How to Politicize A Military In Under 150 Days?

Yesterday, I ended up posting the same meme as a few months ago and wondered why I posted it the first time:

 And then I realized: Trump hit another item on the checklist of how to turn the military into a partisan actor--to politicize it.  

Here's the checklist:

1. Choose a highly partisan Secretary of Defense. ✅  This individual, besides the president, is the most important for managing the relationship between the civilians and the military.  The Democrats often have chosen Republicans (Hagel, Gates, Cohen) for this spot to ensure bipartisan and essentially nonpartisan leadership over the military.  Trump chose a wildly unqualified and disqualified person to do his bidding, one that is on the very far right side of the political spectrum. 
2. Fire senior officers for not being sufficiently loyal to the man in charge as opposed to the Constitution. ✅Senior officers have been fired before, but not because they were accused of being insufficiently partisan--McChrystal, MacArthur, etc. Perhaps getting rid of the JAG's, the top military lawyers, fits here (thanks to the commenter for this).
3. Encourage the troops to be partisan.✅  Trump's speech yesterday where he encouraged the troops to boo the Democratic leaders of LA and California.  In the past, leaders of the military refrained from voting because they didn't want to be seen as partisan.  While retired officers have helped politicize the military by visibly supporting candidates and parties with the aim of making it appear as if they represent the active forces (Flynn for the GOP is the most obvious case, Allen for the Dems in 2016 sort of paralleled this.), this is far worse--active troops booing Democrats.
4. Use the military to do law and order stuff domestically.☑️  This is where we are now--on the verge of this.  We have national guard and maybe Marines escorting ICE as they seek to toss people into concentration camps or deport them. But the Insurrection Act invocation, coming soon, will greatly expand that.
5. Partisan screening at all levels of the military. ☑️ We already have it at the top, but thus far the closest we get is: don't come to the Fort Bragg speech if you are not a fan of Trump. 
6. Mandatory party membership for officers.  Not there yet.
7. Commissars--placing party officials inside military units to vet the decisions of commanders.  Not yet. 
8. Indoctrination. ✅ Having political education at the various military schools is another step, and given what is happening now with the personnel at the US Air Force Academy, the courses and books at the War Colleges, this is already underway (h/t to the commenter for this suggestion). 

These are just the steps to politicize the military.  There are plenty of moves one could and Trump has made to move the US to an autocracy, such as developing paramilitary units that are loyal to one person--that would be ICE.

And, yes, to be clear, politicizing the armed forces like this has the impact of moving the US into autocracy.  A nonpartisan military is an essential foundation, if underappreciated, of democracy.  Dictators have partisan militaries.  Democracies have militaries that largely stay out of partisan politics even if they are inherently political entities.  

The Bright Line Watch folks can identify all the steps taken thus far to cross into autocracy.  My top three or so are: refusing to spend as Congress allocates, violating the due process rights of many people, and politicizing the military.    

There are other truly awful consequences besides ending American democracy: reducing military effectiveness (partisan armies tend to suck at combat), raising the risk of civil war (civil wars often start when a military breaks apart and takes competing sides), Americans getting killed (escalation of force is not great, Bob).

 The other meme I am using a lot these days: 

 

H/T to James Vizzard and other bluesky dwellers for helping me compose this list. 

 

 

The Line Is Drawn Here: No Room for Transphobia

 As Pride month is upon us and as folks are still learning the wrong lessons from the last election, I realized I had tweeted and skeeted much over the years about transphobia, but haven't written much here.

The BLUF is pretty basic: we have no reason to hate or fear trans people, but we have a lot of reasons to hate and fear those who demonize trans people.

Over the past decade or so, the Republicans and their allies in the media and elsewhere as well as a certain horrible author have been fostering all kinds of fears about trans people--that they will assault women in bathrooms, that they will unfairly dominate the sports they compete in, that kids are transitioning because it is cool, and so on.  There is so much wrong with all of this, but let's focus on the most important points:

1. Trans people are people, they are not threats.  
2. Trans people, because they are so marginalized and face such hostility, have a high rate of suicide, and face a great deal of violence.
3. Trans people, because they are small and marginalized, don't have much power so anyone targeting them is always punching down.
4. Actors are mostly targeting them because it is handy politically. 
5. The relative harm or costs/benefits of regulating trans people is clear.

1.  Trans people are people, not threats.

One can go with all of the lies and threat inflation, and it becomes quite clear that these people are no more threatening than anyone else.  Indeed, like immigrants, these people are less likely to engage in bad behavior precisely because they are more likely to pay a higher price.  Who is assaulting kids and women?  Clergy.  Cops.  Teachers.  Parents.  There is simply no evidence that trans people are engaging in crime against women or children at a rate higher than everyone else.  But, like past efforts to demonize minorities, such as when rape accusations were (are) weaponized against Black men, this is an effort to make people fearful of those folks who are different. 
Let's go to sports: how many trans girls (notice, it is always fear of boys and men transitioning) are dominating their sports?  How many are actually in sports?  The advantages that trans girls/women are supposed to have over cis girls/women are, um, not as much as feared. The idea that someone would just transition so that they can compete better in high school or collegiate sports is just offensive and dumb--transitioning is not easy and it is quite costly in money, emotions, and all the rest. There is no risk of trans kids taking over sports.  Maybe a few trans kids will win some competitions.  And the cost of that to those who finish second or third?  To foreshadow, that's not worth having every girl's genitals checked at every competition or in the bathrooms of malls and stores.  
How else are trans people threatening?  Do they have motorcycle gangs holding small towns hostage?  Have they secretly joined pivotal organizations and can now control them at the expense of everyone else?  What exactly is this threat?
One last threat: kids are transitioning too much.  It is so hip, there's so much peer pressure, that kids are making irrevocable decisions without parental permission.  Oh wait, that's not happening.  Certainly, more kids are reporting gender dysphoria with this piece putting the number at 42,000 in 2021.  Wow, that's a lot of kids.  Oh wait, there were something like 72 million kids in that year, so this is something like .06% of all kids. But so many kids are on puberty blockers, right?!  Um, no.  1,390 in 2021. How does that compare to the percentage of kids being sexually assaulted?  28%, with 3/4 of those being assaulted by someone they know, mostly parents.  Given how few trans people are parents, I am guessing they are not responsible for most of sexual abuse of kids. Just putting this "threat" into context.  And, yes, the number of cops abusing kids over the past twenty years or so (actual reports, not total number of cops doing this) > kids getting puberty blockers in 2021.  Fewer kids are getting puberty blockers than being abused by priests: more than 4200 allegations of Catholic clergy abusing kids in one year.  

So, no, trans people are not a threat, kids are not facing a severe risk of being bullied into being trans.  Other people, supposedly trustworthy people, are far greater threats, but you would not be able to tell that from the NYT or other media outlets and certainly not the Republican party. 

2. Trans people, because they are so marginalized and face such hostility, have a high rate of suicide, and face a great deal of violence.

What makes all of this threat inflation and incitement of violence truly awful is that trans people have long been at great risk.  The threat is not that they will harm others but either they will harm themselves or others will do so.  Somewhere between 30-40% of trans people have attempted suicide and around 80% have considered it.  I knew it was bad, I didn't know it was this bad.  Transgender people are four times more likely than cisgender people to experience violent crime!

Again, the threat here is not by trans people but to them.  The NYT and other outlets should be focused on how to protect this vulnerable minority, not how to protect the majority of people from them.   

3.   Trans people, because they are small and marginalized, don't have much power so anyone targeting them is always punching down

Trans people are about .6% of the US population.  They are not a huge group, they are not tied to a strong lobbying organization, they do not control the commanding heights of the media or the political system. Are there even conspiracy theories that try to position trans people as powerful?  I doubt it.  It is striking that one of the loudest and most aggressive voices in this is, well, the richest woman in the UK and one of the richest people in the world has decided to make her post-bestselling book mission to attack trans people and support transphobes.  Whenever someone of that level of power attacks, they are punching down, so maybe it is unfair to be critical of such folks since they lack targets to punch up?   

 4.  Actors are mostly targeting them because it is handy politically

Trans people are attractive targets for politicians who want to whip up hate. Why?  The size of the group means that many people do not know trans people, so they will have less empathy and understanding, and they are easy to define as "other."  It is basic social psychology and thus basic comparative politics that people will feel more in common with each other if there is some "other" out there that is alien, that is seen as less than, that is viewed as strange.  Politicians have always targeted those who are different.  Since most people are cisgender, trans people are "other" to most potential voters, campaign contributors, etc.   

Sure, a party or a politician could offer a more hopeful, unifying vision of the political community, but when a party has a political agenda that hurts most people, it is best to spray the most rancid distraction sauces.  Most of the GOP's stances are out of touch with the mainstream, but if they can get to the media to portray their opponents as captured by this tiny special interest, if they can cause parents to be concerned about their rights (to oppress their kids), then they can grab more votes.   

And yes, hating trans people is bad enough.  It is also a strategy to try to roll back rights for the entire LGBTQ+ community.

 5. The relative harm or costs/benefits of regulating trans people is clear.

This is a very small group that faces much risk of violence, so how do the benefits of restricting their freedom to live as they choose measure up against the costs?  Hey, Steve, that's unfair, when you put it like that, of course, there is no way that their freedom should be abridged.  This is kind of like the voterfraudfraud stuff that I have harped about here and there for years but much worse.  In the case of voterfraudfraud, it is the supposed threat posed by voter fraud (which is not a threat) that justifies restricting people's rights and abilities to vote.  That math never works because the history of the US has always made it clear that the threat/reality of voter suppression is far greater than that of voter fraud.  The math of regulating/restricting trans people's rights is even more obvious: they pose no risk yet restricting their rights, limiting their lives, presents tremendous costs to them.   

 I am outraged by transphobia.  Why?  Maybe a bit of guilt that I was homophobic in high school (not violently so, just in attitude).  It took going to college where I got to meet gays and lesbians and bisexuals to make me shed stereotypes and fears (I was "radicalized" not by my profs but by my peers, of course).  But it is also because it is so obviously awful to be inciting violence and seeking to restrict the freedom of very vulnerable people.  As a result, I have absolutely no tolerance for anyone being "concerned" about kids being rushed into transition or "concerned" about trans women beating cis women in swimming or whatever.  I see people making those argument as enablers of hate.  They may not be conscious of that, but damn it, the reality is so obvious they should be.  

Some loose threads/additional explanation/more unedited spewage: 

When I started to see trans people increasingly become targets ten or fifteen years ago, even though I did not know any, I could see these people as ....  people deserving of dignity and happiness.  That and it is not my business to tell these people how to live. To be honest, transphobia has become a pretty useful indicator for evaluating politicians--are they hateful, are they cowardly, are they so opportunistic as to use hate against a vulnerable group?  That old poem about "first they came for the socialists" isn't quite right. First they came for the disabled and the trans people...  And  today's Nazis are doing the same thing.  I pointed out Pierre Poilievre's transphobic stances to the woman who was seeking my vote for her and by extension for him.  

Over the past few years I have gotten to know some trans people, and a relative recently transitioned.  So, yeah, that increases my outrage, my contempt, my frustration, but it has been there a while.

Finally, I didn't mention Voldemort by name and I didn't mention the shitty form of feminism these transphobes adopt because my arguments here stand on their own, no matter how captured significant hunks of the UK are by this hate.  And, yes, I focused mostly on the US case because the stats were easy to find, but these transphobe dynamics are part and parcel of the far right effort around the world to mobilize hate.  Transphobes tend to travel with anti-semites, Islamophobes, racists, misogynists, eugenicists, of course, homophobes, and other haters.