This Isn't Even the Bottom Point Yet, But It's Pretty Bad

     American news voices and political establishment workers love high-ranking military men.  The spectacle of General Petraeus (who "literally wrote the book on counter-terrorism") facing a Congressional Committee to explain his leaking of military secrets to his mistress nevertheless presented a typical proud lion of Democracy's defense in barbarian lands.  Put these men in their heavily decorated uniforms, speaking in their clipped monotones about "necessities," "the battle space," or "the few who serve in an all volunteer military force,"--the greatest thing since the legions of Marcus Aurelius--and news commentators lose their rationality.
     Petraeus, a married man, was the subject of journalistic inquiries by a good-looking woman who also got herself intimately involved with the twenty-first century Patton and later wrote a book about her personal experiences as she viewed the hero in a way Petraeus worshippers in the news media and in Congress may have envied.
     All of this begs the question: Why wasn't Petraeus prosecuted for giving top secret information to his mistress?
     It comes down to what I wrote above: high-ranking military men can commit egregious violations and get away with it, while a mere Private, like Bradley (later Chelsea) Manning, who revealed explicit evidence of U.S. war crimes, was put into a cell with the lights on for two years, a form of sleep torture practiced under the aegis of Barack Obama, not Donald Trump, in case we're under the impression that Trump is the only evil President.
     That dress uniform works really well when it has lots of ribbons and metal stars on it.  In 1987, Oliver North, a mere Lieutenant Colonel, became a folk hero because of the way he looked in his Marine uniform.  He had well-acted gravitas even as he confessed before Congress, speaking with blunt, unashamed pride about how he and his gorgeous secretary, Fawn Hall, shredded shitloads of government documents to cover up the Reagan Administration's illegal funding and involvement in the Contra War in Nicaragua, a U.S.-directed atrocity that also involved the selling of missiles to the Ayatollah Khomeini; but that was all done by Reagan, a great man even Obama admires.
     Extending my sarcasm to the present day, we have another General, John Kelly, Trump's first head of the Department of Homeland Security and, after the firing of Reince Priebus, Trump's second Chief of Staff.  A tough-looking taciturn man, Kelly has a sense of humor that seems self-deprecating.  He pretends like he doesn't know how politics work and the press corps giggles.  This idea gets reinforced by news media commentary.  Kelly "comes from a military sphere and as such he will bring discipline to the Oval Office, limiting access to the President, and, we can hope, reducing the amount of tweets."
     In Trump time, that was ages ago, but really it was just recently that John Kelly took on the position with the chief purpose of "stopping the leaks."
     They haven't stopped.  I've wondered sometimes if Kelly himself leaks to the press.  He's said to hate his job, according to leaked information, and is planning an exit that may also involve a simultaneous jumping of the ship by Secretary of State Tillerson.  Trump, for all his self-claimed accomplishments as a great businessman, is unable to keep people working for him.  This, in any business, small or large, indicates shitty management, not competence.
     Kelly couldn't stop Trump from saying horrible things about yet another Gold Star family.  Last year, Candidate Trump took a shit on the Khans, Muslim parents of a dead Army officer who was killed saving the lives of his men, qualifying him as a hero.  Just recently, Trump took another shit on a Gold Star family who lost a husband and son in Niger in a still mysterious military action against an ISIS offshoot.  Kelly took credit for telling the President what to say during his condolence call to the widow.  When Kelly later explained what he had instructed Trump to say, it sounded reasonable.  Kelly's a combat veteran, he's made such calls himself, but Trump must've sounded like the tactless, shallow brute that he is.  The widow had put the call on speaker, a Democratic Congresswoman and friend of the soldier's family heard it too, as well as the soldier's mother.  All three women, all Black, a race Trump has demonstrated his documented prejudice against, agreed that the President was insensitive, didn't mention the soldier's name, La David Johnson, even once.  He said also that "He [Johnson] knew what he signed up for."
     The widow was in tears from Trump's call, from the President's attempt to "help."
     Kelly appeared at a press conference and explained the background of the call.  He also spent a lot of time attacking Congresswoman Wilson "for listening in on that call."  Kelly didn't know, even though the information was available, that Wilson has known the Johnson family for a long time and also that the widow chose to let her mother-in-law and the Congresswoman listen to the President.  Trump later tweeted petulantly that Wilson listened to a "SECRET" call, even as he revealed that other unnamed people besides Kelly had been in the Oval Office during the call.  Thus, it was not a secret call, even if one were to capitalize every letter of that word to somehow make it so.  Trump also tweeted several times about how Wilson's account was "fake news," even though it was corroborated by Mrs. Johnson and her mother-in-law, the latter saying, "The President did disrespect my son."
     We can expect Trump to indirectly accuse a Green Beret's widow and mother of being liars, but what did John Kelly do?
     Kelly's account of his own soldier son's death in 2010 resonated with the news media, but once he attacked Wilson, calling her "an empty barrel, the kind that makes the most noise,"--unaware apparently that this accurately describes his own boss, Trump--he smeared her further by condemning her dedication of an FBI building in 2015, mischaracterizing her speech, calling it "grandstanding,"--again, unaware apparently that Trump is the biggest grandstander of all.  Journalists quickly produced the speech in question, proving that Wilson's comments were anything but grandstanding.  Kelly thus showed himself willing to smear an earnest Congresswoman on behalf of supporting his boss's lies which include the condemnation of a Gold Star family.
     How ironic that a General would countenance such loathsome behavior toward a dead Green Beret's family.  We Americans are supposed to respect the military, the flag, the National Anthem, but here we have a four star General and the Commander in Chief both dishonoring a dead soldier, his pregnant wife, their two other children, and his parents.  What is that?  Could it be that Trump's attacks against NFL players supposedly disrespecting the flag and the Anthem, and by extension the military, have nothing to do with Trump's own self-alleged love for the U.S. Armed Forces?  When it comes to the real thing, actual combat death in a war theater (West Africa) most Americans and many politicians didn't even know existed, Trump and General Kelly have now shown in their treatment of the Gold Star Johnson family that soldiers under their command are just objects to throw down the garbage disposal of the Global War on Terror.  
     The narrative in the news media shifted to the idea that everyone, even tough General Kelly, gets brought low by exposure to the hazardous waste dump of a human being that is Donald Trump.  This same corporate news media gave Trump unlimited airtime last year and the year before, allowed him endless minutes of spreading the lie about Obama's citizenship, not realizing, I guess, that close contact with this reality TV star might also pollute them; that is, if they hadn't already been corrupted by such egregious violations of decency as letting the Bush administration convince the American people of the necessity of war with Iraq.
     John Kelly is so noble that he works for Donald Trump.
     Out of this whole disgusting story, the truth is, Donald Trump is an asshole, we knew that; John Kelly is also an asshole.

                                                                          Vic Neptune