Trump is running the 'stab-in-the-back' playbook
A dangerous moment.
History doesn’t necessarily repeat itself, but it sure does rhyme.
After World War I, German military leaders tried shifting the blame for the country’s defeat. During the war, they had kept the truth about the collapsing military situation from the population. Further, many Germans did not want to believe that the German military had been defeated. A myth soon began to spread that German forces could have won if they had not been “stabbed in the back” by disloyal German citizens who had undermined the war effort.
…The Nazi Party and other right wing groups used the widespread “stab-in-the-back” myth to exploit German nationalist feelings and to attack the Weimar Republic. They also used the myth to target socialists, communists, and Jewish people for supposedly undermining the German military.
President Trump signed an executive order on Friday that ceremonially recognized the Defense Department as the “Department of War,” a name that was dropped after World War II and that the president claimed had caused the country to enter wars it “never fought to win.”
“We won World War II. We won everything before, and as I said, we won everything in between,” Mr. Trump said at an event in the Oval Office, where he signed the order. “And we were very strong, but we never fought to win. We just didn’t fight to win.”
Mr. Trump argued that the name, which was changed by President Harry S. Truman to combine all of branches of the military, had been changed because the country “decided to go woke.”
Feels familiar doesn’t it?
Where does Trump want to win without wokeness? The good news: Maybe not abroad:
A draft of the newest National Defense Strategy, which landed on Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s desk last week, places domestic and regional missions above countering adversaries such as Beijing and Moscow, according to three people briefed on early versions of the report.
The report usually comes out at the start of each administration, and Hegseth could still make changes to the plan. But in many ways, the shift is already occurring. The Pentagon has activated thousands of National Guard troops to support law enforcement in Los Angeles and Washington, and dispatched multiple warships and F-35 fighter planes to the Caribbean to interdict the flow of drugs to the U.S.
Domestic you say?
Well shit.
Chicago here we come!
In related news: My wife and I get on a train Sunday morning to spend a romantic few days in Chicago. It seemed like a good idea when we first planned it. I hope to have no reason to post here, and intend to spend a lot of time walking, eating and hanging out in art museums.
But I’m taking my laptop with me, just in case. Dammit.
Have a great trip, and please keep the laptop parked.