[Here I re-start my pretrial detention journal. The date above indicates when it was originally written. I left off working on my notes from de Tocqueville's Democracy in America, and there I start again. sch 5-16-2024]
From worrying about military coups to a remedy for the worst enemy of democracy.
A democratic people must despair of ever obtaining from soldiers that blind, minute, submissive, and invariable obedience which an aristocratic people may impose on them without difficulty… Among democratic communities military discipline ought not to attempt to annihilate the free action of the faculties; all that can be done by discipline is to direct it. The obedience thus inculcated is exact, but it is more eager and more intelligent…
Growing up I saw enough war movies to know what is meant here. What else was Louis Gosset, Jr trying to give Richard Gere in An Officer and a Gentleman? We should fear anyone who desires to substitute discipline for blind obedience. Better the Sands of Iwo Jima than The Caine Mutiny. I have not seen Born on the Fourth of July for years, but I am thinking about how JFK’s “Do not ask what your country can do for you…” as a call for unthinking obedience. It could be that Oliver Stone did not intend this conclusion – his political thinking is not the clearest – and the more I think of it the more I am convinced he was wrong if he imputed a desire for blind obedience to JFK. Then, too, I survived eight years of George W. Bush.
[And four years of Donald J. Trump, who most certainly desires blind obedience. Who also seems to believe that service for one’s country out of patriotism is for saps. Sch 5-16-2024.]
During the George W. Bush years, I came close to believing that we had accepted the Führerprinzip as American. The Führerprinzip means the leader is always right. It was a German idea. If you do not know why it did not work, just ask yourself who won World War Two. You can also watch The Longest Day, and watch for the scenes where the Wehrmacht is trying to get Panzer divisions released for battle. Lucky for Western Civilization, Hitler never read Sun Tzu’s The Art of War.
The President serves to execute the laws passed by Congress and act as the Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces. The President is not the commander of anyone who is not in the military. The conservatives amaze me with their hypocrisy about the inviolability of the Constitution then they want to give the President the powers of an absolute monarch.
We should have all been terrified when presidential advisors came up with this idea. Especially when we were entering into a potential forever war on terrorism.
You will still be cleaning up the messes created by George W. Bush and Dick Cheney while I am incarcerated. I suppose as a denizen of the federal Bureau of Prisons I should not criticize the former President, but I do and will do so. I may still be a little crazy. So be it. I started all this writing to let out what I had dammed up in my heart and brain. Not speaking out when I ought to have fed my mental health issues that got me into prison. Not speaking honestly about what I think is not something I want to repeat.
sch
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