Tyranny and Waste

 

Tyranny and Waste

“The facts do not justify the President’s actions in Illinois, even giving substantial deference to his assertions… Federal facilities, including the processing facility in Broadview, have remained open despite regular demonstrations against the administration’s immigration policies. And though federal officers have encountered sporadic disruptions, they have been quickly contained by local, state, and federal authorities.” 

7th Circuit 3-0 ruling upholding a ban on the use of federal troops in Chicago

Picture millions of federal workers either wrongfully fired (standby for the costly lawsuits), furloughed or working without pay, all in an effort to sustain massive regulatory and tax cut almost exclusively providing the big benefits for the richest Americans, cutting medical and survival food services to the lower rungs of our economic ladder and spending untold billions of dollars to federalize national guard troops to be used to invade blue cities under any number of false or questionable premises. Add the unilateral decision to tear down the East Wing of the White House to accommodate building an American Versailles, a ballroom (named for the current President) fit for kings. They tell you construction won’t cost taxpayers a dime, but even forgetting about the upkeep and maintenance of this extravagance, the list of donors is a Who’s Who of those most likely to need governmental licenses, merger approvals or a get-out-of-jail card from a President who wields a personal cadre of thousands of lawyers within his administration, already jumping to implement his wishes without question. A fat paragraph defining massive waste and even greater corruption opportunities.

Even as Trump’s tariffs kick consumer prices through the roof, even as his popularity is plummeting fast than a rock toss off the Empire State Building, Trump knows that the key to his assumption of formal total control relies on gerrymandering elections, enjoying the carte blanche the Supreme Court has given him and, most of all, controlling the American military to follow his command without question, even if it means initiating attacks on foreign nations or deploying federal troops to assert unambiguous control of cities, where those who will never generate a majority to vote for him or his minions, despise his thinly disguised effort to subjugate and intimidate them into blind submission. Congress is already his, GOP governors have initiated the gerrymander that ends the possibility of a representational democracy, and election monitors are being sent to certain blue areas to let voters know they are being watched, and perhaps even photographed.

As with most dictators, even those who extend their quest for pure autocracy beyond “day one,” controlling a pliant military is essential to crush any opposition. The selection of a former junior officer, a recovering (?) alcoholic, to helm the Department of Defense/War, followed by a massive purging of both generals and the ranks of career soldiers, leaving only a Trump-loyal force, is part of this effort to have a military ready to do the President’s bidding without question. In mid-October, little man, reservist major Pete “Secretary of Defense/War” Hegseth, after severely lecturing a body of most of our flag rank officers and top NCOs, demanded that members of the press stationed at the Pentagon either sign a pledge to report only official Pentagon press release (and nothing else about our military) or surrender their press badges and vacate their desks inside the Pentagon.

Brian Stelter, writing on October 15th for CNN, noted: “Only one media outlet, the relatively obscure pro-Trump channel One America News, has publicly said it agreed to Hegseth’s new terms for credentialing… Trump-aligned outlets with more robust newsrooms, like Fox News, Newsmax and The Daily Caller, have all rejected the policy… Military Reporters and Editors, a professional organization, said in a statement that the policy represents ‘an unprecedented attack on the First Amendment and on the American people, who deserve accurate reporting on how the world’s largest military is funded and managed with their tax dollars.’

“Military officers who regularly liaise with the press at the Pentagon have privately expressed regret about the clampdown. One longtime military reporter described ‘lots of grim, sad faces and apologies.’… The reporter, who requested anonymity to relay private conversations, said ‘there’s a thought among some of them that in a country where the military and civilians are somewhat living in parallel worlds, this will not help bridge any gaps.’”

CNN’s Haley Britzky, writing on October 25th noted even Congress would be cut out of the information flow: “The Pentagon is barring nearly all Defense Department personnel, including military commanders, from talking to Congress or state lawmakers unless they have received prior approval from the agency’s office of legislative affairs, according to a memo signed this month by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and obtained by CNN… ‘Unauthorized engagements with Congress by [Defense Department] personnel acting in their official capacity, no matter how well-intentioned, may undermine Department-wide priorities critical to achieving our legislative objectives,’ says the memo.

“The directive applies to the civilian leaders of each military branch, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, all combatant commanders and Defense Intelligence offices. The memo, dated October 15, does carve out an exception for the Pentagon Inspector General office, the agency’s internal watch dog.” So, all of this, directed at giving the President the unilateral rights, as he openly claims, to deploy the military at home or overseas as he alone directs, without any approval from any other governmental body, including Congress.

As the Supreme Court considers another emergency docket request from Donald Trump – to wit: if there are any guardrails against a President ordering federal troops into cities and states where mayors and governors strenuously object – you have to remember that this mockery of our high Court has already given Trump an unjustified 21-2 record on the so-called “shadow docket” (emergency” appeals for interim decisions without opinions or an examination by the Court of the underlying merits) to prevent lower court orders against the administration’s lawlessness from going into effect. This may be the last hope of stemming Donald Trump, who has already coopted the Department of Justice as his personal ministry of “I am your retribution,” from unilateral control, without provable justification, of our armed forces… anywhere. And if Supreme Court does anything other than uphold the trial court and the 7th Circuit ban on the use of federal troops without provable justification, it may well be game, set and match for the final decision needed to replace our democracy with a Trump-led autocracy.

I’m Peter Dekom, and there are no issues which would seriously benefit the quality of life even for the vast majority of his MAGA followers, if democracy is de facto repealed by the Supreme Court, as evidenced by the consistency of their pro-Trump docket decisions without so much as an examination of the case or an opinion justifying their decisions.