Biden’s militarized inauguration showcased Democrats’ insecurity
Nothing says, “This was a perfectly normal election, and now it’s time to come together as a united nation,” like having your swearing-in behind 12-foot-high razor wire surrounded by 25,000 troops whose loyalty you doubt. That’s what we witnessed at President Biden’s inauguration on Wednesday: a grim testament to the fundamental insecurity and fragility of the re-ascendant liberal elite.
Democrats no doubt hoped that the optics of this military-heavy presidential installation would convince ordinary Americans that the republic is in peril from the populist ferment that sent Donald Trump to the White House in 2016 and garnered more votes four years later than any GOP ticket, ever. It’s a peril that can only be addressed by, in James Comey’s lovely phrase, “burning down” the Republican Party.
But the whole aura was less Lincoln and more bananas. As in banana republic.
Abe Lincoln had fewer troops to defend Washington during the Civil War, even though the Confederate capital of Richmond was just down the road. LBJ used only about half as many troops to put down the 1968 riots that killed more than a dozen, injured hundreds and did property damage that lasted decades.
Having filled the nation’s capital with enough soldiers to invade a small country, the Democrats went further and suggested that the National Guard troops might not be trustworthy.
Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Tenn.) observed, “The [National] Guard is 90 some-odd percent male; and only about 20 percent of white males voted for Biden. . . . There are probably not more than 25 percent of the people there protecting us that voted for Biden.” This meant, he said, 75 percent of them might be of the class that would be inclined to “do something.”
Many of the Guard deployed around Washington were given unloaded rifles. The FBI rushed in to “vet” the troops for disloyalty, and still more damage was done. Never before, to my knowledge, has the US government openly demonstrated a lack of trust in its own military.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, who was among the governors furnishing National Guard troops to the Capital, was dismayed. His comment: “This is the most offensive thing I’ve ever heard. No one should ever question the loyalty or professionalism of the Texas National Guard. I authorized more than 1,000 to go to DC. I’ll never do it again if they are disrespected like this.”
The division of the armed forces into “loyal” versus “suspect” units is a hallmark of a dictatorship. What’s next for America, a “Democratic Guard,” made up of ethnicities that Steve Cohen considers reliable? It makes the Democratic-controlled Congress and the new administration look paranoid and out of touch, because, well, that’s what they are.
This is dangerous territory. Last week, there was Nancy Pelosi’s effort to insert herself into the nuclear chain of command. The House speaker wrote Pentagon officials last week urging them to prevent Donald Trump, at that point still the duly elected commander in chief, from accessing the nuclear launch codes.
The Pentagon wasn’t amused. As The New York Times reported, “Defense Department officials have privately expressed anger that political leaders seemed to be trying to get the Pentagon to do the work of Congress and Cabinet secretaries, who have legal options to remove a president. Mr. Trump, they noted, is still the commander in chief, and unless he is removed, the military is bound to follow his lawful orders. While military officials can refuse to carry out orders they view as illegal, they cannot proactively remove the president from the chain of command. That would be a military coup, these officials said.”
The Democrats have thrown the word “sedition” around a lot lately, but trying to encourage a military coup is the very definition of sedition.
You’d like to laugh, but it’s not really funny. A few years back, I wrote an article on military coups and the US Constitution, published in the Columbia Human Rights Law Review. When I wrote it, in 2015 and 2016, it seemed like a purely academic exercise. But the 2021 Democrats seem to be trying hard to make it relevant. That’s bad for America, and they have to know it.
Glenn Harlan Reynolds is a professor of law at the University of Tennessee and founder of the InstaPundit.com blog.
https://nypost.com/2021/01/21/bidens-militarized-inauguration-showcased-democrats-insecurity/
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