Who Is This Marshall Dude
And why does he keep making laws?
You know it’s close to Merkin presidential selection time when folks start talking about “martial law”. We need to pay close attention to it, because Merkins created martial law. And no, I’m not kidding.
The Great Dictator Abraham Lincoln, who slaughtered 600,000 humans, destroyed an entire society along with its economy, and initiated one of the darkest periods in Merkin history, know as Reconstruction, is the same fellow who gave the world Martial Law, also known as a military junta.
Oh, I know some folks split hairs on martial law and military junta, but when you’re in the middle of it, there’s not a jot nor tittle’s worth of difference.
Lincoln’s destruction of the Confederacy was so utterly complete that there was no functioning social order. Everything down to the town council and registrar was destroyed. Basic needs like food and water had vanished. The entire economy was in shambles. And folks wonder why John Wilkes Booth took revenge.
Anyway, Lincoln waved his dictatorial wand and put his lackey Francis Lieber, a pro-slavery skunk who endorsed “scortched earth” tactics and summary executions, to work making some rules on how to treat the scum that dared to extract themselves from the federal overlords. The result was General Order No. 100.
General Order No. 100, also known as the Lieber Code, was issued on 24 April 1863, during the American Civil War. Drafted by Lieber and signed by Lincoln, it provided a comprehensive set of rules for federal forces regarding the conduct of war and occupation, especially toward prisoners, civilians and property — shoot the prisoners, beat the civilians and steal the property, but make it look “humanitarian”.
The Lieber Code is considered one of the first formal codifications of the laws of war. It emphasized “humanitarian treatment” (gag) during conflicts and influenced later international laws, including the Hague and Geneva Conventions.
Lest you think this is all ancient history, you will want to take a gander at Title 50 of the US Code. It’s all there, with some additional flourishes, in current Merkin law. The obvious question here is, what is martial law and when do we get some?
Some scholars draw shades of gray between martial law and military juntas, but they are essentially the same things: the military seizes the civilian institutions of governance, take away all your rights, and set about “restoring” order, because you dumb animals aren’t capable of governing yourselves.
Martial law is typically invoked when civilian institutions, particularly the judicial system, cease to function — in other words, when humans are finally free of tyrannical and oppressive organizations. We just can’t have that now, can we? If folks figured out that they can handle their own affairs, why there wouldn’t be taxes to pay for the military that is oppressing them. Horror of horrors!
I often hear folks talking about martial law coming, but I don’t think they have assessed the full extent of what that means.
The current best guess is that the US population is about 345 million. The active US military has roughly 1.2 million folks under arms, with another million in reserves. That gives us one soldier/marine/pilot/sailor/spacer for every 166 citizens, more if you factor out all the useless brass, paper pushers, medics, and so forth. It also assumes that the entire military is on US soil, which it isn’t. Many thousands of them are oversea occupying other countries. We haven’t begun to factor in the size of the country or the number of angry folks with guns.
It seems to me that martial law would be a highly untennable situation. After all, the US military couldn’t control half of Korea or Vietnam, much less CONUS plus Alaska plus Hawaii.
The most likely scenario would be the US military occupying Warshingten Deesee, with an attempt to activate the National Guard in the several States. This seems problematic at best, and highly unlikely in any case, without a full-scale invasion that destroys the institutions of governance at all levels everywhere.
Legally, of course. Need to throw that caveat in there.
If there was no predicate for martial law during the Great Depression, then it would take quite a bit to justify it. I don’t see widespread internet or power outages rising to that level between now and selection day. It would take profound and prolonged nationwide power outages for at least a couple of weeks to reach the level of dysfunction that would cause the vast majority of folks to line up and throw flowers at the tanks as they roll in.
A martial law scenario in the US would likely occur in isolated areas — Big Blue Cities, for instance. It would be wildly expensive and the logistics would be a nightmare. More than half the States would openly and violently resist it. And it would require mobilizing all the troops and materiele overseas back to US soil, and recalling the fleets.
If that happens, the entire world will go up in flames, so a little martial law at home will seem like a picnic in the park. The US has spent over a century pissing off just about everyone in the world, so you can bet your sweet bippy they’ll take advantage of a situation like that.
My best guess is that there will be pockets of “unrest” (that term always makes me think of “occasional irregularity”). The GeezerMedia has got the last 10 people who watch them fightened out of their wits that the Wehrmacht will be goose-stepping down the street. However, it will never rise to the level of martial law, and the Bumbledicks would be far stupider than they look if they tried.
Wouldn’t hurt to load in some groceries, buy a water filter and test the genset, just in case.
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Today’s celluloid hero flick is The Siege (1998), starring Bruce Willis and Denzel Washington, and directed by Ed Zwick. It’s a standard 90s action hero trope movie, but the themes and action center around martial law in New York City, and how much fun it would be. You probably forgot that you never watched it, so it will be fresh all over again.
Chillin’ with Marshall on the Far Side:
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The slaughter was more like 850,000. At least 80,000 non-combatants, elderly men, women, children, both black and white, were slaughtered by William Tecumseh Sherman at the behest of Grant and Lincoln. He then went on to slaughter the buffalos and the Indians and called it the "final solution." The old stats are 620,000, but adding the non-combatants made it 700,000. The latest updates from researchers has the figures at 850,000. The original figures added up to more Americans lost in that war than in WWII.
In the 1970s, I lived under martial law in Colombia. I lived in Bogota where the government had soldiers posted everywhere. They had a civil war at the time and for quite some time before and after. Latin America has a long tradition of martial law mitigated by the poor pay of soldiers who would take low level bribes to look the other way. The US still has at least one Colombian "guerilla" (Gorillas on the Plain of Jars, for those who read Mad Magazine during Vietnam) in the super max prison in Florence, Colorado. You can see remnants of this idea in Mexico, where one sees soldiers and cops in pickup trucks with submachine guns and often with 50 caliber machine guns driving around like good old boys. People mostly ignore them and they mostly ignore the people, with the occasional road side checkpoints.