I for one count myself and the world lucky that the Trump administration is so incompetent. More incompetence, please.

There may be flaws to the plan. As a management style it tends to increase short term profits, which is why they do it. Of course it also tends to destroy the company, but the wealthy never worry about that.

It's not the meeting, it will be the orders to deploy against citizens and allies.

Yeah...

I can go on very long rants about how much I hate the "support the troops" mindset and how much of that was a manufactured response to how the draftees who raped and murdered their way through Vietnam were vilified at rallies. But people seem to still think the year is 1988 and war is unthinkable and everyone in the military is just there for free college. And while there were still people doing that going into The War On Terror... we had almost two decades of a forever war.

And that shows. While I dislike the ableist connotations of it... the reality is that there are people who are going to get the most out of a college education and there are people who... aren't. And the former? They know that the military is just going to mean they are 2-8 years older than everyone else applying for the same positions and are probably going to be doing so with PTSD from the killing and possibly even rapes that get covered up (fun reminder: The reported rate of sexual assault among female active-duty US military members was 6.8 percent as of 2023. That is what the military admitted to...). That isn't to say there aren't some true geniuses coming out of the military and getting a PhD and so forth but... they are the ones who knew what they were getting into when they enlisted and all that entails.

So increasingly you just have the crowd who joined because everyone in their family "served" and the people who bought in to "the only way you can get out of the generational poverty we have forced you into is to kill some brown kids for us". And you get "I joined the military to learn to work on cars".

So yeah. Very much a recruiting pipeline for cops and other "thug with guns" occupations. And if you exhibit even basic competence at the combat side of things? You have your pick of PMCs looking for deniable killers.

And, just to be clear: The US Military is a WONDERFUL job if you are not the right demographic to be dragged behind a building and raped and you don't mind using force against whoever you are told. In a lot of ways, it is the single best experiment proving the value of UBI and managed economies. But... understand that it is a job about enabling the murder and subjugation of enemies of the state. And that you won't need to get on a 13 hour flight to find said enemies in the very near future.

As an aside: I love the Business (ha!) Insider youtube videos where they do an "authorized account" interview or just look at a "day in the life" of a military adjacent role. And if you want a truly fucking terrifying video, go watch the recent one where they interviewed a former Blackwater mercenary. That shit was even more horrifying than the white supremacist biker who was pretty open about the murders he committed (I want to say he narced to avoid consequences? Been a minute).

Corruption with arms contractors is rampant.

Yeah... Fuck off with that "they were just following orders" nonsense. At least let the jackboots be the ones to say it.

re-emphasizing that the federal military has no role in domestic politics

Congress and the VPOTUS were being actively hunted by a large armed group. Local law enforcement clearly was not qualified to handle it and the exiting POTUS, who has well documented ties to russia et al, was actively supporting the insurrection.

That is not "domestic politics". That is an attack on US soil. But, because nobody had confirmed enough of the mob had russian accents, it was clearly not the military's problem. Unlike, say, kids protesting or getting a bit too rowdy after a sports game where suddenly the national guard are all ready to start busting some teeth.

But also, it shows they were paying attention and had the right way of looking at it in mind.

Personally, I don't think "We side with the winners" is the right way of looking at it. But you do you.