Competing Truths

I wanted to wait until the 80th Anniversary of D-Day to write this. Also, I felt rushing to write about the Trump verdict would not be prudent, as admittedly I am still trying to objectively grasp the situation and make cogent sense of what it means. Most importantly what is presented below is not absolute, nor do I think I have all the answers to this problem.

I’m going to do my best to separate fact from opinion. I won’t be successful. And to be upfront I do not intend to blather over the partisan details of what occurred. I suppose that’s a portion of the root cause problem here. The truth isn’t really the truth. Hence this newer (to me) term of “lawfare.” If law is supposed to be objective and the rule of law equally applied to anyone, then in theory, there should be no discussion. Theory vs. application and reality seem to at odds.

The last statement isn’t unique though. While we do have the freest nation in the world and objectively the greatest legal framework in the free world, it is not bereft of being hijacked. 

So for some boilerplate:

• I don’t care about Trump as a person. I’m under no right wing veil of absurdity that Trump is ethical, or that he’s not made a habit of operating outside the law with impunity because he’s too rich to fail. The last statement is not unique to him though and (here’s the opinion part) I don’t think any variation of mogul / tycoon / multimillionaire – billionaire has not intentionally found ways to violate the law and obfuscate truth through money… this is why Hunter will not be convicted in his current trial
• I could care less that Trump paid off a hooker. I could also care less how he did it. Does everyone know what happens to a campaign “war chest…” the candidate employs themselves and their friends against that surplus. Yet people are calling 130k hush money to a porn star by a multi-billionaire a felony. Meanwhile illegal immigrants and / or convicted felons are being released on bail and committing murders. To think this is anything but political theater is pathetic (more on that in a bit).
• The right has to do better at beating the left at their own game. We decry foul yet the left has outpaced us at almost every turn. I mean, depending on the source, the right tried to overturn Obama Care between 200 or 2000 times (vast delta there). Meanwhile the left brought articles of impeachment against Trump and were successful. The right is simply not getting it done at the same level
• If Trump is guilty of breaking a law, he should be found guilty (Like I said, I’m not going to exhaust the “facts” about the trial). That’s the point of the rule of law. If you evaded taxes, you’d get audited and owe money. If Trump is committing crimes the law should be applied equally.
  • Is it oddly convenient the left held a trial in a blue city (even though NY is actually red, outside of NYC) with a blue AG and a blue Judge that donated to blue candidates and has a  blue daughter who has made and is making 10+ million supporting democratic campaigns / issues… during an election cycle? Yes, coincidence only, I’m sure! Or, the left has just done a better job than the right in applying the tenets of Sun Tzu.

• Do I think Trump’s appeal will work: No
• This ruling will see AG Bragg on the Supreme Court someday. 
• This is Biden’s OBL take down. As long as Trump doesn’t win re-election, Biden will go down in history for the left as the savior of America and that will destroy the right for decades.
• Do I think Trump serves jail time: I think if the left truly wants to preserve Biden, he has to go to jail
• Do I think the entrenched right is secretly happy about this: Absolutely
• We should all consider the reality that it’s less about who’s qualified to run for president and more about who can afford to. This is why Vivek Ramaswamy had to drop…and his net worth is almost a billion…think about that. I would surmise his networth will top a billion shortly due to his campaign bid and potential cabinet position. It’s not that Trump is the right candidate. He simply has the most money
• If Trump wins re-election he has nothing to lose… and that’s a problem. He is an ego maniac. He will spend the next 4 years on a personal revenge tour. He will not get anything meaningful passed to right the course of the nation. About two years (if not sooner) into his tour, you will see the right rapidly begin to distance themselves from him as they fracture and try to create new power bases as they all vie for position and opportunity, because when is the last time you saw anyone in power try to lose it.
• None of you are starting a revolution so stop rolling out the quote that the tree of liberty must be refreshed with the blood of patriots and tyrants alike. It sounds cool, like raising the black flag and slitting throats. They’re not incorrect sentiments but you’re not starting a revolution. Gov. Abbot isn’t starting one, nor is DeSantis or Boebert. 

Something to consider:

• The signatories of the Declaration of Independence pledged their lives, fortunes and sacred honor to form a more perfect union. Many of them sacrificed one or all of those things. Do any of us think the vast majority of currently elected officials in office for a day or decades would do that now? No I don’t think they would. 

Agnostic of whether a crime was or was not committed, anyone who thinks this trial wasn’t purely to remove a political opponent from the field is either willfully naive, or worse they do not care. They are putting an irrational dislike (that’s the nicest way I can frame it) ahead of greater issue – the imperative that our legal system is just, objective and above manipulation. And that myopic timidity signals the downfall of the great experiment that are these United States of America. At the risk of being melodramatic, those boys died on a beach in France 80 years ago to preserve freedom, and on 31 May, 12 jurors, a corrupt judge, a politically motivated AG and a weaponized DOJ killed it.

Terms I want to address:

Banana Republic

Topically I understand / understood it in terms of poor South American countries but It feels to me its getting thrown around the same way narcissist and fascist are these days. The most complete and succinct definition I found is this: A banana republic is a country with an economy of state capitalism, whereby the country is operated as a private commercial enterprise for the exclusive profit of the ruling class.

• Based on the above, I don’t know if we’re there yet… I think we’re staring one in the face though. If Biden is re-elected, we get very close. In 5 years, depending on that candidate, we will be there and / or have to be ripped back from the brink. A lot can happen in a day, let alone 5 years though. Sadly, I am not optimistic.

Kangaroo Court

• This one is quite a bit more simple when looking at the lawfare that took place to get Trump convicted on 34 felony charges along a series of fairly murky charges that do in fact appear conflated and / or manufactured to attempt to satisfy these verdicts. 
• Furthermore, the judge stating to the jury they did not have to agree in order to convict; all of this lends itself to support the terminology. It is the rights only hope in getting this overturned by appeal. 
• However, the short game for the left is a long enough game to secure the long term (4 year) win. It’s less about any of this sticking but sticking long enough to impede Trump from winning. Couple that with the circus that will ensue as the right attempts to find a new candidate for a disillusioned left and it becomes irrelevant what the long term result is. The left is playing chess. The right is pouting in the corner.

Lawfare

• Using the legal system by any political party to harm / hinder a political opponent and or impede on that opponents rights to use the same legal system in equal measure.
• This should terrify all of us. Left, right, sideways. It does not matter! We should all harken to Martin Niemoller’s poem to the German Intellectuals
  • First they came for the Communists
 And I did not speak out 
Because I was not a Communist 
  • Then they came for the Socialists 
And I did not speak out
 Because I was not a Socialist
  • Then they came for the trade unionists 
And I did not speak out 
Because I was not a trade unionist
  • Then they came for the Jews
 And I did not speak out
 Because I was not a Jew
  • Then they came for me
 And there was no one left
 To speak out for me
• By no means am I comparing Trump’s slut hush money trial to the Holocaust and the plight of the Jewish nation, but that isn’t what Martin was addressing. He was addressing the fact that people ignored the why and how and only focused on the myopic selfish what…and then it was too late. 
• This is why it’s imperative that all citizens need to look at what just occurred from the above lens. A banana republic and lawfare are intimate bedfellows. They are enabled by kangaroo courts. Just read a biography of Stalin and you will realize it only works for you until it doesn’t… And when it doesn’t, it is horrific, especially as it scales.

All the above is theory. Thoughts. Nothing really. What do we do? What is the call to action?

• I’ll be honest, I had to listen to several podcasts, read articles (that I didn’t agree with), and literally just sit and think. I don’t know if either side is doing this en masse. I think that’s a great place to start. 
• We have to take back the education of our youth (not the same as saying take back the schools). What this means for each family in application is probably very unique to the family or cohort of families.
  • Unlike my jab above at the collective about revolutions, we do in fact, need to take Yuri Bezmenov seriously in terms of Russia’s efforts to subvert the ideology of the US across four pillars. Yuri stated that our ideology would be subverted when: “What it basically means is: to change the perception of reality of every American to such an extent that despite of the abundance of information no one is able to come to sensible conclusions in the interest of defending themselves, their families, their community, and their country.”
  • Think about the above statement and my first bullet in this section in regards to reading / researching everything. How often do we hear these days some variation of all news is a lie or that people don’t know what to read, where to turn and what / who to believe? 
  • I’d argue Russia’s plan is complete and successful. Look at the recent bout of useless, flaccid, pathetic protests across college campuses this year. This is a problem
• Vote! 
• Be and live the example of the ideals of our founding fathers. Make good on the sacrifice of the signatories of the Declaration of Independence. Honor the valor of those men who stormed the beaches of Normandy on this day 80 years ago

And lastly:

• Never ever give up on this nation. 
• Remember this nation was formed to limit the state! We must find ways to stop giving the state power. Weirdly enough, Lenin provided the answer to the problem in the last half of his quote about the “state.”
  • …When there is freedom, there will be no state

Choose to don the dangerous armor of freedom. Shun the false veil of state-sponsored security.

_____________________________

Peyton is a retired Tactical Air Control Party Specialist (TACP). He spent time as a conventional TACP, TACP Instructor, and 17th Special Tactics Squadron TACP, supporting 2/75 Ranger Regiment. Peyton has eight deployments to Afghanistan going back to Dec 2001 with 10th Mountain Division and one deployment to Iraq during the surge. Peyton retired in May of 2020 and lives in Utah with his wife and son. He is involved with veteran transition groups like The Honor Foundation and Elite Meet. One of his primary focus areas in retirement is helping other veterans retire / transition successfully.