It’s actually quite shrewd to troop-ify every other armed public servant, as far as Trump’s feeble, damp brain is concerned. He’s hardly the first politician to play up the bravery of men in uniform and then use them as a kind of human shield (his boy Rudy Giuliani has been a walking 9/11 billboard for 17 years now), and he won’t be the last. When people like Trump want to deflect criticism of the missions tasked to our armed forces and law-enforcement agencies, they go ahead and remind people that the officers involved are in harm’s way (never mind the potential harm they may cause others) and that you, the civilian, are a wuss who has sacrificed nothing and has no right to criticize someone willing to serve their country. That latter sentiment is effective because, of course, there’s truth in it. I have not served in the military, and I have the standard male guilt complex about not having fought in a war when my forebears did. Trump, with his five deferments, apparently suffers from no such guilt...
Keep in mind that the Trump administration is actively trying to privatize the VA and fuck over veterans while this is all happening. You can apparently support the troops now without actually supporting them, and doing so makes you more infallible than the troops themselves...
And with Trump spreading hate every fucking day on TV, it’s not gonna get any better. Because when you create a culture where the troops—and other agencies that are unofficially deputized as such—can essentially do no wrong, you’re giving them carte blanche to do as they please, even when a majority of the public is vehemently against it...
Wait till Trump’s power is legitimately threatened and he steers this metaphorical battleship into anyone else who dares challenge his authority. That’s going to happen, because we have glorified the troops and ordained them as holy defenders against every last kind of international bogeyman, and it’s going to cost us everything. You are being constantly disgraced and ripped off by this administration, but who’s gonna defend you from it now? John Kelly? The police? ICE? ICE is supposedly serving this country right now by tearing families apart at the behest of the corrupt, and leaving scores of women and children broken, helpless, and alone. That deserves no support. That deserves no salute. In fact, there’s a word for the kind of people who would voluntarily cause such misery: animals.
