October 30, 2018: Caravan Approaching Border Carrying Smallpox - Fox News Viewers Alarmed!

 

10/30/18: Fox News is running scary stories about the “migrant caravan” heading toward America. President Trump says the caravan includes “very scary people.” Also known to Fox News fans as: “non-white individuals.” 

There could be “Middle Eastern people” hiding among all the Spanish-speaking asylum seekers. 

Also known to Fox News viewers as Muslims – and, ipso facto, terrible people. 

 

The rhetorical China shop bull who is now our president. 

According to David Ward, some “expert” who appears in one Fox segment, these people are bringing diseases like leprosy and smallpox, and we can’t allow them to breach the border. 

Smallpox! I for one am suddenly scared and think I should go buy guns and head south to defend America. Then I remember. Smallpox was eradicated in 1980. So, I guess Fox is just running stupid, scary stories. 

And that would be “Fake News.”

Smallpox!

 

In related right-wing-nut news, three Kansas men are convicted in a plot to blow up mosques and the homes of Somali immigrants. Because Somali immigrants are just as scary as SMALLPOX! 

Their lawyers beg for leniency, basically arguing that Trump made their clients do it.  Trump, lawyers for one of the defendants insist, appealed to “lost and ignored white, working-class men” like the defendant, who was “an early and avid supporter [emphasis added here and throughout]” of the president.

“The court cannot ignore the circumstances of one of the most rhetorically mold-breaking, violent, awful, hateful and contentious presidential elections in modern history, driven in large measure by the rhetorical China shop bull who is now our president,” the lawyers wrote in their sentencing memorandum. 

Lawyers for a second defendant note that the president continues to stoke fear with his warnings about caravans filled with dangerous individuals. 

As long as the Executive Branch condemns Islam and commends and encourages violence against would-be enemies, then a sentence imposed by the Judicial Branch does little to deter people generally from engaging in such conduct if they believe they are protecting their countries from enemies identified by their own Commander-in-Chief.”

 

So, there’s that.

November 24, 2018: Troops Spend Thanksgiving Down at the Border - Mission Unclear

 

11/24/18: Several thousand U.S. troops are celebrating Thanksgiving down along the Mexico border. They are there, and they will do their best, to “protect” the rest of us from the threat of imaginary smallpox (see: 10/30/18) and “dangerous immigrants,” many of whom look like these: 

 

Are there some dangerous individuals in any group, including the feared “caravan” that keeps Donald J. Trump up at night? Of course. There have been bad customers in every group of immigrants, starting with those who landed at Plymouth Rock. John Billington we’re talking about you. 

And smallpox? Now those Pilgrims definitely brought smallpox with them, along with their Bibles and guns. 

____________________ 

 “I don’t think he understands the proper use and role of the military.” 

Col. David Lapan

____________________ 

 

Yet, as much as Trump likes to talk about “my military” and “my generals” and pretend he has the best interests of those who serve at heart, not everyone is convinced he knows what he’s doing in that regard: 

“There was the belief that over time, he would better understand, but I don’t know that that’s the case,” said Col. David Lapan, a retired Marine who served in the Trump administration in 2017 as a spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security. “I don’t think that he understands the proper use and role of the military and what we can, and can’t, do.”

 

As The New York Times makes quite clear, Col. Lapan isn’t the only officer who seems to have doubts. 

“If a president routinely and cynically leverages our nation’s armed forces for short-term political advantage, the professional ethos” of the officers’ corps will be degraded, said Karl W. Eikenberry, a retired three-star Army general and a former commander of American forces in Afghanistan. “This, in turn, would threaten one of the foundational principles of our republic [emphasis added] – that our military must remain outside of politics.”

 

In fact, a group of soldiers asks Defense Secretary James Mattis when he visits the border what their mission is. “Short term, get the obstacles [barbed wire, etc.] in,” Mattis tells them. 

“Long term, it is somewhat to be determined.”