A vitally important discussion with @andreapitzer.bsky.social and @anatosaurus.bsky.social.
There are many ways concentration camp systems can end — but they never end on their own.
We have to ask ourselves what we will tell our grandchildren we did to stop this.
Now seems like a good time to remind everyone that the only way to destroy an entire civilization overnight is with nuclear weapons, and Donald Trump has the absolute power as President to follow through on that threat. It could take as little as 5 minutes.
Here's how it would go down:
If the President opens the briefcase and gives the order, no one can stop him.
At this point, impeaching and removing Trump from office is the ONLY way to prevent this nightmare scenario from happening.
Accurate, and terrifying.
The system presumes that an incompetent or incapacitated President would be removed from power through either impeachment or the 25th amendment, neither of which is fit for purpose in the current circumstance. Thanks for compiling and clarifying, @derekjesq.bsky.social
This is the vast, terrible power we bestowed on Donald Trump. At the heart of our democracy is an undemocratic nuclear monarchy that holds the whole world hostage to one man's decision-making. Everything rests on the President's sound mind, good judgment, and emotional stability.
I don’t blame you for refusing to believe. I probably wouldn't believe it myself had I not learned this directly from nuclear command-and-control experts, veteran launch officers, and the 4-star general who commanded all US nuclear forces.
This is real. This is how it works.
Bear in mind these weapons are 10-20x more destructive than the bombs America dropped on Japan, and travel at 22x the speed of sound. They'll obliterate target cities in 30 minutes or less. Millions of innocent people will be dead faster than the President can order a pizza.
When the switches are flipped, the nuclear weapons will launch instantly. The whole process, from the President opening the briefcase to civilization-destroying missiles climbing into the sky, can take as little as 5 minutes.
There are no take-backs. No way to stop or cancel a launched missile.
To block the launch, 4 of 5 crews would need refuse to obey what seems like a legitimate order from their Commander-in-Chief, without the benefit of any outside contact or additional information.
If that mutiny is where you pin your hopes for all of human civilization, good fucking luck with that.
A launch key is inserted and then 3 cooperative launch switches are flipped by 2 officers. (The “2-man rule” you may have heard of is at the bottom of the chain, not the top.) Each crew flipping their switches generates a “vote” to launch. 5 crews = 5 votes. It takes 2 votes to launch the missiles.
Five launch crews with 2 officers each, spread miles apart underground and overseeing 50-missile squadrons, receive these orders. The 20-something-year-old officers open their safes and make sure the War Room's codes match. If they do, they unlock the missiles and target them.
The order then speeds through the system, encrypted in a message half the length of a tweet. This happens FAST. By the time it reaches its destination — launch officers in underground silos — only a few minutes will have passed since the President first opened the briefcase.
A verified order has the presumption of legality; the pressure to obey is extraordinary. Executing officers in the chain of command have no legal/procedural grounds to defy it, no matter how inappropriate it seems. If the President's identity is confirmed, the order is considered legit. Full stop.
Once given, the order must be verified. This is the only “check” in the process. The War Room officer reads a challenge code, and the President reads the matching response on a little card he carries with him. Then, like magic, the order is imbued with the full power of the presidency.
This is where folks assume top brass has to agree. Nope, sorry! This is a "consultation" only to the extent that the President wants advice. He can end all discussion immediately. Of course, folks can refuse and resign. But a disobedient officer in the War Room will be instantly replaced.
The officer in charge of the National Military Commander Center (they sometimes call it the “War Room”), who may not be any more senior than a colonel, will be on the other end of the line. A small group of senior advisors or commanders may or may not be patched in, depending on their availability.
Everywhere Trump goes, a locked briefcase follows. Inside it is everything he needs to launch weapons that can destroy entire nations. At any moment he can open it up, flip through a black book of targets, pick up the phone, and tell the Pentagon which genocidal war crime on the menu he likes best.
Folks always insist this can't be how it works. They need to believe that someone — the Defense Secretary, the Joint Chiefs, or a general, somewhere, surely — has to sign off on it. Because the facts sound simply too unbelievable to be real.
Allow me to burst that precious bubble.
Now seems like a good time to remind everyone that the only way to destroy an entire civilization overnight is with nuclear weapons, and Donald Trump has the absolute power as President to follow through on that threat. It could take as little as 5 minutes.
Here's how it would go down:
When in Iowa… #iykyk
In other words: We're totally down with the war criminal but condemn those who get hung up by things like the law, ethics and morality.
The writing this season is getting a little too heavy-handed.
bibi is just descriptively correct and the next dem needs to just sever all ties with israel. defense, trade, all of it. even thinking on utterly cynical grounds: israeli political leadership and overall politics is overtly opposed to the american left-of-center project
It is simultaneously true that Trump had (in the two elections he won) positioned himself as opposed to the wars of his predecessors while advocating for warcrimes, and we're again seeing that play out: violence without aims or rules in service of generating spectacle that plays well on TV & posts.
Absolute fucking clown shit
Yeah, not a great sign that they're just going to be experimenting on trans inmates like this and it's not a big story.
"American innovation" now refers to making a kind of atrocity cronut by combining insider trading with war crimes.
