876: Bigger Than Me
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A quick warning, there are curse words that are unbpeeped in today's episode of the show. If you prefer a beeped version, you can find that at our website, thisamericanlife.org. Okay, so I want to tell you a story and I'm going to start with the part you probably already know about. In November, six Democrats, all veterans of the U.S. military or intelligence communities, came out with a video saying to people in uniform, "You took an oath like we did." Our laws are clear, you can refuse illegal orders. You can refuse illegal orders. You must refuse illegal orders. No one has. Those are Senators Mark Kelly and Alexis Sratkin and Congressman Chris DiLusio. They did not specify what illegal orders they might be referring to. At the time, just like now, the Trump administration was shooting boats of supposed drug runners out of the water off the coastal Venezuela. And lots of military experts and veterans were saying this did not seem to be illegal. In the past, if we found boats of drug runners, we arrested them. We didn't just kill them on the spot in cold blood with no due process. The video also didn't mention the President trying to order the National Guard into American cities, Portland and Chicago, where judges stopped the orders saying they were illegal. Like I say, the video mentioned no specific orders at all. And really, the video made it vanished into the daily noise of a million news stories and online videos like almost everything else does these days. It really could have come and gone and been forgotten, except that the President went on truth social and called the video "sidicious behavior punishable by death." Today, one of the lawmakers to be tried is traitors. Stephen Miller, who seems to run so many things in the White House these days, went on TV to declare. It is insurrection plainly, directly without question. It's a general call for rebellion, saying that those who carry weapons in America's name should defy their chain of command and engage in open acts of insurrection. So in other words, we ended up in one of those completely exhausting and very familiar standoffs between Republicans and Democrats, but the Democrats saying we're just telling people to obey the law, and Republicans saying the Democrats, as always, are trying to overthrow Trump, this time with a military insurrection. And in the middle of all that, are the two million people serving in the act of military or national guard or reserves right now. What are they thinking? Are many of them worried about getting illegal orders or getting legal orders that they're not comfortable with? We reached out to the handful of organizations that service people can call if they want confidential legal advice on that kind of thing. None of them could put us in touch quickly with any of the service people they talk to, but they all did confirm that they've seen an uptick in calls since the Trump administration came in. Most did not see more calls after the Democrats' video, and I want to emphasize the numbers of calls that they get are low compared to the immense size of the armed forces. G.I. Wright's hotline has been getting a little over 200 calls a month, on average, since June, an organization called About Face only gets a few calls a week. Sidney Ramos-Dibarros answers all those calls, she's an Army vet served in Afghanistan.
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