The biggest mistake the Republicans made in my lifetime was the near-beatification of military and veterans after 9/11 and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
One commenter introduced me to newly elected Congressman Jake Auchincloss.
He was a USMC captain. He wants to take your guns. He thinks social media should be able to silence and unperson you.
But he’s a USMC veteran so how dare you question his patriotism and devotion to the Constitution.
He’s better than you because he served and you didn’t. He slept next to an M16A4 so he knows what you can’t have a rifle that looks like it as a US citizen.
It’s going to be some retired Army officer turned politician who takes your guns and sticks you in a gulag because you can’t question his moral superiority or love of our Constitution because he served. Those are the rule the Republicans created and the Democrats are beating us to death with them.
It would be hard to list all the major mistakes made, or pick just one as the worst, but this one is a strong candidate. All large organizations are just large organizations. There’s no magic that keeps bad people out of them. There will be a mix of the good and the bad in any organization, military, police, education, corporations, etc., etc. Making automatic heroes out of a job classification is ludicrous, and it’s been done to many others – teachers, doctors, you name it. Each individual must be judged on their own merits. Hitler was a veteran, Stalin was a veteran, Mao was a veteran. The end of romanticization will be the beginning of the return of reason.
All organizations that are not actually right-wing will over time become left-wing. — John O’Sullivan
Fuck him and all like him with harpoons. Benedict Arnold was a war hero, too, until he wasn’t.
And the story of Benedict Arnold at least USED to be so ingrained in American lore that I remember his name as an insult from when I was a kid.
Don’t fret that we lionize Audie Murphy — because we don’t forget Arnold.
An AGM-84 seems like overkill, but I’m good with make a very loud point with people like this.
Wait, we were talking about the Harpoon missiles right?
I’ve been saying this for a long time, on this blog and elsewhere. Those who canonize veterans seem to have forgotten that Al Qaeda was trained by John Muhammad, a former U.S. Army Special Forces sergeant. Quite a few veterans have no loyalty to the United States; they used the military as a Job Corps and never had any intention of cashing the proverbial check they wrote to Uncle Sam. But they got the same training as those who were willing to, and have, cashed the check.
One of the top ones anyway. As a life long libertarian, and Libertarian [note case] since the Bush Betrayal after ’88, naturally I share the sentiment. If the field is your lifetime, I’m at a disadvantage since I don’t know what that is, but Reagan’s selection of GHWB was both a positive mistake, because he was a truly terrible prez, and a negative one, as in missed opportunity. If he had talked Thomas Sowell into it, we’d be in a lot better place today. Or Friedman or Williams. Now, I doubt if any of us are old enough to remember, but if you want to talk longer term, I’d really love to go back in time and shoot TR. The treasonous bastard put Wilson in the White House. Anyone who can’t see how utterly evil that was doesn’t understand the most fundamental partisan ethics.
Too late for edit, but I must amend that. While I voted LP from Marrou through Johnson, I voted straight GOP a few days ago. I respect JJ – I’ve met her & I think she ran at the left edge of the Libertarian envelope deliberately, as a matter of strategy. I think she almost certainly drew more from Biden or from the no-vote camp than Trump & I think that was intentional.
I find it saddening that veterans wish to deny the RTKBA to “ordinary” citizens
I completely understand that individual vets never again want to handle or own a firearm. I don’t get the transference, though.
Some of it is self inflicted. How many of us have seriously considered “Starship Troopers” as a guide for who gets to vote?
I served twenty years in the Marine Corps, but no combat, so I’m no hero. Not that I didn’t see men die, but that didn’t count.
From one article: “Auchincloss called for mandatory assault-weapon buybacks, liability insurance for all weapons, repeal of all concealed-carry permits, universal background checks for all gun purchases, red flag laws and taking guns out of the hands of domestic abusers.”
My military experience never covered the claim that my Constitutional rights, especially under the 2nd Amendment, are subject to forfeit, or that the government could “buy back” something from me that they didn’t sell to me, and that I’m not interested in selling.
Molon labe.