Welcome to Dictatorship
The Post this morning announces: "Trump announces that he will ban transgender people from serving in the military". Naturally, we have something to say about that.
Actually, I hardly have to comment. It's a bad idea and interestingly enough just about everybody is lining up against it. There had been some debate going on about whether the military should pay for sex reassignment surgery -- which, by the way, The Post notes that The military spends five times as much on Viagra as it would on transgender troops’ medical care -- and that is fine, it is a great thing to debate, let the conservatives and liberals fight it out. But nobody was proposing banning transgender people from the military. The President got up in the morning and decided he needed to distract us from his plan to fire his Attorney General and special counsel, distract us from the fact that the Russia investigation is getting very close to him and his finances and his business associates, distract us from noticing that he and his staff are a crime mob, and so he signed into Twitter and blasted out some absurdity. Didn't tell his press staff, didn't tell the Pentagon, didn't consult with anybody, he caught all of the federal government by surprise. Yes, he's the commander in chief, the most vaguely defined position in the world. He still has a chain of command, and Twitter is not part of it.
You know how we feel about the order itself. Transgender people are just people. There is no point in discriminating against them. I don't even need to make the case for that. Here, this is fascinating, look at the Republicans speak out: The Daily 202: Growing GOP backlash to transgender troop ban underscores Trump’s political miscalculation.
The important part here is: this is not how we do things. The United States has a Constitution. We have well thought-out branches of government, processes for deliberating new policies. Our representatives debate and discuss and vote on things. America does not have a king. We do not have a guy who gets up in the morning and makes capricious decisions and the millions of federal employees, including the military, just do whatever he says.
You will note that Joint Chiefs of Staff are ignoring the tweets. Marine General Joe Dunford sent out a notice: “There will be no modifications to the current policy until the President's direction has been received by the Secretary of Defense and the Secretary has issued implementation guidance.” Because that is the way we do things.
I understand Trump not knowing how it works. He doesn't know anything about how government works, and doesn't want to know. In the meantime, this is not a "new policy." Government decisions are not announced on Twitter, by one guy. This is one idiot talking off the top of his head. He has his reasons for changing the subject and he found a hot-button issue to make everybody's head spin. Nobody wants to discriminate against trans people, it just isn't a viable position any more. Too much progress has been made and we're not going back. Even staunch Republicans have realized that people they know are trans, people they count on, including as many as 15,500 transgender people in the military already.
The guy is allowed to blow off steam on the Internet, no problem. His tweets are entertaining and at least we have some idea where he's coming from. But he is the President of the United States, and in that function he is bound by the Constitution and the rule of law. No matter how much they wish it in the red states, the US is not a dictatorship. Yet.
Actually, I hardly have to comment. It's a bad idea and interestingly enough just about everybody is lining up against it. There had been some debate going on about whether the military should pay for sex reassignment surgery -- which, by the way, The Post notes that The military spends five times as much on Viagra as it would on transgender troops’ medical care -- and that is fine, it is a great thing to debate, let the conservatives and liberals fight it out. But nobody was proposing banning transgender people from the military. The President got up in the morning and decided he needed to distract us from his plan to fire his Attorney General and special counsel, distract us from the fact that the Russia investigation is getting very close to him and his finances and his business associates, distract us from noticing that he and his staff are a crime mob, and so he signed into Twitter and blasted out some absurdity. Didn't tell his press staff, didn't tell the Pentagon, didn't consult with anybody, he caught all of the federal government by surprise. Yes, he's the commander in chief, the most vaguely defined position in the world. He still has a chain of command, and Twitter is not part of it.
You know how we feel about the order itself. Transgender people are just people. There is no point in discriminating against them. I don't even need to make the case for that. Here, this is fascinating, look at the Republicans speak out: The Daily 202: Growing GOP backlash to transgender troop ban underscores Trump’s political miscalculation.
The important part here is: this is not how we do things. The United States has a Constitution. We have well thought-out branches of government, processes for deliberating new policies. Our representatives debate and discuss and vote on things. America does not have a king. We do not have a guy who gets up in the morning and makes capricious decisions and the millions of federal employees, including the military, just do whatever he says.
You will note that Joint Chiefs of Staff are ignoring the tweets. Marine General Joe Dunford sent out a notice: “There will be no modifications to the current policy until the President's direction has been received by the Secretary of Defense and the Secretary has issued implementation guidance.” Because that is the way we do things.
I understand Trump not knowing how it works. He doesn't know anything about how government works, and doesn't want to know. In the meantime, this is not a "new policy." Government decisions are not announced on Twitter, by one guy. This is one idiot talking off the top of his head. He has his reasons for changing the subject and he found a hot-button issue to make everybody's head spin. Nobody wants to discriminate against trans people, it just isn't a viable position any more. Too much progress has been made and we're not going back. Even staunch Republicans have realized that people they know are trans, people they count on, including as many as 15,500 transgender people in the military already.
The guy is allowed to blow off steam on the Internet, no problem. His tweets are entertaining and at least we have some idea where he's coming from. But he is the President of the United States, and in that function he is bound by the Constitution and the rule of law. No matter how much they wish it in the red states, the US is not a dictatorship. Yet.