Assorted pertinent quotes from recent articles in the Atlantic

 "Trump has acted as a catalyst for the next reboot. His hostile takeover of the Republican Party was leveraged by a new, more working-class electoral coalition based on a populist politics of resentment. His antipathy toward China may lack analysis, but by articulating a sense that American workers had lost out in the neoliberal era, it gave voice to authentic grievance. Trump’s chaotic first term made only limited progress in forcing another reboot, but his second term seems likely to foreclose on the Biden administration’s interim solution of keeping the neoliberal system running with a limited New Deal–like reindustrialization in new sectors such as renewable energy. The Inflation Reduction Act was a significant reinvention of industrial policy, something not seen for decades outside a national-security context, but Trump is abandoning this sort of intervention. Instead, he has chosen tariffs as his singular tool for reshoring industry."

 "During the Vietnam War, Latinos were about 5 percent of the U.S. population, but they accounted for an estimated 20 percent of the 60,000 American casualties.

In 2015, 12 percent of active-duty service members identified as Hispanic. By 2023, that number had increased to 19.5 percent. In the Marine Corps, the proportion was closer to 28 percent. Latinas are more represented in the military than in the civilian workforce—21 percent of enlisted women compared with 18 percent of working women. (One explanation might be the military’s guaranteed equal pay: In the civilian workforce, Latinas earn just 65 cents on the dollar compared with white men.)"

 

How long will it be before those Marines decide they've had enough of ICE thugs beating the crap out of their compatriots. 

 

Re nuclear weapons:

 

The challenge, as George W. Bush memorably put it, is that a president wouldn’t even have time to get off the “crapper” before having to make a launch decision, a decision that could be based on partial, contradictory, or even false information. Ronald Reagan, when he assumed the presidency, was said to have been shocked that he would have as little as six minutes to make a decision to launch.

The sociobiologist E. O. Wilson described the central problem of humanity this way: “We have Paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions, and godlike technology.” The main challenge of the 80 years since the Trinity atomic test has been that we do not possess the cognitive, spiritual, and emotional capabilities necessary to successfully manage nuclear weapons without the risk of catastrophic failure.

 

References:

 

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2025/08/nuclear-command-control-football-iran/683256/

 

https://www.theatlantic.com/economy/archive/2025/06/reboot-capitalism-operating-system/683308/

 

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2025/08/nuclear-proliferation-risks-iran-trump/683250/ 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The calming influence of history

It's impossible to not draw a powerful and historically rich parallel between Trump's use of the National Guard in LA and Kennedy's and Johnson's use of federal forces in the sixties when I was in high school.  The deployment of force—especially military force—on U.S. soil in response to civil unrest has a long and fraught history, and comparisons between different eras can bring deeper clarity or, at the very least, help us question the narratives behind such decisions. 

The south was in an uproar about civil rights and rioting. 

Governors like George Wallace of Alabama framed federal intervention (especially the use of National Guard troops or federal marshals to enforce desegregation) as federal overreach and an infringement on "states' rights." But from another perspective, those federal actions were necessary to uphold constitutional rights that were being denied by state governments.

Fast forward to recent years—if Trump or any president deploys the National Guard in response to protests, especially immigrant-rights demonstrations, it raises serious questions:

• What's the motivation? Is it truly to preserve public safety, or to suppress dissent? Wallace argued the feds were suppressing constitutional rights. Wallace framed federal intervention as an overreach, emphasizing states' rights and portraying the federal government as an oppressive force. His rhetoric galvanized segregationist sentiments and set the stage for confrontations between state and federal authorities. (1)

• Who's being labeled the threat? Civil rights protesters in the '60s were often painted as agitators or "outside troublemakers"—a tactic still used today.

• What rights are at stake? Then it was voting and desegregation; now it's immigration policy, police accountability, and freedom of assembly.

Remembering the sixties offers not just context, but a caution. Sometimes the same playbook is used with different actors, and historical memory becomes essential to resisting cycles of repression.

N.B. The Insurrection Act of 1807 grants the President the authority to deploy federal troops within the United States to suppress civil disorder, insurrection, and rebellion. This act has been invoked during significant civil rights confrontations, such as the Little Rock Nine crisis in 1957 and the Selma to Montgomery marches in 1965. The act underscores the tension between federal authority and states' rights, a theme that persists in contemporary debates over the use of the National Guard in civil unrest situations. It has been invoked over 30 times. See https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/guide-invocations-insurrection-act

Note that the National Guard is used because  the Posse Comitatus Act (1878) is a federal law that limits the use of the U.S. military in domestic law enforcement. The law was enacted after the Reconstruction era, when federal troops had been used extensively in the South to enforce civil rights laws and maintain order. Southern states pushed for the act to limit federal control and reassert state power.  The National Guard is supposed to be invoked by state governors, not the federal government, but can be federalized.

President's are authorized to call up the troops under Article I, Section 8, Clauses 15-16  

Congress shall have the power:

• “To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions.”

• “To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the Militia...”  and

 Article II, section 2 

“The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States...” 

Of course these sections were added because they were terrified of slave revolts. 

None of this of this is to justify Trump's actions which I find abhorrent, but to simply provide some historical context so we don't all over-react;  oppose but not go nuts. And also to remember that actions we approve of when in support of our causes, may come back to bite us in the ass.