Not a Surprise Re: Milley

Published at 09:48 on 16 September 2021

Look, we already knew that Milley had conspired with Pelosi against his Commander in Chief. That he also instigated contacts with China to help forestall a war between two nuclear-armed superpowers thus falls squarely into the Not a Surprise category.

And yes, there are real questions about the constitutionality of it all. But, that serves more as an indictment of the entire system than it does any of the actors in it. If the system’s own mechanisms actually worked to limit the abuses of the presidency, Trump would have either been convicted and removed from office after being impeached, or his Cabinet would have invoked the 25th Amendment against him.

In the face of neither thing happening, can anyone really blame Milley for engaging in constitutionally dubious conduct? Can anyone argue with a straight face that it would have been better to have a nuclear war than it was to bend the rules?

It all goes to show how difficult it is to maintain good conduct when inside a fundamentally rotten system.

Blame the system, not the actors. Yes, this goes for Trump as well. He deserves blame for whatever he did, but what he did is nowhere near as concerning as the fact that the system failed to use the formal mechanisms that it did possess to restrain Trump and hold him accountable.

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