Veterans Day: Headline November 11, 2020 from The Washington Post "Trump Administration Upends Senior Pentagon Ranks, Installing Loyalists." I'm thinking today of all those vets who sat behind Trump at his Superspreader rallies with their proud veteran hats of every variety, emblazoned with patches buttons and pins, displaying the wars they served in. There they were waving their "Proud Veterans For Trump" signs and their little American flags. Shocked, I always wondered if they were suffering from Agent Orange---or maybe PTSD?? 
by Sue Bergeron
How could America's veterans forget about Trump's dishonerable treatment of war hero John McCain?---or Trump's calling fallen American soldiers 'losers and suckers," or his letting Putin off the hook for putting a bounty on the heads of American soldiers? I thought one of the most sacred creeds of an American soldier was to "Leave no man behind." I'm sorry, but when you climbed up on those risers with those other sheep you made a conscious decision to leave a hell of a lot of men and women behind. Can you still see the face of the bloodsoaked guy from your batallion who was hurried onto a gurney and then stuffed into a helicopter under fire in the jungle of Vietnam, crying for his mother as he faded into glory? Was he a 'loser'? How about when war veteran Tammy Duckworth got her legs blown off in Iraq? Is she a 'sucker'? You vets who stood with this dictator who continues to abuse the American military---he has used you as a prop. Thank you for your service, but you have been played, and I'm disappointed that you let a carnival barker do that to you. And it's about to get worse.
I have a 90 year old friend who is a Korean veteran and a big Trump fan. I call him often. I took Russ on as a project, determined to help him see the light. Over these past four years I've quizzed Russ often about how in the world, as a vet, he could reconcile these issues. But ever the cheerful fellow, he always laughed it off and insisted Trump was "doing a great job" and although he liked Biden, Trump was his guy. The summer wore on and it became clear to me that all the phone calls in the world could not turn Russ, as I could tell he was beginning to show signs of dementia. Sometimes he didn't even remember me. At least it comforted me that maybe my friend Russ' choice to support Trump was not a lucid one.
Former Senator Claire McCaskill (D-MO) made a chilling statement last Saturday after the presidential race was called for Joe Biden. She observed that the outpouring of people into the streets of major cities all over America in response to a presidential victory was unprecedented. In the past, news crews had gone into bars and restaurants to report viewing parties that were celebrating, but there were no demonstrations in the streets of that proportion that she could recall, not even when our first Black president Barrack Obama was elected. What she said next was chilling; McCaskill noted that this is what you see in banana republics after dictators are overthrown. Another panelist on the show added that this usually occurs after a bloody, messy coup. On Saturday those panelists agreed the world must be amazed that America rejected this dictator in an orderly way using democracy, using their vote, using the will of the people. We would have a peaceful transfer of power. Not so fast, guys.
America saw a grim prelude to what an all-out dictator does when Trump took Secretary Mark Esper and General Mark Milley along for the ride during Trump's horrific gassing and rubber bullet attack on peaceful protesters in Lafayette Park in Wash., DC this summer, in order to use a bible as a prop in front of an historic church. Since losing the election to Joe Biden, Trump has taken a big old firebrand to Esper's ass and branded him "Yesper" after the Defense Secretary broke ranks last summer, along with General Milley, and proclaimed he was not on board with using the military to attack peaceful American protesters. Secretary Esper got the news he was being sacked via Trump's continually moronic and classless method of tweeting it out from his golf cart. Esper learned he'd received the churlish moniker from Trump when it was reported by journalists that when asked if he was going to resign over the Lafayette Park debacle he told them he would not because he feared he would be replaced by a 'yesman.'
We knew Trump would take a wrecking ball to the government during the lameduck session, but the fact that he's going for a surgical strike right into the heart of the U. S. military is bone-chilling. Remember when he wrote that EO a few weeks ago giving himself permission to axe civil service employees with long held protections? These tens of thousands of worker bees who keep our government buzzing along include public health experts, attorneys, and Federal scientists. Many of them are senior employees who have spanned several administrations. They are non-partisan workers who are there to do a job, not proclaim their loyalty to a despot. This is why Trump wants them out. He is going to remove them in order to make it easier to carry out his long laundry list of nefarious agendas. Some people believed he did this to make things damn hard for Biden when Joe takes over the reigns of the government, but we can see now that's a moot point. Trump is not envisioning a Biden transition. Indeed, Trump has instructed the head of the GSA to bar access to office space and other usual transition property normally afforded a new president-elect. This action is purely to assist a Trump coup.
I hate the word coup. I don't use it lightly. But what else can you call this? Almost certainly, General Mark Milley's head will be the next to get the twitter axe from the Cowardly Liar. The purge is just beginning. General Milley sealed his fate when he said he never should have worn a military uniform during Billy Club Barr's eerily pogrom-like clearing of Lafayette Park, when DOJ cops on horseback chased down peaceful protesters before curfew. Now Billy Club is at it again, desperately aiming to save his own ass by issuing forth a directive to ninety-plus U.S. attorneys general to investigate all voter fraud claims. (As of this writing, not one has taken any action because there is no fraud.) The Republicans kept abusing the word coup during impeachment proceedings last winter. You know who did that the most? Devin Nunes, the little worm that crawled out of a dairy cow's ass, he who keeps getting elected by the apparently brain-dead constituents who keep electing him representative of California's 22nd District. He's also the same guy who betrayed the confidence of the House Intelligence Committee when he ran straight to the White House and shared confidential information with the president, after a closed hearing in a run-up to the eventual impeachment of the president.
Nunes' infamous White House lawn news conference that followed this disgraceful act involved spouting lies that spawned conspiracy theories he hoped would help the president and earn himself a few more brownie points. During the House Impeachment hearings of 2019 Nunes neglected to inform the committee and the American public that he had traveled to Ukraine and colluded with Rudy Guliani's secret pack of opposition researchers---including Lev Parnas. This was not revealed until after the House committee took it's vote. Fortunately, this did not effect the outcome of the House Democratic Majority-ruled Committee vote. This is the guy that Trump has just put in charge of the Pentagon. Be afraid, America. Shake in your winter boots. Something tells me we're going to be on the march again, damn it. Ladies, shake the moth balls out of your pink pussy hats, I think we're going to have to go back out on the road. (A matching pink mask that says "RESIST" would be a nice touch.)
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