Authors Note: Here is a copy of the narrative from this week’s podcast for those who would rather read than watch or listen.
Fáilte
Welcome to The Village Oak Tree
I am your host, Terrance Ó Domhnaill.
Thank you for joining me once again.
Once again, the United States is at a historical crossroads. Trump and his loyalists are running roughshod across the country still, and the chaos is consuming everything, every day. The news feeds in the U.S. are full of little else but some kind of new Trump attention grabber, from the new concentration camp in the Florida Everglades to this hugely unpopular bill being battled back and forth between the house and the senate.
So come, sit you down somewhere comfortable for a bit and let me talk to you about some of the things that are going on, and some personal memories of times past about the U.S. military.
Last week I said I wanted to continue talking about how hard it's becoming to live in the United States now.
With Trump tearing everything down more and more every week, with the help of his sycophantic congress and six justice majority on the supreme court, things are getting worse more and more every week it seems.
It's not just in the U.S. either. I've said this in previous podcasts that Europe is going under, with Germany in the lead. Their economy has been in recession for the last two years and it's steadily getting worse, thanks to Donald J. Trump. If Germany can't turn things around very soon, the ripple effect across the EU may become a big wave by next year. And they want to increase their defense spending to five percent to satisfy Trump. Where they going to get the money?
12,000 German companies went bust in six months – economic tracker
From RT News-Russia
Corporate insolvencies have hit their highest level in a decade, a new study indicates
Here in the U.S., the fight is on in Washington D.C. about this 'Big Beautiful Bill,' they're calling it. In the draft created in the House of Representatives, it would kick approximately fourteen million poor people off of Medicaid. It would decimate the SNAP food program, putting millions of poor people back into food insecurity, the elderly who depend on Medicaid to pay for their senior facility care would be evicted and be put on the streets. Maybe their children will pick them up, but what if they can't?
‘You open the fridge – nothing’: renewed threat of US hunger as Trump seeks to cut food aid
Ed Pilkington for The Guardian in Germantown, Maryland
What if the children can't afford to take care of their parents? Especially if these seniors were in a memory care facility, like my late mother was. Who would pay for the in home nursing they have to have? Private health insurance providers have already said they won't touch that.
Who's going to provide food for these poor people once the government takes away their Snap benefits, the free school breakfast and lunch programs?
For the richest country on the earth, why does the United States refuse to take care of its people? We all know the answer to that question now after all of the news stories about the corporate tax breaks and such. Trillions for the morbidly rich and starvation for some of the poorest of us.
No one is absolutely sure what this bill will look like by the time they get finished with it but, given how the MAGA republicans are these days, it still won't be very good for the American people by the time it gets to Trump's desk.
One, sort of, piece of good news. Three republican senators voted no on the bill, one of which was Senator Susan Collins of Maine, who had been on the fence until the last minute apparently. It's hard to say whether this will help her with the people in Maine but at least she finally stood up to the king and his court.
On the other hand, Senator Murkowski of Alaska, another fence sitter, ultimately caved to pressure and voted yes. She's touted as being the deciding vote for yes that allowed this crap to go back to the house. She likely has sealed her doom in any future reelection campaign once her constituents start paying for her mistake. She likely gave into her fears of Trump and her rich donors when it came crunch time. I wonder if she'll soon announce that she's not running for the next election, like a few others?
The majority of the GOP politicians are more loyal to Trump and their rich donors, than they are to the people who voted for them. Which the American middle class, poorer voters and especially the younger people, are starting to see now. I don't think there's much that's going to save the MAGA politicians from a near shutout in the next election. Not that the democrats are that much better right now. They have a long way to go before all of the voters will get on board the train with them after last year. For some, this animosity goes back even farther.
Then, we have more news from the battle grounds in the United States. And that's what they are starting to become. There are more and more stories coming out about what ICE is doing to people who dare stand up to them. American citizens are now being arrested everywhere on made up charges of assault on federal officers, and obstructing officers in the performance of their duties.
In one story I found last weekend, they're even going out to people's houses and blowing doors in to take revenge over the slightest hindrance to their missions. This story details how ICE blew a door off a house, with no notice, to apprehend someone who got into a traffic accident with an ICE van. ICE claims it was a deliberate attempt to stop them. The man's girlfriend told reporters that it was just a simple traffic accident. Who're you going to believe?
Federal agents blast way into California home of woman and small children
Security footage shows agents setting off explosive device and shattering window of family home in Huntington Park
Dara Kerr for The Guardian/US-News
There have been plenty of other stories about ICE teams enacting revenge on people who they think are trying to resist their efforts to kidnap people without warrants, identification or anything else. There was the story last week about the father of three U.S. Marines who was beaten by ICE cops for, allegedly, swinging a weed eater at them as they were chasing him down. Although the one video on social media only shows the cops beating this man as he was laying on the ground with two burly agents sitting on him.
I know what I'd do if I saw a bunch of dudes in tactical gear come after me without identifying themselves. I'd probably fight back, thinking I was being taken somewhere against my will. I have the right to defend myself against people who wish to do me harm in my state. Although the likelihood of that happening to me are slim as I'm white.
The war between the people and the government is starting to heat up. I expect there will be more such resistance in the near future as people are getting fed up and are ready to fight back. Do I think that there will be casualties over this eventually? Yes I do. As more and more people start to get angry over these Gestapo tactics, plus all of the economic woes Trump is imposing on people, things may get ugly soon.
Trump still has the authority to deploy National Guard troops around the country for now as the issue is still locked up in the courts. But given how six justices on the supreme court seem willing to give Trump whatever he wants, this might become a permanent thing.
Then our worst nightmares will be realized once Trump puts military boots on the ground around the country. The next question will be, do the civilian citizens in this country want to go up against actual troops?
Let's talk about that for a minute. First of all, the only thing scary about the national guard is their uniforms and weapons. They are not very well trained to deal with armed civilians. They're not trained very well to deal with highly trained enemy combatants either. For the most part, these citizen soldiers are not much different than the people they're being told to defend against. The only thing that sets them apart is their uniforms and gear.
If an armed group of American citizens were to confront them over one of Trump's unconstitutional edicts, most of them would cave. Especially the junior enlisted. Now, if they were fired upon, that would change everything. Like any soldier, their training would kick in and they would defend themselves and whatever they were guarding, such as a federal building for instance.
I don't think we're there yet in the U.S. What I can see someday soon is an armed group of civilians, to include military veterans, confronting ICE, and some sort of battle ensue. Will the national guard defend the ICE storm troopers as part of their orders? Yes, if told to do so. Would they go out and start arresting people in neighborhoods and market places, I don't think so as the public outcry would be too much. The national guard would only defend ICE storm troopers if a battle were to break out where the guard troops were stationed. Such as any federal building they're tasked with guarding. I could be wrong but that's how I see it right now.
There are national guard troops who have seen combat on active duty. I was one of those. That's how I know a little bit about the mindset of these guard troops. Most of the junior enlisted have only been on active duty long enough to attend basic training and AIT. Advanced Infantry Training for those who don't understand military acronyms. They may also have attended a technical school of some sort as well.
This goes for a lot of the NCO's too. They're weekend warriors for the most part. They attend once a month weekend drills with minimal training in combat arms, if any. They travel to a base for two weeks in the summer, again, with minimal combat training and their done for the year. Once in a while, when the U.S. goes to war a national guard unit will be deployed overseas to help out the active duty troops.
As an Army reservist in Afghanistan, I worked with a West Virginia National Guard ODA unit (think of them as a national guard special forces unit). They were pretty well trained but when I was with the 278th Armored Cavalry, Tennessee Army National Guard, it was a different story.
Coming from active duty, drilling with these guys was a joke. I spent a year with my unit and during our two week summer vacation to Fort Stewart, South Carolina, the equipment, such as the guns, didn't work, the other training equipment didn't work and after a few days of this, I gave up. Not to mention the senior NCO's and officers barely had a clue on how to conduct the training. Not that I knew what was going on either as no one was instructing anyone on what to do. It was just the upper echelon getting their orders from the Ft. Stewart training cadre and attempting to execute the training, and failing miserably. Everyone seemed to be running around like chickens with their heads cut off.
Discipline was a joke. I will relate one, not funny story, just to give people an idea of what I mean.
When we were packing up our gear and cleaning up to go home, I ran into a young man I had served with on active duty during Desert Storm in the Persian Gulf. He had worked for me as a junior enlisted marine boat mechanic back in 1992. Our Army MOS's were 88L back then. When I ran into him again at Fort Stewart, it was the summer of 2001 and he was a sergeant E5 and a gunner for an M1 Abrams tank.
As we were catching up on old times, he told me about how his tank crew fired a training round from their tank during one of the exercises on an ambulance that was on their way out across the training grounds to attend to a hurt soldier. Training had been suspended because of the medical emergency but they fired on the ambulance anyway because it was fun. He laughed as he told me this story. This gives you an idea of the mentality of a typical national guard soldier in today's world.
My biggest training issue during this two week vacation, was that none of the issued firearms worked. The .50 cal on the truck mount didn't work, my M16 didn't work with the training bullets in it and so on. Mostly, I spent the days puttering with tent A/C's and a towable generator and sweating my ass off in the extreme humidity.
All of this is just to give people who may see this an idea of what our nations National Guard units are capable of, or not. They have to deal with equipment failures a lot more than active duty troops, manpower issues and other logistics, such as food and water. Whereas federal troops, who receive more money for training and equipment, don't have these issues near as much.
When I transferred over to a federal Army reserve unit a couple of months after we returned from Fort Stewart, it was like night and day with regard to money for training and equipment. The only difference here is when a unit, whether national guard or Army reserve, becomes deployed by the federal government and the feds pick up the tab, the supplies needed to sustain that unit are provided by the Pentagon, instead of the state. It just means that these soldiers are now being fed and equipped by the active duty component for the duration of their deployment.
It doesn't change the caliber of their training or their mindset. You can outfit the least trained military unit with the best equipment and feed them the best food but unless they know what to do with that fancy equipment, it's all moot. I'm not saying that national guard troops aren't trained at all, I'm telling you that, as a rule, their training is subpar compared to the federal troops as a rule because the states have to pay for it unless the feds mobilize them.
On the other hand, ICE storm troopers are full of ex-active duty combat troops and overly militarized police with training in urban warfare. I read somewhere a while ago that ICE recruiters deliberately go after ex-military just for their infantry combat training. They want that mindset to go after their targets. Can you imagine a bunch of 11B infantry warriors who came back from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and are now working for agencies like ICE, DEA and ATF? Especially ICE and the border patrol? I happen to have known a couple of decorated soldiers who were recruited and signed up for the border patrol right after 9/11.
I ran afoul of one such veteran when I lived in northern Maine. Maybe someday I'll tell everyone the story of when I tried to enter the U.S. from a vacation in Canada and was trashed by an former Marine, turned customs and border patrol agent late one night. This happened many years ago and they are much worse now.
I'm afraid to leave the country right now as they might not let me back in. Especially if my wife is with me, despite her green card and having never been in trouble with U.S. law enforcement.
As I said earlier, I have this training. I have combat training and I have combat experience. I may be older than dirt but that training is still with me. So imagine what would happen if a bunch of unidentified men in tactical gear accosted me or my wife with the intent of taking us? If I asked them who they were, and they refused to tell me, and don't provide me with a valid reason for them to attack us, I plan to defend myself. I live in a defend your ground state and I have a concealed carry license.
How many other veterans would do this across the country? How many veterans would revert to their combat training and instincts to defend themselves in this kind of situation? How long will it be before ICE agents start to come under fire from people defending themselves? They're already complaining of being assaulted while attempting to do their jobs. We don't really know how truthful this is as the DOJ lies to the American public nearly every day now so it seems.
I'm dramatizing a lot of this but I'm only speaking what's on my mind and I'm sure, a lot of other people have been asking themselves this question as well lately.
When Trump deployed troops to Los Angeles, he started making a lot of people sit up and take notice. A lot of people were asking, what if. What if protestors pushed a soldier and he reverted to his training and shot someone? What if someone shoots an ICE agent in what is perceived by them as self-defense? Will Americans see a vindictive agency go after them with a kill order? It's starting to seem that way with some of the latest news reports.
How long before we start reading news stories of ICE shootings while in pursuit of immigrants and resistance fighters? I don't think we're too far off from that right now as Trump and Miller keep putting more pressure on these agents to round up people, no matter what their status is. One of the other things I've been reading about, is this policy of not asking for identification from those they're arresting. Whether they're undocumented immigrants or American citizens who may look like someone from a Latin American country. They don't seem to care whether you are a citizen or not. If you get in their way, you will be taken and you will have to sort it out in a court, if you ever get the opportunity.
With this other latest supreme court ruling letting ICE deport people to other countries other than the one people came from, if you do get picked up and deported, you will have lost any opportunity to see a judge. Trump and Miller are counting on that.
Imagine if you're an American citizen, you're picked up by ICE for obstructing or resisting them, and deported to another country without due process? Even if the allegations aren't true? Who're you going to call if you're in the deserts of Libya or down in the slums of South Africa?
This is the United States we live in now. One of deliberate extreme poverty for a large percentage of the people, with more and more soon to be added to the statistics with the tariffs starting to kick in and this, soon to be passed, Big Beautiful Bill.
A country that has storm troopers running around taking people off the streets with impunity, whether they are illegal or not, and using extreme force against anyone who dares to stand up to them.
Wait until it's time to deport the Haitians who just lost their temporary legal status. I will make a correction here as a judge today just before I posted this blocked this order of deportation. They're all supposed to leave the country by September at the latest but that’s now in limbo as they review this in the courts. What about the Cubans in the same boat? Will all of these people just leave quietly? I don't think so. Some will try and evade the deportation orders. Will some of them fight back?
We're just starting to see the tip of the spear with regard to all of this. Once the economy collapses some more by the end of this summer, things may get a little ugly in certain places around the U.S.
If violence does break out, the economy will take an even bigger hit. One other thing I've noticed, is the absence of the word recession from the news feeds lately. Everyone was talking about it a couple of months ago, but now, it's all quiet. Unless you listen to people like Professor Richard Wolf.
I'm still talking about it here but there are very few people who will watch this video or read the narrative in Substack, Medium.com or even less so on my website blog. I'm not a big name media star so this will largely go unnoticed.
But nonetheless, a recession is coming. The experts are saying by the end of 2025 or the first quarter of 2026. With the U.S. Treasury on the brink of default (In fairness, it has been for several years), it won't take much of a push to send the fed over the fiscal cliff. And the current domestic issues could turn out to be the catalyst that everyone has been warning about.
With the migrant labor force largely disappearing now out of fear, the tariffs curtailing international trade, and fears of war overseas, investors are bailing on the U.S. So much for bringing industries and factories back to the U.S. Trump is now scaring them off.
Once the rising prices start to really hit the American consumers by this fall, things will become very different. Attitudes are already changing. Add into that a recession and things could get ugly for the governments, both state and federal. People are already angry. Kick them when they're down and they'll probably come up swinging. We're starting to see a little of that now but it's still a little early. Wait until August and September when parents can't buy school supplies for their kids.
And people still think the United States is the greatest country to live in. It's still better than a lot of others but that distinction of being the best is quickly losing its appeal. Even for citizens who've lived here all of their lives.
As you go about your daily lives in the U.S., keep an eye out on your surroundings now. You never know if ICE is watching over a parking lot at a store near you. Don't accidently get caught in one of their sweeps. You may have to learn how to speak Arabic or Swahili if you do get picked up, even by accident.
Welcome to the new world of climate warming and authoritarian governments. I bet, as U.S. citizens, you never thought you'd be living under one.
As you think about that, once again, I have another chapter from Michael Campi's dystopian future series, The Priest, chapter 35 that I read after my commercial break. If you want to read it, here is the link to his Substack page with this week’s chapter.
Go raibh maith agat, thank you for watching or listening to the show today. I hope you enjoyed it and that you'll return again to help me protest against the would be tyrants.
As I say good bye this week, I wish to leave you with this rebel quote. "A nation is not built by those who turn a blind eye to injustice, but by those who rise up against it." Slán go fóill.
Share this post