Where is the Right-wing Authoritarian Triad Taking Us?

This blog tracks where we are going by documenting the characteristic categories of the minority right-wing authoritarians (RWA) in the United States. The RWAs are part of our political system and are currently represented by the Tea Party, Sarah Palin, and the minority party in our Senate. They are also characterized as being born-again evangelicals and some of them have been referred to as the “extreme right of the extreme right.” The RWAs are also represented by a privateering group of civilian mercenaries hired by our government to replace our military and used both nationally and internationally to provide unaccountable, freelance “security.”

Now the presence of RWAs in our own military has to be added to that list. Their existence is exemplified by the words of General McChrystal as reported by Rolling Stone magazine. Frank Schaeffer detailed this growing characteristic of our military leaders in a recent Huffington Post article. Here are some related quotes from Schaeffer’s article:

The real reason that Rolling Stone was able to quote so many highly placed military people’s disdain for members of the Obama administration is because the military sees itself as more moral and better — and certainly more conservative — than the types who serve in civilian roles today, especially within a Democratic administration.

Perhaps more importantly, the evangelical Christians — now a force for reactionary Far Right politics — created an alliance between themselves, the Republican party, and the military beginning in the 1970s — something that’s been well documented by political scientist Andrew Bacevich — and this strategy has borne “fruit” in the current era, where the ties between the three groups — weak a generation ago — are now very strong.

America needs to understand that we have a professional military that increasingly looks on the culture it serves as morally inferior. And speaking as the father of a Marine who had plenty of neighbors who went shopping as my son went to war, I understand this feeling!

What you saw now between the White House and the general being fired is the tip of an iceberg.
New recruits are increasingly second generation military. This is especially so in the officer class, a nation within a nation. We now have a military “class.” And face it they [the military] don’t trust or like the people outside that class who tell them what to do but with no skin in the game.

Our system was set up to have a civilian led military of mostly civilian non-professionals serving for a time then returning to civilian life. We now have a civilian leadership with no military experience in charge of a mercenary professional force with few personal (let alone empathetic) ties to our leaders.

And that force is no longer protecting America only but rather projecting imperial overreach that will lead to more and more loss of American lives for no reason. Expect more trouble.

So, not only has our government contracted with freelance, unaccountable mercenaries like Blackwater (Xe), it has cultivated a “mercenary professional force” in our military which has little respect for those who prefer everything ‘me’ to serving others.

Combine the public and private RWA mercenaries with the RWAs of the Christian right and the RWAs of Tea party right, and you have a potent cocktail for wars against the many imagined internal and external enemies of the RWAs.

Have you forgotten about the gun and ammunition shortages around the country since the 2008 election?