Loyalty Checks

Not political but military-oriented:

Our governing class responded to the Capitol failure by setting up a Green Zone around central DC, blockading the bridges, cutting off vehicle access except via a few checkpoints, and bringing in two divisions of National Guardsmen to protect them from their fellow Americans. 

Now they've decided the Guardsmen can't be trusted and that they need their secret police, the FBI, to perform loyalty checks on the National Guard.

This is of course completely unnecessary. It's also insulting, but military service entails suffering regular insults like this. The unnecessary nature of this process is what draws my attention. Chains of command know their troops quite well already, and can easily tell you which ones they're worried about. If there's really some concern here you can assign those guys to special "volunteer" garbage-collection units who will be kept away from anything important. The FBI isn't going to be able to do a better job than their company commander of identifying the problem cases.

The Army is, of course, doing just that kind of thing. 

Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy told The Associated Press on Sunday that officials are conscious of the potential threat, and he warned commanders to be on the lookout for any problems within their ranks as the inauguration approaches. So far, however, he and other leaders say they have seen no evidence of any threats, and officials said the vetting hadn’t flagged any issues that they were aware of.

”We’re continually going through the process, and taking second, third looks at every one of the individuals assigned to this operation,” McCarthy said in an interview after he and other military leaders went through an exhaustive, three-hour security drill in preparation for Wednesday’s inauguration. He said Guard members are also getting training on how to identify potential insider threats.

The lack of military service among our elected officials is noteworthy. They really do feel threatened by our own people. The very people they brought in to guard them are now seen as a potential 'insider' threat. They don't understand the service or the ranks, or that the Army and the National Guard are the best-integrated part of America (governed by an officer class who have all been to college, and none of whom who did so in the last decade will have escaped university wokeness indoctrination). There is very little danger of an 'insider threat,' not from these guys; and the few who are a little 'out there' are definitely on their bosses' radar and have been for a while.

Now another thing I can tell you about these troops without the bother of asking them is that they hate being there. They were deployed in titanic numbers without any preparation; it's cold; they've been pulled away from their homes and families to stand watch over streets that have checkpoints every block. It's got to be one of the worst assignments ever, even without being insulted, even without being subject to the FBI prowling through your life looking for reasons to punish you.

Spare a thought for those poor bastards, pardon my French. They deserve better and will receive worse before it's over.