I had intended to make my next entry in this blog an open letter to the armed forces of the United States, and I will probably do that before the end of this week. However, I wanted to first address a topic that I’ve begun to see arise within the right-wing blogosphere over the last couple of weeks: the invocation of the Insurrection Act by President Trump and the declaration of martial law in response to civil unrest and violence anticipated as the result of a second Trump term.
The phrases “double-edged sword” and “playing with fire” come immediately to my mind whenever I hear demands on the right, secular and Christian alike, for the president to act decisively in the face of Globalist-fomented anarcho-nihilism (my term for what most people mistakenly refer to as “anarchy”). I will admit right up front that my visceral impulses would lead me to advocate such action on the president’s part, in direct opposition to my longstanding conservative-quasilibertarian philosophy. We have clearly reached the point at which a sizable minority of Americans have come to despise their nation and are hellbent on destroying it and everything that represents it. Whether such people are acting entirely of their own volition, or whether they’re acting under the influence or control of some malevolent external force is irrelevant at present. The point is that the threat that they pose is all too real, and that if they are allowed to proceed unhindered with their criminal behavior the result will be the destruction of what few civilized institutions have been holding the nation together for the last half century. While I believe that the USA is beyond salvaging and that its breakup is a foregone conclusion, the complete breakdown of the last vestiges of law and order will make difficult, if not impossible the transition to a peaceful political order in the wake of the USA’s demise. A growing number of people, especially on the political Right, see the U.S. armed forces as “white knights” that will be called back home from the various imperial debacles abroad into which the reigning American Empire has embroiled it. No one who has been paying attention to the armed forces over the last three-plus decades should have any cause for such optimism.
What most people, especially those on the Right, fail to realize (or perhaps simply choose to ignore) is that the U.S. armed forces are as divided, unstable, and dysfunctional as American society itself. After all, its ranks are drawn from the population at large (or self-selected subsets thereof) and thus cannot help but be reflective of the general dysfunction that is now American society. However, within this body, there have emerged in the post-Vietnam War era two distinct groups: “The Troops,” consisting of the enlisted members and a portion of the office corps, mostly those who were trained in college ROTC programs and commissioned upon graduation, or who were commissioned from the enlisted ranks; and the “Academy Alumni” which consists of officers, usually in the middle and flag ranks, who are graduates of the service academies (i.e., West Point, Annapolis, and Colorado Springs).
“The Troops,” generally speaking, though by no means always, are patriotic individuals in the sense that they at least viscerally adhere to what we have historically considered core American values (e.g., belief in personal and economic liberty, the right to self-defense, freedom of seech, assembly, assembly, and religious worship; the recognition that all men are equal under the law, etc.). While their motivations for joining the military may have been more economic than patriotic, they are aware (again, even if only on some undefinable, visceral level) of what their ultimate responsibilities are and where their ultimate loyalty must lie, which is to the Constitution and the People of the United States.
The “Academy Alumni,” (this is my term for them; I can’t at present think of a better term by which to categorize them), on the other hand, have undergone rigorous academic, physical, and doctrinal training within one of the Regime’s three service academies (Army, Navy, and Air Force, in the order I listed above). Admission to one of these academies is a fiercely competitive and highly selective process (or at least has historically been so; waves of scandals emerging from these places in recent years indicates that they are in the same state of decline as every other institution) that requires nomination by a Congressman in order to be admitted. Each Congressman may nominate only on person from his district each year for each academy (one for West Point, one for Annapolis, one for Colorado Springs), so they must be highly selective in whom the nominate. At this point the rhetorical question arises: given what we know about the subhuman flotsam that makes up the vast majority of Congress, what do you think these corrupt criminals look for in young people between the ages of 18 and 25 (the academies went co-ed in the late 1970s, which explains a large part of their ongoing decline, as well as that of the armed forces) who seek training in the elite institutions of the armed forces that will enable them to rise to positions of the most senior leadership ranks? Most certainly their selections are not based on some mythical altruistic criteria of who would make the best leaders. No, the Congresscreatures instead examine what extra-curricular activities these young people engaged in during their high school years (were they activities that meet the political establishment’s approval?), their home life (is Mom and/or Dad connected in a way that benefits Congressman Scumbag politically?), and who they are demographically (do the demographics in Congressman Scumbag’s district demand that he appoint a black or Hispanic candidate, or a black or Hispanic female candidate, regardless of whether or not any of them are military leadership material?). In other words, candidates for nomination to the service academies learn very early on that any career successes they intend for themselves depend entirely upon the willingness to kiss the collective ass of the reigning political classes, whose interests, as we all know, rarely if ever coincide with those of the American People. Thus the would-be Academy Alumnus comes to learn very quickly what side his bread is buttered on and that in order to get what he wants (i.e., power, prestige, and opportunities that will be handed to him on a silver platter in the future as a result of his Academy and military pedigree), he can turn any residual sense of morality, patriotism, or concern for his fellow Americans (the people the Establishment refers to as “deplorables”) over to the Academy as part of his initial issuances when he reports aboard during plebe week. Thus occurs the loss of his soul in exchange for gaining the World.
It is these two groups of people that make up the U.S. armed forces today. Gone are days of the “citizen army” dedicated solely to defending U.S. soil and legitimate U.S. national interests. The death march of this military force as envisioned by the founders began with the end of World War II and ended with the end of the Vietnam War. Today’s armed forces are mercenary forces in everything but name. While this does not mean that everyone in the armed forces considers themselves mercenaries, to wage war at the Executive’s bidding for any reason whatsoever, the institution has mutated into such a force.
The question now facing the nation ultimately comes down to one of: if the armed forces are called upon to impise martial law, for whom will they impose martial law? We know that the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the senior echelons of each service, indoctrinated in the Deep Statist philosophy of the service academies and having been loyal servants of the Empire for decades, despise President Trump with a passion and want him put out of office. On the other hand, “The Troops,” while as divided as the nation as a whole, tend to lean hugely pro-Trump, recognizing him as a man of the People who is determined to prevent them from being committed to anymore senseless foreign wars. Surely they know how disastrous a Biden-Harris
Administration will be for them, as well as how much both Biden and Harris despise them. Will they respond to the Generals’ and Admirals’ orders to eject the man they respect, and whom many know as well as the rest of us is the victim of a blatant Deep State coup d’etat by staging a mutiny? Are the “Academy Alumni” aware of the rank and file’s feelings and therefore justifiably hesitant to “cross the Rubicon?” No one knows for sure, and this is why We The People need to be very, VERY careful about thinking that martial law is the practical solution to the current crisis. Even if it is, we not only no longer have any way of knowing if the armed forces are capable of implementing it, but whether or not they would implement it in a manner that upholds the Constitution, the rule of law, and the rights of the American people.
I certainly do not have an answer or a practical suggestion for resolving this dilemma, nor can I predict with any accuracy or certainty what will happen. All I can say is that no course of action at this point will be ideal or pain-free. The best that we can hope for is that majority of those currently on active duty have the foresight and the strength of character to do what they took an oath to do, with emphasis on defending the Constitution against domestic enemies, something that no one has been comfortable contemplating, much less discussing or urging. Whether or not they do so, each of us must be prepared to do so in our own way and according to our own abilities. As a few other men in the Christian blogosphere have pointed out, for men like me and they who also served in the past, our oath to defend the Constitution is an oath that never expires, even long after we’ve doffed our uniforms. As long as we remain citizens of this nation, we are duty bound to defend the source of what makes this nation worth living in. May God give us the strength and wisdom to be able to do so, and may He continue to be at our side in the troubled times that are soon to come.
