In some democratic countries and my own, the military is a respected, even hallowed institution. We never hear anything about them except the rare event some lose their lives in some UN mission or they have the rare parade in memorial events. No politician in his right mind would even utter, in the slightest, the deployment of the military for internal strife. Not even as a joke. So we trust our democracy as valid, imperfect, but in the best interests of the people.
But in the end, the American issue does strike one as strange. A people who believe themselves - self-proclaimed leaders of the free world - must surely ponder why they are at a junction such as this. The solution is simple as all hell and yet, here we are.
I have a number of coworkers who are veterans and while they’re generally confident that the military would refuse to follow general orders to attack civilians, nobody wants to test what might happen in confusion if they’re deployed to backup the police. All you need is one mistake and a lot of people can get hurt before the confusion clears.
It’s tough to say which state will use Trump’s magnanimous offer to deploy the military, but similar to the lockdown, I can imagine a cascade across state governors taking the offer, and even more hilariously - a partisan split of Republican governors taking it and Democratic ones not. Perfect to bait back the base that secretly seethes at the racial undertones of events like this. The collective sentiment will be invisible in pre-election polls, but Trump knows how to conduct the silent orchestra. It seems unimaginable, but beware the hidden vote.
We’ll have to wait and see, but the stage for this to turn into a mockery is mostly set. NYC is on day two of a mandatory curfew.
Many in the military are, contrary to popular belief, quite patriotic, and very concerned withthe integrity of the system. It is not a foregone conclusion a dearth of volunteers to put the boot to countrymen may manifest.
Furthermore, to the sibling poster's assertion that's a great way to ensure gun control laws get passed, when the State's legitimacy is already in question, further clenching of the iron fist (particularly from the American viewpoint I grew up with) will exactly not yield the quiet compliance one might imagine. In fact, it would result in quite the opposite given any active attempt at confiscation.there's also the problem of who you intend on having do said confiscation, and just how bulletproof they are, and where on the "persons I'll comply with" spectrum they'll fall on .
Also, again, once the guns go, all the other far more destructive, nigh-impossible to regulate means of destruction and mayhem creation get put on the table. You don'thonestly think that all that new anger will just go home and sulk while you have the government of the United States running around fielding the least hyperbolic stormtrooper initiatives on American soil, do you?
If you think things are bad and violent now. Get back to me when you start actually pulling the pages from the dictator's population subjugation handbook.
This entire endeavor is remarkable in that it is trivial for this turmoil to bedissipated bythepolice deescalating and being open to a a greater degree of civic oversight,and being held to a higher standard. Or so the protestor supporters seem to repeat. The refusal to make a meaningful gesture in that direction suggests to me that it what we're going through is a macro-event. Something that's been building for a long time, and isn't going to ground out without substantive structural change.
It's anyone's guess how this'll go; but I'm wagering the first time the military proper gets involved it may be a sign of the end days of the country I was brought up loving.
Then again, I've been wondering if that was the case since 2001... So... Yeah. Take it or leave it.