens like me. Well-armed, well-trained, and willing to fight, even to die, for what we KNOW is right. And, based on what I have personally observed over the decades, there are a lot more of us than there are of 'them'.
And, what's 'right' in America is freedom, a working code of Honor, born of a sense of what is really 'right' not just what one side wants. Peace is right. Non-violence is right. Freedom from harassment and assault by the police...or anybody...is right. The rights spelled out in the Constitution need to be respected and used as a coda for life. These rights are for ALL of us, not merely the privileged, the rich and the most manipulative.
What needs to stop, is one elite class engineering ways to bleed all the lower classes dry. Whether it's big pharma, big energy, big finance, the medical industry in its entirety, the education system, the economy that depends on its lower echelons being in debt peonage...i.e. debt slavery....all of that needs to either go away or drastically morph into something more humane.
Donald J. Trump is a deluded and clinically insane leader. Too many psychiatric professionals have been willing to step forward and say this and it's based on their ongoing observations of the man's behavior. Our president is fucking nuts. It's not up for debate anymore. It used to be, but he keeps giving us new material that re-confirms the diagnosis....like his current assault on John McCain. This man not so secretly pines to become a dictator and be in office for life. He has no observable conscience and has only a tenuous grasp on reality. So, the idea that he'll have great legions of soldiers, sailors, marines, police from all around the country....coming together to pummel the rest of us into submission to his will, is simply fatuous. Even if he makes a stab at it, it won't work. Those bad-ass bikers he thinks are a force to be reckoned with......will crumble and wither under direct fire from armed veterans and others like myself.
Hey Donny-boy, bring it. We're waitin' on ya.
A society that has billionaires calling all the shots, and a vast under-class that has no hope for a better life...is a society hurrying on its way to self-destruction. It will eventually either implode, or even explode and chaos and suffering will rule the day.
And.................none of this even takes into account the vast and growing scientific body of factual knowledge that clearly demonstrates how we are destroying our host planet. That is a whole other ball of wax.
