Playing for Keeps
Democrats prefer turn-taking for political leadership, but those days are over
The world will never get the full truth concerning Merrick Garland’s near-18-month delay in assigning a Special Prosecutor to investigate the leaders of the January 6 insurrection. The federal prosecution of foot soldiers began just months into the Biden Administration, but those bloodthirsty morons had no more connection to coup leadership than the ICE goons terrorizing America today do.
Both the morons and the goons had been agitated, saw Trump & Co. issue a call to join in a riotous mob, and they said, Where do I sign, boss?
The January 6 mob, many of them dressed similarly to today’s ICE agents (and observant people suspect more than a few of them became ICE agents) had to bring their own weapons.
Because of “laws,” the Jan6 militia did not bring sufficient firepower. There was only one documented shooting—that of a rioter who began breaching a makeshift interior barricade, by a Capitol Police officer.
Thousands of rioters, vandalizing the building and threatening violence against its occupants, produced a copious amount of photographic evidence (some of it by the actors themselves, who shared to social media platforms) that was used to convict them. There were hundreds of convictions. None of the convicted were able to offer evidence against Trump, nor would a thinking, strategic prosecutor would have believed they could.
Republicans and MAGA men love social hierarchies. They find comfort having men with authority over them. It makes them feel safer (from other men), and superior to women.
However, hierarchy limits contact and information-flow, by design. One’s position confers superiority over all those below, where the only permissible upward action is appeal, and only then to the (administrative) authority situated one rank above them. Attempting to “go over the head” of one’s immediate superior, when unsuccessful, inevitably results in punishment. Members learn that the content of the orders given are immaterial, the refusal to quietly and swiftly obey them violates hierarchy itself.
Much has been said in the past six months about U.S. soldiers not having to obey illegal orders, and while that is true, the hierarchical information controls render most all soldiers and sailors incapable of contextualizing the orders they have been given. To understand whether an ordered killing is warfare or homicide requires knowledge soldiers are not expected to have, under most circumstances. An order to “destroy the vessel” offers no clarification as to why.
I was just following orders is not a statement about an action or actions, as much as it is a statement of not having had enough information to understand the contexts under which the action was being taken. Failure to follow orders has known negative outcomes—drilled since Basic Training—regardless of the legal context of the orders being given.
Three years ago, there was speculation that prosecutions began with the people who stormed the Capitol because they would later swap testimony against their superiors for reduced sentences. The DOJ was building an airtight case against the Trump Administration, went the speculation.
But Jack Smith had made multiple public declarations (his Congressional committee testimony last week was just the latest) that there was sufficient evidence against Trump to gain two Grand Jury indictments (as he did), and he did not need foot soldier testimony to make it happen.
Oops. Those prosecutions had nothing to do with Trump, per se. No one cared who gave the “orders,” and while some of the defendants defended themselves by claiming Trump told them to come to DC to [Start] the Steal. It was a fruitless appeal.
The branding was an exercise in accusing others of what he, himself, was undertaking. Every accusation is a confession.
Strategic actors plot exit strategies, but aside from a few women announcing their pregnancies, there are no hints of any coming from the Trump Administration. Those in the highest-ranking positions are not planning to ever leave. That is why they are criminalizing protest and dissent, and are allowing the Executive’s personal militia to kill protestors, without holding anyone accountable. They are playing for keeps, and there is no opposition party to stop them.
ICE has murdered three American citizens in three weeks, in Minneapolis. Expect more, because that is what agents have been ordered to do.
There is a reason that swift and irreversible “justice” leaves unsuccessful coup leaders literally hanging. Their attempt to steal control of the state is treated as a threat to the state’s legitimacy. Once that legitimacy crumbles, there is no longer a state monopoly on legitimate violence and anyone can make a claim to it. When there can be no justice through institutional pathways, justice itself takes a different route.
SKIDMORE, Mo. – Tucked away in the northwest corner of Missouri is a small, dusty town 46 miles north of St. Joseph with a decades-old secret.
This past weekend marked the 40th anniversary of the killing of Ken Rex McElroy of Skidmore. And despite there being dozens of witnesses, no one has ever been arrested or charged in connection with McElroy’s murder.
In short: no one saw anything.
Ken McElroy died in a hail of gunfire on the morning of July 10, 1981, while sitting in his truck outside a local tavern. He was known as the town bully, but they may be putting it mildly.