In Favor of Massacres (and Incompetence)

Yesterday the Pentagon's Chief Disinformation News Anchor and, apparently, Secretary of Defense Peter Hegseth announced that the 20 soldiers awarded the Medal of Honor for participating in the Wounded Knee Massacre in 1890 would get to keep their medals, after more than a century of controversy.

Wounded Knee was a massacre - so obviously so that it has not been excised or moderated in history books.  Nearly three hundred Lakota - men, women and children - were killed.  About 25 Army soldiers were also killed, almost exclusively by friendly fire (the massacre started when, deployed in a full circle around some of the Lakota, they started firing).  The Medals of Honor were handed out to disguise the rampant corruption and incompetence of the Indian Agents and the US Army officer who lead the troops, James Forsythe, and the equally corrupt Harrison Administration in Washington, which was trying to manipulate the people of South Dakota, where the massacre took place, to elect a state legislature who would send a Republican Senator to Washington to support higher tariffs.

I'm not making that up.  The Wounded Knee massacre was about higher tariffs.

But, says Peter Hegseth, the men were “brave soldiers... we’re making it clear that they deserve those medals.”  So... medals for massacres.  A chilling glimpse of the future.  Even the My Lai murderers weren't given medals, although one did go to jail.  Medals were given to the helicopter crew who finally intervened and stopped the massacre.

But we can't, I guess, expect the Secretary of Defense (soon to be Secretary of War) to know much history.  Maybe that big meeting of the entire US military command staff he's scheduled for next week is going to be about the Final Solution.  Medals all around.

More about Wounded Knee and the political context here and here.

Rubicon

 Can I say something else about the Roman Republic/Empire?  I'll be short.  Feel free to move on if you're not into it.  

The fall of the Republic and the establishment of the Empire happened over a span of many years.  Rules were bent; favors were given, political boundaries crossed.  The very structural and cultural foundations of the Republic were disassembled and discarded, little by little.  The guardrails were removed.

And then, in BC 49, Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon.

This was the one clear, defining moment when the Republic died and the Empire was born (that's why the phrase "crossing the Rubicorn" still has significant meaning today).  Caesar was the Governor of Cisalpine Gaul, and had just finished a military campaign with a standing army.  No Governor was allowed to bring a standing army beyond the borders of his province.  Caesar did, against the orders of the Roman Senate, for a number of interesting reasons, and began his campaign to take Rome by crossing the river, the southern boundary of his province.  Once installed in Rome, he became dictator for life, appointed his adopted son Octavian (later Caesar Augustus) as the first true Emperor, and the Republic was dead.

So all of this is to ask the question:  What will be Trump's Rubicon?  His administration, like the late-stage Roman Republic, is ignoring rules and law, encouraging corruption, and dismantling the guardrails.  What will it look like when he drags the unwilling American people past the point of no return?  

I believe that he will see the river, stride cockily up to its banks, strike its surface with his staff, and declare himself the master of the river and promise that he will lay waste to the other side.  Then he'll turn around, wander off and do something else.

You heard it here first.

True Things 3

You probably know that there been at least one example - a famous one - of a republic with term-limited leaders becoming an empire with emperors for life.  This example is, of course, the decline of the Roman Republic, in the first century AD, and the rise of the Roman Empire, ruled over absolutely by emperors who were more likely than not to act in bizarre and unhinged ways.

It didn't help that the Roman Republic was rigged so that a small number of wealthy men got to make all the decisions.

Those of us who will not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.

Put Forward Without Comment

 

True Things 2

In April of this year, Republican Representative Keith Self, from Texas's 3rd Congressional District, quoted Joseph Goebbels regarding freedom of thought in America.  The quote?  Who cares.  I mean, he quoted Joseph Goebbels - chief propogandist for the Nazi Party - in public!  But here it is anyway:

It is the absolute right of the state to supervise the formation of public opinion.

Self credited Goebbels during his statement. 

True Things 1 (a new feature of New World II)

Charlie Kirk's wife Erika competed in the 2012 Miss America pageant, a pageant owned at the time by Donald Trump.

Gary Becomes a Terrorist

Boy, I did not have this on my Golden Years bingo card.  But here it is:  I am, and I am proud to be, a terrorist.  A domestic terrorist, no less.

Yesterday, King Donald the Absurd and his Clown Car from Hell declared that Antifa is a domestic terrorist organization.  You can look elsewhere for analysis regarding the difference between an organization and an ideology, the fantastical accusations smeared all over the declaration, and the troubling manipulation involved in this kind of calling names and throwing stones at one more thing you want your ignorant followers to be afraid of.

So opposing fascism in America is now a terrorist activity.  Fine.  I am opposed to fascism, and at this point the best thing I can do to join the fight against fascism is to write the truth, plus things I believe, in this blog.  As I've said before - come at me, bro.

By the way, my father was Antifa too.  He and millions of his comrades kicked fascist butt all over Europe in the 1940s.  He didn't want to go, but he did, because he thought it was the right thing to do.

Me too.