Former Marine here. I thought this article was funny when it recirculated just prior to the recent election. But I also sort of thought to myself "Yeah I would vote for him over HRC or Trump."
Now I worry. A few thoughts:
1. If the military remains the most-trusted branch of government that's a bad thing. We need to take steps to reduce its power now.
2. If the Freedom Caucus is really committed to reducing the powers (and spending) of government they should be fervently resisting budget plans to expand the armed forces and pull us back from pointless non-productive conflict in the Middle East.
3. It is critical that Congress finds ways to reverse the rise in income disparity or we're going to have an even more dissatisfied and formerly middle-class voter base next cycle.
4. If Congress remains gridlocked by partisanship we are surely heading down the Road to Serfdom, and voters will either cede more power to Trump, or perhaps worse, be dissatisfied and demand an even stronger strong man.
I think it's much more complicated than resisting expansion of the Armed Forces. The last ~16 years of war has fundamentally changed the way the military operates, both in terms of how we build our strategies and how we operationally conduct these wars. Instead of a full-force commitment (units deploy and don't come home until the job is done), we've instead fought this thing in spastic increments, with a kind of warped "turn-based" leadership model ("Whose turn is it to be a Combatant Commander?"). This is why from the invasion through 2014 we had 16 different ISAF commanders. No wonder we've struggled to develop a coherent strategy.
I point that out because I agree that we need to back off from pointless Middle East entanglements immediately, because the Long War has altered how we (I mean soldiers and their leaders, both GOs and Civilians) view preparation for war. There is no way the model used in Afghanistan and Iraq (I understand the difference between the two, I'm talking about sustainment differences here), full of mega-FOBs for the sustainers and (mostly) consistent resupply for the war-fighters, is something we should be expecting in the future - be it a conflict with Russia, China, those pesky Donovians.
There's reasons to be optimistic, and Mattis is one of them. General Milley also seems to "get it", that we've gotten pretty lost in our understanding of what "readiness" and "sustainment" really means.[1]
Disclaimer: Former Infantry Officer, though I do spend a lot of time thinking and writing with friends both in and out about this stuff.
> If the military remains the most-trusted branch of government that's a bad thing.
Agreed, but I think the thing driving it isn't really the size of the defense budget. I think it's the All-Volunteer Force.
During the Vietnam era, U.S. military spending was much higher as a percentage of total GDP than it is today -- around 10%, compared to ~4.5% today (see http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/spending_chart_1900_2020...). But the military's reputation for competence was much lower then. Why?
Because back then lots of Americans had first-hand experience with the military, or knew someone within one degree of separation who did. So they knew that people in the military were just like people anywhere else -- that generals could be principled or venal, officers clever or clueless, soldiers motivated or lazy. They knew it because they'd lived alongside all these people in the ranks, and personal experience doesn't leave a lot of room for mystique.
We're now more than four decades in to an all-volunteer force, though, which means that the days when a broad slice of the population had seen the realities of the military up close are slipping out of living memory. Today's average American knows the military only at a distant remove, heavily mediated by hoorah propaganda (just watch an NFL game) that emphasizes the idea that Soldiers -- who we are supposed to refer to with a capital S now, just to drive home the point -- are a breed apart from ordinary workaday people.
As a civilian who grew up in a military family, I see this happening and it worries me profoundly. History has not been kind to democracies that turn their soldiers into a remote, unaccountable elite. They tend not to be democracies for too much longer.
"2. If the Freedom Caucus is really committed to reducing the powers (and spending) of government they should be fervently resisting budget plans to expand the armed forces and pull us back from pointless non-productive conflict in the Middle East."
Unfortunately, there's the slight matter of the Carter Doctrine, the idea that the US has a vital interest in the continued uninterrupted flow of oil from the Persian Gulf.
The US can't just withdraw from the Middle East until Middle America withdraws.
There's a large portion of our population that has arranged their lives in such a way that they literally cannot leave their homes and return with a jug of milk, without getting in their cars and driving a long drive.
And so if the flow of oil from the Gulf is interrupted, the ramifications stateside would have them screaming bloody murder.
Ironically, these people are unable to see that it's their choices that lead to this: you choose where you live, you choose where you work, and you choose how you get there.
And until there's a sober discussion of the problem, there will be a US presence in the Middle East.
Re #4 - we saw this throughout the Obama tenure as well, more executive orders, more expectations of the President to create and change law rather than execute it, etc.
Point is, it's not just Trump - or Trump and Obama - it's been a slow but steady march toward treating the Office like a monarch...
Great comment. Relatedly, we might see a third party candidate on the debate stage in 2020, for the first time since Ross Perot. The FEC/CPD was successfully sued (after many attempts) regarding the polling threshold required to be invited to the debates.
>If the Freedom Caucus is really committed to reducing the powers (and spending) of government they should be fervently resisting budget plans to expand the armed forces and pull us back from pointless non-productive conflict in the Middle East.
The reduction in commitments has to come first, or at least coincidentally. I would like to see a reduction in military spending, but we shouldn't be making overseas commitments without allocating the resources necessary to carry them out.
I would like to see the US out of Europe in the near-to-medium term and a disentanglement from our commitments in the East long term. If we're not willing to do that, if we refuse to step down from the role of the Heavy who keeps the peace, then we need to maintain a military up to the task. And that requires increases in spending.
As a military person, I'm curious how you feel about the US's role in curbing nuclear proliferation.
I agree that we seem to be in pointless wars, but I'd mostly forgotten about the dangers of nuclear proliferation until a Pentagon-working friend pointed it out to me.
Essentially the idea is that the US acts as both the carrot and the stick. We will protect countries that don't have nuclear weapons and threaten any that try.
I think that's the justification for having such a large military.
But it's also a justification that's largely not talked about. So I've been wanting to get alternative thoughtful viewpoints to go along with the one my friend has.
If you haven't read it, you may find Hannah Arendt's Origins of Totalitarianism a worthwhile read. She offers a lot of analysis on the rise of a classless society, paired with a deep sort of aimlessness in state leadership.
1. All of these institutions should be trusted. The problem is there is not enough enhancement in other institutions to build trust.
There should be ever stronger ethics laws for elected officials: the perception of self-dealing is inherently damaging, and there is peripheral damage to completely unrelated parties when it happens.
There should be a constitutional amendment getting money out of politics. Most everyone now believes elections can be bought, however indirectly, they who have the most money, get the most advertising, the most media coverage, will win.
The military industrial complex is an oligopoly but it's not regulated like one; Eisenhower called the complex a grave threat to democratic government. We were warned, we continue to ignore the warning.
2. Out of the entire Congress there might be 10 members who are very aware of our interventionist foreign policy, for 70 years, in the middle east, and the role that's played in destabilizing the whole region. There's no possible way we stop stepping on our own d|cks if we don't understand the multitude of ways we've been doing it already for that long.
3. Baby boomers will have to start dying in appreciable numbers before this will be politically possible. The baby boomers have cornered both political parties. There is no possible way we get back to the near 40 years where the top tax bracket was above 75%, and for 10 years it was above 90%. The incentive is to try as hard as you can to spend the money on allowed deductible expenses like growing or starting a business. And for that 40 years, this country build massive private and public infrastructure as money was moving. Taxes went down, and building went away, but the stock and bond markets flourished which is where the baby boomers have their money, and expect to find it even after death. Meanwhile that generation has charged the country credit card $20 trillion and that's just so far. If they can find a way to cheat death, they will demand to be first in line.
4.
Denigration of institutions needs to be resisted and admonished. Constructive criticism, based on facts, is necessary and appropriate, but this inane "so-called judges, activist judges" and the "do nothing Congress" and "liberal, fake news media" and "rigged elections" is a precision strategy to weaken checks and balances in a system, and favors a unitary executive. And that's a huge problem.
Democracies are not easy, and they're not on autopilot. The American Civil War was vicious. At the start, General Sherman made his men pay restitution for civilian property destroyed, and he was convinced the wonton destruction of private property was detrimental to the Union cause. Later in the war, he considered it an exigencies of the war to eviscerate Southern citizens themselves for aiding the Confederate Army. The photographs of what was done to the South are easy to confuse with Dresden and Berlin. It was wholesale obliteration. By any modern standard what was done was way beyond war crimes.
But today we have this batshit insane menace of unreality where large numbers of people are opting into alternate realities, and electing paranoid conspiracy theorist to run their countries.
Not even the free market with a minuscule government functions at all properly with a misinformed population.
One piece of this was poorly predicted: rising violent crime.
In the late 80s and early 90s, there were lots and lots of predictions that in another decade, violent crime would be at crisis levels. It was steadily increasing year over year and there was lots of disagreement as to the cause.
Then we reached 1994 or so, and everything started going down[0]. Lots of possible reasons, popularly that Wade vs Roe had been 21 years prior but lots of other competing theories may explain it, or be part of it.
I'm not saying that the future predicted by this story isn't alarming in some of its predictions but that this particular prediction was made by a lot of people and it turned out to be pretty clearly incorrect.
By 2012, America was probably as safe as it had ever been and continues to become safer despite popular belief to the contrary.
Freakonomics talked about the decline of crime in the 90s as being directly attributed to rise of abortion.
Basically, offsprings from poverty or low socio economic statuses tend to grow up without education and exposed to violence and dysfunctional families with parents who are likely uneducated and addicted to substances.
Growing up without fathers, young men adopt gang culture as a surrogate for the lack of positive role models.
It makes perfect sense that in the 90s there were lot less would be criminals (not by choice but genetic, environmental and socioeconomic factors) being born.
The financial burden on divorced men with children is far too skewed in benefiting divorced women in North America. My fear is children being born from this generation of turbulent and unstable familial organization as the middle class slowly erodes and job security disappears due to automation.
"After the President died he somehow “persuaded” the Vice President not to take the oath of of ce. Did we then have a President or not? A real “Constitutional Conundrum” the papers called it. Brutus created just enough ambiguity to convince everyone that as the senior military of cer, he could—and should— declare himself Commander- in-Chief of the United Armed Forces"
Taking these two items in reverse order - Article 2 of the constitution is clear - the President is the CIC - full stop, period, no alternatives.
As far as the VP not taking the oath, that would pretty clearly make him/her fall in to the 'Inability' side of the Resignation or Inability statement, triggering Presidential Succession Act [2], which opens with the following language:
"If, by reason of death, resignation, removal from office, inability, or failure to qualify, there is neither a President nor Vice President to discharge the powers and duties of the office of President"
Refusal to take the oath of office would fall under 'failure to qualify' and 'inability', as taking the oath is required by Article 2 (section 1, clause 8)[1] before executing the office of President.
There's more, such as the 25th amendment, but that doesn't contradict anything here...
All of that is completely setting aside the deeply ingrained establishment of civilian control of the military in all modern liberal democracies - as established largely by the US constitution.
One thing we're rapidly learning in recent weeks is that the Constitution and the laws don't matter unless there are people able and willing to enforce them. Nothing is automatic, and if nobody with power will stand up to Brutus, then it can work even if it's supposedly not allowed.
I think that "deeply ingrained establishment of civilian control" you mention is the real problem with this scenario.
Well, yes. The entire point is: what happens when the population loses all faith in civilian control -- not just of the military, but of anything? From the article:
"Here’s what I think happened: Americans became exasperated with democracy"
I'm almost wondering if we may ever end up in a situation where someone who is constitutionally unqualified to serve as President winds up becoming Vice President, so the Speaker of the House effectively becomes the President's successor.
Maybe if there's some bizarre brokered convention where the delegates agree to put a certain person on the party ticket as President if they agree to effectively leave the role of the President's successor to Congress by naming an 18-year-old kid (need to be 35 to be President) as his running mate.
One bit I found funny was that the narrator argues that being forced into police work has made soldiers too restrained to function as warriors, when in our timeline, the opposite has happened -- police have become too aggressive to function as peace officers.
I actually think both have happened: the military has increasingly adopted traditional police tactics and mindset [1], while law enforcement has become more paramilitary it its equipment, tactics, and mindset.
[1] Personal experience. I was shocked to receive so much instruction from LEOs instead of infantrymen prior to my own deployment to Afgh. While there, we did a lot more arresting, and not nearly as much killing, as I think the situations I encountered warranted. ETA: not saying there wasn't instruction from the Army, but there was a lot from beat cops contracted to train us.
"Attempted" seems like a strong word to use... even the Wiki article you linked, in the introduction, seems to put it somewhere between a hoax and a few people contemplating a coup (far from "attempting").
There is little evidence for this except the word of Smedley Butler. Butler had been court-martialed by Hoover and after losing a senate race wrote and gave speeches about his book "War is a Racket". This was the person who wrote "...I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism." After losing his senate seat, Butler supported Norman Thomas of the Socialist Party for president in 1936.
If wall street bankers were actually planning a coup against FDR, this would have been about the very last person in the world they would have wanted to tell their plan.
I'm surprised this was written back in 1992, at a time when I personally hadn't noticed the rising tide of military adoration that the country experienced post 9/11.
It was on the increase then, a backlash against some of the vehement (or at least widely spread and popularized) anti-military rhetoric of the 60s and 70s (Vietnam-era). But not quite to the fetishization that happened post-9/11 where saying anything against the military (even straight up facts) could get you labeled anti-American.
The author won a competition with this paper, Colin Powell honored the author at the awards ceremony. I was an undergrad in polisci when this paper came out, and we took it semi-seriously. I'm pretty sure the class was about South American military juntas.
The biggest problem I see with this is that is assumes something not in evidence - that the concept of 'freedom' actually means anything, ever meant anything, or could possibly ever mean anything. But then, that is true of nearly everything people believe in; self-deception is, IMAO, the primary nature of the human brain.
I would argue that far from the concept of 'freedom' not meaning anything, it means many things - it's heavily overloaded. For example - I have the freedom to reply to your comment if I choose. The concept of freely choosing to take or not take an action is surely meaningful.
I'll assume that you're not making the statement literally, that 'freedom.... could [not] possibly ever mean anything', and instead ask /which/ meaning of the word 'freedom' do you believe to be an eternally-meaningless self-deception?
[+] [-] dforrestwilson1|9 years ago|reply
Former Marine here. I thought this article was funny when it recirculated just prior to the recent election. But I also sort of thought to myself "Yeah I would vote for him over HRC or Trump."
Now I worry. A few thoughts:
1. If the military remains the most-trusted branch of government that's a bad thing. We need to take steps to reduce its power now.
2. If the Freedom Caucus is really committed to reducing the powers (and spending) of government they should be fervently resisting budget plans to expand the armed forces and pull us back from pointless non-productive conflict in the Middle East.
3. It is critical that Congress finds ways to reverse the rise in income disparity or we're going to have an even more dissatisfied and formerly middle-class voter base next cycle.
4. If Congress remains gridlocked by partisanship we are surely heading down the Road to Serfdom, and voters will either cede more power to Trump, or perhaps worse, be dissatisfied and demand an even stronger strong man.
[+] [-] remarkEon|9 years ago|reply
I think it's much more complicated than resisting expansion of the Armed Forces. The last ~16 years of war has fundamentally changed the way the military operates, both in terms of how we build our strategies and how we operationally conduct these wars. Instead of a full-force commitment (units deploy and don't come home until the job is done), we've instead fought this thing in spastic increments, with a kind of warped "turn-based" leadership model ("Whose turn is it to be a Combatant Commander?"). This is why from the invasion through 2014 we had 16 different ISAF commanders. No wonder we've struggled to develop a coherent strategy.
I point that out because I agree that we need to back off from pointless Middle East entanglements immediately, because the Long War has altered how we (I mean soldiers and their leaders, both GOs and Civilians) view preparation for war. There is no way the model used in Afghanistan and Iraq (I understand the difference between the two, I'm talking about sustainment differences here), full of mega-FOBs for the sustainers and (mostly) consistent resupply for the war-fighters, is something we should be expecting in the future - be it a conflict with Russia, China, those pesky Donovians.
There's reasons to be optimistic, and Mattis is one of them. General Milley also seems to "get it", that we've gotten pretty lost in our understanding of what "readiness" and "sustainment" really means.[1]
Disclaimer: Former Infantry Officer, though I do spend a lot of time thinking and writing with friends both in and out about this stuff.
[1]http://breakingdefense.com/2016/10/miserable-disobedient-vic...
[+] [-] smacktoward|9 years ago|reply
Agreed, but I think the thing driving it isn't really the size of the defense budget. I think it's the All-Volunteer Force.
During the Vietnam era, U.S. military spending was much higher as a percentage of total GDP than it is today -- around 10%, compared to ~4.5% today (see http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/spending_chart_1900_2020...). But the military's reputation for competence was much lower then. Why?
Because back then lots of Americans had first-hand experience with the military, or knew someone within one degree of separation who did. So they knew that people in the military were just like people anywhere else -- that generals could be principled or venal, officers clever or clueless, soldiers motivated or lazy. They knew it because they'd lived alongside all these people in the ranks, and personal experience doesn't leave a lot of room for mystique.
We're now more than four decades in to an all-volunteer force, though, which means that the days when a broad slice of the population had seen the realities of the military up close are slipping out of living memory. Today's average American knows the military only at a distant remove, heavily mediated by hoorah propaganda (just watch an NFL game) that emphasizes the idea that Soldiers -- who we are supposed to refer to with a capital S now, just to drive home the point -- are a breed apart from ordinary workaday people.
As a civilian who grew up in a military family, I see this happening and it worries me profoundly. History has not been kind to democracies that turn their soldiers into a remote, unaccountable elite. They tend not to be democracies for too much longer.
[+] [-] ocschwar|9 years ago|reply
Unfortunately, there's the slight matter of the Carter Doctrine, the idea that the US has a vital interest in the continued uninterrupted flow of oil from the Persian Gulf.
The US can't just withdraw from the Middle East until Middle America withdraws.
There's a large portion of our population that has arranged their lives in such a way that they literally cannot leave their homes and return with a jug of milk, without getting in their cars and driving a long drive.
And so if the flow of oil from the Gulf is interrupted, the ramifications stateside would have them screaming bloody murder.
Ironically, these people are unable to see that it's their choices that lead to this: you choose where you live, you choose where you work, and you choose how you get there.
And until there's a sober discussion of the problem, there will be a US presence in the Middle East.
[+] [-] djrogers|9 years ago|reply
Point is, it's not just Trump - or Trump and Obama - it's been a slow but steady march toward treating the Office like a monarch...
[+] [-] theseatoms|9 years ago|reply
Edit: Citation: http://reason.com/blog/2017/02/02/libertarian-party-gets-vic...
[+] [-] gozur88|9 years ago|reply
The reduction in commitments has to come first, or at least coincidentally. I would like to see a reduction in military spending, but we shouldn't be making overseas commitments without allocating the resources necessary to carry them out.
I would like to see the US out of Europe in the near-to-medium term and a disentanglement from our commitments in the East long term. If we're not willing to do that, if we refuse to step down from the role of the Heavy who keeps the peace, then we need to maintain a military up to the task. And that requires increases in spending.
[+] [-] tonystubblebine|9 years ago|reply
I agree that we seem to be in pointless wars, but I'd mostly forgotten about the dangers of nuclear proliferation until a Pentagon-working friend pointed it out to me.
Essentially the idea is that the US acts as both the carrot and the stick. We will protect countries that don't have nuclear weapons and threaten any that try.
I think that's the justification for having such a large military.
But it's also a justification that's largely not talked about. So I've been wanting to get alternative thoughtful viewpoints to go along with the one my friend has.
[+] [-] hblanks|9 years ago|reply
It doesn't end well.
[+] [-] r00fus|9 years ago|reply
The Potomac is the new Rubicon, and the US is the new Rome. Where are we exactly in the imperial lifecycle? I wonder.
[+] [-] cmurf|9 years ago|reply
There should be ever stronger ethics laws for elected officials: the perception of self-dealing is inherently damaging, and there is peripheral damage to completely unrelated parties when it happens.
There should be a constitutional amendment getting money out of politics. Most everyone now believes elections can be bought, however indirectly, they who have the most money, get the most advertising, the most media coverage, will win.
The military industrial complex is an oligopoly but it's not regulated like one; Eisenhower called the complex a grave threat to democratic government. We were warned, we continue to ignore the warning.
2. Out of the entire Congress there might be 10 members who are very aware of our interventionist foreign policy, for 70 years, in the middle east, and the role that's played in destabilizing the whole region. There's no possible way we stop stepping on our own d|cks if we don't understand the multitude of ways we've been doing it already for that long.
This is a good primer from post WWII to 1991, most people are familiar with our extracurricular activities in the middle east since then. https://www.cato.org/publications/policy-analysis/ancient-hi...
3. Baby boomers will have to start dying in appreciable numbers before this will be politically possible. The baby boomers have cornered both political parties. There is no possible way we get back to the near 40 years where the top tax bracket was above 75%, and for 10 years it was above 90%. The incentive is to try as hard as you can to spend the money on allowed deductible expenses like growing or starting a business. And for that 40 years, this country build massive private and public infrastructure as money was moving. Taxes went down, and building went away, but the stock and bond markets flourished which is where the baby boomers have their money, and expect to find it even after death. Meanwhile that generation has charged the country credit card $20 trillion and that's just so far. If they can find a way to cheat death, they will demand to be first in line.
4. Denigration of institutions needs to be resisted and admonished. Constructive criticism, based on facts, is necessary and appropriate, but this inane "so-called judges, activist judges" and the "do nothing Congress" and "liberal, fake news media" and "rigged elections" is a precision strategy to weaken checks and balances in a system, and favors a unitary executive. And that's a huge problem.
Democracies are not easy, and they're not on autopilot. The American Civil War was vicious. At the start, General Sherman made his men pay restitution for civilian property destroyed, and he was convinced the wonton destruction of private property was detrimental to the Union cause. Later in the war, he considered it an exigencies of the war to eviscerate Southern citizens themselves for aiding the Confederate Army. The photographs of what was done to the South are easy to confuse with Dresden and Berlin. It was wholesale obliteration. By any modern standard what was done was way beyond war crimes.
But today we have this batshit insane menace of unreality where large numbers of people are opting into alternate realities, and electing paranoid conspiracy theorist to run their countries.
Not even the free market with a minuscule government functions at all properly with a misinformed population.
[+] [-] mabbo|9 years ago|reply
In the late 80s and early 90s, there were lots and lots of predictions that in another decade, violent crime would be at crisis levels. It was steadily increasing year over year and there was lots of disagreement as to the cause.
Then we reached 1994 or so, and everything started going down[0]. Lots of possible reasons, popularly that Wade vs Roe had been 21 years prior but lots of other competing theories may explain it, or be part of it.
I'm not saying that the future predicted by this story isn't alarming in some of its predictions but that this particular prediction was made by a lot of people and it turned out to be pretty clearly incorrect.
By 2012, America was probably as safe as it had ever been and continues to become safer despite popular belief to the contrary.
[0]https://content.gallup.com/origin/gallupinc/GallupSpaces/Pro...
[+] [-] brilliantcode|9 years ago|reply
Basically, offsprings from poverty or low socio economic statuses tend to grow up without education and exposed to violence and dysfunctional families with parents who are likely uneducated and addicted to substances.
Growing up without fathers, young men adopt gang culture as a surrogate for the lack of positive role models.
It makes perfect sense that in the 90s there were lot less would be criminals (not by choice but genetic, environmental and socioeconomic factors) being born.
The financial burden on divorced men with children is far too skewed in benefiting divorced women in North America. My fear is children being born from this generation of turbulent and unstable familial organization as the middle class slowly erodes and job security disappears due to automation.
[+] [-] djrogers|9 years ago|reply
"After the President died he somehow “persuaded” the Vice President not to take the oath of of ce. Did we then have a President or not? A real “Constitutional Conundrum” the papers called it. Brutus created just enough ambiguity to convince everyone that as the senior military of cer, he could—and should— declare himself Commander- in-Chief of the United Armed Forces"
Taking these two items in reverse order - Article 2 of the constitution is clear - the President is the CIC - full stop, period, no alternatives.
As far as the VP not taking the oath, that would pretty clearly make him/her fall in to the 'Inability' side of the Resignation or Inability statement, triggering Presidential Succession Act [2], which opens with the following language:
"If, by reason of death, resignation, removal from office, inability, or failure to qualify, there is neither a President nor Vice President to discharge the powers and duties of the office of President"
Refusal to take the oath of office would fall under 'failure to qualify' and 'inability', as taking the oath is required by Article 2 (section 1, clause 8)[1] before executing the office of President.
There's more, such as the 25th amendment, but that doesn't contradict anything here...
All of that is completely setting aside the deeply ingrained establishment of civilian control of the military in all modern liberal democracies - as established largely by the US constitution.
[1] https://constitutioncenter.org/interactive-constitution/arti... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presidential_Succession_Act
[+] [-] mikeash|9 years ago|reply
I think that "deeply ingrained establishment of civilian control" you mention is the real problem with this scenario.
[+] [-] throwaway729|9 years ago|reply
"Here’s what I think happened: Americans became exasperated with democracy"
[+] [-] amyjess|9 years ago|reply
Maybe if there's some bizarre brokered convention where the delegates agree to put a certain person on the party ticket as President if they agree to effectively leave the role of the President's successor to Congress by naming an 18-year-old kid (need to be 35 to be President) as his running mate.
[+] [-] NoGravitas|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unit91|9 years ago|reply
[1] Personal experience. I was shocked to receive so much instruction from LEOs instead of infantrymen prior to my own deployment to Afgh. While there, we did a lot more arresting, and not nearly as much killing, as I think the situations I encountered warranted. ETA: not saying there wasn't instruction from the Army, but there was a lot from beat cops contracted to train us.
[+] [-] splitrocket|9 years ago|reply
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_Plot
[+] [-] InitialLastName|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] opo|9 years ago|reply
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smedley_Butler
If wall street bankers were actually planning a coup against FDR, this would have been about the very last person in the world they would have wanted to tell their plan.
[+] [-] doktrin|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Jtsummers|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] maxerickson|9 years ago|reply
There were trading cards, like baseball cards:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desert_Storm_trading_cards
I didn't understand the context at the time, looking back, yeesh.
[+] [-] cmurf|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] JosephOsako|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Infernal|9 years ago|reply
I'll assume that you're not making the statement literally, that 'freedom.... could [not] possibly ever mean anything', and instead ask /which/ meaning of the word 'freedom' do you believe to be an eternally-meaningless self-deception?
[+] [-] doktrin|9 years ago|reply
[deleted]