No greater gift could we give to people hell-bent on destroying the USA than provide an open door into our nation’s data systems, empower them to shut down funding, and fire thousands of federal employees. The harm caused will be felt for years to come, assuming the USA survives.
Who allowed that?
Some of us voted Mr. Trump into office. He brought along the world’s richest hacker himself, Mr. Musk, plus assorted MuskRats, to do the dirty work.
While Republican Congressional “leaders” applaud, Democrats scramble, and the courts contemplate, the rest of us, everyday Joes and Janes, are standing alone to face the consequences of our USA in shambles.
Our ancestors were once at a similar point. But their challenge was not the result of traitors inside the government. Rather, it was terrible combat that took out their officers and comrades, leaving only a few standing alone, to either hide in fear or move forward to try to complete their mission.
And they did. They kept going.
Everyday Joes, the sergeants and privates, got the job done.
Now it’s up to us to take back our government from the MuskRat hackers and restore our government under the Constitution.
Here’s the story about The Boys of Pointe Du Hoc, originally posted on 20 June 2014.
Getting the Job Done, No Matter What it Takes
I've been working on a project about what makes an excellent leader and revisited a book written by Douglas Brinkley, The Boys of Pointe Du Hoc.
While some of the text is devoted to Reagan’s 40th D-Day Anniversary speech and his speech writer, Brinkley described the history of the Army Rangers and their role in taking out the big guns at Ponte Du Hoc during the D-Day invasion.
When I heard Brinkley recount the story of the Rangers scaling the cliffs and the terrifying loss of men, 70% I believe, I also remembered reading Cornelius Ryan’s The Longest Day, in which he said, when the few surviving Rangers took the gun emplacements they found them empty.
Ryan never found out the rest of the story: the Germans had only pulled the guns out of their emplacement and moved them back away from the shore in order to avoid the allied bombs and naval gun fire. They were simply waiting for the best time to bring them back into position and then open up on the landing fleet.
What stopped them from doing that?
Brinkley discovered that a couple sergeants survived the battle for the emplacements. When they discovered them empty, they still went on to complete their mission, which was to disrupt German communications and interfere with troop movements behind the gun emplacements.
They had only 11 men but moved out anyway. Soon they discovered heavy equipment tracks leading to an apple orchard. They followed them and found the “five camouflaged guns in ready firing position with ammunition piled nearby”. Somehow the gods of war were kind that day because the German crew and defenders were clustered away from the guns at such a distance that the two sergeants were able to disable them with the thermite grenades that they and the others were carrying.
For me this story underscores what our military does do right most of the time: empower all of our people with a “can do” spirit to complete whatever mission is assigned and train them to use their minds and ingenuity, stay alive, and get the job done no matter what it takes - no matter one’s rank.
One of us, the everyday Joes and Janes, will get the job done.
