You know the Trump Team is in trouble when they go after women. “Fucking Bitch.” That’s what ICE officer Jonathon Ross called Renee Good after he shot and killed her. Three days later, David Marcus of Fox News said “Organized gangs of wine moms using Antifa tactics to harass and impede ICE agents is not civil disobedience. It isn’t even protest. It’s just crime.” On X, conservative talk radio host Erick Erickson called Good an “AWFUL” (Affluent White Female Urban Liberal), adding “progressive whites are turning violent.” And don’t get me started on Hegseth and women in the military.
It has been a long year for many of us, and yet, I have hope. I believe we may have reached a turning point as 2025 ends. A local Fauquier County MAGA man, as MAGA as they come, has turned on Trump. When someone like him calls Trump a “f^cking piece of sh!t”, you know the world is changing.
As we approach the Thanksgiving holiday, I was thinking about family dinners and how they have been affected by our President. The President does something better than anyone else in the world. He screws up relationships. I am talking about our personal relationships with each other – with our families, friends, and neighbors. It does not matter whether you are Red or Blue, or somewhere in between. If you are honest with yourself, you know your personal relationships have suffered.
The election for Governor and other positions here in Virginia is November 4th, but early voting started last week on Friday, September 20th. At 9:45 that morning, I was voter number 54. We are blessed and cursed here in Virginia, with elections Every. Single. Year. This year, the stakes are high.
73 year old Veteran Bruce Bair hiked over 280 miles from Durham, NC to Washington DC where he hand-delivered letters to the office of Senator Thom Tillis (R-NC). The reason? Tillis refuses to host Town halls back home in North Carolina. Bruce spent a night in our home along the way. Some think his superpower is his physical stamina. They are wrong. His superpower is that he gives a d@mn.
Did you hear? A Big Parade is coming! It is the 250th anniversary of the United States Army, and coincidentally, a certain someone’s birthday. Let’s celebrate! Ever since Trump saw a military parade in France in 2017, he has wanted one and he is finally getting it.
R_____ looked at me and was on the verge of tears. “Oh Max, thank you so much. You are making me cry.” That wasn’t my intent. All I’d done was tell her that if she ran into problems, call me and I would help. It’s a shame what we have come to as a nation, when a person feels threatened by some of those around her.
In June of ‘83, I returned to America after serving 4 1/2 years with the Army in Germany. At the time, the Post-Vietnam dislike of soldiers was still alive, a decade after the war. Returning to the States, I had a good experience at the airport that still gives me shivers today.
Captain Hall in Early 1983. Commander, HHC, 34th Signal Battalion.
It’s different now and we as a country, or at least most of us, have learned to separate politics from the people serving in uniform. Back then? Post-Vietnam? We weren’t so great about how we treated our soldiers. I remember someone spitting at me as a cadet while walking in New York City in the mid-‘70s. In 1979, right before we first deployed to Germany, a woman from our church commented to my mom about how terrible it was that they as taxpayers had to pay for Cathy to go to Germany with me, and for us to be able to take some of our belongings with us. AND this was a woman from our church I’d know since I was a child.
Of course most family friends, and our close friends were great with us, but past that? Things were often ambiguous. None of this was as bad as soldiers put up with during Vietnam, but it would be years later before we (as a country) really learned to separate politics and our respect for our soldiers.
In June of ‘83, I turned over my Company Command in Stuttgart, Germany. I had a couple of weeks of additional work I needed to do, so Cathy flew back ahead of me. Finally it was time for me to go home and I flew on a commercial flight wearing civies. We landed at Dulles and I made my way to customs where the line seemed about a mile long. Several flights arrived at the same time, and the line wasn’t moving.
As I stood there, I noticed a young lady walking down the line looking at people in the line. Eventually she arrived in front of me and said “Are you in the Armed Forces?” I’m sure my short haircut and bearing probably gave me away.
I answered “Yes ma’am, the Army.” and she said “Follow me.”
I walked with her for quite awhile and we finally arrived at the front of the customs line. One of the stations opened up and she walked me over to it. The guy behind the counter looked at me and asked for my passport, or my military ID and orders, which I produced for him. He took a quick look, handed my papers back to me and then said, “Thank you for your service. Welcome home to the United States of America.”
I still get a shiver typing those words today. It was the first time someone went out of their way to thank me for what I was doing, and then welcomed me home to boot. It was such a little thing, but plainly had a huge impact on me. I remember it clear as a bell forty years later.
I’ve thought about this story lately. Probably since Panama in ‘89, and certainly since the First Gulf War, we’ve thanked our soldiers and shown respect for them. Unfortunately, an annual poll conducted last November by the Reagan Institute shows respect for the military dropping from 70% in 2017 to 48% in 2022. Much of the drop was attributed to people (from both sides) trying to politicize the military, or what the military was doing.
To be quite frank, most people today have no connection with our armed forces. Their sons and daughters aren’t in our military. If fact, over 70% of American youth today aren’t qualified for the military. They are overweight, or are doing illegal drugs, or are doing legal drugs that make them ineligible for military service. I fear that for many, saying thank-you is a cheap and easy way to feel good, while not really caring about our troops. Maybe I have that wrong, but I’m not so sure.
As time progresses, I’m hoping we as a nation can adult enough to remember to mentally separate politics and the soldiers serving in the military. I hope that we can take a couple of minutes to genuinely thank our troops. Not pro forma, but really thank them. We continue to owe them that much.
Addendum:
in a side note, in the 4 1/2 years we were gone on that tour, I only made it back to the States once. That was to attend my sister Tanya’s wedding. When Roberta married the next year, we couldn’t afford another trip home. It was one of the many family events we would miss over the course of our almost 9 years overseas.
Thanks to my wife Cathy for input to parts of this blog. As an Army wife, she too remembers those days. Like me, she is also concerned about the lack of connectivity between our society and our military today.
On June 24th, we woke to the news the Wagner Group rebelled against the Russian military and was marching on Moscow. Twelve hours later, it was all over. Peace at hand? More problems to come? Certainly we have ripples of instability, never a good thing in world affairs.
There’s nothing like a coup attempt to grab my attention before I’ve had my morning coffee. On that fateful Saturday, I watched with fascination as Prigozhin’s Wagner Group troops took over the Rostov Russian Military Headquarters and then started their march on Moscow. It appears they were within 120 miles of the capitol before the insurrection ended as suddenly as it began, and Belarus leader Lukashenko worked out a peace between Putin and Prigozhin.
Whoops…I Didn’t Really Mean It
The terms? Maybe, forgiveness for the troops, a safe passage of Prigozhin to Belarus, and no invasion of Moscow itself. Yea, a win-win for everyone – if you believe in fairytales. The “fog of war”, and the cloak around all things “Russia” makes it difficult to assess what is true, what is false, and what is somewhere in between. It will all play out over the next few months. What I know is there is now increased instability in the region, and the world. I’m not a big fan of instability. No sane person should be a fan of instability as we are now experiencing in Russia.
Will The Peace Last?
I am by no means a Russian expert, but I am a student of history. I also spent nearly a decade in the Army in Germany in the ‘80s waiting for them to attack us, and had the opportunity to learn a bit about them then as well. So, while I’m no expert, I do feel confident that I know more than about 95% of the talking heads on TV, and 99% more than all of those spouting off online.
Here are seven questions we don’t have the answers for. I waited this long after the putsch attempt to publish this blog in order for events to develop and perhaps answers become apparent to some of the questions. I don’t believe that has happened. The fog, and the world’s instability will remain until we have a better understanding of the answers. If someone on TV or online says they have the answers right now, you should immediately change your TV channel or go elsewhere online. They are probably lying.
1. Has Putin weakened? Between his failing attacks in Ukraine and this mini-coup, he looks like it, but looks can be deceiving. He is shrewd, and he is ruthless. I wouldn’t count him out just yet.
2. What WAS the agreement between Putin and Prigozhin? Is there wiggle room for both of them? Will they somehow be buddies after all is done? Or are they both out to kill each other?
3. A related question – How hard will Putin try to crush those who rose against him? Putin is not the forgiving type. In addition to settling up with Mr Prigozhin, he will certainly look at how easily the headquarters at Rostov fell. Was there complicity on the part of his generals there, or weakness? In either case, heads are likely to roll.
4. What about the Wagner troops? There are 25,000, give or take, wandering around Southwestern Russia, or in Ukraine with plenty of guns, tanks, and other weapons. They have served as the pointy end of the spear for the Russians in most of their attacks over the past year. If they are now peaceably subsumed into regular Russian units (as the Russian Army is trying to make happen), what happens to their effectiveness? What happens to the effectiveness of the units they are added to? And what happens if they don’t go quietly into the night?
5. What happens to the other Wagner Group troops scattered around the globe providing “security” and other services in places such as Sudan, Mali, Syria, the Central African Republic, Libya, Venezuela and Sri Lanka among others? Does Prigozhin continue to lead them, does someone else, or do they fade away?
6. How will this affect the war in Ukraine? If the Wagner Group is dissolved as a fighting force, what is the impact? Also, the other Russian troops in Ukraine have to know at least some of what has happened. How will they react?
7. How safe are Russia’s nuclear weapons? Are we confident they are managed and controlled in a secure fashion?
As I said, I’m not a big fan of instability, and right now, this situation provides plenty of it. Some people in this country would say ignore it, it’s not our problem. Others (I’m looking at you Majorie Taylor Greene) stupidly question whether the US was somehow behind the coup. Both of those courses are unwise. Any time there is instability in the world the ripples make their way in our direction, arriving sooner or later. The only question is whether the ripples fade away, or due to activities we can’t see below the surface, turn into a tsunami.
And don’t forget China lurking around out there as well. Their commentary was generally muted about these events. I believe they are a bigger longterm threat to us both militarily and economically. Having said that, I’m more concerned about an unstable Russia right now, than I am about a stable China.
It’s been a busy couple of weeks for our former president. It’s not every month you get to announce your candidacy for the presidency, have dinner with a couple of racist Hitler fans, and declare the Constitution should be terminated. That’s a full month, even by Trump standards.
I don’t know anyone who was surprised when Trump announced he was going to run for the presidency in 2024. It was all his handlers could do to have him wait until after the midterms to announce. He was expecting a big splash from the midterms themselves, but most of his election denier choices went quietly into the night. Yea, Vance won in Ohio, and Lake is still whining like a mini-Trump in Arizona, but the rest of them? B’bye. None of it slowed down his big announcement though. It was almost as if he was oblivious to anything else happening. And the rest of the Republicans? Perhaps Senator Rubio said it best: “We should not have a Senate GOP leadership vote until we have a clear explanation for why our 2022 campaign efforts failed…”. Ummmm, Senator, I could help you with that…
Of course Mr Trump didn’t slow down. As a matter of fact, in typical fashion, he accelerated. Are any of us surprised he ate dinner with Ye (the former Kanye West) and white nationalist Nick Fuentes? Nothing quite says “there are good people on both sides” like having dinner with a couple of Hitler loving antisemites. It’s never a good sign when Alex Jones is distancing himself from some of your dinner guest’s comments, as Jones later did during his interview with Ye. The Republican response to all of this? Again deafening silence. Senator McConnell managed to say “Let me just say that there is no room in the Republican Party for antisemitism or white supremacy. And anyone meeting with people advocating that point of view, in my judgment, are highly unlikely to ever be elected president of the United States.” The brave Senator couldn’t bring himself to utter the “T” word.
Ye and Fuentes… “I See Good Things About Hitler”
Which of course brings us to Mr Trump’s most recent episode. His blast on the Truth Social network was … interesting. He called for “the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution,” because he lost the last election for president. He wants to be declared the “RIGHTFUL WINNER,” or “have a NEW ELECTION.” (All CAPS are directly from the Trump quote) Wow. Wanting to terminate the Constitution finally drew some rebuttals from the right, but not from everyone.
Just as the events of Charlottesville, or January 6th, or his continuing election denial caused some people to leave the Trump orbit, another dribble of people are departing after the Ye/Fuentes dinner and the subsequent “termination of the Constitution” comments. The vast majority of his core? Like a married couple, they are there through thick and thin, for better or worse. There will be no divorce. They will follow him to the bitter end, however that turns out.
I’m not really sure why I wrote this blog. It’s not going to change any minds. Having said that, I think we all have a duty to bear witness to what is going on in this country. If we don’t continue to speak out, the future becomes a foregone conclusion. As Edmund Burke (or maybe someone else) famously said “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”
I have a couple of last questions for you. First, if Joe Biden declared he wanted to terminate the Second Amendment, what would the immediate reaction be? And second, does anyone doubt Trump would terminate the Constitution in a heartbeat if he could?
Finally, those of us who served in the military or the government swore an oath that started with these phrases: “I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same;”. For my West Point and former military comrades who still support Mr. Trump, I guess we are finally at that point. Which do you support – Mr Trump, or the Constitution?
Live Life Exuberantly 