eVille Times

Jun 6, 2020

Falling From Grace

It's said that grace is but glory begun, and glory is but grace perfected.

America's amazing military is cycling back down to the depths.

I know a retired Army 4-star, Paul Gorman, who came out of his tour in Vietnam thoroughly demoralized. He was ready to take his retirement as a colonel and get on to the next phase in his life, whatever that turned out to be.

But he was persuaded to stay, and along with many others, he helped rebuild the US military into something we could be proud of again (mostly - obviously, there're some not-so-good things too, but that's a different part of the story).

The point is that Gen Gorman is alive today, and looking even more askance on recent developments than he did when he decided to go against a lifetime of voting straight Republican in order to vote for Hillary in 2016.

NYT:

Gen. Mark A. Milley was never meant to be President Trump’s top military adviser.

Defense Secretary Jim Mattis had sent him to the White House in late 2018 to interview for the top American military post across the Atlantic, with its grand title: supreme allied commander Europe. Mr. Mattis wanted someone else, the quiet and cerebral Gen. David L. Goldfein of the Air Force, to be Mr. Trump’s next chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

With the president souring on Mr. Mattis, his recommendation quashed General Goldfein’s chances. During the meeting, the president — who already liked General Milley’s brash demeanor as Army chief of staff — asked which job was better. And General Milley went for the top prize: by law, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is the nation’s top officer and the senior military adviser to the president.

But in the last several days, after accompanying the president from the White House to a church in his camouflage uniform as National Guard troops in helmets and riot gear deployed across the country, General Milley has quickly become the face of what could amount to the American military’s fall from public grace, to levels not seen since the Vietnam War.

“Milley (he’s a general !?!?) should not have walked over to the church with Trump,” Michael Hayden, the retired Air Force general who has directed both the National Security Agency and the C.I.A., said on Twitter, noting that he “was appalled to see him in his battle dress.”

General Milley’s decision to join Mr. Trump “was an egregious display of bad judgment, at best,” said Paul D. Eaton, a retired major general and veteran of the Iraq war, who now serves as a senior adviser at VoteVets.org. “At worst, Milley appears confused about the oath he took to support and defend the Constitution — not a president. I suggest the general get quickly unconfused, or resign.”

General Milley, his friends say, has agonized over the events of the past week. But he has also managed to persuade Mr. Trump not to invoke the 1807 Insurrection Act to deploy active-duty troops across the country to quell protests, a line that a number of American military officials say they will not cross, even if the president orders it.

It is largely because of General Milley, administration officials say, that Mr. Trump has not ordered it yet despite his threat to do so.

The general went face to face with his boss on Monday during a heated discussion in the Oval Office over whether to send troops into the streets, according to people in the room. He argued that the scattered fires and looting in some places were dwarfed by peaceful protests, and should be handled by the states, which command local law enforcement and the National Guard.

General Milley won the immediate battle in the Oval Office meeting on Monday. But shortly after, he was right in the middle of a different war — the kind of political war where the military does not belong.

Defense Department officials say General Milley believed that he was accompanying Mr. Trump and his entourage to review National Guard troops and other law enforcement personnel outside Lafayette Park; that he did not know the park had just been cleared of peaceful protests by security forces using tear gas; that an Australian news crew had just been beaten by baton-wielding police on live TV; that frightened teenagers were sobbing two blocks away.

Milley didn't know what 45* was getting him into.

It's easy to shit on Milley for being "naive", but we have to understand that a guy like Milley has spent his entire professional life steeped in the values of Honor and Discipline and Duty. When he encounters a guy like 45*, who has no honor, Milley can almost be excused for not always stopping to consider that he'll be used and abused at 45*'s whim - almost be excused.

- snip -

Once Mr. Trump arrived at St. John’s Church, holding a Bible, and it became clear that the moment was only a photo op, General Milley disappeared from view. He is nowhere to be seen when the president motions for other officials to join him for a photograph, in which he is now flanked by his press secretary, defense secretary, national security adviser and attorney general.

But the damage had been done.

“Ridiculous. General Milley, who I respect, is embarrassing himself,” Michael McFaul, a former American ambassador to Russia under President Barack Obama, tweeted.

Pentagon officials say General Milley was horrified afterward, and he has not appeared before cameras since.

I guess we can only hope that Mark Milley learns from this - adapt, improvise, overcome - and maybe he is learning, because shortly after that walking cluster fuck, this came from his office:

note: "We all committed our lives to the idea that is America - we will stay true to that oath and the American people."

Hope is always justified.

Optimism not so much.

COVID-19

Number of Cases is ticking back up. 10-20 days from now should tell us what's up.

Today's Today

June 6, 1944

And it signaled that the world had begun to change in ways that are even more significant than what those guys did that day.

An Ad

Republican Voters Against Trump:

What We're Up Against

It's gotta be pretty plain by now: We're way off into the propaganda weeds.

Snopes:

In June 2020, as protests took place across the United States against racism and police violence, a number of social media users started to claim that six police officers had died during the previous 10 days while working at these demonstrations.

A version of this claim on Facebook was shared more than 20,000 times. Mark Levin, a conservative talk radio personality, also spread this rumor and accused the media of ignoring these deaths:

Six police officers were not killed in a 10-day period (circa June 2020) while working the protests against racial injustice and police violence. The article linked by Levin is several months old, is not related to the current protests, and does not list officers who were “killed” or “murdered” by Black Lives Matter activists.

The Guardian:

False social media rumors about so-called antifa activists traveling en masse into rural areas of America have led rightwing vigilantes to carry out armed patrols of small cities and towns in the western United States and beyond.

In some cases, local activists planning peaceful protests in support of the Black Lives Matter movement and in protest at the killing of George Floyd by a white Minneapolis police officer have been inundated with death threats.

Since Donald Trump tweeted recently that antifa would be declared a terrorist group, the term has gained broader currency on the American right and is seen as a dire threat. In fact, it simply means “anti-fascist” and is used to describe a wide spectrum of leftist and anarchist groups and individuals. It has no existence as a separate organization.

The FBI has said there is “no evidence”NBC News has reported of antifa involvement in violence linked to the Floyd protests and one supposed antifa group posting violent rhetoric on the internet was in fact linked to white supremacists.

But in the Idaho city of Coeur d’Alene groups of 30-50 men armed with semi-automatic weapons have occupied downtown streets on successive evenings this week, guarding against supposed busloads of radical leftists rumored to traveling from cities such as Spokane or Seattle, according to local residents and social media materials obtained by the Guardian.

These people are stupid frightened little children, and they seem hell-bent on the notion that the best way they can prove their virility is by killing somebody.

Jun 5, 2020

Failing

WaPo, Greg Sargent:

We need to step back and clearly state a point that should be obvious but keeps getting lost amid clever hair-splitting and obfuscation.

President Trump and his partner in authoritarian nationalist militarism, Republican Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas, want you to see mass protests against police brutality sweeping this country as a fundamentally destructive, dangerous force — as something to be feared.

They don’t want you to see these events as they are — largely a sign of people exercising their fundamental rights in our democracy, with mostly peaceful protests registering profound and legitimate abhorrence at continued systemic racism and police violence, and demanding reform. They want you to see the protesters, not police brutality, as the real threat.

They’re losing the argument, as a new batch of polls confirms. How and why they’re losing it sheds light on the ugly reality of what they’re really trying to accomplish, and on why it’s heartening that it’s failing.

A new ABC News/Ipsos poll finds that Trump’s standing on the protests is in the toilet: Only 32 percent of Americans approve of Trump’s handling of the response to the death of George Floyd, who died under the knee of a white officer. Sixty-six percent disapprove.

The ABC News poll also finds that 74 percent think Floyd’s death is a “sign of broader problems in the treatment of African Americans by police.”

Tellingly, this represents a huge increase: In 2014, after two other high-profile deaths of African American men at the hands of police, only 43 percent of Americans said those instances pointed to a broader problem. That’s according to another ABC News poll at the time.

Meanwhile, a CBS poll this week also finds that a majority of Americans, 57 percent, now think police are more likely to use deadly force against a black person than against a white person. That’s up from 43 percent in 2016.

And earlier this week, a Monmouth poll found that 57 percent believe police in a dangerous situation are more likely to use excessive force against blacks. It also found that 57 percent say the anger leading to protests is “fully justified.” And a combined 54 percent say protesters’ actions are either partly justified (37 percent) or fully justified (17 percent).

Take all this together, and it’s reasonable to suggest majorities hold a nuanced view of what’s happening: More Americans than ever recognize systemic racism and police brutality as intertwined societal problems. Majorities see the protests as rooted in legitimate grievances and see much protest activity, though not outbreaks of violence, as understandable.

Trump and Cotton do not want majorities to see what’s happening this way.

Trump keeps threatening to escalate force against the violence — vowing to invoke the Insurrection Act of 1807 to send troops into U.S. cities, while claiming we’re under attack from “domestic terror.”

And Cotton, in his widely criticized op-ed piece, claimed “rioters have plunged many American cities into anarchy." He called for troops to be sent in, on the grounds that “one thing above all else will restore order to our streets: an overwhelming show of force to disperse, detain and ultimately deter lawbreakers.”

Both Trump and Cotton, of course, mouth words of respect for the legitimacy of peaceful protests. Cotton claims he finds it “revolting” that anyone would conflate rioters with “peaceful, law-abiding protesters,” while admiring his glinting halo in the mirror.

But to pretend that the story ends here — to pretend their arguments aren’t deliberately conceived to create a profoundly distorting impression of these protests, while giving themselves plausible deniability for doing so — is to allow bad faith in argumentation to triumph.

Cotton spends the first three paragraphs of his op-ed depicting a dangerous threat to the country in extraordinarily lurid terms. He does so in a “slippery and dishonest" manner, as Michelle Goldberg demonstrates, badly inflating the proportion of violence endured by police, relative to that suffered by protesters.

Cotton also badly downplays the fact that many governors oppose Trump sending in the military and/or have condemned Trump’s call for more “toughness” on the grounds that this will make the situation worse.

This omission allows Cotton to get away with pretending the opposition resides only in “chic salons” and to frame his position as the “law and order” one. That’s harder to get away with when governors themselves don’t think what Trump and Cotton want will serve that purpose, and/or think it will exacerbate tensions.

Proportionality in argumentation matters. Yes, Cotton piously claims to respect law-abiding protesters. But the sum total of his arguments are designed to create a propagandistic impression, i.e., that the current state of affairs is so awash in chaos and violence that calling in the military is merited.

This is how Cotton wants the overall situation to be perceived. We are not obliged to pretend not to understand what Cotton is really up to here.

Similarly, Trump justifies his threat of more force by claiming we are under assault from “domestic terrorists,” language Cotton has also used. But this is an utterly baseless claim. It, too, is designed to mislead the country about the true nature of the moment.

And yet, approval of Trump’s handling of the situation keeps sinking, even as majorities see the protests in a positive light and as rooted in legitimate criticisms of real and acknowledged societal problems.

Trump and Cotton won’t level with you about what they’re actually trying to accomplish with their arguments. But majorities simply refuse to see the protests as they hope. Their efforts are failing badly.