You may have seen the picture of the Texas sheriff who denounced Hombre Naranja’s efforts to get control of the border. But did you see the general’s stars on the collar of this civilian cop?
One sees this a lot.
War Crimes Against Sou...
Best Price: $17.69
Buy New $21.69
(as of 07:16 UTC - Details)
There are “sergeants” and “lieutenants” and “majors” and “colonels,” with eagles on their collars. There are even four and five-star “generals” – equivalent in rank to MacArthur and Eisenhower and Patton running small-town sheriff’s offices.
It’s what you might call stolen valor – a term of opprobrium applied to people who parade around in military uniforms (and wearing military insignia) they’re not entitled to wear – either because they’re not in the military or because they didn’t earn the military insignia.
Like the four-star “general” of Bexar County, Texas. He is not in the military and he most definitely did not receive his four stars from the military.
An interesting thing about this is that there’s a historical precedent for it. One with unpleasant implications.
In National Socialist Germany – it is always important to spell it out rather than use the acronym that the National Socialists themselves never used – there were paramilitary bodies that awarded themselves military ranks – such as SS Haupsturmfuhrer, a kind of “captain” who wasn’t commissioned by the German army.
33 Questions About Ame...
Best Price: $2.91
Buy New $9.99
(as of 07:05 UTC - Details)
There were also – and here we hit closer to home – generals der polizei – that is, police generals who were also often officers of the SS, such as SS Oberstgruppenfuhrer (colonel general) and general-der-polizei Kurt Daleuge. He was the man who replaced the “butcher of prague,” SS General Reinhard Heydrich, after the latter’s assassination by Czech partisans.
Point being, we’ve become a lot like them without most of us even seeing it. More finely, we’ve become used to paramilitary policing – which now (as then) has become almost indistinguishable from being policed by the military. This is an interesting thing in that Americans aren’t supposed to be policed by the military.
It’s actually “the law,” as if that mattered.
