I’m skipping my usual Memorial Day musings for this bit of current news. This is from Market Watch —
Former national security adviser Michael Flynn said over the weekend that a Myanmar-like coup — in which the military overthrew a democratically elected government — “should happen” in the U.S.
Appearing in Dallas at a QAnon conference, Flynn was asked during a Q&A session that was shared in a Twitter video: “I want to know why what happened in Myanmar can’t happen here?”
After cheers from the crowd died down, Flynn responded: “No reason. I mean, it should happen here.”
Here’s the video:
Here is the video of former national security advisor Michael Flynn saying that he thinks a coup like the coup in Myanmar should happen in the US. pic.twitter.com/7mGYjfXg18
— Mamie ? (@MC_Hyperbole) May 30, 2021
The Market Watch article continues,
Myanmar’s military seized power Feb. 1 and imprisoned the country’s democratically elected leaders, on the basis of unproven allegations of voter fraud. At least 800 civilians have died, and thousands have been arrested, in protests that have wracked the Southeast Asian nation in the months that followed.
Supporters of the QAnon conspiracy theory have praised the Myanmar coup and called for the U.S. military to do the same, citing unsubstantiated claims of election fraud.
Myanmar, formerly known as Burma, is no stranger to military dictatorship. Its history since gaining independence from Britain in 1947 is mostly a list of insurgencies and coups. It’s been under the thumb of military dictatorship most of that time, especially from about 1962 to about 2008. (Note that it wasn’t the same military junta running things, exactly, during that period. The coups had coups.) It managed to almost sorta kinda function as a democratic nation from about 2011 to very recently, but now the military has taken over again.
Myanmar is unfathomably screwed up. It would take a book to describe how screwed up it is. Just note that the various military juntas that ran the nation through most of its history did not do much good for the people. The juntas did not respect civil liberties or even concern themselves much with whether people had food and shelter.
Buddhism is the dominant religion in Myanmar, and the Buddhist establishment there is also a mess. Part of the reason for that goes back to the independence movement, which was led by monks, but that’s a long story. It’s also the case that during the worst of the earlier dictatorships many families gave their young sons to the temples, to be ordained, so that at least they would have something to eat. This resulted in a large number of Monks With Issues who were more interested in politics and activism than in meditation.
Did I mention Myanmar is bleeped up? So, yeah, let’s try to be just like them! That’s the ticket!
Morons. On the plus side, most U.S. career military officers have more respect for the Constitution and our democratic tradition than do the Republican Party these days. They aren’t going to follow Michael Flynn anywhere.
Myanmar military.
Wow. That is just Quazzy. Fox news channel is the gateway addiction then you can go full Q and never see reality again for the rest of your life. Sounds like a really bad trip to me man.
As I always advise children at all ages, you must learn from the mistakes of others. Life is too short to make all the mistakes out there yourself.
And he is the X-general they did not call mad dog. Go figure.
Is he fomenting sedition? Or am I too respectful of our governing principles?
He's singing for his supper. After all, Q is picking up the tab for his appearance at their crazy fest, so it's only natural that he'd give them what they are paying for. The one thing that Flynn learned well was the fact that the more outrageous and offensive statement you can make, the greater the dividend is paid in the conspiracy laden Trump world. He achieved near divine status in MAGA world with his "Lock Her Up" quip. It stands to reason that he has to go over and above that bar to sustain the adulation and devotion of the Q cult.
There is a strong possibility that Q is the product of the Flynn clan. His son was the perpetrator, or at least in on the ground floor, with the pizzagate conspiracy. So it does leave open the possibility we are just witnessing a marketing ploy.
So he is probably triple dipping, speakers fees from Q, a fat military retirement check, and whatever he gets from his work for Putin creating and fostering chaos in America (plausible). He has to pay off his pardon bill which could not have been cheap. (speculative)
Is he breaking bad, badly broken, or flat broke from extortion fees?
It could be all of the above. He seems a man of many facades.
There is a possibility that the real Michael Flynn does not even exist any more. He is all Qucked up, that's for sure.
Over the last few years, Flynn's morphed into someone who's practically become a national punchline.
But there aren't any laughs in that punchline.
Nothin' funny at all. The man has serious issues (yeah, I know: didn' take no rocket-surgeon to figger that out, but still…).
And I think one man, a POTUS, is a huge part of Flynn's issue(s).
No, not tRUMP. Obama.
It seems like Flynn was an exceptional soldier and leader until the the mid-10's. And that he was on a career-path that aimed high, and the odds were that he seemed "golden" – very likely to succeed, and reach many or most of his goals.
And in 2012, Flynn became the 18th leader of the DIA (Defense Intelligence Agency). With his knowledge, and long successful record in the field of intelligence, he was a natural for that gig!
And then, in 2014, Obama fired him.
Basically, it was for insubordination (Paging Dr. Freud! Oy, man, I subconsciously typed "insurrection" first, and had to come back later and correct the word to be "insubordination").
Look, I don't have anything to back it up, but IMO, right then, something in Flynn's mind… snapped… broke… whatever…
If he wasn't crazy, and/or a racist before, did that firing make him one?
Or, more likely, was he a nutter who was racist to some degree, and then when he, Michael Flynn, was fired by a Black guy. A BLACK GUY! ME: MICHAEL FLYNN! FIRED!!! OK, not just a regular Black guy. But the 1st Black POTUS. But still: FIRED. BY. A. BLACK. GUY! ME!!!
Because ever since Obama fired him, Flynn's seemed less like a General, and more like Gomer Pyle gone to seed, and who's become a nasty MAGA lush and acid-freak who makes meth in the back of his garage.
Something drove Flynn crazy. I think it was Obama.
Our democracy doesn't need to copy Myanmar. We had our own very close "Burma Shave" with a coup not too long ago!
So, can someone take that coup-lovin' "KKKoo-KKKoo Bird," Flynn, and put him in a padded villa for his own protection, and for the protection of others. Not forever! But until we figure what made and makes him tick.*
Flynn's KKKOUP-KKKOUP FOR COCOAPUFFS!!!
*Being an expert at intelligence, it might be tough to make him "tock."
GET IT?!?!?
OK. I grok you folks, You're sending me to my room for that bad gag. Be out in a while! Later…
Open the frame a bit to look at three players, Flynn, Guliani, and Trump. None of them were ever 'great', but they played 'great' on TV.
Flynn was 'famous' in the military and very good as a military leader, they say. (You only know if you served with the soldier – everything might be hype.) As Gulag observed, he was a rising star until he crashed.
Mayor Bug-eyes loves the spotlight – a more vain, egotistical, self-absorbed Mayor has never cursed NYC.
Trump is a loser. He's failed more often than he's won. Most of his wealth is from a) cheating and b) selling his name. He hasn't built crap. BUT, he played a real-estaate mogul on TV, and he loved it. The unreal "reality" of reality TV completely suited the cheater who makes the same property worth ten times as much for a loan as he claims on taxes. EVERYTHING is smoke and mirrors for the audience.
Having been almost famous once, I can tell you that the temptation to grab back the spotlight is powerful. I'm not driven by what others think of me. If my entire self-worth was based on my perception of how popular I am….wow! What a monster I would become.
That's what's happening here. What's amazing is that millions of people want to play the other side, feeding these egomaniacs with cash and adulation,
Trump's fav whisperer Habermann of the Failing NY Times is reporting that der Fuhrer is telling people around him that he will be reinstated as President by August. Doesn't say how of course, but doesn't have to. Like a mob boss saying to an underling, "I got a stone in my shoe" not only do they know what they means, they know what needs to happen, and pleasing the boss (all important) means just get it done, and they set to work attempting to please the boss.
As reported:
The anti-democracy theory has been bubbling up in fringe conservative media for several months. It has no basis under the Constitution or any legitimate legal framework.
That explains Flynn's Myanmar style coup talk. He's not the only one thinking like this.
Its easy to write these people off as "crazy" because they talk about things in irrational and delusional ways that are so far outside of the norms of law and tradition as to sound absurd. But who would have predicted that a US president would, on camera, foment and encourage an assault on the US Capitol while congress is certifying the election results, with the goal of stopping a constitutional process — the very definition of sedition (and yet no one is being charged with that, at least not yet) — to illegally and undemocratically install that same losing president, in office?
These people sound crazy, and some of them actually are. The response can't just be a national having a laugh though. As crazy as they are, they're serious.
Thank, you, Maha, for the background on the Monks With Issues (great phrase, too!). When I first read about Buddhist Monks in Myanmar beating up Rohingya, I was quite surprised.
I've watched a terrible pattern develop across the last few decades: major religions – losing young people to the lure of secularish Mammonism – grow meaner and revert to a fundamentalist style, eventually to the point of advocating violence against the Evil Forces ("Those People", outsiders).
First I saw of this was the rise of the "Religious Right" here in USA. That was partly engineered by the GOP, who recognized that people with blind faith in any Televangelist could easily be sucked into blind faith in the GOP. But recently it's gotten so bad that they've merged into the Qult of Trump. Yecchh.
The radicalization of Islam was also partly engineered; the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia was glad to fund the CIA's "brilliant" scheme to use Central Asian Muslims to undermine Soviet Communism, but things got kinda out of hand. The Saudis wound up building Madrassas all around the world, to spread their own twisted Wahabi version of Islam; the Madrassas too often became centers of radical plots.
Particularly since the immigration of 1-2 million Russian Jews to Israel around/after the fall of the USSR, radical (Orthodox?) Zionist sects (concentrated in West Bank Settlements?) which consider (some?) non-Jews to be less than fully human have gained political power in Israel, making a 2-State solution nearly impossible.
In India, the BJP – a Hindu Nationalist party which has encouraged violence against non-Hindus – now runs the national government. They risked nuclear war with Pakistan by annexing Kashmir, and are (stupidly) starting border clashes with China. Their "traditionalism" includes horrible treatment of women, and then, of course, there's the whole Caste thing…
I wasn't really that surprised by radicalism in any of those religions, though I have ben surprised by their success (especially in gaining political power). But I expected better from Buddhism. Yeah, I probably have a somewhat rosy view of it, shaped by the very pleasant, mellow, non-dogmatic way it has leaked into modern American culture. Presumably, Tibet went through an aggressive (violent?) expansionist period a millennia or two ago (how else could it have gotten so big?), but that's long ago, far away, and not in the history books I had in school.
Anyway, when the treatment of Rohingyas in Myanmar hit the news here, I had a hard time believing that Buddhists had fallen into the ethno-centric hate thing. I actually leaned toward excusing them, thinking that perhaps the Rohingyas had infected with Wahabi crap from KSA, and were stirring up trouble.
So thanks for filling in an extra piece of the puzzle, Maha!