The author was trying to shield themselves from the despair of political doomscrolling by reading books, but was dismayed to learn of Trump’s plans to declare a national emergency and use the military to carry out mass deportations of undocumented immigrants. The author speaks with anti-imperialist veteran friends who remind them that this is not the first time Trump has threatened to deploy the military against immigrants, and that actually carrying out such a plan would be a logistical and legal nightmare, requiring a massive expansion of the prison system at immense cost. The author argues that the only reasonable response for active-duty soldiers is to refuse to carry out these immoral orders, drawing parallels to the G.I. resistance during the Vietnam War. They advocate reviving networks of support like “G.I. coffeehouses” to provide a space for soldiers to organize and resist. Experts emphasize that troops have a moral responsibility to disobey illegal and immoral orders, and that immigrants are not the true enemy - it is the ruling class elite who are stealing from the working class. The author acknowledges the impulse to retreat into escapism, but argues that now is the time to collectively challenge these dangerous policies.
The US military is aggressively apolitical. They’re not going to refuse orders from the CiC without those orders being blatantly and explicitly illegal.
The whole mass deportation thing is blatantly absurd. There won’t be a mass deportation. There might be an attempt at a mass deportation, but there’s no way a bunch of guys who can’t figure out how to book a room at the Four Seasons are gonna figure out all the problems. There’s just not the resources or other places to detain, move, and deposit that many people. It’s the Wall Part II. It’s just gonna be the existing policy, but with press conferences claiming they did something.
To be a little fair, the military is very competent when it wants to be. If the military was onboard with the plan then the most competence the Trump team would need would be to give them the order. They’d start cordon and searches on the daily.
The military isn’t on board though.
Y’all always getting the enlisted men mixed up with the officers. They are not the same. The officers, from the top down, will not go for this.
Been saying since the first Trump admin, he will eventually enlist civilian bully-boys for the task. Red Shirts if you will. It’s obvious the military brass won’t go along. It’s obvious there’s not enough state or local officers, of any kind, to do this.
And lookee here! Steve Bannon’s already saying the obvious and talking about enlisting “local help”. Perhaps we shall call them Committees of Public Safety?
If I was a fascist looking to carry out mass deportations I would probably just give federal badges to young veterans and police officers willing to do so. I get mass deportations with no resistance in the ranks and a powerful paramilitary force I can deploy to squash protests after my secret police of convicted white supremacists infiltrated them and caused violence.
Sure it might take a few months to setup and a few years to really get going but it will be faster than trying to burn through enough officers to get an entire chain of command willing to follow illegal orders.
More likely is that all the business owners employing undocumented immigrants will whine about it — like has happened in Florida and Texas whenever their legislatures are on the verge of passing some law that would take away their cheap labor.
This is exactly why it will unfortunately work. You go to far too many doctors dentist whatever’s offices. You will see Fox News or worse. Even at the VA you’ll see Fox News etc. When it comes to the officer core and career military people you might see some push back. But most of the enlisted will be on board for this day one sadly.
The military is about 60/40 partisan. But beyond that they are also extremely pro Constitution. It’s entirely possible that they agree mass deportations are necessary, but will not follow the illegal order to go round them up. There’s not a whole lot of hardcore MAGA beyond the low ranks because Trump has spent the last 9 years insulting the military in every way he can. Including denying casualties and stealing school funding for military kids. No amount of Fox News allows the combat arms community to forget stuff like that.
The very idea that the military is all die hard Republican is a Fox News myth.
A military without sufficient officer cooperation is incapable of anything beyond banditry
Its amazing how much propaganda Americans are exposed to on a dailly basis.
Hollywood basically a propaganda machine that always paints the US as a superior power.
News agencies at all levels repeating the same stories from a predefined script.
It’s funny how some Americans straight up deny the existence of any propaganda while there’s so many fucking movies of American Snipers and Colonel Badasses and whatnot.
Like if those movies were equally realistic as they are now (movies require some flair I’m not above sometimes enjoying a nice American war movie, propaganda or not), but depicted like, Russian or Chinese soldiers instead of American ones, they’d seem ridiculous. But as they depict American heroes, people don’t see them that way as much.
It wouldn’t surprise me at all that extraordinary humans arise in extraordinary situations…
True enough.
You need to go read some medal of honor reports. There’s certainly some hilariously propagandistic movies out there, but there’s also so much Hollywood could never put in a movie because nobody would believe it.
Sure, I’m not denying there has been heroic shit.
But so probably so has the other side. Like I’m sure at one point there’s been Russian and Chinese “heroes” throughout the decades. Japanese especially didn’t mind dying in combat, but usually in the Western movies, that’s depicted as them jumping up completely in sight, yelling something for three seconds, then blowing themselves up. I’m not saying that didn’t happen either, but I’m sure with the whole “take as many as you can and don’t care about your own life” mentality there probably were some heroic shenanigans the Japanese also pulled off.
It just wouldn’t really seem like that from our perspective, because we don’t believe in the reasons why he did it as well as we can project ourselves onto the protagonists of war movies that are from our countries.
From war movies, you’d sort of might get the impression that Americans pretty much single-handedly won world war two. Now by no means do I mean to put down the massive effort they put in and the effect it had, but Russians did quite a lot indeed, like the British, and the Americans didn’t join for a few years.
It’s all just about perceptions.
A war movie that followed both armies would actually go a long ways towards puncturing the idea of a “heroic death”.
They’re not unique but yes absolutely. They can wake up in the morning to the Sinclair local TV news propaganda. Listen to AM radio propaganda on their way to work. And come home to unwind to Fox News and oan propaganda in the evening they can basically go a whole entire day without contact with the truth.
You are absolutely correct, the USA is not unique in this regard. Its difficult to spot propaganda when living inside the bubble
This channel looks kinda sus but the clip is just a re-post and highly relevant. https://youtu.be/KFyxDKw6DZc
There will certainly be commanders who resist if they think it’s unlawful. We may just need to wait to really see. I hope there will be resistance.
It’s a potentially comforting thought. Until you realize. That those are the people Republicans are targeting at the behest of trump. He had babysitters in his first term. It’s time he’s going to get his loyal Hitler generals. And he will Purge both of the military and the civilians bureaucrats from their offices in order to install loyal sycophants.
They haven’t forgotten their training. Militias may become a thing.
Cool. They can fight the pre-existing militias that have been organizing against us for the last 50 years.
Those commanders will be replaced
It is really not easy to just replace commanders
No one said they had to be good at their job. They just have to be yes men.
And then the next guy down the line, and on, and on, until you’re left with incompetent yes men who couldn’t fight their way out of a wet cardboard box.
Alternative headline: Why It Will Definitely Happen
The end game of this would be a military coup of the US government which is probably not the worst thing that could happen. Sadly i am not confident that the soldiers have the balls to do it.
I mean maybe not the worst but pretty fucking bad I’d say. Look at Egypt. Just because your enemy is in power doesn’t mean a military junta would be better.
If your population cant agree on whether they should build concentration camps or not, then i think they need a bit of civil war as a treat. Nah but really it cant go on like this, they need some big change and that wont happen without some big conflict.
You mean if someone reminded them that they could be court-martialed and imprisoned for violating Posse Comitatus?
“I’ll be pardoned”
Who gets to say what is illegal or immoral though? Seems denying an illegal genocide has it’s consequences.
The law says what’s illegal.
Morals tell you what isn’t.
I have no clue how you arrived at the second sentence.
If you condition your soldiers to accept the illegal acts of others, then it is psychologically easier for them to conduct illegal themselves.
And other concepts of evil.
