Marius went into politics afterward, you see. He had the prestige of his victory behind him, he was the most powerful man in Rome, his intentions were noble, but he did not understand politics. There followed a witch’s dance of corruption, murder, civil war, fifty years of it, the final extinction of the Republic. Caesarism merely gave a name to what had already been done.
Poul Anderson, Marius (1957)
They are also sending a none too subtle message that when they return to power, troops who have served loyally and followed the chain of command may face prosecution for their actions.
The Democrats are playing a very, very dangerous game. It is a cardinal principal of our government that the military is subject to civilian control. One of the charges against King George in the Declaration was that he had rendered the British military independent of and superior to the civil authority of the colonies. Encouraging the military to think that they have a right to disobey the civilian authority is to invite a coup when the generals and admirals think they know better than the elected president. Once that happens, the genie will not be put back in the bottle and our Republic will almost certainly die as successive military dictatorships, interspersed with civil wars, become the order of the day.
Damn. Talk about insurrectionist!
This is some very ugly propaganda.
A law and order President is facing this backlash from a weak and pathetic party who painted Trump as the master insurrectionist on j6 through
criminal editing of the video taken on that day.
Lock these traitors up. Don’t give up President Trump. Don’t give up the ship.
These public servants are inciting civil war.
Men like Senator Mark Kelly are particularly dangerous: former military and astronaut. He plays the hero card, but he’s no hero. Just another godless Democrat ambitious for power. Such Democrats must be stopped. Short of violence (which we should all deplore), I don’t know how to do that.
I think the precedent would be Argentina after 1930 (or after 1943). The country did have a certain formal legal political order between 1853 to 1930 which did not allow for freebooting aspirants caudillos ensconced in the military to take control of the government. It wasn’t in its national politics a constitutional republic until about 1912. Constitutional state or no, it was as economically prosperous as any country in the world in 1928. It had a long relative decline after that and is now a fairly unremarkable middle-income country. (Chile and Uruguay also suffered a long relative decline but were able to reverse course about fifty years ago and are now near the borderline of middle-income and affluent countries).
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Another possible precedent is the Spanish Civil War. Please note that the productive capacity of Spain declined by half as a result. About 2% of the population died from war injuries, famine, or public health collapse during the war and there was a bloody settling of scores in the two years succeeding. The succeeding regime was patriotic and orderly and fostered prosperity. That was from the good fortune of having the right man at the top. Ditto the experience of Portugal from 1928 to 1974. Still, a humiliation for a society of free men.
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A third possible precedent might be the military regimes which ran Uruguay (1973-85) and Chile (1973-90). Chile in particular experienced a tonic political and economic reset.
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All depressing to contemplate.
Yeah well.. that’s all they have.. haven’t been forcibly told they can’t.. haven’t been punished for previous actions.. power is their god.. and “the ends justify the means” is their motto.
My guess is that 98% of the military will think this to be a clown show, but 2% won’t and they’ll likely be motivated in the same way assassins hearing “hitler! hitler!” already have been.
“Encouraging the military to think that they have a right to disobey the civilian authority is to invite a coup when the generals and admirals think they know better than the elected president. Once that happens, the genie will not be put back in the bottle and our Republic will almost certainly die as successive military dictatorships, interspersed with civil wars, become the order of the day.”
In the dialectic philosophy of the Left, military or Right based dictatorships aren’t that bad.. because they always eventually dissolve into Left based Marxist dictatorships.
Except they don’t ‘always eventually’ do that. Nicaragua was run as a family racket from 1936 to 1979, though two of the three bosses in suggestion had passed through the country’s military. Nicaragua was a passable constitutional state from 1990 to 2007; the current autocrat is there due to assiduous vote fraud. The Venezuelan regime succeeded a constitutional state disfigured by rampant corruption and economic mismanagement. The Cuban regime comes closest to your model.
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The vast majority of military regimes in Latin America went back to the barracks in favor of some sort of elected government.
What’s really surprising is Senator Mark Kelly who always pushes for “gun control for our own safety… ” , is pushing for the Armed Forces to disobey “unlawful” orders while not pointing out which-orders are unlawful.
Just kidding, it’s not surprising.
Data republican was pointing out this was step 6 in inciting a color revolution.
https://x.com/DataRepublican/status/1990917358735798541?t=yqsgdXjDlz7ONwBjcnYK8g&s=19
The fools are working overtime Nate to bring about Civil War II. God forbid President Trump were to be assassinated. I would not bet against Civil War II then.
I don’t put much stock in palaeobabble about ‘color revolutions’.
Now I know why all the Confederate statues were torn down.
So contemporary Dems could follow Jeff Davis’s lead without the old precedent staring everyone in the face.
It is the blue cities and states that promote both the soft on crime defund the police policies and the criminalization of self defense that turns the citizens living there into serfs. Serious dereliction of duty by the local civil authorities.
Double-underscore to LCQ on Sen Mark Kelly:
He is little more than a CCP plant, 2nd only to Tim Walz.
His private company, “World View,” would have failed about 2013 without a large financial transfusion from China Communist corp Tencent, one of China’s largest corporations, owned and operated by at least 5 very high level CCP party members. He then received another large financial sum from TenCent in 2016. Part of the requirement was for Sen Kelly to drive around China promoting his company and American relations on a motorcycle. Who gets to travel around communist China on a motorcycle without total approval by the CCP? Oh, what does World View do? It makes surveillance balloons—-the technology his company no doubt shared with the “weather balloon”-infatuated Chinese Communists.
So this is who lectures us on loyalty to the US?
As a retired naval officer, Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ) is still subject to the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ). Perhaps he could be recalled to active duty and court-martialed for violation of Article 134, conduct prejudicial to the “good order and discipline of the Armed Forces”.
If convicted I suggest reduction in rank to CDR or LCDR. Hit him in the pocketbook!