Is a Militarized US Government Really Impossible?
(Permanent Musical Accompaniment To The Last Post Of The Week From The Blog’s Favourite Living Canadian)
Masha Gessen in The New Yorker provided the final words on John Kelly’s turn on the stage, and those words were a clear warning of something nobody wants to talk about.
Kelly’s last argument was his most striking. At the end of the briefing, he said that he would take questions only from those members of the press who had a personal connection to a fallen soldier, followed by those who knew a Gold Star family. Considering that, a few minutes earlier, Kelly had said most Americans didn’t even know anyone who knew anyone who belonged to the “one per cent,” he was now explicitly denying a majority of Americans - or the journalists representing them - the right to ask questions. This was a new twist on the Trump Administration’s technique of shunning and shaming unfriendly members of the news media, except this time, it was framed explicitly in terms of national loyalty. As if on cue, the first reporter allowed to speak inserted the phrase “Semper Fi” - a literal loyalty oath - into his question.
I used to think that a militarized United States government was impossible. There were too many chokepoints. Now, with a president who on his best day is an incompetent buffoon, a supine Republican majority in both Houses of Congress, and a troika of generals being regularly applauded as the only thing standing between all of us and the abyss, and after a couple of decades of Support The Troops every time you turn around at the ballpark, I’m really less sure, and Kelly didn’t make me feel any more secure on Thursday.
There was an awful, indefinable edge to the bargain he seemed to be offering for his services keeping the president* put away. Gessen was able to define it.
Before walking off the stage, Kelly told Americans who haven’t served in the military that he pities them. “We don’t look down upon those of you who haven’t served,” he said. “In fact, in a way we are a little bit sorry because you’ll have never have experienced the wonderful joy you get in your heart when you do the kinds of things our servicemen and women do - not for any other reason than that they love this country.” When Kelly replaced the ineffectual Reince Priebus as the chief of staff, a sigh of relief emerged: at least the general would impose some discipline on the Administration. Now we have a sense of what military discipline in the White House sounds like.
And then there’s this little touch of anti-American babble from Sarah Huckabee Sanders, White House spokesgoober:
“If you want to go after General Kelly that's up to you but I think that if you want to get into a debate with a four-star Marine general, I think that's something highly inappropriate."
This is something you hear from somebody on a balcony with braids on their hat. Good rule of thumb going forward: There’s nobody that’s going to make having elected this president* all better. Don’t trust any of them. A democracy let this happen to itself. God help us if we decide that democracy is too weak to fix its own mistakes.
Sometimes, the Five Minute Rule is too long. From Sciencemag.org:
New legislation introduced this week by Senator Rand Paul (R–KY) would fundamentally alter how grant proposals are reviewed at every federal agency by adding public members with no expertise in the research being vetted. The bill (S.1973) would eliminate the current in-house watchdog office within the National Science Foundation (NSF) in Alexandria, Virginia, and replace it with an entity that would randomly examine proposals chosen for funding to make sure the research will “deliver value to the taxpayer.” The legislation also calls for all federal grant applications to be made public.
Because, if it doesn’t pass the radio talk-show audience test, what good can it be?
Paul’s proposed solution starts with adding two members who have no vested interest in the proposed research to every federal panel that reviews grant applications. One would be an “expert ... in a field unrelated to the research” being proposed, according to the bill. Their presence, Paul explained, would add an independent voice capable of judging which fields are most worthy of funding. The second addition would be a “taxpayer advocate,” someone who Paul says can weigh the value of the research to society.
Brilliant! A natural aristocracy of mediocrity. Don’t worry, though. Nothing’s really on the line here.
Two of the witnesses - Brian Nosek of the University of Virginia in Charlottesville and Rebecca Cunningham of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor - were generally supportive of the status quo, although Nosek emphasized the importance of replicating findings to maximize federal investments. The third witness, Terence Kealey of the Cato Institute in Washington, D.C., asserted that there’s no evidence that publicly funded research makes any contribution to economic development.
This is Kealey’s particular hobby-horse. He must consider himself fortunate that he lives in a country ranked only 10th in this kind of spending.
Weekly WWOZ Pick To Click: “Oh, How She Dances” (James Luther Dickinson): Yeah, I pretty much still love New Orleans.
Weekly Visit To The Pathe Archives: Here are some generals - Pershing and Petain - from 1918. Right there at the end, Petain starts waving at Pershing. I have no idea what that’s about. History is so cool.
On Friday, Sarah Huckabee Sanders tried to argue that the criticism from the president*’s immediate predecessors was not aimed at him because they didn’t mention his name. This is what passes for political nuance these days.
Is it a good day for dinosaur news, R&D Magazine? It’s always a good day for dinosaur news!
The 76-million-year old fossilized skeleton of the dinosaur was found in a remote field site at the Bureau of Land Management’s Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument (GSENM) in 2015 and was airlifted on Oct. 15, 2017 to the Natural History Museum of Utah where it will be uncovered, prepared and studied. The fossil is likely from a Teratophoneus curriei, known to inhabit western North America between 66 and 90 million years ago during the Late Cretaceous Period. The fossil includes a nearly complete skull.“With at least 75 percent of its bones preserved, this is the most complete skeleton of a tyrannosaur ever discovered in the southwestern US,” Randall Irmis, Ph.D., curator of paleontology at the Museum and associate professor in the Department of Geology and Geophysics at the University of Utah, said in a statement. “We are eager to get a closer look at this fossil to learn more about the southern tyrannosaur's anatomy, biology and evolution.”
Get it out quick before Scott Pruitt drops an oil derrick on the poor beast!
I’ll be back on Monday, likely with some more handwringing from Republicans who want their tax cuts more than they want their pride. Be well and play nice, ya bastids. Stay above the snakeline, and maybe you can grow up to be a “taxpayer advocate” at NASA.
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