Calliope
calliope5431.bsky.social
Calliope
@calliope5431.bsky.social
Not the Greek muse, just a casual fan. I study the Third Reich. The demands to READ THEORY will continue until you have actually read Christopher Browning and Ian Kershaw.
Pinned
Reposted by Calliope
Mass pardons are coming. There will be no accountability without treating those as null and void. And that means a future administration taking an official position that Trump is not the legitimate president right now because he is disqualified by the 14th Amendment. The two things are inextricable.
November 28, 2025 at 9:36 PM
Reposted by Calliope
America needs a special forces command but it sure looks like we need to fill it with completely different personnel.

This is utterly beyond the pale, and evidence of how thoroughly JSOC has rotted itself.
WaPo with reporting that Pete gave an explicit order to JSOC during the first strike post impact to immediately follow up in order to, and I quote, "kill them all"
November 28, 2025 at 5:59 PM
Reposted by Calliope
The question is in two parts I think:

- how should USSOF be organized and what should the relationship between SOCOM (which I think has to exist in some fashion), the other CCMDs, and the services be

- does JSOC need to exist at all in the future construct
November 28, 2025 at 6:10 PM
Yeah SOCOM really truly has to go and the people in it need to be cashiered. Unclear exactly how that will look, but it has to happen.
I don't know exactly where you go beyond that in rooting out the special operations cult of lawlessness, but an immediate start would be abolishing SOCOM as its own combatant command and requiring, by law, such operations be conducted only through the regular geographic commands.
November 28, 2025 at 10:09 PM
Reposted by Calliope
This is actually a relevant factor here: it's been pretty clear SOUTHCOM, whose commander resigned, has been pushing back, at least somewhat. They're putting it under the operational command of SOCOM specifically because that's the most already rotten place you'll find people happy to do crimes.
Why do you need Seal Team 6 to blow up a fucking boat?
This would be an unambiguous war crime even in a proper war against a real enemy’s navy.
November 28, 2025 at 9:14 PM
Reposted by Calliope
A three star is probably also savvy enough to know the likelihood any plausible near term Dem admin will actually prosecute is zero
November 28, 2025 at 5:57 PM
Special Operations probably needs to be dismembered after this, and the people who gave *and followed* these orders dealt with in a fashion befitting their crimes. This is entirely unacceptable and it's absolutely ghastly that people followed these commands rather than resign.
November 28, 2025 at 9:59 PM
Reposted by Calliope
Every single congressional Democrat needs to be out there, right now, insisting that Pete Hegseth resign right now and announcing that he will be held accountable for committing war crimes.

If you do not demand accountability here and now, they will only become more emboldened.
Exclusive: Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth gave an order to “kill everybody” in the first strike on suspected drug boats in the Caribbean. After two men survived, the mission commander ordered a second strike to comply with Hegseth’s instructions, according to two sources.
Hegseth order on first Caribbean boat strike, officials say: Kill them all
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth issued a verbal order to kill all crew members in the Sept. 2 strike on a suspected drug boat. Navy SEALs fired a second missile.
www.washingtonpost.com
November 28, 2025 at 7:19 PM
It's entirely possible the pardon is such a shattered husk it's no longer worth honoring or trying to work around, particularly if Trump pardons himself. But yes, there are absolutely ways to skirt it once Democrats get back into power.
If Trump proactively pardons Hegseth, the solution is to signal either to the ICC or the country of origin of the murdered men that we will honor extradition requests on this point.

And then, in something of an irony, Noem him out of the country before anyone can react.
Historical precedent of note...
November 28, 2025 at 9:52 PM
The Koizumi family brand remains untarnished by the Abe years, and the LDP loves political dynasties. Given he came in second during the party elections, I'd be shocked if it weren't on the table.
honestly wonder if Koizumi Jr is next in line to be PM if the LDP stay in power but Takaichi ends up facing electoral backlash or gets Trussed
Japanese Defense Minister Koizumi Tours Military Bases Near Taiwan — USNI News
news.usni.org/2025/11/28/j...
November 28, 2025 at 4:25 PM
Reposted by Calliope
Effectively there is no *one* person performing the duties of President of the United States right now. We are in an interregnum with an occupied throne.
The fundamental thing to understand about this administration is the president is a grumpy retiree. He has no interest in working anymore. Which leads to him being pissed that he is getting asked a question, pissed he has to show up and work, the scheming viziers running the show, etc..
“You’re a stupid person” — Trump lashes out at a reporter who presses him on the fact that the suspected DC shooter was actually thoroughly vetted before he was let in the US from Afghanistan
November 28, 2025 at 7:16 AM
Reposted by Calliope
If Japan can be bullied into silence, the rest of Asia interprets it as:
“No one is safe.”

That is exactly why Beijing tries — not because it works, but because the attempt spreads fear.
November 28, 2025 at 10:38 AM
Everyone who served in Afghanistan and voted for this administration ought to look in the mirror today and feel mortal shame.
Stephen Miller is now arguing that assimilation is fundamentally impossible and that certain cultures are not compatible with Western civilization
November 28, 2025 at 4:00 PM
That's not quite right. It WAS applied to Italian immigrants. And Irish immigrants. And "those dirty Norwegians".

The people staffing this administration should know better, but don't.
This is just gutter racism and it’s a standard that would never be applied to say, the descendants of Italian immigrants who fled the lawlessness of Southern italy post unification and now staff this fascist administration bsky.app/profile/publ...
Stephen Miller is now arguing that assimilation is fundamentally impossible and that certain cultures are not compatible with Western civilization
November 28, 2025 at 3:39 PM
It is indeed. Hitler specifically wrote about the adulteration of the German bloodline with the daughters of Jewish shopkeepers:
November 28, 2025 at 3:35 PM
Reposted by Calliope
Let's not confuse the people giving the stupid orders with the people who have to deal with following them, who are often good and decent people.
November 28, 2025 at 3:04 AM
Selling out Ukraine to sell out Taiwan so he can get stabbed in the back over soybean sales that China already has new suppliers for.
“.. Japanese officials said the message was worrying: the president didn’t want friction over Taiwan to endanger a detente reached last month with Xi, which includes a promise to buy more agricultural products from American farmers ..”

@wsj.com
www.wsj.com/world/china/...
November 28, 2025 at 6:32 AM
Reposted by Calliope
Right-wingers throw the term "civilizational suicide" around a lot

Well, cratering your economy by cutting your world-historically trade dependent country off from international circuits in pursuit of a mirage of Merry England, causing ppl to flee for a better life elsewhere, seems a textbook case
YOU WANTED NET IMMIGRATION TO COME DOWN! THIS IS WHAT THAT LOOKS LIKE!
November 27, 2025 at 4:30 PM
By "Third World Countries" I assume he means well-known Cold War neutrals such as Finland, Sweden, and Austria.
Trump: “I will permanently pause migration from all Third World Countries … denaturalize migrants who undermine domestic tranquility, and deport any Foreign National who is a public charge, security risk, or non-compatible with Western Civilization.“
November 28, 2025 at 6:15 AM
The British Empire is a dismembered corpse, torn apart because of its overweening arrogance and the cruelties it heaped upon its colonial subjects. US hegemony was built in explicit rejection of that form of imperial rule. This is quite simply one of the most pathetic things I've ever seen.
November 28, 2025 at 5:55 AM
Academia is run on shoestrings so tight it's a wonder they don't cut off the foot they're attached to. For the price of the name change at DoD ($2 billion) you could fund every assistant professorship in America and come out far richer for it. The humanities in particular are mind-breakingly cheap.
It’s useful to think about things like this in numbers of tenure track professors.

$53M is 575 assistant professors. Or more than thirty percent of the total number of full-time faculty at LSU.
November 28, 2025 at 5:44 AM
I'm pretty sure this is something most people learn in kindergarten. Possibly preschool. It's not some secret graduate school course.
Homeland Security doesn’t grasp the fact that the first Thanksgiving was about making “room at the table” for European “invaders.”
November 28, 2025 at 5:38 AM
Reposted by Calliope
This might become my pet issue but it’s crazy how center left parties are hurting because they’re seen as the party of snobbish technocrats when the actual “experts” they go to are lawyers who think anesthesiology and TV manufacturing have seen similar productivity growth
November 28, 2025 at 12:23 AM
Reposted by Calliope
separate from anything about the specific dumb shit the NSA was doing on Americans he also just happened to burn basically every collect capability the NSA had; Obama was effectively blind for most of his second term
November 28, 2025 at 4:25 AM
The history of early 20th century Europe (both East and West) is the history of European intolerance. This was "solved" in the most horrific way possible, and ended with the US playing policeman in the West all the way to the present and the Soviets performing wholesale ethnic cleansing in the East.
Actually wtf is he on about? As if Ireland or Italy are super stoked about becoming multi ethnic states??
November 28, 2025 at 12:53 AM