Despot-Proofing Our Armed Forces

Like most Americans, I’ve been forced by circumstances to think a lot about a man I’d rather never bring to mind: Donald Trump. I’ve thought hard about his possible ascension to our top leadership post for yet a second time. I’ve spent even more time recently, as polls in “battleground” states suggest a realistic chance of his winning the presidency yet again, despite his self-evident focus on himself, his inconsistency, his lying, his tendency toward violence, and his manifest general unfitness.

Deep down, I don’t credit the polls. Why? I think we are witnessing a pollsters’ debacle like that in the Dewey-Truman race, but on steroids.

MAGA partisans are childishly eager to tell the world how they feel and will vote. Progressives like me, who are equally adamant in supporting Biden, spend an hour each day clearing our cell phones and e-mail inboxes of unwanted messages—even from causes and candidates that we wholly support—because there are just too many.

Many of us progressives are already contributing and doing as much as we possibly can. We don’t need reminders of how consequential this race is. So the likelihood of my spending even ten minutes on the phone with a pollster is somewhere between infinitesimal and zero. I assume there are many Biden supporters like me, maybe even more who support Biden lukewarmly.

And yet, and yet. As flawed as they may be, polls tell us that the Cult of Trump is strong. Every time I see an oversized pickup truck with nothing but two gigantic flags in its bed—one our American flag and another labeled simply “TRUMP”—I can’t help but wonder. How many more are there like that? And how many more are there like that in the “red” battleground states that will decide this election?

So I can’t help but think that the best approach for me and our nation is embodied in the motto of the Scouts of America (now, at last, co-ed): “Be Prepared.” We all have to think hard and work hard to prepare our democracy to survive a possible second Trump presidency. How do we do that?

Today’s New York Times has one answer. It has a long story about preparations among progressive organizations to fight such things as mass roundups and deportations of undocumented migrants and the use of federal military force against demonstrators, especially in blue states. Virtually all of the reported preparations involve lawyers and legally oriented private, nonprofit institutions, such as the ACLU. We progressives are building an unprecedented army of advocates armed with law texts, sharp pencils and yellow legal pads.

But when I let my mind relax a bit and drift from polysyllabic words, I think that “crude” best describes our would-be despot. He’s crude in his descriptions of and relationships with women, including those whom he has assaulted. He’s crude in his casual acceptance and encouragement of violence—in his mass rallies, in his speech promising a “bloodbath” if he loses, and in his threats to deploy the judiciary and our armed forces against his enemies. He was crude in encouraging and (in my view) inciting what became the January 6 Insurrection.

In these respects, he’s a brute. We’ve not seen his like in the White House since Andrew Jackson, whom historians tend to hold responsible for one of our greatest shames: the forced displacement, cultural genocide and partial actual genocide of Native Americans.

In Trump’s first term, his crude and brutish tendencies were restrained by those around him and his vague sense that—never having held any political office, let alone the top job—he was in unfamiliar territory. Perhaps the most famous example was then-Vice President Mike Pence’s refusal to participate in the appointment of false electors after Trump lost to Biden in 2020. Another was the threat of virtually all the assistant attorneys general to resign en masse if Trump removed the then-acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen and replaced him with a “Stop the Steal” lackey. Even General Mark Milley, who unlawfully assisted in using military force to clear Lafayette Square of peaceful protestors, later regretted doing so and pledged not to allow further unlawful use of our military.

But this time, there will be no Mike Pence, no wall of resistance among assistant attorneys general, no Mark Milley. This time, all the people appointed to key positions of civil and military power will be selected for loyalty to Donald Trump alone, and to no one and nothing else. The would-be despot himself has told us so.

Does anyone seriously think that this crude and brutish man, now showing signs of significant senile dementia, will appoint any “underling” to any high position who will have the slightest chance of opposing his every whim? A few good Germans once had such wishful fantasies about Adolf Hitler. Within a year of two of Hitler’s accession to absolute power, they were all gone from positions of power, or dead.

So “being prepared” to save our democracy in a second term of Trump will require, above all, preserving independent and lawful operation of our armed forces, all of them. President Jackson once resisted complying with a lawful order of Chief Justice John Marshall, saying words to the effect of “Where’s his army?” We do not want the second coming of Jackson to take that reasoning to its logical conclusion.

How do we prevent that? How do we preclude the worst case of a second civil war being fought with heavy aircraft, mighty littoral landing craft, attack drones and other sophisticated modern weapons, perhaps even nukes?

I submit that Congress can, and probably would, pass laws to prohibit all the following:

1. The use of nuclear weapons, aerial bombing or strafing, littoral attack vessels, tanks, armed drones and other heavy weapons against American civilians, or where American civilians could incur mass casualties, without specific congressional authorization by a two-thirds vote of both Houses, upon a specific finding that foreign forces or influences were involved;

2. The deployment or non-emergency use of any branch of federal service—Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines or Space Force—for any purpose other than defense of the nation’s capital or designated military bases, except upon invasion or attack by foreign forces, and then only as specifically authorized by a majority vote of both Houses of Congress; and

3. The deployment of National Guard troops to suppress civilian unrest for a period of more than ten days, except upon authorization by Congress, by majority vote of both Houses, after an official report by the FBI concerning the nature and causes of the unrest, and upon the approval of the governors or acting governors of all the States involved.

We never want to see the awesome power of modern weapons, let alone nukes, deployed against American civilians the way Saddam deployed aircraft and gas against the Marsh Arabs. We never want to see, inside our own country, anything like what is going on now in Gaza.

Congress has just over seven months before Donald Trump, if elected again, will take office. It should begin to put in place these democracy fail-safes now. Even in our badly divided Congress, there ought to be enough true patriots and realists to pass these much-needed restraints and democracy fail-safes by majority vote.

Endnote: As a white geezer who just turned 79, I’m enormously grateful for the service (and relieved at the leadership) of Secdef Lloyd James Austin III and Joint Chiefs Chairman General Charles Q. Brown, Jr. Both men are Black. As such, both no doubt understand better than most the dangers of misuse of military power to disadvantage and oppress innocent civilians and to violate the most basic human rights in ways both subtle and overt.

I suspect and hope that they are doing all they can to rid our armed forces of extremists, including white and Christian supremacists. I believe that their very presence in top leadership posts is causing at least some extremists to leave our armed forces voluntarily. Good riddance!

But as top leaders, both men serve at the President’s pleasure. They can be dismissed on the day a new president is inaugurated.

Accordingly, if we wish to despot-proof our armed forces, we need to have more powerful institutional, legal restraints and a deep, deep bench of service members who believe devoutly in the neutrality, non-partisanship and egalitarianism of our armed forces. I hope and trust that both top leaders are working hard to entrench the laws, orders, customs, and people who will maintain those traditions. They have seven months to complete their good and vital work before all may suddenly change.

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