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Trump's Dangerous Domestic Army [1]

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Date: 2025-01-27

Our joke of a secretary of defense, accused drunk/sexual assaulter/incompetent ass Pete Hegseth, staggers into office with the goal of making the military more male, whiter, and more MAGA.

(Whiter? More male? The Air Force has removed videos of the storied Tuskegee Airmen and the Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASPS) from its basic training program as part of the administration’s crackdown on diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives. Hint, hint.)

Hegseth has the near equally important task of staying sober and keeping his penis in his pants to the degree that he won’t end up getting fired.

Of course, none of that matters if he fails in his most important assignment: maintaining his servitude to four-time indicted, twice impeached, sexual assaulter, tax fraudster, insurrectionist inspirer, wannabe fascist dictator, convicted felon, President Donald Trump.

That means being ready to send out the troops when Trump tells him to, whether it’s to round up immigrants, run roughshod over protesters, invade foreign countries for no good reason, or whatever other whim strikes his fancy.

But Trump now has a second army -- far-Right militias like the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers – not to mention unaffiliated MAGA men and women who would love to show up for a rumble, just like they did on Jan. 6 when Trump sent them to the Capitol to try to overturn the election.

Trump did more than just take a piss on the rule of law and the constitution when he issued clemency for all of the nearly 1,600 people charged in connection with the Jan. 6 attack and commuted the sentences of 14 members of the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers, most of whom were convicted of seditious conspiracy.

These domestic terrorists are raring to go again. Trump remains their hero. The danger from these lunatics isn’t over, it might even be worse because now they know whatever crime they commit there’s a guy in the White House ready to pardon them all over again.

Just listen.

Enrique Tarrio, leader of the Proud Boys, is now out of a federal prison after Trump made his 22-year sentence for seditious conspiracy charges disappear. His comments during an interview with conspiracy theorist Alex Jones reported on the website Wired sound ominous.

“I’m happy that the president is focusing not on retribution, and focusing on success. But I will tell you I’m not going to play by those rules,” Tarrio said. “The people who did this, they need to feel the heat, they need to be put behind bars, they need to be prosecuted. They need to be imprisoned. We need to find and put them behind bars for what they did.”

I believe you call that seeking retribution.

The Global Project Against Hate and Extremism analyzed the Proud Boys’ social medial channels after the Jan. 6 pardons. They showed a ramping up of real-world activism to help further the Trump administration’s agenda, Wired reported.

Proud Boys posts “reveal an emboldened network, with members fantasizing about mass deportation schemes and threating to escalate their attacks during Pride Month,” the GPAHE said. “These developments point to a broader alignment between extremist groups and the Trump regime, raising urgent concerns about public safety and the normalization of far-Right violence.”

Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes, himself a recipient of a get-out-of-jail-free card from Trump that ended his 18-year sentence for seditious conspiracy, attended the president’s rally in Las Vegas Saturday. He even got to stand on stage during the event.

Yeah, these guys aren’t going anywhere.

Jon Lewis is a research fellow at George Washington University’s Program on Extremism. He gives a pretty good explanation of the lay of the domestic terrorist landscape.

“How many people are going to be emboldened by this, how many are going to take this as justification, as their call to arms, to say ‘we have to fight now against the prosecutors, the FBI agents, the so-called deep state?’” Lewis said. “These are people who have a track record of being allowed to commit violence in the name of their ideology, and they’ve been given a second chance to do just that.”

***

So, what are we going to do about all this? First of all, few of us will ever encounter these militia clowns. I doubt – but I can’t guarantee – that they’d target regular folks just going about their day-to-day business. If I was an immigrant, I’d be very worried. If I was going to take part in a legal protest on an issue that they don’t align with I’d keep my eyes open.

Some people might think they need to get a gun. The Right believes they have a big weapons advantage and so do I. It’s an individual choice whether to own a gun or to carry one when out in public. In a lot of cases, it’s not a good idea.

The main thing is we can’t be scared. We have to be careful, but not scared. We can’t let domestic terrorists control our lives or our country, even if they have a license to do so from the president himself.

This whole thing can be scary, but fear is what they count on. When they push all their chips into the middle of the table that’s what they’re betting on.

We can’t let them win. We just can’t.

***

Thank you for reading my post. You can see my other writings on my blog: Musings of a Nobody. Please share and subscribe for free via email on its home page.

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