This is a story from Brother Marlow which was sent a week or two back. At the time, he did not regard it as prime time, and needed to have some time in the settling pond to ripen.

The events of the last two days- Government officials like Attorney General Barr actually saying thing we have know for years- reveal just how loony the loony tunes have become. As a rapporteur, I enjoy it. As a citizen, I don’t.

But oh well, here we go again. A year and a half to the election.

– Vic

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Slip sliding away

“The information’s available to us mortal men
We’re working our jobs, collecting our pay
Believing we’re gliding down the highway
When in fact we’re slip slidin’ away.”
– Paul Simon

Last week America’s Swampsters continued slip sliding their way across another couple of Rubicons, when (1) border patrol agents were told by their supreme boss to do something illegal — as in directly and knowingly violate a federal law and (2) a Congressional House Committee decided it had the right to subpoena and review any and all American individual and corporate tax return files they wanted without justification or probable cause.

In the first case after the ring leader and his media circus departed the border, the agents’ next level supervisors told them following their elected boss’s order would put them squarely in the defendant’s chair at a criminal trial. Let’s avoid discussing how some could square either of these two circles.

Let’s just accept that the Swampsters have placed the rest of us closer to our destination than we know. There was no internal staff “what-if-ing” or “spitballing” fig leaf here available to cover up El Supremo’s direct issuance of an illegal order. If the reports are true, this was not just some piddly-assed misdemeanor but a feloniously illegal order.

Similarly, in the absence of any compelling need other than a self-serving and likely unconstitutional law that Congress passed, Americans’ surrender of the privacy of their IRS form data is Nixonian and Orwellian in nature and likely will be found as defective upon scrutiny by US courts.

This brought back uncomfortable memories of long ago times when I had to decide whether what I was being told by my boss to do was illegal, whether and how I would disobey, and whether I was prepared to suffer the consequences of the US Navy’s RHIP (rank has its privileges) system ethos.

The undetlying mattera were serious — submitting pre-deployment readiness reports that were utter fiction so our unit would look good on paper to compete for the Navy’s annual Battle Efficiency award.

Despite broke-dick equipment stats that were undeniable and reported by a separate tracking system, I was directed to falsify crew readiness goal achievements that were utterly laughable, given the dearth of flight hours and aircraft availability.

I was repeatedly directed to dummy up these reports for forwarding up the chain. I played dumb and sent the truth up the chain, leaving it to my boss to create his desired fiction. It is imporatnt to remember how effed up the US Navy’s material condition was after 14 years of unrelenting high-OPTEMPO obligations with no time for maintenance and training.

As these BS orders continued, I researched what my predecessor had submitted and found a total clusterf@ck. The squadron had been BSing its way for sometime. It hadn’t been detected despite stark hardware and training deficiencies. Our BS readiness stats had been rewarded by the prized assignment of special missions with demonstrably dangerous (in Navy parlance of the time “pieces of shit”) airframes and inoperable safety of flight and defensive systems.

The squadron’s abrupt change to honest reporting and cratered readiness levels didn’t seem to raise any eyebrows in our squadron ready room, our wing superiors or our AIRLANT overlords.

My go-rounds on this went on month after month, until it was annual officer evaluation report time. He thought he finally had me and would finally get what he wanted — “a compliant JO.” He even told me that it would be reflected.

For the umpteenth time, I refused and told him that, should he not desist, we would take this matter up the chain. I thought I was playing a dead hand, so I was surprised when he folded his cards and approved my report as is. I was relieved that I wasn’t going to face an Officer’s Mast for insubordination but accepted that a Navy career-ending “shitcan” fitness report was likely.

Several months later the squadron XO debriefed me on my fitness report that while containing several downgrade marks wasn’t abhorrently a screw job.

It took years to wash the stink from my record of that one “aw shit” report.

There were other follow on disobedience incidents that at times involved breaking the secrecy seal on sensitive sources and methods. In others I was willing to accept the consequences and not attempt to use in my defense “I was just following orders.”

However, here’s the rub: I disobeyed these rules and orders at my own peril. Ultimately, it’s not whether or not I considered the rule or order as lawful or applicable; it was whether my military superiors (and courts) thought the order or rule was unlawful or inapplicable.
There doesn’t seem to be any consequences for the Swampsters.
America is now at the junction of Obey-Disobey. Shall we allow the Swampsters to violate the rule of law? Ot will there be consequences for their acts?

At the corner of Obey-Disobey

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