Early on, my cousin, Ben Wittes, came up with “malevolence tempered by incompetence,” to describe the Trump administration, and Trump himself.
As we view videos and news coverage of overweight masked white men garbed in “uniforms” which apparently have some secret meaning maybe related to the cannons they’re lugging around, I shake my head at the stupidity.
They’ve taken their cannons into a Subway, demanding sandwiches. I’ve always been under the impression that Subway will make them sandwiches without being threatened because, you know, that’s what a food chain does. As a business. But maybe this cockamamie protest against a virus (??) or for being killed by a virus has changed the calculations.
They’ve also lugged their cannons — and inspired a Twittered conspiracy — into state legislatures, where they are threatening at least one governor (and I’m pretty sure the FBI is investigating the direct threats I’ve read on Twitter).
Some people envision these groups of fools as rehearsal for a possible coup d’état, providing that the état in question will no longer be ruled by Trump after November 2020.
I don’t. I see them as disappointed, dopey, angry poseurs, playing out some simplistic fantasy of being At War, Warriors, something like that. Actually, none of them would probably be accepted into any rational armed forces, so the best they can pretend to be is…mercenaries.
So here’s a timely item from Harper’s Weekly Review about a genuine highly trained and devoted Trump mercenary whose skills at assault, upheaval, camouflage, subterfuge and plotting coups are, um…well, read it for yourselves:
Trump and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo denied U.S. involvement in a botched coup attempt in Venezuela in which an ex–U.S. Special Forces soldier—who had previously tried to launch an initiative to install Special Forces troops inside American schools to prevent school shootings and had served as unofficial security at Trump rallies—led an amphibious assault that resulted in the arrest of several dozen mercenaries, including himself, and the deaths of eight others.