Trump's ban on transgender individuals in the military

The BBQ Pit
381

It’s rather funny, that the pedant-in-residence for this thread, who is basically arguing that “negatively impacts our national security” only counts if it is above 10% (or whatever), and everything lower than 9.9999% is totally irrelevant, has let this comment slide.

So, SteveG1, how exactly did you see the timing of Trump’s tweets playing out?

8:55am – Trump tweets: “After consultation with my Generals and military experts, please be advised that the United States Government will not accept or allow…”

8:56am – CDR Jones, watchstander in the Joint Staff, sends an urgent message to General Dunford, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs.

8:57am – Gen Dunford sees the fragment of the tweet and immediately starts placing phone calls to all combatant commanders in the absence of Secretary Mattis’ orders, since he is on vacation.

9:01am – Calls to regional commanders are complete, with the orders to attack ALL adversaries since the Commander in Chief has not yet specified who we are going to war with.

9:02am - General Hyten, Commander of Strategy Command, orders ICBM strikes on Russia, China, North Korea, Iran, Syria, Pakistan, Libya, Somalia, Yemen, and Berlin (just to be sure, because weak leadership - sad!).

9:03am – missiles away, targets will be obliterated beginning in 24 minutes.

9:04am – tweet continues: “…Transgender individuals to serve in any capacity in the U.S. Military. Our military must be focused on decisive and overwhelming…”

9:05am – Gen Dunford issues apology for overreacting, but explains he was just trying to do his best for President Trump. #MAGA

Something like that? This is what you’re worried about?

382

Yes, that is what worries me. It doesn’t even have to be ALL supposed adversaries, just one is enough. It doesn’t even have to be us launching first, either. It could have caused Kim to fire on South Korea. Do we want to give him an excuse however slim??

This is all insanely dangerous.

Trump is a menace.

383

I think worrying that anyone is moving to defcon 1 over an ambiguous tweet is kind of in the “chicken little” range of thinking.

384

Trump is deranged, but so is your fear of a fragment of a tweet starting a war in the course of 10 minutes. Your concern is ludicrous, silly, and unfounded.

385

Good point but even so, you should not have the CinC rattling the chain of command at random times for whatever random brainfart reason. When you as CinC tweet out “After consulting my generals and advisors, be advised the US will not allow…” you expect what follows to be “resupply flights between Iran and Syria” or “China to bully us out of open international waters” or “North Korea to keep dumping dud missiles into Japanese waters” and conclude with “I expect the plans from the Joint Commands to deal with this on my desk this afternoon”. Not a fuckin’ human resources management decision followed with no actionable information. It’s a RELIEF that it was that, if you’re the head of STRATCOM or of the 7th Fleet, but still…

386

And you’re a moderator?

I just wanted to join this thread to mention a speculation from the Votemaster. First note that a tweet is not a presidential order. God knows what it is, but it is not an order. Second, many in the military are appalled by it and have announced that they will resist throwing out perfectly competent personnel. If it does go through, they will presumably get less than honorable discharges and the VM anticipates oodles of lawsuits. So the VM speculates that since Trump’s only purpose is to throw red meat to the base and that has been done, they will never notice if he fails to follow through and that the issue may eventually die. Presumably most of the base are too unconscious to notice.

387

I expect that there is a lot more to a policy change that a tweet. I mean, there would HAVE to be, right? Someone has to type something up and the President has to put his signature on it for it carry any real weight.

Right???

388

@Hari Seldon:
Did the Votemaster mention that this is likely connected to a House floor fight over the funding of reassignment surgery and if be fails to follow through it will likely reignite it?

389

I believe that, if it were to go through, the type of discharge will be “separation for the convenience of the government”. The character of discharge will be determined by the service member’s record, i.e. honorable for not having any disciplinary record.

And I really do wish his base were too unconscious to vote. Sadly, they voted unconscionably and will do so yet again and again.

One thing this continues to show is that Trump managed to be right on one thing: the twerp really is “unpresidential”.

390

I can concede the linguistic point. The larger message is: sometimes apologies are simply worthless. In fact, they can be even worse, as they can encourage people to believe that some treacly utterances after the fact somehow amount to a substitute for the action that was required of them at the time.

Sorry I didn’t fire my machine gun at the invaders. We all speak German now, but hey, I’m sorry, ok?

Sorry I didn’t make sure to lock the door at the CDC while I was leaving. Half the world’s population is dying of flesh-eating bacteria, but hey, I’m sorry, ok?

Sorry I shirked my civic duty to vote. Donald Trump is literally going to get us all killed after he is done attempting to impose every moronic prejudice Bible beaters and racists have ever devised in lieu of following through on the business of the most powerful nation in the history of Earth, but hey, I’m sorry, ok?

Can you understand why someone might think “sorry” just isn’t worth jack shit, and why someone might believe there is no point in being nice about that or soft-pedaling that message in any way?

Yeah, we need a 3rd party that actually serves the public, and that is probably a pipe dream. Nonetheless, there isn’t any excuse for not voting, and I am tired of people coddling these non-voting duty shirkers. Some of us appreciate having the kinds of rights we enjoy in this country, and aren’t going to just be quiet and polite about the people who lack the virtue to do what is required to prevent it all from being thrown away.

391

You are correct in just saying, “I’m sorry.” isn’t enough. A true apology needs to demonstrate that the apologizer understands what they did wrong, why they did wrong, how that harmed others, and what they will do in the future to avoid the same regrettable situation.

And you are correct that there are times when no manner of words or promise of future action can in any way make up for it. If you walk in on my slaughtering your family, a sheepish smile and a “Sorry” isn’t going to get far.

This is not one of those times. One vote didn’t get trump elected. You cannot blame the current administration on a single person who did not vote. I thought Idle Thought’s apology was sincere, and the fact that he recognized the error of his ways, and promised to do what he could to make reparations in the future is about the best you can do.

To refuse to accept a sincere apology, that acknowledges fault and promises reparation, and instead to continue to attack someone for what they have apologized for does no one any good (especially when you remember so little about the situation that you only remember that you are angry about it, but you don’t remember anything other than the first letter of the poster’s name, causing you to lash out at completely random people). If people know that they will be attacked for admitting that they made a mistake, then they will be resistant to not only admitting it to others in the future, but admitting it to themselves.

Most people who didn’t vote probably realized that they fucked up at this point. We don’t need to rub their noses in it, that will just make them dig their heels in. Fume all you want about the last election, but if we want to win the next one, then making enemies of those on our side just because they made a mistake that they are willing to make amends for will not help us to win any.

At the very, very least, if you are going to insist upon attacking someone for not voting, make sure that you have spent a few seconds making sure that you have the right target, or you will find yourself making enemies of people who did absolutely no wrong, and that is a path that leads only to abject defeat.
ETA: about apologies, after your rather vicious and completely unfounded lashing out at iiandyiiii, you’re only response on learning your mistake to that was “My apologies”, which iiandyiiii accepted.

392

This reminds me of one of my favorite moments in the TV show Supernatural.

Sam has taken to drinking demon blood to enhance his powers and has started boning the demon-woman encouraging him to do it. He has developed an addiction. Pretty much the whole season is people telling him to knock that shit off, that she can’t be trusted, yadda yadda. Season Finale, she lures him into a trap in which he’s opened the gates of hell, kicked off Armageddon and released Lucifer onto the planet. As the earth starts to crumble, making way for a yawning hell-chasm about to vomit forth the horrors of Armageddon, Sam turns to his brother, his expression plaintive, and says, ‘‘I’m sorry.’’

I laughed so hard I cried.

There may be a parallel to draw here.

393

It reminds me of the title character of the Batman: The Animated Series episode “The Man Who Killed Batman”, a nobody schnook who by pure happenstance appears to have accomplished that deed. It gets him nothing but trouble, culminating in the Joker (pissed off that now he’ll never get to kill Batman) sealing him in a box and dumping him in a tank of acid as he plaintively cries “Would it help if I said I was really really sorry?”
(He survives to get himself into one last round of trouble before Batman reappears.)

394

Well, this will all be resolved in the fullness of time as society gradually learns to give a flying fuck whether Try2B Comprehensive deigned to deride rather than coddle non-voters.

395

I’m every bit as surprised as you are. Terrible decision on behalf of the other
Mods. Can’t imagine what they were thinking.

396

[QUOTE=manson1972]
Where have you been? If someone posts a denouncement of a social ill, if you don’t agree with whatever they say, that means you are in support of the social ill.

For example:

“Trump bit the head off of a live dove! He is an animal hater, warmonger, and the worst human being ever!!”

“Yeah, that didn’t actually happen”

“That’s not the point! He is a monster, and if you can’t see that, you are a monster too!”

Same for this thread it looks like. Same for a lot of threads.
[/QUOTE]

Tada:

LOL, thanks!

397

We don’t always get the moderators we want, we get the moderators we deserve.

398

Yes, I acknowledged that, all I can say this that words can be the answer to words, but actions are forever.

The critical comments are noted. This issue theatens to turn me into an asshole. But I am reminded of The Ballad of Ira Hayes:

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://m.youtube.com/watch%3Fv%3DUKDLQWEvubc&ved=0ahUKEwjF5KOpq7XVAhVp2IMKHT0_Dc4QtwIIZzAL&usg=AFQjCNHdPeoRpGpsPlPBk5WR8lfekwpXhg

It is hard to find any group in history that was mistreated worse than the Native Americans were by the US government. Nonetheless, Ira Hayes took up arms to fight for his country, thinking it might make a difference for his people. It did not; he was “just a Pima Indian”, and no matter what feats of valor he performed, including charging machine gun nests, it turned out he was really only fighting for the Chance that things could change, not the actual prospect of that change. He realized this eventually and drank himself to death. No degree of patriotism/virtue could resolve his hopelessness.

Will we learn? Men like this fought for our right to vote. All most people have to do is get off their duffs and fill out a ballot. Is that so great a sacrifice? Really? I say no. Vote, or you suck, in a dishonoring the memory of your cultural ancestors kind of way. The alternative is to return to the days of official prejudice against anyone who isn’t squarely in the majority, the process of which we are now witnessing, infuriatingly, at least to me.

399

And yet there are (apparently) reports that the Department of Defense was indeed worried during that ten minutes that Trump was going to announce strikes on North Korea. Fortunately, unlike the White House, the DoD are not likely to go off half-cocked and with imperfect information. Unfortunately, tweets don’t just get sent to the domestic market and it’s entirely plausible that folks in NK were also waiting breathlessly for the next part of Trump’s sentence to appear.

So while I doubt this sort of thing would lead to actual war, it makes a tense and volatile situation worse for all involved for no good reason whatsoever.

400

But – but it pleased his base! Surely that makes the fact we’ve got a complete loon and a man-child egging each other on insignificant.