America’s fight against brutality

Jun13

I had a friend years ago, a pot dealer, who was one of the most ambitious, self-centered, hard-driving teenagers I’ve ever known. Recognizing he might not have the intellectual capabilities of many of his classmates in law school, he took to memorizing every case he read, studying twice as hard. He became a sometimes unethical lawyer before making his fortune buying and renting real estate and shrewdly investing. He was socially insufferable with his constant self-aggrandizing patter. I commented to a mutual friend that his then-wife seemed like a bright woman. “How bright can she be? She married Jack,” he said, very sensibly.

I think of Melania Trump, who may well be very bright (she speaks a number of languages, apparently, and has negotiated, and renegotiated, lucrative deals with her famously unfaithful husband), and her announced anti-bullying campaign when she first became First Lady. The anti-bullying campaign never happened, she was probably bullied out of it. Or perhaps her fashion statement spoke for her true feelings, when she put on the “I really don’t care, do you?” jacket.

Robert Reich really put his finger on what we are up against as a society, as a culture, in this perilous moment in human history. The entire game, the supreme struggle of our time, is brutality and exploitation versus empathy and cooperation. His whole short piece is well worth reading, the link is below. It ends this way, with a series of epigrams that could be carved in stone as eternal truths:

The central struggle of civilization has always been to stop brutality. Unless we prevent the stronger from attacking or exploiting the weaker, none of us is safe.

A civil society is the opposite of what Trump seeks. A civil society doesn’t allow the strong to brutalize the weak. It moves as far as possible away from brutality.

Every time the stronger brutalize the weaker — whether it’s Trump and his flunkies bullying immigrants and the state of California, white supremacists bullying Black and Latino people, giant corporations bullying customers with high prices, the wealthy bullying the public to get giant tax cuts, Elon Musk bullying poor people by cutting programs they depend on, police bullying poor Black people, powerful men bullying women through sexual harassment, politicians building their power by bullying racial or ethnic minorities, Netanyahu wiping out Palestinians in Gaza, Putin trying to take over Ukraine — it’s fundamentally the same playbook:

Stoke fear. Exploit desperation. Suspend the rule of law. Fan brutality.

source

Deliberately crash the economy, increase pressure, precarity and pain on working and poor people, instill fear on Wall Street and Main Street. Irrationally blame your predecessor for the results of your own destructive policies. Make people on both sides of a nation you continue to divide as angry as possible all the time.

Once everyone is feeling desperate, exploit this desperation for your own/billionaires transactional ends.

Because of this created mass desperation declare a national emergency and invoke emergency powers under some vague and semi-rational rationale. Anything should be good enough as long as you get the troops on the streets and actual violence finally breaks out.

Blame society’s most vulnerable for this situation and sic the angriest and most violent armed-to-the-teeth Americans against them. Institute mandatory Roman salute for all citizens and make gristly examples of anyone who makes Hitler comparisons, employs sarcasm, irony or the f-word, or is in any way disloyal to America Made Great Again.

Trump’s perverse veneration of slaveholders = fascist gold

Jun12

Historian Timothy Snyder reminds us that Trump’s veneration of oath-breakers and traitors, guys like Confederate commander Robert E. Lee, (or, for that matter, insurrectionist rioters like Trump’s pardoned J6 Day of Love crew), is intended to create a false narrative about the past in order to dominate the present. Fascist politics frames everything as a death struggle, an eternal battle of the wills, between us and our sick, evil, dangerous “enemies” (whoever they may be that day). In the case of Trump, the enemy is any American who opposes his right to rule like the CEO of a privately held company his father gave him.

Trump announced recently to a carefully selected group of MAGA soldiers, at Hegseth-renamed Fort Bragg, that he is ignoring a bipartisan law Congress overrode his veto to pass, and renaming US military bases for the violent racist scoundrels who led an army against the USA to preserve “The Peculiar Institution” (slavery). By law, he has no power to do this. As bellicose, in-your-face, strongman propaganda? Gold.

The selected troops assembled for his video op applauded as Trump promised to change the name of former Fort (Robert E.) Lee back from its current name (in memory of a black military heroes) [1]. He’s constantly appealing to the unhealed heart of the Old Confederacy, which was never defeated, in the minds of the descendants of those who lost the Civil War they still claim Northern aggression started.

Trump’s most devoted base is largely down in Dixie, among white Evangelical Christians. The former Confederacy is bright red on the electoral map, and for the same irrational reason — the claimed God-given right of one Christian race to rule all the others. In the mind of his base, Trump’s not going to let those goddamned black criminals who are eating the dogs, eating the cats, eat our goddamned pets and rape our women. NOT ANYMORE!

Robert E. Lee, the American general who led Confederate troops in an actual war against the United States (most American casualties ever), is on a US postage stamp, for fuck’s sake. His former slave plantation became Arlington National Cemetery, but only after his death. A US military base was long named after this motherfucker. We don’t remember Lee as Benedict Arnold, we remember him as a refined and dignified southern gentleman who, out of loyalty to his home and family (many of whom apparently were horrified when he turned down Lincoln’s offer to lead the Union army) took up the glorious Lost Cause, protecting the rights of wealthy “planters” to own certain human beings and do with them as they pleased.

It’s Trump’s dream too. To do as he pleases, always, with no restraint from anyone because he is entitled, as a result of being born rich and the heir to a highly successful psychopath who bailed him out over and over from the results of his own hubris and stupidity. He has never been held accountable for anything he’s done in a long life of contempt, dishonesty and crime (the turd will be 79 on Saturday). He won Trump v. US, after all (consider the power of the name of that lawsuit) — not only is he the first president legally allowed to commit crimes if he believes they are part of his duties as Leader, but, perhaps even more sweet to the transactional, very stable business genius, no presidential pardon, even if bought and paid for outright, publicly and with receipts, can ever be challenged in court.

His $130,000,000 birthday present to himself, on the taxpayers’ dime, is a Soviet style military parade. He’s had sturdy fences constructed all along its route (to avoid another J6 when DC was completely unprepared for the illegal, unpermitted march he had planned and announced while whipping up the crowd to violence) and made sure no permitted protest is allowed within earshot of this North Korea-style spectacle he has planned for himself.

After all, traitors and sick, dangerous criminal maniacs prevented this parade during his first term, he has a right to it and he will have it, thank you very much. He’s publicly warned protesters that he’ll smash them hard in the fucking face if they try to rain on his big, beautiful birthday parade. He’s doing everything in his considerable power to provoke the violence that will allow him to do what his hero, Mr. Hitler, did when seizing power– invoke a national emergency and mobilize the military and secret police against any citizen who does not raise his arm in a proper Trump salute.

In this difficult moment, when this desperate and doddering dictator wannabe, who has already done such damage to the country while unable to pass anything in Congress or win a lawsuit in any court he doesn’t own 6-3, is playing his last card — provoking violence — we all have to keep our heads. It would be easy enough for Trump’s lackies to arrange to have a few dozen pardoned J6 rioters (perhaps even the dog dick who proudly marched the Confederate flag through as the others ransacked the Capitol, or the horned Q-Anon Shaman himself) join each protest and throw rocks, or fire guns at, cops. Putin wouldn’t hesitate, nor would any other dictator. I put nothing past these motherfuckers who make a career of lapping at their Leader’s colon.

Call me Anne Frank, but I am putting my faith in the better angels among us. The stakes are known to everyone, and I’m counting on the restraint of good people here in America resisting this wave of evil. If I’m wrong, I’ll try to send y’all a postcard on the way to Camp Donald J. Trump.

[1] “In the actual history of the United States, one war is central: the Civil War. Trump, who has never seen the point of the Union Army defending the republic, now seems now to have moved on to the position that the Confederacy should have won. He promised to rename Fort Gregg-Adams, the first base named for African-Americans, to Fort Robert E. Lee. The base in question hasn’t been known by the full name of the confederate commander since 1950. Lee was a traitor, an oathbreaker, a defender of slavery and the commander of a force whose mission was to break up the United States of America.” source

“I had Schleicher shot”

Jun10

Adolf Hitler was one of history’s most infamous, prolific liars and mass murderers. Or, if you admire the Führer and think his program made a lot of sense, arguably history’s greatest self-made man. Or both can be true at once, or partly or mostly true, and other things besides: vegetarian, artistic, eccentric, flatulent, insane, loved dogs, sadist. We often forget, in this divisive, fascistic age of black and white when we all must be either good or evil, that more than one thing can be true about each of us, and that some of these true things directly contradict other true things about us.

History is deep, complicated, nuanced, not straightforward and, though those who don’t learn the lessons of history are doomed to repeat them, it never repeats itself exactly. Historians say it doesn’t repeat, but it rhymes, as Mark Twain supposedly observed. I’m thinking about Hitler’s speech to the Reichstag in the spring of 1934, about a year into his 1,000 Year Reich, a couple of weeks after The Night of the Long Knives, a nationwide execution of all of Hitler’s most prominent political rivals.

Hitler, a talented liar, was a trailblazing pioneer of the Big Lie, a technique of mass media manipulation, based on an audacious, endlessly repeated lie, that every powerful psychopath and dictator always makes use of. Hitler lied without hesitation, to everybody and under all circumstances. He said whatever he needed to say, according to the transactional needs of the immediate contest he was determined to win.

He had the Prime Minister of Britain in his office in the months leading up to World War Two and was determined to have the European Allies, his former enemies, let him have Czechoslovakia (coincidentally, producers of the world’s best munitions). After throwing a terrifying temper tantrum, rolling on the floor biting at furniture as he snarled and screamed, he calmed himself and managed to sincerely assure British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlin that once Germany had the Sudetenland and the German population of Czechoslovakia was back in German hands, that the Fatherland’s territorial demands would be at an end. Peace in our time, how about it, old bean?

Chamberlin shook his hand and came back to England with the good news that war had been avoided through diplomacy (that would be remembered by history as appeasement). Once Germany had Czechoslovakia, Hitler’s men dressed some political prisoners in Polish uniforms and shot them in the act of attacking a German border outpost. With the photographic proof of dead Polish aggressors at the border, the Führer then declared war on Poland, and the rest, as they say, is history. 70-85 million (70,000,000 to 85,000,000) dead later, in another war Hitler claimed had been started by a global cabal of Jewish elders (we did the First World War, then known as The Great War, too), the Führer condemned the nation that had betrayed and failed him, shot his wife, shot his dog and then shot himself.

I apparently wrote this on February 6, 2020. It is timely today:

Once you remove the last legal restraints on a lawless person, the results are easy to predict.

I’m haunted by the image of Mr. Hitler, already the dictator of Germany for a year and a half, finally sending the Gestapo out to liquidate his enemies in “The Night of the Long Knives”. Everyone on Mr. Hitler’s voluminous enemies list was murdered that night, June 30, 1934, including a nationally known ultra-conservative politician and decorated German general named Kurt von Schleicher. He was shot seven times while sitting at his desk, his wife was also killed; a year later Schleicher’s cook, the only eye witness to the shooting, mysteriously drowned.

The killing of Schleicher was sold the next morning in the Nazi press as an act of self-defense by the men sent to peacefully take Schleicher into custody on charges of high treason. The Nazi story in the Nazi-controlled mass media was that they’d shot the accused traitor when he resisted arrest by opening fire on them, as desperate, insane traitors often do. Two weeks later Mr. Hitler could nonchalantly drop the lie during a Reichstag speech and simply tell the nation: “I had Schleicher shot.”

Even though “jobs are booming, incomes are soaring, poverty is plummeting, crime is falling, confidence is surging and our country is thriving and highly respected again” I am feeling unaccountably uneasy. (2025 note: Biden actually achieved most of these things, after, heh, stealing the 2020 election…) I keep thinking of what our infallible leader tweeted right after Mueller’s investigation “completely and totally exonerated” the man about whose ten counts of obstruction of justice Robert Mueller III wrote “we could not exonerate him.”

Mueller, the lifelong Republican who “completely exonerated” Trump, of course — a traitor– and the treason of his witch hunting partisan investigators is being criminally investigated by the aggressive Attorney General’s most aggressive investigator even as we joyously celebrate the unprecedented greatness of our great land. Here’s the part of the president’s tweet I can’t manage to forget:

“It is finally time to turn the tables and bring justice to some very sick and dangerous people who have committed very serious crimes, perhaps even Spying or Treason.”

The Führer used the same kind of passion in sharing his deepest feelings with his faithful followers about his sick and dangerous enemies, the ones he said would be hanging from lamp posts, or slowly strangled on piano wire, on film, for his repeated viewing pleasure.

History rhymes, but it doesn’t always go according to a would-be tyrant’s plans, no matter how wealthy, powerful and unscrupulous his backers are.

German democracy was only about fifteen years-old when Hitler invoked the constitutional Emergency Powers his party never gave up (it’s always an emergency when one of these motherfuckers is in power, as we have seen). Our democracy, the world’s oldest, will be 250 next summer. Our founding document, The Declaration of Independence, a copy of which Trump hung on the wall of the Oval Office, has the same meaning to Trump as his interpretation of the MAGA riot of January 6, 2021 — it’s all about love, loyalty, and honor, and, personal loyalty to the boss, and freedom, and the God-given right to take long showers with plenty of water pressure to wash the shampoo out of your thick, luxuriant head of hair. Everything but what it actually is. We hold these truths to be self-evident, and shit. In the immortal words of George Lopez, fuck that puto.

Make America Great Again is racist (misogynistic, homophobic, xenophobic and fascistic too, of course)

Jun7

Bryan Cranston nails the basic truth about MAGA. Once you hear it there is really no rational argument that bringing the country back to the days before the Voting Rights Act and the other “Civil Rights Era” laws protecting the civil and human rights progress of all Americans, an imagined time of national greatness, is not as fucking racist as every infamous (or beloved, for true MAGA conspiracy believers) Supreme Court decision supporting racism at law prior to and in the century after the Civil War.

Bryan doesn’t mention it in this short clip, but MAGA is also deeply misogynistic. This cruel, dishonest political “movement” has no problem with draconian laws forcing raped ten year-old girls, and pregnant women in comas, to carry fetuses to term and give birth to babies even if medical tests show the newborn is doomed to die moments after birth. The mother’s life and sanity, MAGA preaches, must come after an abstract idea of the sanctity of the soul of the unborn, and every theological argument undergirding witch burning, as cited by mad, enraged, reactionary medievalist Samuel Alito.

MAGA’s credo of hatred of the Other and punishment of the “weak” is hateful, immoral and about as faithful to the teachings of Jesus as the insanely justified “Godly” tortures of the Spanish Inquisition.

There is also MAGAs strong embrace of every element of fascism, specifically the practices of Nazi Germany where public and private loyalty to a compulsively lying infallible Leader were requirements for government work — and eventually life itself. MAGAs success, like Hitler’s, requires an endlessly supple police state where laws can be changed at the Leader’s will to serve the Leader’s increasingly destructive impulses. Heather Cox Richardson ends her most recent piece with this:

Aaron Reichlin-Melnick of the American Immigration Council agreed. He wrote: “In order to build a mass deportation machine to round up and deport 4% of the entire goddamn population, you must first build the police state.” Source

Mass murder of children? Chill, bro

Jun5

Talk about a “disgusting abomination” (Elon Musk’s petulant name for Project 2025’s Big Ugly Bill that will kick millions of working and disabled Americans off their health insurance programs and let more children go to bed hungry in the richest country in the world, among other abominations)… the first actual casualties of the world’s wealthiest insane refugee from the end of White Supremacy Apartheid in South Africa, in his role as head of an illegally constituted government “department”, are the non-white children of Africa. Who would have thought an insanely greedy megalomaniacal proponent of the Great Replacement “theory” would be instrumental in killing tens of thousands of black and brown children by starvation, toxic water and disease? An estimated 103, mostly children, are dying EVERY HOUR. 24 hours after I post this more than 2,400 more poor people will be dead.

American corporate media is tastefully silent about the ongoing mass deaths– mostly children, that Trump’s illegal impoundment of funds allocated for USAID are causing worldwide. It’s as if all the world’s children are now Palestinian children, born into a world of terrorism, and the media of the world can’t bear to report on their maiming and killing.

In officially parting from the insane white supremacist Musk, Trump’s White House leaked the shocking news that superfreak AI glitchbot, often almost, semi-convincing human impersonator Mr. Musk, who appears whacked out of his mind during awkward public appearances, was actually high as a cyberkite on a daily cocktail of mind-altering drugs.

Senator Sheldon Whitehouse had a good image of these destructive, lawless, whining, endlessly transactional and combative “winners” during a committee hearing:

“It strikes me that what we have here is a team that has taken the field and engaged in unprecedented numbers of fouls, unprecedently flagrant fouls, and when the refs blow the whistle on the unprecedented number of fouls the partisans of the team committing the fouls call out the referees for the unprecedented number of whistles they blow.”

Sounds about right. USA! USA!!! Make America violent and suicidal again!

A perfectly reasonable story

May24

Here’s a little story to illustrate what a perfectly reasonable story is made of, particularly in our age of manipulative social media and the algorithms that keep everyone’s eyes glued to their phones to have our biases confirmed over and over, our outrage stoked.

Here are the elements of a reasonable story: the setup is something people can relate to, the unfolding tale is something that rings a bell of true life for them, the ending makes perfect sense in light of the rest of it. If you trust the storyteller, the context of the story is familiar, and emotionally resonant, the story will be perfectly reasonable to most people. A story that sounds perfectly reasonable, given the culture we live in , leaves you with no real questions.

So, yesterday I went into a big sporting goods store in a mall, a chain store. There were two greeters at the door, a male and a female. Neither one acknowledged me as I approached, neither one could be bothered to turn their heads one inch in my direction. I was walking slowly with a cane, talking to them, and these two fitness models never even turned to look at me. I wanted to know where the shoe department was. I was looking for shoes with the greatest possible cushioning, to try to help my painful knees.

Asking these two for help was like talking to a fucking wall. I understand they don’t get paid much, probably minimum wage, and they are from a younger generation, one that doesn’t always make eye contact with humans as much as with screens, but I was asking very little of them, almost nothing. “Excuse me, can you direct me to the shoe department?”

“Hello,” I said, trying to get their attention. After the third or fourth attempt I got the message loud and clear. I was very tempted to tell them to go fuck themselves, but just limped off to find the shoe department on my own.

The salesman who helped me was very nice, and helpful, and I wound up finding a comfortable pair of very cushioning shoes. I told him about the two greeters who had been so rude, literally pretending to be deaf and blind. He smiled indulgently, sympathetically, what else could he actually do?

I didn’t hold it against him, there was nothing he could do about his rude colleagues. He did his job well, made good recommendations, accurately predicted which of the three pairs of shoes he brought out for me to try on I’d wind up buying. A very nice guy and I’m hopeful the shoes will help ease my painful bone on bone, metal on metal, knee caps. If not, this chain has a very reasonable return policy of 90 days, as long as I don’t abuse the shoes during that time.

I completely forgot about those two dick heads by the front door, until I had to pass them again on the way out. I called out “goodbye” in a loud voice and neither of these robotic pricks so much as turned their heads to acknowledge I was there.

I took their picture before I left, so you can see what we are all up against in the greatest nation Jesus ever personally gave his blessings of peace and freedom, and the Second Amendment, to.

The Musk, Bezos, Thiel, Koch, Zuckerberg of their day considered a 500,000 soldier fascist coup d’etat against the New Deal in 1933?

May17

Ever hear of the so-called Business Plot? Wealthy financiers, after their wild speculation and World War caused the Depression, planned to hire an army of World War I veterans to stage a coup and oust the hated FDR and his commie New Deal. They admired fascism, hated unions, collective bargaining, child labor laws, the forty hour work week and all the rest of those anti-American “reforms” and tried to hire retired Major General Smedley Butler to lead the half-million man army and assume dictatorial powers. Check this super short video out and then go google Smedley Butler, who laid out the plot and named the traitors in Congress.

Or read the Wikipedia entry on the Business Plot, also called the Wall Street Putsch, at first dismissed by the NY Times as a “gigantic hoax”, later confirmed as true when a Congressional Committee found:

In the last few weeks of the committee’s official life it received evidence showing that certain persons had made an attempt to establish a fascist organization in this country. No evidence was presented and this committee had none to show a connection between this effort and any fascist activity of any European country. There is no question that these attempts were discussed, were planned, and might have been placed in execution when and if the financial backers deemed it expedient.

This committee received evidence from Maj. Gen Smedley D. Butler (retired), twice decorated by the Congress of the United States. He testified before the committee as to conversations with one Gerald C. MacGuire in which the latter is alleged to have suggested the formation of a fascist army under the leadership of General Butler.

MacGuire denied these allegations under oath, but your committee was able to verify all the pertinent statements made by General Butler, with the exception of the direct statement suggesting the creation of the organization. This, however, was corroborated in the correspondence of MacGuire with his principal, Robert Sterling Clark, of New York City, while MacGuire was abroad studying the various forms of veterans organizations of Fascist character.^[47]

Would you be surprised to learn that none of these fascist businessmen ever faced any kind of accountability for planning an armed insurrection against the duly elected president and his administration? Is it surprising that a plotted fascist coup d’etat in 1933 (the year Hitler took power in Germany) is virtually erased from American history? They are trying the same thing now, only with much more sophisticated means than an army of trained soldiers at their disposal. Everything old is new again, as they used to say.

In other news:

source

For some reason people are saying “idiocracy” a lot lately

May10

Hard to imagine why an administration stocked with glaringly unqualified attention seekers and opportunists who publicly pretend to worship the stupidest, pettiest man ever to be US president has its common sense questioned. Trump Derangement Syndrome by Deep State deep fake AI cuckbots, no doubt.

The big guy’s nominee for US Attorney for Washington, DC, Ed Martin, was not going to get out of committee, it turns out, a GOP senator finally had to put his foot down. At first Trump declared victory, announced he was going to make this loyal MAGA fighter UN ambassador (oh, wait, that was former national security advisor/Signal chatter Mike Waltz), while getting Alcatraz ready to house the sick criminals who had cynically weaponized the US government and viciously, unfairly prosecuted Trump and his loyal patriots who rightfully attacked Capitol police and sacked the US Capitol on a day of national awakening and great love. Here’s Heather Cox Richardson, with the details:

Trump announced he was moving Martin [a Missouri political operative with no experience as a prosecutor, who defended the January 6 rioters and fired the prosecutors who had worked on their cases, threatened to investigate Democrats and critics, and hosted a notorious antisemite on his podcast] into three roles that do not require Senate confirmation. He will become the new director of the Weaponization Working Group at the Department of Justice, an associate deputy attorney general, and a pardon attorney. “In these highly important roles, Ed will make sure we finally investigate the Weaponization of our Government under the Biden Regime, and provide much needed Justice for its victims,” Trump posted on social media.

To replace Martin, Trump has tapped Fox News Channel host Jeanine Pirro, who is passionately loyal to him. He noted among her qualifications that she “hosted her own Fox News Show, Justice with Judge Jeanine, for ten years, and is currently Co-Host of The Five, one of the Highest Rated Shows on Television.”

Matt Gertz of Media Matters for America recalls that the Fox News Channel took Pirro off the air after the 2020 election because of her conspiracy-theory-filled rants. In emails turned up in the defamation suit against the Fox News Channel for pushing the lie that voting machines had tainted the election results, her executive producer called her “nuts” and a “reckless maniac,” who “should never be on live television.” That lawsuit cost the Fox News Channel $787 million. . .

The administration appears not to be able to attract the caliber of federal officials to which Americans have become accustomed.

. . . When asked yesterday why he had nominated her [a surgeon general without a medical license], Trump answered: “Because Bobby thought she was fantastic…. I don’t know her. I listened to the recommendation of Bobby.” Today, Casey Means’s brother Calley, a White House advisor, went after Trump ally Laura Loomer for opposing the nomination, posting on social media that he had “[j]ust received information that Laura Loomer is taking money from industry to scuttle President Trump’s agenda.” Loomer responded: “You’re so full of sh*t.”

. . . White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller told reporters today that voters elected Trump to “deport the illegals” and that “Marxist” judges frustrating that effort are attacking democracy. In fact, Trump convinced many voters that he would deport only violent criminals, and they are now aghast at the scenes unfolding as masked agents grab women and children from their cars and sweep up U.S. citizens.

In The Bulwark today, Adrian Carrasquillo explained how podcasters, sports YouTubers, and comedians, including Joe Rogan, have brought the rendition of Venezuelan migrants to El Salvador onto the radar screen of Trump voters. Americans now disapprove of Trump’s immigration policies by 53% to 46%.

Miller made an even bigger power grab when he said “we’re actively looking at” suspending the writ of habeas corpus, a legal change that essentially establishes martial law by permitting the government to arrest people and hold them without charges or a trial. Legal analyst Steve Vladeck explains that Miller’s justification for such a suspension is dead wrong, and suggests Miller’s threat appears to be designed to put more pressure on the courts.

But in this chaotic administration, it seems worth asking who the “we” is in Miller’s statement. In the group chat about striking the Houthis, when administration officials were discussing—without the presence of either the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff or the president himself—what was the best course of action, it was Miller who ultimately decided to launch a strike simply by announcing what he claimed were Trump’s wishes.

source