Narcissism and the Chain of Command

Why would a Commander in Chief and his "Secretary of War" call their top military leaders from around the globe to a meeting and then broadcast the meeting through mass media to citizens around the world?

Answer: To announce totalitarian control.

Decorated in Heavy Metals

At Attention

AI Overview

A military chain of command is a hierarchical structure where authority flows from the highest civilian authority down through military ranks, ensuring civilian control and a clear line of authority for issuing orders and making decisions.

Who would you follow?

Brandishing a Sword

While I was preparing this blogpost, I came across the following excerpt from an article in the NYT by Jennifer Schluessler and Minho Kim:

President Trump wanted a gift for King Charles.

Ahead of his state visit to Britain last month, the administration began looking for an artifact relating to President Dwight D. Eisenhower that the president could give the British monarch — a sword perhaps, or something else that spoke to Eisenhower’s role as the supreme commander of the Allied forces in World War II.

Through a personal email address, an administration official approached the Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library, Museum, and Boyhood Home in Abilene, Kan., which has at least one Eisenhower sword in its collection, given to him in 1947 by Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands. But the library declined to release it or any other original artifact in its collection, on the grounds that they are the property of the U.S. government, which the library is obligated by law to preserve for the American public.

Instead, Mr. Trump wound up giving King Charles a replica sword. And this week, the director of the Eisenhower library, Todd Arrington, was forced out of his job.

“The Founding Fathers [breaking away from abusive power] tried to protect us from the threat they knew, the tyranny that overcame ancient democracy.  Today, our political order faces new threats, not unlike the totalitarianism of the twentieth century.  We are no wiser than the Europeans who saw democracy yield to fascism, Nazism, or communism.  Our one advantage is that we might learn from their experience.”

-from On Tyranny by Timothy Snyder

CPW