His Generals

     One of the saddest realities of our now officially dysfunctional government is that we've normalized and have come to calmly accept two chickenhawks berating and brow beating 800 generals and admirals (plus their senior enlisted advisors). That's what we played witness to yesterday in Quantico, VA.

     One is a rubber-headed moron and drunk who'd never ascended any higher than the rank of major and the other is a fat tyrant who dodged the draft five times over fictional bone spurs and equated his sexual promiscuity to serving in Vietnam. The Purple Hearts he owns were given to him by demented veterans.

     Pete Hegeth talked down to our nation's military leaders as if they were 12 years-olds being lectured by their father. He railed about fat generals, telling them how to shave and do push-ups and doing the usual spiel abut "woke" culture. Looking at the pictures of these military leaders, many of whom being decorated combat veterans, I wished I could get in the minds of all 800 of them and know what they were thinking.

     I'm sure their private thoughts weren't all flattering.

     Military officers, especially flag officers and those of command rank, don't appreciated being talked down to and having their ability to lead impugned and questioned. And not only was this hastily-called meeting of our nation's top brass reckless and ill-advised, it served no practical purpose. It didn't address combat readiness, force protection, how to confront our enemies, etc. It was all right wing culture war bullshit.

     But as embarrassing as Hegseth's speech was, that was nothing compared to Donnie Dementia.

     Obviously, he thought he was walking into another rally in which he obviously thought he was going to hear a constant chorus of Yee Haws and Boo-yahs. If so, he seriously misread the room. Military leaders are, by their very training, some of the most stoic people on the planet and I'm sure the same applies to their foreign counterparts.

     It must have thrown Trump for a loop. As with the Justice Department and every other federal agency, Trump obviously thinks they work for him and that he deserves their unconditional adulation. During his first shitshow of an administration, he kept referring to our military leadership as "my generals", as if they were tin figurines on a board.

     But it quickly descended into a tired list of his grievances, at one point calling Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker "a stupid governor".  Then he ticked off a list of cities and states, all run by Democrats, that he's either illegally occupied or is about to occupy, calling them crime-riddled cesspools. Then he said something quite alarming: He told our military leadership they should use the cities he's targeting as "training grounds".

    People, this is the stuff of dystopian nightmares, movies and fiction. Combat training is supposed to carried out out of public view on military bases, not American cities. And what Trump basically told them yesterday was to shoot and kill anyone who vaguely resembled a protester.

     These officers have a duty, not a right but an actual duty to refuse to execute any illegal order given to them even by their Commander in Chief. We know he's not above doing these things. Witness June 1st 2020 when he illegally ordered the military to clear a street in Washington DC so he could hold a meaningless photo op in front of a church so he could hold an upside down Bible that he borrowed from some random person.

      And my fading hope that these 800 people knew what they were dealing with- a fraudulent "president" who couldn't stand the very idea of wearing a military uniform after his tin soldier days in that military school to which Mommy and Daddy had shunted him when they couldn't control him, anymore. I sincerely hope they were already planning to disobey the illegal orders to invade our cities that will come from a dictatorial psychopath slipping further and further into dementia.