"I expect that you will eventually find somebody who is foolish enough or enough of a coward to file your motion, but it was never going to be me." - SDNY Prosecutor resigning after being asked to drop the Eric Adams corruption case. The people who would push back are resigning as their last resort. Soon anybody who has any sense of fidelity to the rule of law or the constitution will be removed from power.

They lead with firing a ton of the people in semi-independent executive branch offices that are suppose to raise red flags (in an advisory role, and formally putting the brakes on things if that's not enough) if the admin tries to do illegal stuff. Like, that was among their first actions.

They've been clearing out people who might resist before they get a chance to, and have made it clear that your life's gonna be messed up (your career's over, if nothing else, which is a pretty big deal for normal non-billionaires) if you rock the boat.

The only major, public resistance has been over dropping the prosecution of NY's mayor, and the first of the prosecutors to resign received a letter promising retaliation against other members of her office and that she'd have an investigation launched against her, which, even if it goes nowhere, is basically promising to make someone's life hell for the next year or so. They're looking to hurt people who don't play along, so others just shut up and do what they're told.

We haven't seen them going after political opponents (Democrats or Republicans who don't nod along to every single thing—and business leaders, this isn't limited to politicians) but nearly everyone in DC and in big business is a bit dirty and I wouldn't be surprised if we start seeing very selective investigations and prosecutions of things that everyone had kinda agreed to overlook up until now (and that may be far from the most-severe corruption going on), that they don't even pretend aren't aimed at getting everyone else to stay in line and go along with the agenda, legality be damned. They've got the access to do it and there are some indications DOGE and pals are starting to poke around in things like tax records.

Hasn't risen to the point where the people perpetrating the crimes are credibly threatened with violence. People are still gambling on the nonviolent options.

Don’t be so sure they’re all unconstitutional. Read A2S1. Read Humphrey’s Executor and try not to snicker.

They do. It wont matter unless there is prosecution.

In my experience, tech suffers from short term thinking and is not concerned about long term consequences.

In the military it is a privilege to be given responsibility over a group of men and women. At least for me, I was very aware of these issues. I was a believer in the “God” camp. There is a noticeable contingent of US military who wear their religious beliefs on their sleeves. It is complicated but at least for me, morality occupied my mind all the time.

I've seen plenty of bureaucratic stupidity and shenanigans in 20 years of active and reserve service. But in my personal experience, corporate America is even more hidebound, top-down, and unimaginative than everyone in it thinks the military is. Disclaimer: I don't work for a "tech" company; I work in tech for a non-"tech" company.

Even in peacetime, the Navy will launch 25 jets off an aircraft carrier off the coast of San Diego. They will be expected to go practice an opposed strike on a target in a range complex east of Reno, including multiple aerial refuelings and navigating the civilian airspace system. They will be expected to hit their target within seconds of the planned time. And they will be expected to come back and land on an aircraft carrier, at night, on the first pass.

And all the details of this kind of operation, from weapons planning to fuel planning to "who talks to whom on what radio net for what purposes" to flat-out "how do we simulate combat without anyone being killed in a midair collision" take place under the aegis of a bunch of twentysomething and thirtysomething junior officers led by a few thirtysomething (or maybe fortysomething) middle managers.

Plan-Brief-Execute-Debrief. Like a Scrum shop, except the iterations are 24 hours long and the penalty for sloppiness could potentially involve flames, wreckage, and death.

They don’t need to be left leaning.

We've had 2 military coups in Brazil that immediately implemented a constitutional government and called elections. (One was against an autocratic constitutional monarchy... go figure... but it was on the direction of more democracy so it counts.)

In a total of 5 military coups if I'm not forgetting any...

I have a theory, that the military are only interested enough on democracy after they come back from fighting against some dictatorship. Otherwise they are bad news.

And here's the US Army oath of enlistment https://www.army.mil/values/oath.html

> "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; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So help me God."

Note that the enlisted soldiers' oath includes "I will obey the orders of the President of the United States" which the officers' oath doesn't.

I assume that the paragraph called «after hitler» is more appropriately called «during hitler» or similar.

Do you know what the current path is on Germany? (I don’t, honest question!)

(Edited typo)

>>Milley faced the moral issue when he was Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Trump lost the election

And sadly he failed the test.