Flowers & The Military

Maybe we all live in red states, and this won’t be a thing with which we deal (just maybe.) But, just in case, here is a pointer for coping. Pass it along!

As the Military Occupies your Town, Give them Flowers and a Note

Arnold Oliver 10/02/2025

An anti-Vietnam demonstration. Arlington, Virginia, USA. By S.Sgt. Albert R. Simpson. Department of Defense. Department of the Army. Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations. U.S. Army Audiovisual Center. – This media is available in the holdings of the National Archives and Records Administration, cataloged under the National Archives Identifier (NAID) 594360. Public Domain. Via Picryl.

Tiffin, Ohio (Special to Informed Comment; Feature) – During some of the large anti-war demonstrations during the 1960’s some of the protesters gave flowers to the troops faced off against them. In the 1967 March on the Pentagon it was the 503rd Military Police Battalion, and elsewhere the National Guard was deployed. An iconic photo from 1967 shows a young man placing a flower into a soldier’s gun barrel during the protest. Let’s bring that custom back when the US military occupies your town in 2025, but this time let’s include a note along with the flower.

Allow me to explain.

The demonstrators of the 1960’s understood that the soldiers faced off against him were not the enemy. Nearly all of the soldiers were young and patriotic and trying to do the right thing. Many of them were under economic hardship and wanted help paying for their education. The flower symbolized the protesters’ belief that the soldiers were not their enemies, and they did not wish to be theirs. And in fact, as the almost entirely peaceful protests grew, many soldiers came to sympathize and began to actively oppose the war as well.

Now we have federalized Guard troops being called out by President Trump in Washington, DC, Los Angeles, Portland with other cities soon to follow. Chicago is likely next. The authority for this is said to be Title Ten of the US Code which says that the president may federalize the National Guard if the US “is invaded or is in danger of invasion by a foreign nation; there is a rebellion or danger of a rebellion . . or the president is unable with the regular forces to execute the laws of the United States.”

Legitimate grounds for a US military or National Guard deployment do not exist. The claim that crime is spiraling out of control is false, and those pushing for the deployments know it. There is zero credible proof that crime is increasing. According to a recent FBI report (August, 2025) robbery, assault, rape and murder all continued a decline that began post-covid. We are not being invaded, there is no rebellion, and the laws are being enforced about as well as ever.

A second reason against deploying the military on our streets is that the Posse Comitatus act of 1878 forbids the use of US military forces within the country for active law enforcement except in exceptional circumstances such as insurrection, and explicitly approved by Congress. The military is forbidden from making arrests, conducting searches, issuing warrants, or interfering with local law enforcement. The law also applies to National Guard forces unless approved by state governors. No governors this year have made any requests for federalized National Guard troops.

And it is worth noting that Trump’s military forays into cities are only being used in areas run by Democratic officials. High crime in red state cities is ignored. And the Trump administration refuses to realize the obvious danger of political violence and threats from MAGA and the American right which are much higher than those from the left, according to the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) and others. Antifa is officially (and improperly) designated as domestic terrorists while violent right wing groups get a pass from the administration.

The President’s rhetoric seems aimed at inflaming and dividing. The “enemy from within”, “full force”, “thugs”, “vermin”, and much more. And there is hardly a peep of protest from the Republican party.

So this time around, how about if we give the troops a note along with the flower? You could use wording such as this:

Dear US soldier –

Your service oath included a pledge to uphold the US constitution, and your training taught you to disobey illegal orders.The orders sending you here (insert name of your city or town) are unlawful and unjust. You have a legal obligation to disobey.

We encourage you to go home, and we will support you in that decision.

About the Author

Arnold Oliver is an emeritus professor of political science at Heidelberg University in Tiffin, Ohio. A Vietnam veteran, he belongs to Veterans For Peace, and can be reached at soliver@heidelberg.edu.

Why Trump’s Corruption Goes Unchallenged By Dem Leadership

Sharing A Snippet From Rep. Ocasio-Cortez

Click on the link to read the whole thing which is funny/scary/as only-Jeff-Tiedrich can do it; I’m sharing the message as snipped below.

dunk-tank clown and demented pantload lecture actual soldiers on soldiering by Jeff Tiedrich

what the fuck was that? Read on Substack

(snip)

look, this is all scary shit — so here’s AOC to talk us all down off the ledge.

“I think there’s two things that are happening at once: one, there absolutely is an unprecedented abuse of power, destruction of norms, erosion of our government and our democracy in order to prop up an authoritarian style of governance however, they are weaker than they look, and it is important that we remember that because what they rely on is the impression of power, the perception of inevitability in us giving up in advance. Donald Trump is at record levels of unpopularity in his tenure. the Republican house is at record levels of unpopularity. they are underwater across the board and they know it. and that is causing them to double down in public. but it is backfiring. that is why whether it’s a shutdown, whether it’s all of this, they want us to blink first and we have too much to save.”

steady on, folks. we will get through this.

The Majority Report clips on ICE and the use of the military in US cities

FBI to Categorize Trans People As “Nihilistic Violent Extremist” Threat Group, Report Says

I just read how Pete Hegseth has decided that the best military in the world is “too woke and not male enough to have the warrior ethos”. He wants a military modeled off the 1940 model with all male white straight cis people. A few women in the offices are OK but none of that integrated military that Eisenhower did, whites and blacks serve in different military units and of course now being Christian is going to be a new requirement. I don’t know if Hegseth is paid by Russians or if his Christian nationalism is causing him to idealize the very Russian military propaganda of a male only hyper aggressive military … the same military that has been getting its ass kicked in the Russian war against Ukraine. We are witnessing the dismantling of 80 plus years of integration and what made the US military so powerful. Think of how warfare is done today. With drones and weapons that reach targets over the horizons. You don’t need to be a Rambo for those tasks. I worked in a satellite intel unit. We were not really soldiers. When I was in the Navy we did not have the requirements for PT that the Army did, but we were still as deadly or even more so. This fixation of purging the military of the LGBTQ+ and female members is destroying what makes our military so great. Ask countries that have those people in their military like Israel! Their LGBTQ+ and female members are just effective as the men. But it doesn’t fit with the Christian Nationalist identity that Hegseth and his ilk are trying to push the US into.

Recently the heritage foundation pushed the idea of a trans terrorist idealization that was behind the public shootings and they used faked data that they created to prove their point. It is all to further the push of theirs to make the US a Christian Theocracy where only the biblical pairings they consider hole to be accepted. But in truth the bible allows for a male to have as many sexual partners as he wishes and only constrains the females from having sex with anyone but their husbands or their owners. The entire Christian teachings these people push is constriction for females and complete freedom for males on the issue of sex and marriage. Hugs

https://www.them.us/story/trump-admin-fbi-trans-nihilistic-violent-extremists-terrorist

The choice is being championed by the Heritage Foundation, which is behind Project 2025.

By Abby Monteil

September 19, 2025

The Federal Bureau of Investigation is reportedly preparing to categorize transgender people as “violent extremists,” a categorization supported by organizations affiliated with Project 2025.

The most important LGBTQ+ news and politics stories delivered straight to your inbox

SIGN UP

By signing up, you agree to our user agreement (including class action waiver and arbitration provisions), and acknowledge our privacy policy.

According to a September 18 report by independent journalist Ken Klippenstein, two anonymous national security officials said that the Bureau is discussing treating trans subjects as a subset of its new threat category, “Nihilistic Violent Extremists” (NVEs), which was created earlier this year. The Bureau defines “Nihilistic Violent Extremism” as “criminal conduct… in furtherance of political, social, or religious goals that derive primarily from a hatred of society at large and a desire to bring about its collapse by sowing indiscriminate chaos.”

Officials said that such a classification would give the Trump administration “political (and media) cover” as they escalate their anti-trans campaign in the aftermath of right-wing pundit Charlie Kirk’s death.

“They are cynically targeting trans people because the shooter’s lover was trans,” an unnamed senior intelligence official told Klippenstein. “The administration has convinced itself that the Charlie Kirk murder exposes some dark conspiracy.”

Last week, the false claim that there were “transgender” engravings on the bullets that suspect Tyler Robinson allegedly used to shoot Kirk began circulating widely, boosted by anti-LGBTQ+ conservatives like Rep. Nancy Mace and Steven Crowder. Utah Gov. Spencer Cox later confirmed that there was “no indication that the ammunition included transgender references.” On Sunday, Cox told Meet the Press that Robinson was allegedly in a romantic relationship with a roommate who is trans, providing no additional public corroborating data or information of the roommate’s gender. The authorities have stipulated the roommate has been cooperating with the investigation and was not aware of the shooting prior to its occurrence.

Despite no evidence linking an alleged trans roommate to Robinson’s motivation for shooting Kirk, right-wingers are nevertheless attempting to use this detail to push an anti-trans agenda. In a petition launched on Thursday, the Heritage Foundation — the far-right think tank behind the derided and controversial Project 2025 — and its spin-off group, the Oversight Project, asked the FBI to designate “Transgender Ideology-Inspired Violent Extremism” (TIVE) as a domestic terrorism threat category.

The group defines “TIVE” as “the belief that violence is justified against people who oppose [the trans community],” as well as the belief that opposing trans rights “itself constitutes a form of violence towards people who identify as [trans or gender nonconforming]… or poses an imminent threat to such persons’ emotional, psychological, or physical safety, including through self-harm or suicide.”

As The Independent noted, if such a category is adopted by the FBI, it could be applied to rhetoric used by activists, writers, and allies speaking out against anti-trans policies and rhetoric.

At least a dozen hoaxes have claimed trans people were responsible for mass shootings and other incidents since 2012.In reality, there is no evidence suggesting significant patterns of violence committed by trans people. In 2024, The Gun Violence Archive’s Executive Director, Mark Bryant, said that out of 5,000 mass shootings tracked by the archive, the number of trans or LGBTQ+ suspects is in “the single digit numbers.”

Get the best of what’s queer. Sign up for Them’s weekly newsletter here.

Abby Monteil is a New York-based writer. Her work has also appeared in The Daily Beast, Insider, Elite Daily, Thrillist, and others. … Read More

Some clips from recent Majority Report that I enjoyed.

ICE Violence Is OUT OF CONTROL

As the guest host says, running into an ICE group is terrifying. They are untrained and are extremely abusive to people. The video show how the ICE guy drew his gun while laying on top of the person then put it into his belt. Later he lost both his gun and his ammo clip. Yet there are no controls on these masked people. So many kidnappings are going to happen by every group of sexual traffickers, and how is the public to know who is real official or not. This is pure Stephen Miller. I was a trained auxiliary deputy sheriff. Had I done anything like this I would have been in court and regardless I would have been fired. Hugs

Dr. Mo Returns From Gaza | Mohamed Mustafa | TMR

This is a doctor who served in Gaz and explains how horrible it is with Israeli soldiers shooting children as sport. He talks of dealing with children with their intestines hanging out and they have to operate with out pain killers. Please watch to see how horrific Israel is being at this point.

Sorry I have not been posting much. Really struggling right now. Hugs

Dr. Mohammed Mustafa joins us to discuss the horrors he has witnessed while volunteering at hospitals in Gaza. Here is a link to the fundraiser for a children’s hospital in Gaza. Live-streamed on September 23, 2025.

Israel: A Society In Denial

This is incredibly disgusting and horrific. The Israeli media is pushing garbage, lies, and misinformation on the Israeli public. They don’t believe what other news sources say about starving children or women. One Israeli man said he was going into the military in two months and hoped to be sent to Gaza to kill the Palestinians. When asked about the women and children he claimed there were no innocents, that they were all Hamas. He was asked about kids, little kids and babies his answer were they were either Hamas or terrorists or future terrorists. Better to kill the babies now rather than them growing up to hurt an Israeli. Only one couple called for an end to the war. The others demand Hamas release the hostages. The surrounding crowd did not believe them when they said that Hamas was willing to return the hostages in exchange for stopping the war but Netanyahu killed the negotiations. They are as brained washed as Fox viewers and when the truth comes out they will be living in Palestinian land claiming innocence because they willfully did not know of what the military was doing. Oh well water under the bridge they will claim. I am seriously anti-Israel’s government and military. I think they are equal to Hitlers government and supporters. They need to suffer the same fate. Following orders doesn’t cut it. Being Jewish is not a pass for committing genocide. Never again is for all people or it is not for any people. Best wishes for all and hugs for those that want them.

Some News (Tabs From Tuesday)

Some of it is not being covered so well elsewhere, what with the proponents being women and all, so some may still be new this morning! 🙂 A bit of blue language.

WELCOME BACK, JIMMY! Tabs, Tues., Sept. 23, 2025 by Rebecca Schoenkopf

CAN’T KEEP A FREE SPEECH DOWN. Read on Substack

Tabs .gifs by Martini Glambassador! Did I repeat one? Oh well if I did LOOK AT IT AGAIN

Good morning, it’s a short tabs because it just is, and because OH LOOKIE HERE?

https://embed.bsky.app/embed/did:plc:ihpglfqq3dapqjmwl2ntktil/app.bsky.feed.post/3lzh5zkhvpc2j?id=278835588257752

Ha, fuckers, ha!

But will MAGA hack companies Sinclair and Nexstar put it on their air? Who knows.

But we guess Disney got hurt right in the wallet. And it’s got to be pretty embarrassing when big Hulu documentaries are coming out and the literal stars of them (Sarah McLachlan) are declining to perform at the premieres, because of this whole censorship/fascism crisis we are in. Did you hear about that? That happened. [Billboard]

Um, we did not realize Trump was already babbling and making up “sir” stories about men with tears in their eyes in Memphis thanking him for the National Guard, but they have not been deployed.

https://embed.bsky.app/embed/did:plc:27jrcf2nmsofvwqcf6ztcnxy/app.bsky.feed.post/3lzgxktll2d23?id=8841689470383374

Anyway, crime is down in Memphis. It has nothing to do with shit nor shinola done by Donald J. Trump. [Tennessee Lookout]

Doctor Donald Trump says the old Ass Met Min Fin — how you say it? Words is hard — is more commonly known as “tylenol” and is definitely what causes the autism. You betcha.

hereswhykevin

A post shared by @hereswhykevin

Politico reports that Trump and Marco Rubio have absolutely destroyed the state of American diplomacy around the world. We knew that, but interesting details in this article. [Politico]

You guyssssssss, Tom Homan and Kristi Noem are having a diva fight about who goes on TV too much, you guyssssssss. [Daily Beast]

There was no Moral High Ground this week, because I’ve been out and about. It’ll be back later this week, but why don’t you go subscribe to it anyway? [The Moral High Ground]