An issue I have heard about a lot in the news lately has been the text chains that were sent out with sensitive information about our military plans, and accidentally adding a journalist to the text that they did not mean to add. This is pretty ridiculous when you consider the type of conversation that they were having. You would think that before you discuss F-18s dropping bombs on an enemy that you would at least check who is on the text chain before you send this kind of information out. But of course, this was downplayed by the Trump administration as not that big of a deal. They wrote it off as a simple mistake, but Trump based the whole 2016 election on Hillary Clinton’s emails, and said she was not fit, and degraded her in every way possible and said she should be in jail. Now that it is his guys, he is trying to act like it is no big deal.
As a former service member, this is upsetting to me that they would put our military members’ lives in jeopardy and then try and lie about the conversation. Pete Hegseth, a former combat veteran, then lied about this conversation. He tried to distance himself as much as possible and when interviewed, he said it was a “hoax”. Of course, he would use that word, just like his daddy, Donald Trump. I don’t understand how this happened, but someone should take full responsibility for it, and disciplinary action should be taken to prevent anything like this from ever happening again. I know some people do not think it is that big of a deal, including our president apparently, but it is a very big deal and could put people's lives at risk. The Vice President was a Marine as well, you would think this would be upsetting to him that somehow, they put these pilots' lives in danger, but he has not done anything to address this. It just goes to show the lack of humanity with some of these guys, if that was me in that text chain I would be apologizing like crazy to the pilots and to everyone else for making such a stupid rookie mistake.
But when Pete Hegseth was getting sworn in to be the secretary of defense, this was most people’s issue with him is that he was not qualified to do this job, and it definitely shows. I just think how funny and two-sided everything is. In 2016, they wanted to throw Clinton in jail for her whole e-mail scandal, but it’s okay when they do something that stupid. I really wish Trump had never been elected into office in the first place because since 2016, it has been nothing but issues with him; he lives for chaos. Our nation was not even close to being as divided as it is today. I wish it was not the way it is and I am not sure what it is going to take to get everything back on track after he leaves office.
These themes in your reaction relate to some universal themes.
First, there is the issue of partisanship and cognitive bias and cognitive dissonance. Persons who feel a partisan alignment are likely to perceive the world through a cognitive bias filter where every error committed by their political opponents will look more dramatic, sinister, malevolent, and egregious, whereas every error committed by someone from their side will look excusable, mild, inadvertent, innocent, and harmless. The more partisan someone is, the more this is so. As persons who are highly partisan are more likely to have this partisan bias, and simultaneously likely to believe in the virtue and goodness of their side and the malevolence and ill-intentions of the other side, any evidence that they are being hypocritical or biased would threaten their self-concepts of their virtue, and any evidence that the “other side” is being fair and honest whereas their partisan side is being dishonest or unreasonable would threaten their world view, and they would take such evidence or arguments as threats to their very being (their ego or psychological being). It seems to me, as a non-partisan outsider who has a radical-to-liberal pragmatic inclination, that the Republicans tend to be more hyper-partisan than the Democrats, although these problems of cognitive bias afflict people on all sides of the political world. And, with hyper-partisanship comes increasing blindness to their own thought-distortions and irrational thinking.
Second, there is the issue of the general incompetence or mismanagement of the federal government executive and legislative branches under the leadership of Donald Trump, John Thune, and Mike Johnson. And in particular, the cabinet-level officials who have been using social media to discuss secret government operations is one egregious example of incompetence and lack of seriousness. Of course, one always expects a certain level of mistakes, bad decisions, lack of wisdom, or foolishness from any human being, and political leaders are not exempt from human foibles, but at the level of persons confirmed to run government agencies at the level of the President's cabinet, one expects better.
Then, there is the problem of intelligence and expertise. Some of the people in government may be competent and capable of able management, but they may not be geniuses or they may be operating in an area which lies outside their expertise. President Trump seems to have assigned a reasonably intelligent Florida real estate businessman (Steve Witkoff) to run several of his highest priority diplomatic efforts, and Witkoff evidently went to meet with Putin and other Russian leaders without even bringing along an interpreter, deciding he could do this negotiation without any help from an expert diplomat from the State Department or a US Government translator. Trump has assigned Pete Hegseth, a man who has a proven record of being a good communicator to audiences who watch FOX News even on weekends when most people are out doing activities and not sitting somewhere watching television propaganda, but he has no expertise in running large organizations, holding command in the military, or communicating with people who aren't avid FOX network viewers. The President seems to care more about loyalty and voices who will be respected within the right-wing MAGA echo chamber, and less about competence, expertise, and intelligence. This will be frustrating to people who want to see brilliant people running the government. Those of us who want government leaders with awe-inspiring expertise doing things within their realms of expertise that the rest of us could not possibly do are naturally irked when people are given leadership mainly because of their loyalty to the President or their willingness to obey anything Trump tells them to do.
All these issues are relevant in the issue of the signal chat about the attack on the Houthis, but these same issues are also relevant to people who are dismayed or disgusted by how the White House and Congress are operating these days. There are consistent patterns of activity that alarm many people, and that is why you see large demonstrations two or three times each month where thousands of people, even in a small city like Springfield, come out on an afternoon to wave signs, listen to speeches, chant slogans, and shout out against what is going on.
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