from the now-is-the-not-quite-the-winter-of-our-discontent dept
This news — you know, the stuff that shows National Guard troops aren’t exactly happy to be expendable pieces in Trump revenge schemes — is unsurprising. No one signed up for this, but Donald Trump and a bunch of suck-ups scattered across a handful of red states have made Trump’s War on DC the new day-to-day operation for troops who’d probably rather be doing anything else than this.
And what exactly is “this?” Well, it’s all sorts of things. Some of “this” is standing idly by while law enforcement officers do law enforcement work. Some of “this” is sleeping on floors, defecating in Humvees, being the constant gardener you never wished to see in the world, and not knowing if you’re actually going to get your next paycheck, much less the pension you’ve been drilling for.
While previous reports of widespread discontent have been mostly hearsay contributed by anonymous troops and officers, this one comes straight from the US military. Yeah, the Department of War is just as sloppy as the guy running it — the one who decided it was okay to share war plans with family members and family members’ acquaintances.
The lede gets buried a bit in the Washington Post report by Alex Horton, but when you see it, it’s less “omg” than “ofc.” (I’m going with the swear-y version here because… ofc I am.)
Not for public consumption, however, is an internal “media roll up” that analyzes the tone of news stories and social media posts about the National Guard’s presence and activities in Washington.
[…]
“Trending videos show residents reacting with alarm and indignation,” a summary from Friday said. “One segment features a local [resident]describing the Guard’s presence as leveraging fear, not security — highlighting widespread discomfort with what many perceive as a show of force.”
A National Guard official acknowledged the documents are authentic but downplayed their sensitivity, saying the assessments are intended for internal use and were inadvertently emailed to The Post last week.
That’s the sort of unforced error that has been the calling card of the military under Pete Hegseth’s “leadership.” A guy who loves photo ops and fawning interviews more than he likes actually doing his job isn’t an anomaly in the Trump administration. It’s the other thing: emblematic.
See also: the final line in this WaPo paragraph.
It is unclear how many people mistakenly received the documents.
A completely fair point to make. If the military was careless enough to send this to a Washington Post email address, it has likely made the same mistake elsewhere. We’ll see if any other news agency speaks up now that the Post has gone on record with this. Or maybe we’ll discover months or years from now that this was actually a deliberate leak, but one that had to be sternly denied lest Hegseth and the man he owes this unearned position to decide it’s time to bring back summary executions for consorting with the enemy.
That’s the more remarkable part of this report. The rest of it just adds to what we have already assumed and that has been buttressed by a handful of anonymous National Guard members. All of this sucks, and very few troops are fully supportive of invading US cities just to make Trump feel even more powerful.
In examining public opinions online, Guard officials last week highlighted the sentiments shared by people who self-identified as veterans and active-duty troops, who, the documents show, say they viewed the deployment “with shame and alarm.”
Great. At least they’re on our side. We also feel “shame and alarm” when seeing military troops sent into a city just because the US president doesn’t like the political leanings of city officials. With Trump pretty much straight-up declaring war on Chicago, we can only expect things to get a whole lot worse, and then hope with all of our might there’s a turning point in the future where things get better. But until a bunch of troops walk off the job rather than just express their discontent, Trump will do what he wants to do because no one with the power to do so seems capable of stopping him.
Filed Under: federal police, martial law, national guard, police state, trump administration, washington dc
