Dem
47
GOP
53
We are going to have some history in each of these three items—a moderate amount in the previous item, a small amount in this one, and a pretty large amount in the next one. So, hope you like history.
The problem that we're going to talk about here begins, as many problems that have "bloomed" in the last 5-15 years do, with Ronald Reagan. The President of the United States is, of course, the Commander-in-Chief of the United States Armed Forces. More importantly, for our purposes here, he is an Officer of the United States. For the latter reason—and not, in fact, the former, despite popular belief—military personnel are thus required to salute the sitting president.
The gentlemen who wrote the Constitution, fearing the possibility of a military dictatorship, took pains to make clear that while the president is in charge of the armed forces, he is a civilian without a military rank. One implication of this is that while uniformed military personnel are required to salute, the president is not required to return the gesture. In fact, in order to keep the line between the military and the civilian command as bright and as red as is possible, presidents are not supposed to return the gesture. George Washington, Andrew Jackson, Ulysses S. Grant and Dwight D. Eisenhower—all of whom spent a bit of time in the military, as you may have heard—were careful to observe this convention during their presidencies.
When Reagan became president, well, he loved him some pomp and circumstance. And while he was not really a budding fascist, he did love the military LIKE a budding fascist would. Plus, the Gipper WAS a veteran (albeit a veteran of narrating a bunch of World War II training films). So, he began to return the salutes he was getting. John Kline, a Marine officer and one of Reagan's aides, who would later become Rep. John Kline (R-MN), warned the President that might not be appropriate. Reagan then turned to the Commandant of the Marine Corps, Gen. Robert H. Barrow, for advice, and was told: "You're the goddamn president. You can salute whoever you goddamn well please."
Ever since then, presidents have returned the salutes, because failing to do so (particularly for Democrats) can easily become fodder for the media (especially the right-wing media). Indeed, during Barack Obama's term, there was much carping about Obama's salutes—not that he didn't make them, but that they were not crisp enough. Anyhow, we presume it's clear how things like this blur the lines between "military" and "civilian," laying the groundwork for even more aggressive blurring—like, say, George W. Bush using an aircraft carrier (the USS Abraham Lincoln) and its crew as backdrop for the (laughably untrue) declaration of "Mission Accomplished" in Iraq.
Consistent with the overall theme of these three pieces, Donald Trump clearly wants to obliterate the line between
civilian and military, and to turn the armed forces into his personal goon squad/Praetorian Guard/status symbol.
We actually wanted to write this story up the day it happened, but then we ran out of time. In any event, the speech
where Trump announced the name changes for all the military bases took place at Fort Bragg Fort Liberty
Fort Bragg (but not THAT Bragg), If you really like punishment, you can watch the speech
here:
However, what is important for our purposes is the backdrop—all those soldiers in uniform. Using those folks as a backdrop is a bad look, but it gets worse, because as Trump ran through his various talking points, including some anti-immigrant rhetoric, some slurs against Joe Biden, and a characterization of protesters in Los Angeles as "animals," the soldiers in the background hooted and hollered and cheered.
Our insta-response, on seeing this, is that there is no way those people were randomly selected. Most soldiers know full well they are supposed to remain above politics AND also take that responsibility seriously. It's simply impossible that a few hundred personnel, selected at random, would all be MAGA zealots who are willing to break the code and express their views. And, as it turns out, we were right. The people sitting behind Trump were carefully screened for three things: (1) to make sure they were MAGA, (2) to make sure they would be vocal about it, and (3) to make sure they weren't too fat. We are NOT joking about that last one.
In addition to using the soldiers as his living, breathing reality TV props, there were also numerous vendors selling MAGA gear during Trump's speech. That is also supposed to be a no-no on a military post, and an investigation has been commenced. We have no doubt that once it is complete, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth will see to it that the responsible parties are properly disciplined.
And as long as we're at it, how about some bonus schadenfreude? Because while Trump was openly slurring people he is supposed to represent, and was tacitly engaged in fat-shaming, he also said some really dumb things. We will point out the two dumbest. First, he was rambling on about how every country that won World War I celebrates that victory, except the U.S. And, he added, the U.S. really should celebrate, because if not for that victory, Americans today might be speaking German and Japanese. Clearly, he's not aware that Japan was on the Allied side during World War I.
And then there's the really juicy one. Early in the speech, as he was in the middle of tearing down Joe Biden (yet again), Trump said: "I've known this guy for a long time. He was never the sharpest bulb." Many, many people made fun of the Donald for mixing up his metaphors, pointing out that it's either "never the sharpest knife/tool in the shed" or "never the brightest bulb." On the whole, if you're going to slander someone else's lack of intelligence, it's probably best not to put your own lack of intelligence on display.
But it actually gets better—and we haven't seen anyone else who noticed this. As some readers will know, the character of Biff Tannen in the Back to the Future movies was a thinly-veiled version of Trump. And in the movies, the not-so-bright Tannen tells Marty McFly, several times, to Make like a tree, and... get out of here. It is, of course, supposed to be "Make like a tree, and... leave." The point is to illustrate that Tannen is not the sharpest bulb. So what we had at Fort Bragg, then, was a case of life imitating art. (Z)