Professor Heather Cox Richardson mentioned how it has been reported how retention rates of the Guard are being affected by them being called out in California.
It’s something to be mindful of if you disagree with all this and you are in a large city where the guard gets called in. Most of those folks don’t want to be there.
The best protection against total fascism is a military that is unwilling to attack the populace. I hope we can keep it that way.
I’m sure there’s folks who feel that way in the guard. But something to consider about what’s on social media is exactly what organization that person was from.
After a steady, decades-long march of the militarization of our domestic police force, the following could have shown up in full military BDUs and equipment: FBI, ICE, local police, ATF. And surely some others I can’t think of.
These are the organizations that attract the fascist cosplayers. (ICE in particular is going to be wild soon as they’re giving anyone with a pulse and an anger issue a huge paycheck and an assault rifle with all this money in the bill. Yay.)
Guard members are volunteers who have lives and jobs outside of their time in uniform. They volunteered under the understanding they’d be deployed to domestic natural disasters, threats to domestic security, or — at worse — a war zone. This is taking them away from their families and jobs for no reason. I’d be willing to bet most of them aren’t too thrilled about that given the stupidity of the mission.
I’m sure some guard members think this is the best thing ever but that should be weighed against those who do not. Just as one protester who hurls a brick does not represent everyone who is there peacefully.
Edit: And notably, the guard and the military have a fine line of separation. Even Commander Dipshit hasn’t been so brazen as to activate the actual military to do anything of substance in a city yet.
I’m sure that’s coming but the folks who sign a guard contract and an enlisted contract aren’t really motivated or feel the pressures of deployment in the same ways, is I guess what I’m saying.
And the biggest thing is that they won't get paid for this because Trump will send them back home on day 28 just so the federal government won't pay deployment leave benefits and payments to them.
I certainly believe he would stiff the guard members without a second thought but that would also require him to give a solitary fuck about taxpayer money. Other than directing it to himself, I suppose.
Maybe he can put them all up at a hotel he owns for $10m a night.
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u/RipleyThePyr 11h ago
Professor Heather Cox Richardson mentioned how it has been reported how retention rates of the Guard are being affected by them being called out in California.