When the history of the 2020 election is written, it is the story broken by the New York Times, chronicling the scheme hatched by Vlad the Imp to pay a bounty for the lives of US soldiers in Afghanistan that may well have been the final nail in the Trump reelection coffin.
For generations now, veterans and active duty military personnel have been two of the richest veins for the GOP to mine. And they worked hard at it. For generations the GOP has portrayed itself as the patriotic party, ready to shovel boxcar loads of cash at the military, and with an almost religious reverence for the veterans who served this country. And now it’s all coming down around their greedy, lying little ears.
Donald Trump basically picked up a bullhorn, and bellowed, What a bunch of bullshit! From day one, Trump has done nothing but disrespect both the military as well as veterans. He removed a progressive VA Chief who was trying to drag the agency, kicking and screaming, into the 21st century. He disrespected the days of gold star widow of Sgt. LaDavid Johnson, sloughing off her pain with a cavalier He knew what he signed up for. Trump has repeatedly moved to politicize the armed forces, calling them his army, like some tinpot despot. And even worse, he took tens of millions of dollars of funds earmarked for improvement of bases, especially schools and daycare centers, to build his stupid vanity wall. And he let the Veterans Administration fall even farther into disrepair with a political hack appointee.
But it is the crisis currently embroiling the Trump administration over this scandal about Russia paying a bounty for dead American soldiers that is going to have a catastrophic effect on the election. Because it is current, it is visceral, and it is intolerable. The Trump administration has fallen back on it’s traditional strategy of bifurcated bullshit. Call the whole thing a media and Democratic hoax, and then deny that the case against Russia hasn’t been proven. There is no way that Trump will risk waking up some morning and seeing that Wikileaks has decided to drop a cache of documents showing how the Trump organization has been nothing more than a massive ruble laundromat for decades, obfuscate he must.
But that obfuscation is about to tear Trump’s electoral map to shreds. Trump is already down double digits nationally, trailing in every battleground state, and states once thought safe are in play. Now, with that in mind, think about the number of major military installations in the United States, and the number of not only veterans, but families of active service members spread throughout the United States.
Trump’s actions have just placed the entire eastern seaboard of the United States in play. There are major military installations in Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Florida. And sailors, soldiers, and airmen know bullshit when they hear it. Trump already alienated the Navy by removing the commander of a nuclear powered aircraft carrier for pleading for assistance for his sailors stricken with the coronavirus. Trump has taken the military for granted from day one. Now, let’s just take a look at all of the military bases in Texas, and Arizona, states where Trump is struggling.
The men and women who make the conscious choice to wear the cloth of this nation are indeed the best there are among us. They made a personal choice to put their own preferences aside to serve a higher common good. They serve for us so that we don’t have to serve ourselves. And they all have families that are rightfully as proud as hell of them. But if they have a brain in their heads, they’re also scared shitless for them.
And now they are learning, with increasing clarity every day, that the Commander in Chief, the man ultimately charged with the preservation of the well being of their sons and daughters, is, and for months has been, aware of a Russian plot to pay up to $100,000, to send their sons and daughters home in an aluminum box filled with ice. And the Commander in Chief is just fine with their sons and daughters being buried, just as long as his secrets remain buried. I can’t wait to see the military vote totals once this election is in the can.
To know the future, look to the past.before the insanity of the 2020 election, relive the insanity of the 2016 GOP primary campaign, and the general election, to see how we got to where we are. Copies of President Evil, and the sequel, President Evil II, A Clodwork Orange are available as e-books on Amazon, at the links above. Catch up before the upcoming release of the third book in the trilogy, President Evil III: All The Presidents Fen
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I’ve been waiting for the general public, military and retired military to wise up to this. All the things you mentioned, tRump has screwed military and veterans over as much or more than the country itself. Looks like the bill is finally coming due.
I got on my high horse on this one, and just went with it…My great uncle went down on the Arizona, so fuck Trump from where I’M concerned!!!
My late grandfather drove a tank under Patton in North Africa and Sicily and he DEFINITELY had zero tolerance for bullshit. Something like this bounty business would have broke his heart.
It’s probably wishful thinking, and as a lifelong (and suffering) Cubs fan common sense tells me to be grateful for any crumbs & not get greedy. IOW I’ll take what I can get if all it is winds up being just for this one elections Veterans and active duty troops tear the GOP a new asshole.
However I can’t help the part of me that hopes that maybe, just maybe the hole in the dike is too big to get close up and will grow wider with each passing week, and month and year. What do I mean by that? I mean Veterans in particular, especially old farts like me who’s service was long ago think back on their time on active duty and start rethinking their whole belief system about the GOP. Especially the enlisted pukes who never even made it to NCO status which is eighty percent of all the troops ever. People who got “coached” by an officer corps and senior staff NCOs on bullshit like I heard in the 1980s about Reagan. And get hit with realizations that all the fucking money he ladled out went mostly to defense contractors for “gee whiz” high priced fantasy crap like “Star Wars” (officially Strategic Defense Initiative) while money for actual training for those of us who’d stare down rifle sights at an enemy staring down their at us simply wasn’t there. Conservatives during my lifetime talked a good game, but for the average trooper the old saying about shit rolling downhill is all too familiar. All that money disappearing into Pentagon black holes while basic stuff for most of us was lacking. And the VA never, ever being fully funded.
Trump’s actual flag humping is something the GOP has been doing when it comes to the average trooper for generations. So I can’t help but fantasize about tens of millions of Veterans thinking back and re-evaluating what they’d accept as gospel for so long. And realizing conservatives have ALWAYS given them the short end of the stick and used them as both cannon fodder and props for their re-election campaigns.
Ok, so that’s too much (most likely) to hope for, so I’m not kidding when I say I’ll settle for the current growing anger to continue to grow and last through election day. I just hope that if we prevail and do so in a wave we don’t blow the opportunity to lay the groundwork for a re-alignment of active duty and veteran attitudes towards this country’s two major political Parties.
I realize this is horrific and all with the bounties, but is anyone really surprised this was going on? I saw Charlie Wilson’s War, to think the russians have not been stoking the taliban ever since g w bush sent troops there seems unrealistic. Plausible deniability and all that. I am sure Obama knew russia was doing this even while he had to meet with putin at international meetings.
The part that gets me is trumps genuflecting to putin which has been sickening to watch. That is the part that is going to get to people, especially military families I think.
BTW Fort Sam Houston here in San Antonio had funds taken from housing upgrades (ie get rid of mold) in base housing to help trump build his vanity wall. I know people who live in base housing who are not happy about this.
With all the current crap Trump is saying and doing, while flailing around in his personal hell of universal expired BS work-around his mind is showing he IS TRULY finished …
He is totally deflated to minimal statements that reflect the lost and impotent fool and fake person he always has been … pretends to be, “brilliant”, says we all should consider injecting Lysol and bleach … !!??!!
Now, since we all are at least average in common sense, maybe a little better in knowledge that high school grads should have, something Trump knows nothing about, we recognize the constant barrage of BS and drivel from Trump’s pie hole, never answering a yes or no question requiring the knowledge level of a functioning president, world leader, trusted and respected by PM’s and Presidents of countries everywhere.
Ignoring all the racist attitudes and comments from the stinky GOP, Obama had a couple things going for him that worked around the world, where we have been abandoned since Trump … Obama knew stuff, lots of it, if there was something he needed to know before meeting another world leader about their country for traditions and rules of public actions to prevent an embarrassing moment in the meeting he had people on his staff, and qualified field people to represent our country with dignity and respect which returned to our country in kind …
Obama, instead of being a cruel, stupid sadist, had, and still has a place in his heart for other people rather than a narcissistic, idiot dufas, so Obama is truly missed for his compassion, sympathy, empathy and understanding of human needs … Trump has a very narrow personality, his needs are simple … constant praise, applause, horrible diet choices, use of an old phone with no security, an always open channel to, lambaste the media and anyone that would dare tell the truth about Trump’s fails and incompetence, subservient women, preferring blonds, an eye-candy wife to drag around for public display, staying close to his fantasy lust subject, his own daughter Ivanka … Trump has to be nervous about the new witness about his history as the pedophile that loves younger girls, this witness is now in the hands of the SDNY … WOW, Trump’s non-performance on the virus and now the info pouring in on Putin’s bounty on OUR troops …
Fuck Trump, he’s done, the money is going away, the Trump dynasty empire will become a pile of metal letters, polished brass like were removed from the Panama Trump building …. Phhhht!
Look no further than last night’s joke of a speech (and Hoarse Whisperer’s inspired commentary on same in real time) for proof of the above. We’re looking at the end of a John Le Carre adaptation with a semi-good outcome, where the hidden system in place can no longer coast on inertia.