20
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The guardrails are off the US Military: It’s no longer guaranteed that the Pentagon will resist unlawful orders from the President. And the rot is deeper than you think
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- Title
- Opinion | The Guardrails Are Off the U.S. Military
- Published
- Jun 6 2020
- Word count
- 839 words
Every time someone resigns in protest, it weakens the guardrails of that institution. One less critical voice on the inside, usually quickly replaced by a more loyal subject. It's held up as this great personal sacrifice for the greater good, but really; isn't it just taking the path of least resistance and giving their opponents an opportunity to consolidate power?
I don't see all "resigns in protest" people as being consequentialist (ie. for the greater good). For some it's definitely a matter of personal deontological ethics. "I will not participate in, or benefit from, this immorality".
One of the people that shows up in the duckduckgo search you linked is Tim Bray, who resigned from Amazon. He certainly had arguments internally; he got angry. Most of the time these institutions are rotten though, and basically not open to reform, even from 'high ups' like Tim Bray.
I wonder what the best examples are of 'change comes from within'. I'd imagine there's a paucity of successes relative to outside pressures.
This is the sub-header of the piece.
The pentagon has been doing massively illegal shit with knowledge and permission of the president for many decades. The difference here, a difference which is not acknowledged so well in the piece, is that the unlawful orders will be directed at USA citizens. This might be unthinkable if we believed that Americans were united together as one people. They're not though, and never were. White vs. Black is the oldest clear division, and it still remains. Violence by the state and by the military was alway a possibility against minorities, it's just that now it's looking possible that the violence will be directed along political divides. I'm sure Ezra Klein and his political polarization theory have something to say about this.