“Fascist States of America” Series: The generals’ moment…
[Note: This series will focus entirely on combatting fascism in America and around the world with my only weapon, words. (I’m not an NRA member!) It’s not antifa per se; it’s pro democracy. If you recognize words blasting your political preferences here, you’re part of the problem! To the rest of you, don’t worry about me. The fascist plutocracy of the 0.1% doesn’t do their own dirty work; and their toadies who do, don’t read very much, like their lord and savior, Donald J. Trump. So I doubt these essays will even hurt my book sales, mostly because that same plutocracy has already determined they will be low!]
Trump didn’t quite get to take over America…at least not yet. He was a wannabe plutocrat (his wealth represents chump change for most of the plutocratic 0.1% in America) who pretended to be against plutocracy in order to appeal to people he himself considered losers, and he now has a stranglehold on the Good Ole Piranhas, whether the plutocrats and his fanatical followers comprising the marching morons want it or not. Most Piranhas now think they must kiss the wannabe fuehrer’s butt if they are going to win reelection. (It’s refreshing to see, though, that true conservatives like Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger have reelection war chests that are larger than their fascist 2022 opponents.)
Trump came very close to being the new Hitler of the 21st century, though. That January 6th event at the US Capitol was an insurrection where that right-wing fascist mob was more than willing to stage a coup. Let’s call it Crystal Day in lieu of Kristallnacht, though, because Trump, the loser that he is, couldn’t quite rise to Hitler’s level—”the Nazis did some good things,” he said in 2018—but he didn’t pull off what Hitler did. Perhaps if he and his family celebrating that violence had marched ahead with their long guns (big-game guns in the case of Donald Jr.) and led that mob, the putsch would have succeeded. Perhaps if Pence hadn’t insisted on turning over the presidency to Biden, it would have succeeded. And perhaps if the Pentagon had been more inclined to participate in a coup, it would have succeeded.
The generals in the Pentagon were worried, though. Some Trump toadies (maybe even Trump himself put out the word?) delayed sending the National Guard in to quell the violence and back up the overwhelmed Capitol Police. But the generals were afraid the wannabe fuehrer would ask them to ensure the coup. You see, most coups fail if the military doesn’t support them. (In many countries, the military creates the coup.) Hitler had most of the German military behind him, for example, at least his military hierarchy dominated by ultra-right-wing types (Prussia was only one letter away from Russia, and the fascists took over in Russia even before, the only difference with the Nazis being that Lenin, Stalin, et al cloaked their fascism in a now debunked ideology—at first and for much of World War II, the European battles were clashes between two fascists, Hitler and Stalin). With a bellicose and aristocratic tradition and sour grapes from losing WWI and suffering through the Great Depression, Germany’s military was bent on payback and conquest. European leaders up to that time often took on military trappings too—kings and emperors wore uniforms decorated with military medals and ribbons (that still occurs today, like in England).
Trump admired the military; he saw that celebration in France and wanted a military parade down Pennsylvania that honored the wannabe US fuehrer (he’d probably have required our military to march goosestepping and salute him with that Nazi salute). But Trump hadn’t gone to any US military academy. (He’s such a moron, he’d have washed out!). He didn’t understand America’s military traditions, Although many people, especially those to the radical-left of the political spectrum, think the US military is too conservative, there are at least two political things they have in their favor over a lot of past and present militaries: They’re generally apolitical; and they generally believe in civilian rule, an anti-European tradition that’s been a constant since colonial times. The generals in the Pentagon wanted no part of a putsch, even though Trump and his civilian bureaucrats there requested it.
The generals also had to be worried all along, during the four years of hell Trump put this country through on behalf of America’s fascist plutocracy, that the moron-in-chief would start a nuclear war, especially after he lost the 2020 election by seven million votes, a landslide in modern terms (at least that was what he called it when he won in 2016 by far less). He’s a moronic psycho, after all, and just might enjoy giving the fascist Christian right their longed-for armageddon, their “rapture.” He had the nuclear codes to do it.
No, the US generals would never have played along and participated in a coup, McConnell and other fascists can pack the courts, but they can’t pack the Pentagon. And they can’t touch what’s taught in the academies either, a lot of it creating a solid foundation for a patriotic military ready to do battle to defend America, not destroy it like the fascist plutocracy.
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Comments are always welcome.
“The Last Humans”—a series about biowarfare and its consequences. In Book One, The Last Humans, Penny Castro, forensics diver for the LA County Sheriff’s Department, finds a body on a dive but a lethal pandemic when she surfaces. What follows is a struggle to survive, but she also finds love and hope. In Book Two, The Last Humans: A New Dawn, she and her new hubby are forcefully conscripted by a struggling US government to take revenge against the virus makers. The government wants the pair’s skills badly enough to kidnap their children. Both novels can be found wherever quality ebooks are sold. (But I don’t recommend Amazon, because they confused the two ebooks and won’t correct their error!)
Around the world and to the stars! In libris libertas!
