TAT readers,
Today will be a short essay, because I will be attending the 5 - 8 anti-ICE and anti-tyranny protest, here in downtown San Antonio. My attendance is partially in support of the protesters and partially, as reconnaissance. I need to take the pulse of both protesters and the Texas National Guard, that our MAGA Gov, Greg Abbott ordered into our fair and tolerant city, late yesterday. I do this because I wish to have as much credible information about these events, before writing to you folks about them.
Abbott, like his Texas Taliban GOP, are little respected any longer in Texas, or at least inside most of Texas’ larger cities. Both employ spineless subservience to Trump and his sycophantic billionaires. Texans do not appreciate blind submissive behavior in our politicians. The great irony of Abbott ordering the Texas National Guard into our city is just much he and the TX GOP have abused our Guard the past decade. His deployment of the Guard to the border in support of his costly and near useless political stunt, Operation Lonestar, garnered him a series of condemnatory articles in the Military Times and the Army Times.
"Abbott’s follies have even been a disaster for the Texas National Guard, incompetently mobilized as a political stunt. The Military Times even did a series of articles detailing the cruelty, incompetence and ineffectiveness of Op Lonestar, more accurately called the Operation Lonestar Follies." - Texas Travesty - Substack publication, TAT, Truth about Threats - Cobaugh - July 24th, 2023
Were it not for the TX GOP’s radical gerrymandering and voter suppression laws, they would have been out of office, a decade ago. Texans have a strong independent streak and when the Army brought me to San Antonio in 2005, I planned to stay, largely because of our patriotism and independence. That has all disappeared. Now the Republican Party of Texas, is little different than the national GOP, and can in no way, be considered a principled conservative state. They are now, insurrectionists, coup supporters, racist and cruel far-right violent extremists. The proof is in their very own words.
A while back I wrote a long, detailed essay, comparing the platform of America’s most principled conservative, President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s 1956 platform to the Texas GOP’s, 2022, Midterm platform. The differences could hardly be more glaring. For those who don’t wish to read that entire essay, the bottom line, is that Eisenhower’s Platform was much the same as President Joe Biden’s and the current platform of the TX GOP, perfectly defines far-right extremism. I know violent extremism well, after much of my military career in CT or Counterterrorism.
This evening at our City Hall and with some reports indicating the Alamo also, Texans will protest Abbott and Trump’s tyranny. We don’t like our rights being abused, not do we like being pushed around by bullies, especially cowardly and immoral ones. These protests, now national should be a warning sign to Trump and his other Abbott-like GOP leaders, but they are subservient as well. My current congressman, Chip Roy and last one, Tony Gonzalez are some of the most dishonest in Congress. They like playing the principled and decent congressmen in the press, but their votes are pure MAGA. MAGA equals un-American and treasonous. Also traits that that honest Texans despise.
Growing up the son of a history and government teacher, I know a thing or two about protests and their responses in our nation’s history. What Trump is doing has long been calculated and woven into his Project 2025 180-Day Transition Plan, now masquerading as his “big beautiful BS bill.” With inexperienced thugs and oligarchs running our government, he falsely believes that he can subdue us, a freedom loving people. He’s wrong and if he persists, will cause the civil war he’s been provoking. Something else he’s dead wrong about is that our military will do his dirty work, especially against US citizens in the streets. The military swears a sacred oath to “defend and protect the constitution, from all enemies both foreign and domestic.” Attacking fellow Americans in the streets under the these Trumpian circumstances, would violate that oath.
As we have all been watching the Los Angeles protests these past few days, there is little to no evidence that the protests are worthy of mobilizing troops. The LAPD and local Sheriff offices, have this under control, and like the San Antonio PD, has little to no communication with military commanders. Of course, there are the FOX News, NewsMax etc. lies and replays of old videos from previous protests for different purposes, continues to sell their brainwashed audiences that there is some sort of “insurrection” involved in these protests. There currently is none but should Trump, Hot Wheels and the rest of the GOP continue “poking the bear,” there will be.
Pinkertons Pinkerton’s agents performed a variety of services for the people who hired them; this included basic security guard work, strike-breaking, and private military contract work. During the labor strikes of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, businessmen hired the Pinkerton Agency to infiltrate unions. They provided guards to help keep strikers and union organizers out of factories; in some cases, they were employed to intimidate workers. The Pinkertons were also employed as guards in coal, iron, and lumber disputes in states that included Illinois, Michigan, New York, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia. - The Slave Patrols and the Pinkertons - Dr. Sandra Trappen
I have long told my friends and professional colleagues, that there is a line, in every true patriot’s DNA, that cannot be crossed without serious repercussions. There are plenty of analogous situations in American history, especially when it is oligarchy that “deploys” thugs to prevent, disrupt and end protests. In this case, it is Trump, Abbott and other oligarchs attempting to employ thuggery. In the late 19th and early 20th century, the Pinkerton Agency who had provided intelligence and Secret Service type protection to President Lincoln, began to operate as “brutal and sometimes lethal strike breakers” for the “robber barons” of the Gilded Age, like Carnegie, Rockefeller, J.P. Morgan, Cornelius Vanderbilt, etc.
The Gilded Age But to Twain and Warner, and to many of their contemporaries, the Gilded Age was basically acquisitive and corrupt, with little cultural depth. They saw the era as a time of hypocrisy and of political indifference and irresponsibility. America's politicos, to them, were mercenary and neglectful of the public welfare. And the period's business leaders exploited the country's resources and workers and accumulated huge fortunes from government aid and favors. - The Gilded Age In American History - Rutherford B. Hayes Presidential Library and Museums - VINCENT P. DESANTIS - Winter, 1988
Of course these early American Oligarchs, were not reined in by the US Government as they employed thuggery to keep America’s workers, in abject poverty. Writers like Upton Sinclair, who wrote the Jungle, vividly portrayed what cruel oligarchy in US manufacturing was like for the workers. Investigative reporters like Nelly Bligh took on cruel and powerful government and business institutions alike.
These so-called “muckrakers“ pulled back the covers on the seedy and immoral side of US business and government collaboration. This period of history, also included the “Yellow Journalism” era that looks like today’s Republican party propaganda driving US policy. The bottom line is, there is no role in American government for oligarchs. In fact, any number of scholars believe the US constitution, to be the “anti-Oligarchy constitution.” In my studies of oligarchy, I believe these scholars to be spot-on!
My friends, we are now at a similar phase of US history. This brutish administration, that is attempting to use their Putinesque tactics against us, the US citizenry, should read more history. Oligarchy failed throughout our history, despite making several attempts to fully control our constitutional republic. Each time, it would be US citizens, far more than the US government, that would demand and receive an end to brutish government enabled by oligarchy. This is indicative of the very line I described above. Pushing the American people too hard with thuggery, will result in an end to the thuggery. Just ask the Confederacy, who lost the civil war.
Most of us live and breathe our constitutional rights. Every time that thugs like Trump, Abbott and their entire Republican Party attempt a second coming of the Gilded Age and support using our government to secure their greed, it is us, the rank and file American citizens, that put a stop to it. We are now at this point my friends, even though many are still in disbelief that “it can happen here.” These protests are not merely anti-ICE and anti Trump protests, but are classic representations of American identity, that declares, “I’m mad as hell and won’t take it anymore.”
Had my father not been a history and government teacher, maybe I would not have understood the big picture yet, as well or this soon. But my morally sound and extraordinary parents, taught me well. This nation and its real values, not the fake-patriotism of Trump, the GOP and the FOX News crowd, is worth fighting for and I will honor our family tradition. Apparently, with the number of protesters in the streets these past few weeks, growing numbers of you will honor our republic as well. I am grateful to all of you willing to put your own patriotism on the line, to claw-back our rights, integrity and honor from this miserable, Putin-loving, oligarchically supported, Christian Nationalist thugs.
I look forward to seeing with my own eyes, Abbott’s National Guard in the streets of this remarkable city. I want to see his and Trump’s tyranny in person. I want to see the faces of protesters and Guardsmen looking into each other’s eyes, and wondering how the hell did this happen? More on this topic as time allows.
I wish all of you the very best as you stand up for our nation, and all of its citizens.
Paul, a.k.a. Publius Redux
Paul, please let me know if you need me to post bail to get you out of the county lockup tonight.
When you are out there, Paul, read the key sections of the UCMJ to remind the Guard their oath to the Constitution and. It to Gov Slow Wheels or the Orange cancer.