Fancy dress
Anyone concerned about the state of America’s democracy ought to have been troubled Monday at the sight of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Mark A. Milley, striding behind Donald Trump during his presidential show of force at Lafayette Square. Dressed in combat fatigues and walking with Attorney General William P. Barr, national security adviser Robert O’Brien and others, the nation’s highest-ranking military officer did more than make himself part of the tableau of Trump’s photo op and campaign commercial. Milley gave tangible meaning to the president’s threat to deploy the U.S. military to put down “domestic terror” in the United States.
Why combat fatigues forgodsake? Why on earth? He wasn’t going into combat, so what the fuck? He was walking to a church a block away from the White House for a photo op, not addressing troops in a war zone. Why did he put on a costume?
The president’s call for military deployments against protesters was not some random Trumpian effusion. He and his advisers and supporters are building a legal justification for deploying troops on American streets. Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper advised the nation’s governors to “dominate the battlespace,” by which he meant American cities. Prominent Republican Sen. Tom Cotton (Ark.), a close Trump ally and presidential aspirant, called for deploying “the 10th Mountain, 82nd Airborne, 1st Cav, 3rd Infantry — whatever it takes,” against the “insurrectionists,” a deliberate reference to the Insurrection Act of 1807, which gives the president broad powers to deploy federal troops. Trump tweeted that Cotton’s suggestions were “100% Correct.” This is the context in which Milley appeared with the president in his battle fatigues. It is the context in which a U.S. Army helicopter descended to rooftop level in Washington’s Chinatown hours later, frightening and scattering protesters in a “show of force” that snapped trees and nearly injured the fleeing civilians.
They are at the very least toying with the idea of a military coup. They’re not shying away from it in horror, they’re considering it and testing the waters and staging dry runs. They’re doing this at the behest of a cheap corrupt real estate developer who race-baited and pussy-grabbed his way into the presidency. Why? I don’t know. Profound genuine love of fascism, maybe.
Meth? Heroin? Power? The first 2 you do to yourself. The third to everyone else. Which one do you think is more fun?
I have been scared in the past when coups have happened in other countries; but this is the USA, so it is orders of magnitude more terrifying to watch.
Hitler didn’t have nukes. Trump does.
I used to work on an Air Force base. The military people almost always wore combat fatigues (BDU, battle dress uniform, I think it was called). They weren’t going into combat, just doing data processing and programming work. Much less frequently they’d have some sort of formal event that called for wearing dress uniforms. BDUs are just regular work clothes for military people; I wouldn’t read much into it.
Hmm. Isn’t this a formal event though? Surely the military people in Trump’s admin – the many many military people the sojer-loving president has in his admin – wear formal dress to work? Surely they never bounce into the Oval Office dressed the way Milley was? I don’t recall ever seeing a photo of any of his military people dressed that way before.
I want out of all this… My anxiety is through the roof…
It’s possible that he normally spends his day mostly interacting with military people and his civilian team, not with the public, and that this event was not made known to him sufficiently beforehand to make it reasonable to change into a more formal uniform.
That seems highly unlikely to me. Just for one thing, image-obsessed Trump would have ordered him to change or stay behind if he hadn’t liked the look. And for another, surely brass that far top dresses the part. Bush junior wouldn’t allow any kind of casual dress in his White House at any time, weekends included. Trump wants shiny. But…I’ve never worked on a base. (But the White House isn’t a base. Yet.)
A quick look through Google images shows that Milley normally wears his dress uniform to the office and his combat fress when he’s with his troops, i.e. on army business rather than Joint Chiefs/government business. His wearing of fatigues on his stroll had to be calculated; he, whether on Trump’s orders or not, was dressed to send a message.