A very compelling and detailed essay on Trump's threats to use military power to quell civil unrest and the negative implications and ill-effects of such a course of action on American democracy; the author is Retired US Marine Corps Four Star General John R. Allen, a distinguished military leader and noted and respected authority on Governance, Foreign and Domestic Policy; he is also, currently, the President of the Brookings Institution, a highly regarded 'think tank' considered to be the finest organization of its kind in the US and, perhaps, in the world, and which has had its findings and opinions cited by political leaders of all parties and/or political bent; it is a non-partisan institution and is widely viewed as a centrist organization...
Here is USMC General Allen's analysis of Trump's action's as posted on the
Foreign Policy Magazine's website:
A Moment of National Shame and Peril—and Hope
We may be witnessing the beginning of the end of American democracy, but there is still a way to stop the descent. --
https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/06/03...loyd-protests/
Quote:
One wonders, did Esper and Barr know that hundreds of peaceful U.S. citizens had been attacked by riot police just minutes before, their civil rights massively violated just to set the stage for their picture? Did it occur to them that in posing with the president and the Bible he held in front of a church, ostensibly calling down the authority of God on this cause, they were violating the spirit of one of the most important strictures in America, the separation of church and state? And if federal troops are indeed dispatched into the states to take action against American civilians, where does the Bible and the Christian God figure into the president’s deployment order? The framers of the Constitution intended the separation for a reason, and the commander in chief just trampled it.
In the immediate aftermath of this dark moment, late into the night, there was an eruption of theological debate about what it all meant on that historic day when a U.S. president weaponized the church and the Bible for a photo-op in order to justify his cause. Bishop Mariann Budde of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington said all anyone needed to say in order to settle the debate: “Let me be clear: The president just used a Bible, the most sacred text of the Judeo-Christian tradition, and one of the churches of my diocese without permission as a backdrop for a message antithetical to the teachings of Jesus and everything that our churches stand for.” Apart from the bishop’s truly righteous indignation, there really was no need for further discussion. Donald Trump isn’t religious, has no need of religion, and doesn’t care about the devout, except insofar as they serve his political needs.The president failed to project any of the higher emotions or leadership desperately needed in every quarter of this nation during this dire moment. We know why he did all this on Monday. He even said so while holding the Bible and standing in front of the church. It was about MAGA—“making America great again.”
To even the casual observer, Monday was awful for the United States and its democracy. The president’s speech was calculated to project his abject and arbitrary power, but he failed to project any of the higher emotions or leadership desperately needed in every quarter of this nation during this dire moment. And while Monday was truly horrific, no one should have been surprised. Indeed, the moment was clarifying in so many ways.
So, what is to be done? At nearly the same moment that Americans were being beaten near the White House on behalf of their president, George Floyd’s brother Terrence Floyd visited the site of George’s murder. Overcome with grief and anger, he loudly upbraided the crowd for tarnishing his brother’s memory with violence and looting. And then he told Americans what to do: vote. “Educate yourselves,” he said, “there’s a lot of us.” So, while June 1 could easily be confused with a day of shame and peril if we listen to Donald Trump, if instead we listen to Terrence Floyd, it is a day of hope. So mark your calendars—this could be the beginning of the change of American democracy not to illiberalism, but to enlightenment. But it will have to come from the bottom up. For at the White House, there is no one home.
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I know some will knee-jerk when they see the word "illiberalism" used in the very first sentence of the piece and go into Pampers-filling near-apoplexy, but here is an actual definition, as it appears in Wikipedia, of the word as used in the context of an "illiberal democracy":
Quote:
An illiberal democracy, also called a partial democracy, flawed democracy, low intensity democracy, empty democracy or guided democracy, is a governing system in which although elections take place, citizens are cut off from knowledge about the activities of those who exercise real power because of the lack of civil liberties; thus it is not an "open society". There are many countries "that are categorized as neither 'free' nor 'not free', but as 'probably free', falling somewhere between democratic and nondemocratic regimes". This may be because a constitution limiting government powers exists, but those in power ignore its liberties, or because an adequate legal constitutional framework of liberties does not exist.
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Sorry that Gen. Allen had to use a fancy, big word, but that's what happens when a complex issue is addressed by someone with that sort background who actually knows what he's talking about...
Maybe his comments would be easier to take if he were someone brown-nosing to get a job...
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