Crossing the Line

And letting it slide

Unlike the bulk of the corporate media, I do not think we should let this go without comment:

Nothing to see here . . . ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Donald posted this on Truth Social, the social media network I used to think of as Twitter for Nazis until, well, Twitter became Twitter for Nazis. Clearly somebody had alerted him to an article about General Mark Milley in The Atlantic, “The Patriot: How General Mark Milley protected the Constitution from Donald Trump,” which had been published early on Thursday September 21. Milley, who had been Donald’s Chairman of the Joint Chiefs from December 2018 until January 20, 2021, is retiring on October 1st. The article is part overview of his long career in the military, part profile, and part assessment of his performance during his two-year tenure.

It’s also an assessment, at least from the point of view of Gen. Milley and other military officers who had the great misfortune of serving during the Trump administration, of Donald. None of it is positive and almost all of it is bound to provoke him, even if unintentionally

A mentor of Milley’s essentially says that, after 200 years, we can no longer assume that “we would have a stable person as president.” High-ranking people in Donald’s orbit refer to him as “the most flawed person.”

Milley himself describes Donald’s behavior on January 6 as “shameful,” and “complicit,” and Milley was deeply concerned about Donald’s “ ‘Hitler-like’ embrace of the big lie about the election would prompt the president to seek out a ‘Reichstag moment.’ ”

It is the portrait of a vicious, ignorant, man-child who needed to be treated with kid gloves because of his lack of impulse control and supra-abundance of vindictiveness. If we didn’t know any better, it would come across as a caricature.

So, of course, in a fit of pique, Donald posts a suggestion that Gen. Milley would have been executed at an earlier time in American history (presumably back when we were “great”). In the run-up to the 2020 election, in the wake of Donald’s erratic behavior and irresponsible threats against China, Milley spoke with his Chinese counterpart in order to assuage his fears that, as intelligence suggested, officials in China were deeply concerned that Donald was going to launch an actual attack against them.

Milley’s stated goal was to “deconflict military actions, manage crisis, and prevent war between great powers that are armed with the world’s most deadliest weapons.”

There are plenty of things to criticize about Milley’s time as head of the Joint Chiefs, the worst of which was his participation in the walk to Lafayette Square during George Floyd protests for which he has repeatedly apologized. And there is a theoretical conversation to be had about Milley’s behind-the scenes maneuverings that, one could potentially argue, undermined the authority of his commander-in-chief.

Whichever way that conversation plays out, however, it is Donald’s threats—which are becoming more extreme and increasingly pointed—that are not at all theoretical.

Do we think his amped up followers, who’ve been wallowing in the juices of Donald’s grievances for over six years now, are going to read Donald’s post as mere historical commentary? No. Neither does Donald. That’s why he posts such things. He knows what his followers will believe after reading, “in times gone by, the punishment would have been DEATH.” They will believe that Gen. Milley betrayed Donald and therefore deserves to die.

After the surreally bad NBC interview with Kristen Welker, I wrote: “the unchallenged lies sink in, adding to the sense that all transgressions—against truth, decency, American democracy—are already ‘baked in,’ and that sussing out the truth, or holding him accountable in any way, is just so much noise.”

Ignoring this direct threat to Milley needs to be seen in this context as well. Wake up, media. It’s long past time.