@Capital_Room comments on "Culture War Roundup for the week of May 6, 2024

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 6, 2024

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Capital_Room rather dementor-like 6mo ago

From my limited understanding, the president is the head of the executive, and any democratic legitimacy of the federal bureaucracy ultimately comes from the fact that the bureaucrats are enacting the will of a democratically (or however you call the electoral college system) elected president.

Again, this is how it's supposed to be, on paper. But that matters as much as when Bart Simpson was sent back to kindergarten:

Bart: Lady, I'm supposed to be in the fourth grade.

Kindergarten teacher: Sounds to me like someone's got a case of the s'pose'das

The law isn't what's written on paper, the law is whatever is enforced. There's how the "employee handbook" says a workplace is supposed to work, and then there's how the workplace actually operates. (The very existence of "bothering by the book" and malicious compliance illustrates that there's a difference between the two, sometimes rather vast.) The written constitution is like an ignored, out-of-date employee handbook.

For one thing, do you really suppose the Supreme Court would play along with that?

Maybe, maybe not. But it won't matter.

If they do not, should the rest of DC also pretend that the Supreme Court does not exist?

Absolutely yes. Because there's no actual enforcement mechanism for SCOTUS decisions, except the willingness of the executive to heed them. From the federal court system's own webpage:

The judicial branch decides the constitutionality of federal laws and resolves other disputes about federal laws. However, judges depend on our government’s executive branch to enforce court decisions.

And from Cliff Notes:

The Supreme Court has no power to enforce its decisions. It cannot call out the troops or compel Congress or the president to obey. The Court relies on the executive and legislative branches to carry out its rulings. In some cases, the Supreme Court has been unable to enforce its rulings. For example, many public schools held classroom prayers long after the Court had banned government-sponsored religious activities.

(DC still hasn't given Mr. Heller his permit.)

the long term effects of establishing that the federal bureaucracy is independent of the president would likely be violent.

Not really. I mean, sure, maybe a few people might resort to violence, but only a few hundred at most, and they'll all be lone actors independently pursuing disorganized, poorly-targeted acts of domestic terror. Nothing that the FBI and ATF won't be able to handle (particularly given that at least half of our would-be rebels would be receiving "assistance" from someone in the pay of the FBI). Maybe you get a few more "Oklahoma City"s, but, as in that case, the perpetrators will accomplish nothing but creating martyrs for the other side, tainting their own side by association, and getting themselves executed (assuming the state takes them alive at all). And once a sufficiently-strong example is made of these people, most everyone else will be disincentivized to follow in their footsteps.

Context

quiet_NaN Capital_Room 6mo ago

The nice thing about democracies is that there is a peaceful path forward if you are unhappy with an administration. Canvas for your issue, change the mind of the voters, change the stance of politicians or get elected yourself. Not an easy path forward, but with some notable benefits over the alternative.

This Calvin and Hobbes comic illustrates the position the bureaucracy would find itself in if they decided to do their thing without the blessings of President, SC and Congress.

And while this is getting deep into silly "could Darth Vader take Superman in a fight?" hypotheticals territory, there is the fact that the federal police agencies are not the strongest kid on the block. The US military seems kind of big on following a chain of command which ultimately ends with the president. They obviously will be reluctant to interfere within the US, but if the constitutional organs of the US are in agreement that a part of the DC bureaucracy is in rebellion, I strongly expect them to intercede on the side of the constitution. And a battle of federal law enforcement vs the US army would be even more lopsided that a battle of Feds versus Trump militias.

Capital_Room rather dementor-like quiet_NaN 6mo ago

This Calvin and Hobbes comic illustrates the position the bureaucracy would find itself in

And just who's supposed to be revolting, and how? I keep bringing up the German Peasants' War for a reason. As the late Kontextmaschine over at Tumblr said, about JFK's quote that "those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable," that making violent revolution inevitable then crushing it by force can be a viable strategy. It will confirm, in the minds of Blue Tribers, the truth of every comment they've made about "neo-Confederates," or about domestic terrorism being the biggest threat to Our Democracy, and that there really is no living with the Deplorables, they'll truly have to be crushed utterly, and the surviving children forcibly reeducated residential-school-style.

The US military seems kind of big on following a chain of command which ultimately ends with the president.

The same military who ~~lied to~~ "misled" Trump when he was president? The same military where these people are in command:

The top US military officer, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Mark Milley, was so shaken that then-President Donald Trump and his allies might attempt a coup or take other dangerous or illegal measures after the November election that Milley and other top officials informally planned for different ways to stop Trump, according to excerpts of an upcoming book obtained by CNN.

The book, from Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington Post reporters Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker, describes how Milley and the other Joint Chiefs discussed a plan to resign, one-by-one, rather than carry out orders from Trump that they considered to be illegal, dangerous or ill-advised.

…

The book recounts how for the first time in modern US history the nation’s top military officer, whose role is to advise the president, was preparing for a showdown with the commander in chief because he feared a coup attempt after Trump lost the November election.

Or see here:

In normal times, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, the principal military adviser to the president, is supposed to focus his attention on America’s national-security challenges, and on the readiness and lethality of its armed forces. But the first 16 months of Milley’s term, a period that ended when Joe Biden succeeded Donald Trump as president, were not normal, because Trump was exceptionally unfit to serve. “For more than 200 years, the assumption in this country was that we would have a stable person as president,” one of Milley’s mentors, the retired three-star general James Dubik, told me. That this assumption did not hold true during the Trump administration presented a “unique challenge” for Milley, Dubik said.

Milley was careful to refrain from commenting publicly on Trump’s cognitive unfitness and moral derangement. In interviews, he would say that it is not the place of the nation’s flag officers to discuss the performance of the nation’s civilian leaders.

These views of Trump align with those of many officials who served in his administration. Trump’s first secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, considered Trump to be a “fucking moron.” John Kelly, the retired Marine general who served as Trump’s chief of staff in 2017 and 2018, has said that Trump is the “most flawed person” he’s ever met. James Mattis, who is also a retired Marine general and served as Trump’s first secretary of defense, has told friends and colleagues that the 45th president was “more dangerous than anyone could ever imagine.” It is widely known that Trump’s second secretary of defense, Mark Esper, believed that the president didn’t understand his own duties, much less the oath that officers swear to the Constitution, or military ethics, or the history of America.

For Milley, Lafayette Square was an agonizing episode; he described it later as a “road-to-Damascus moment.” The week afterward, in a commencement address to the National Defense University, he apologized to the armed forces and the country. “I should not have been there,” he said. “My presence in that moment and in that environment created a perception of the military involved in domestic politics.” His apology earned him the permanent enmity of Trump, who told him that apologies are a sign of weakness.

In the weeks before the election, Milley was a dervish of activity. He spent much of his time talking with American allies and adversaries, all worried about the stability of the United States. In what would become his most discussed move, first reported by Woodward and Costa, he called Chinese General Li Zuocheng, his People’s Liberation Army counterpart, on October 30, after receiving intelligence that China believed Trump was going to order an attack. “General Li, I want to assure you that the American government is stable and everything is going to be okay,” Milley said, according to Peril. “We are not going to attack or conduct any kinetic operations against you. General Li, you and I have known each other for now five years. If we’re going to attack, I’m going to call you ahead of time. It’s not going to be a surprise … If there was a war or some kind of kinetic action between the United States and China, there’s going to be a buildup, just like there has been always in history.”

The October call was endorsed by Secretary of Defense Esper, who was just days away from being fired by Trump. Esper’s successor, Christopher Miller, had been informed of the January call. Listening in on the calls were at least 10 U.S. officials, including representatives of the State Department and the CIA. This did not prevent Trump partisans, and Trump himself, from calling Milley “treasonous” for making the calls. (When news of the calls emerged, Miller condemned Milley for them—even though he later conceded that he’d been aware of the second one.)

More on that latter:

Twice in the final months of the Trump administration, the country’s top military officer was so fearful that the president’s actions might spark a war with China that he moved urgently to avert armed conflict.

In a pair of secret phone calls, Gen. Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, assured his Chinese counterpart, Gen. Li Zuocheng of the People’s Liberation Army, that the United States would not strike, according to a new book by Washington Post associate editor Bob Woodward and national political reporter Robert Costa.

In the book’s account, Milley went so far as to pledge he would alert his counterpart in the event of a U.S. attack, stressing the rapport they’d established through a backchannel. “General Li, you and I have known each other for now five years. If we’re going to attack, I’m going to call you ahead of time. It’s not going to be a surprise.”

(Emphasis added.)

And on the Floyd riots:

This week, Milley made headlines with remarks before a congressional committee about critical race theory, an academic discipline that explores racism in American law and institutions that has been targeted by Republicans, in relation to the US army and its academy at West Point.

“I want to understand white rage,” the general said, “and I’m white, and I want to understand it.”

When Trump was in power, Milley had to deal repeatedly with presidential rage.

Milley is also reported to have told Stephen Miller, a senior Trump adviser, to “shut the fuck up”, after Miller said “cities are burning” amid protests prompted by the murder of George Floyd by a police officer in Minneapolis last May.

Throughout a tense summer, Trump threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act, a historic piece of legislation regarding domestic unrest, but ultimately did not do so.

Bender reports that at one stage Milley pointed at a portrait of Abraham Lincoln, the 16th president who led the Union to victory in the civil war, and told Trump: “That guy had an insurrection. What we have, Mr President, is a protest.”

The US Military is famously apolitical, and, like you note, they obviously will be reluctant to interfere within the US, particularly on behalf of Trump. The guys at the top, especially, spend a lot of time in DC, and interacting quite a bit with other DC "insiders." They're not going to want to send in troops to shoot fellow Americans — civilians, at that, even if Trump says they're in "insurrection." So all they need to do is declare that any conflict over authority, and what is or isn't in the president's power to do, is a civilian political matter, because the US Military does not get involved in civilian political matters, full stop.

So, let me ask you, if Trump declares the bureaucracy in insurrection, and the top brass say "no they're not," and tell Trump to go f*** himself — or even if they just say "civilian matter, we're staying out of it" — what then?

The_Nybbler Does not have a yacht quiet_NaN 6mo ago

They pre-emptively refused to quell the Floyd Riots, and that was before the COVID purges.

Capital_Room rather dementor-like The_Nybbler 6mo ago · Edited 6mo ago

Exactly. Anyone expecting the Pentagon brass to intervene on behalf of Trump (or Red America, for that matter) is bound to be sorely disappointed.

And this is all contingent on Trump even winning. Odds are, we get a second Biden term, followed by a younger and lefty-er Dem after that (and after that, and after that…)

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