Long-time readers may have noticed that at this newspaper, we tend to expect the worst.* Even so, count us among those who did not expect the President to threaten to hang Maggie Goodlander.
This seems as good a time as any to raise a formal complaint: if our government is going to run as if it were a Monty Python sketch,† why is it not funnier? Sadly, current events force us to turn aside from John Cleese, Eric Idle, and the rest of that merry gang, and turn to a grimmer Englishman.
If you really want to be frightened, imagine trying to navigate today’s world without the clarity given to us by George Orwell. Let us begin by setting aside a quotation often attributed to Orwell: “During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.” We dismiss it not because it isn’t true, but because Orwell never said or wrote it.
Besides, for these times, all we need is this, from 1984: “War is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength.”
On September 2nd, our newly-renamed War Department blew up a boat in the Caribbean, killing 11 people. A second strike on the 15th killed three more. The pace picked up as these extra-judicial assassinations continued and expanded into the eastern Pacific. At last count 83 people have died in 21 strikes. All were “narco-terrorists,” according to the White House, though none were tried, much less convicted, and two supposedly-guilty survivors were turned over to their native countries.
This narrative was complicated Tuesday by a report in The Guardian with Hugo Lowell’s byline. The British paper’s White House correspondent, who has an enviable record for breaking scoops, might want to avoid travelling in small boats until the U.S. sees a regime change. Lowell wrote that, according to internal documents, the administration is actually relying on an entirely different legal justification: “the cartels are waging armed violence against the security forces of allies such as Mexico, and that the violence is financed by cocaine shipments.”
In other words, it’s not just the same old “war on drugs.” It’s a war against a “narco-terrorist regime,” and the shooting started months ago. Suddenly, putting the world’s biggest aircraft carrier within striking distance of Venezuela seems a tiny bit less crazy—though much more terrifying.
It was in this context that half a dozen Democratic Members of Congress—veterans, all, of the U.S. military or intelligence services—got in front of a video camera to read excerpts from that quaint old relic of the Truman era, the Uniform Code of Military Justice: do not obey illegal orders.
Our Commander-in-Chief himself might have had this very passage barked at him by a drill sergeant, years ago, had it not been for a tragic case of bone spurs.
The six Democrats—Senator Mark Kelly of Arizona and four other Representatives—did not spell out any specific illegal orders which should not be obeyed. These days, where would you begin? Don’t shoot people on American streets? Don’t go around randomly assassinating Venezuelan fishermen?
FBI Director Kash Patel has now sicced his agents on the Democrats who urged members of our armed forces to obey the law. If this zeal seems a bit excessive, consider the matter from his position: this six-pack of troublemakers may have interrupted his social life.
Patel has been using a $60 million government jet to hang out with his girlfriend in Nashville, country singer Alexis Winter. Patel says he’s reimbursed the government at commercial rates. That’s nice of him. Never mind that each flight costs the taxpayer about $20,000.
Though the flight data for the planes is publicly available, and a 27-year FBI employee who managed the Bureau’s fleet may not have had anything to do with releasing it, he was summarily fired.
It has since been revealed that Patel has also been using the FBI’s SWAT Team to provide Ms. Wilkins with a personal security detail. This is perfectly understandable, of course; as all red-blooded Americans instinctively understand, those bars down in Nashville can get pretty rowdy. Never mind being fired, whoever leaked this is asking for a firing squad.
Just a few days ago, the person who set all this lawless chaos in motion had charges against him dropped in Georgia. And why not? All he did—in this specific case—was call the Governor and ask him to overturn an election. He has long since escaped any consequences for egging on a mob to attack Congress in order to achieve that same end. Hell, the Supreme Court granted him license to do any damn thing he wants.
Why should any of us be surprised at any of this now?
* We also hope for the best, of course. How else could we fulfill our mission of continuing to publish, even as the atmosphere continues to destabilize, antibiotics lose their power to protect us from loathsome diseases, and the economy shows signs of crumbling under the weight of capitalism’s insatiable ideology?
† MAGA readers: we refer here to the Monty Python sketch about the Spanish Inquisition.