this post was submitted on 24 Sep 2025
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United States | News & Politics
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What a good idea, piss off and fire a large number of men with military training.
What could go wrong?
It is, for some reason, classic rookie mistake #1 in the aspiring dictator's playbook. It makes perfect sense. After all, it's crucial that all the troops be loyal to me, so just get rid of any of them that I don't like. Problem solved! The rest of them won't care, and they just evaporate when we fire them, right?
Rather than a rookie mistake it's the least bad option. Would you rather have a large number of pissed off men with military training, or a large number of well-armed pissed off men with military training?
I would rather have a large number of well-armed pissed off men with military training still in a hierarchy which I semi-control who all just got raises and credible assurances that the dictator will actually be looking after them from now on (which the US government tends not to do for them in any respect, historically). I feel like then any of them that have little questions about their new orders will face at least some level of headwinds from their colleagues.
I get that it's frustrating if your military keeps talking back to you about "illegal orders" or "but I don't want to shoot protestors" or "you deported my auntie and her US-born kids" but that problem doesn't really get easier if you start a fight with them. They're accustomed to fighting, they understand it, they'll be fine.
I feel like logically most dictators should at least understand about loyalty and how people operate (maybe better than the big bureaucratic systems they're trying to overthrow). I don't really know if that is a pattern, but I definitely do know that the most maniacal of them tend not to, which makes them extra-notable in the history books but also limits their shelf life.