Joe Biden And His F-15 Obsession
Does he really feel that insecure against the American people? Or is this a veiled threat? Why else would he bring this up as often as he does?
Twitter account Braxton McCoy made an observation similar to one I’ve made before:
It’s true - President Joe Biden has evoked the specter of civil war numerous times throughout his career, including before he became president. Though he sounds to be discouraging any would-be insurrectionists from taking up arms against the state, it’s still an auspicious look for a president who fashioned himself as a uniting figure.
More important, Biden’s comments are also not something a person should say leading a country founded on the belief the central government should never be so powerful as to be tyrannical. Assurances against tyranny requires an armed populace capable of effectively resisting the state. Ideally, just as the state shouldn’t be so powerful it can impose tyranny, the people shouldn’t be so well-armed it can overthrow the government on a whim.
I know some of my readers might have a problem with that last part, but a stable order requires a balance of power, even if that balance is asymmetric in nature. This means the state has to possess a modicum of monopoly on the legitimate use of violence. I often decry the state-worship far too many Americans engage in, as we saw concerning COVID, but all societies give deference to some centralized form of authority. Otherwise, you have a civilization in a constant state of chaos and upheaval. There’s no point to any of this if we’re just going to cycle through one revolution after another.
The United States has enjoyed an unprecedented streak of political stability, so it’s unnerving when you have a political leader of Joe Biden’s stature regularly opining on the prospect of armed conflict between the government and the citizenry, even as a warning. Does he really feel that insecure against the American people? Or is this a veiled threat? Why else would he bring it up as often as he does?
Here’s him giving “the F-15 lecture” last summer:
Here he was again in 2021:
There are also instances prior to becoming president where he made the same remarks. I won’t post them, since I’ve sufficiently established Biden has an obsession with the thought of Americans needing F-15s, a nearly 50-year-old fighter aircraft operated by the U.S. Air Force, to take on the federal government. Personally, I think part of this is Biden’s way of expressing disdain for gun ownership, which is, again, unbecoming of the President of the United States. The right to bear arms is guaranteed in the Constitution, so is Biden truly working to preserve, protect, and defend it as he swore on his inauguration two years ago today? Or does he have something else in mind?
I also think it’s obvious he, like the entirety of the Regime and their supporters amongst the public, view the state as supreme. Beyond the Left’s sacred issues of abortion, LGBTQ+ rights, and the like, opposing the state is viewed by them a direct assault on democracy and the fabric of our very being. Of course, we all know this isn’t how the Founders envisioned this country. Within the total scope of American history, the federal government as a supreme entity is something which came to be fairly recently, a consequence of it’s vast expansion during President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal and further expanded by every president thereafter for almost 30 years.
I’m not trying to deliver a political history lecture. I’m just saying that as the federal government has become more powerful and led by figures who, with each proceeding generation, less reflect the principles and traditions which founded this country, they’ve become more open to the idea of restricting our liberties and rights as citizens. Thanks to the Constitution, however, this hasn’t been easy for the Regime to do via official channels, which is why they often rely on non-governmental entities, like Big Tech and Media, to enforce their dictates. These unofficial measures may actually be more to the Regime’s liking, since we also know not everyone’s rights are on the table for curtailment.
Biden singles out right-wing Americans during his F-15 lectures, even though these aren’t the people responsible for the vast majority of gun violence in this country. The Regime’s obsession with assault rifles like the AR-15 is irrational given the handgun, which averages out at 10 rounds per magazine and are, like AR-15s, semi-automatic, are used in the overwhelming majority of gun-involved crimes. Without getting too deep into the weeds over the nature of gun violence in America, which deserves its own treatment, Biden isn’t concerned about gun violence at all if he thinks right-wingers and their AR-15s are the problem in this country. Gun control advocates are all too ready to point out who the victims of gun violence are, overwhelmingly:
Firearm homicide rates are highest among Black people as compared to people of other racial and ethnic identities and firearm homicide risk is highest among people ages 20-34 across the entire population.
Missing from most of these discussions is who is doing all the shooting. Dig deeper and becomes obvious why that is. Though written cynically, this article admits that yes, most gun violence occurs where Black Americans predominate:
What constitutes a “mass shooting” varies between government agencies and groups like Gun Violence Archive, which defines the incidents as any with four or more people wounded. Our analysis of Gun Violence Archive data found a total of 395 mass shootings as of August 24, an almost 45 percent increase over the same period last year. If the pace holds, this year’s total will be the highest tally since the organization began tracking shootings seven years ago.
The mass shootings have disproportionately occurred in predominantly Black neighborhoods. Nearly 50 percent of the shootings analyzed by The Trace took place in majority-Black census tracts, though less than 10 percent of census tracts nationally have majority Black populations. The pattern held in almost every city that has had more than five mass shootings in 2020. In Chicago, for example, 31 out of 36 shootings with four or more victims happened in majority-Black census tracts. In Detroit and Milwaukee, each of which saw five mass shootings, all of them occurred in majority-Black neighborhoods.
We know most crime in this country is intraracial, not interracial. This means, just as most victims of gun violence (and violent crime in general) are Black, most of the perpetrators are Black. We also know places where so much gun violence takes places are precisely where the constituent bases of Biden, the Democratic Party, and the Regime overall reside. Why the obsession with “right-wing” Americans, then?
I think it’s pretty simple - right-wing Americans pose a political threat to the Regime. Not only that, they could, in extremis, resist the federal government, even if they can’t overthrow it. It’s become this blog’s disclaimer, but we advocate only lawful conduct here, so my point is merely that being armed is a deterrent against any attempt at overreach by the government. Whether resistance is justified is situation-specific, but this is the same country which routinely allows civil disobedience and violent - I’m sorry, “mostly peaceful” - protests. The people running the show have no leg to stand on when decrying Americans who own guns out of concern the government may, one day, cross that bright red line.
Longtime readers know what I think of the prospects of civil war in this country, so I won’t go into that in this post. I know I’m going to have more to say on the topic in the future, so I guess this is as good a time as any to shamelessly recommend you subscribe to this blog. What I’ll say now, though, is we don’t need to fight a civil war for the federal government to turn its guns on the American people.
Presidents have ordered the deployment of the active-duty military on our soil many times throughout our history, even if situations where troops actually fired on Americans are relatively rare. So just as contemplating the use of the military for domestic operations shouldn’t be controversial, neither should the prospect of federal government overreach and violation of our rights. Governments don’t get everything right and their actions are subject to review via the courts. But this doesn’t stop the president from going ahead and issuing orders if he and his advisers are able to formulate a compelling case for doing so while standing on what they believe to be sound legal ground.
In response to Biden’s MLK Day remarks, retired Air Force Col. Rob Maness asked:
This is both the wrong question and a non-sequitur. Blatantly unlawful orders aside, all orders carry a presumption of legality. Furthermore, as a commissioned officer, Maness ought to know that in practice, all orders get followed, except the clearly illegal ones, regardless of how subordinates personally feel about what they’re being told to do. All this talk of “moral autonomy” takes place in safe spaces far removed from the arena where the real action is. If orders didn’t carry the presumption of lawfulness, they’d all be subject to immediate question and review by subordinates, a luxury an institution like the military can ill-afford.
If things ever get to a point where U.S. troops are ordered to fire on American citizens, it’s not likely to be the result of Joe Biden or some other commander-in-chief deciding they don’t like people who don’t vote for them and choosing to punish them. That’d be a blatantly illegal order which I’d hope our military would have the good sense to disobey. Instead, such an order would be issued under the pretense of a threat to civil order or national security. When discussing the deployment of troops on American soil, you hear Posse Comitatus cited most often, but the relevant legislation governing the domestic use of armed forces under federal control is the Insurrection Act of 1807.
It allows the president, upon declaration of a threat to civil order or national security, to deploy active-duty military forces within the U.S., as well as take control of state National Guard forces, to address that threat. Whereas Posse Comitatus is a law generally prohibiting the use of the military for law enforcement purposes, the Insurrection Act is the exception to the rule. Once invoked, it overrides Posse Comitatus and using the military for enforcing the law is no longer prohibited. This is why Rob Maness’ question is both the wrong question to ask and a non-sequitur. Of course, the military would follow such an order! Unless the president decided he just wanted to kill Americans, the Insurrection Act would be invoked in the face of what was deemed a threat to public order and safety, meaning, once more, the order would carry the presumption of legality, and henceforth, need to be followed.
Enough of the legal lecture. The lesson is that a legal pathway exists for not only the deployment of U.S. military forces on home soil, but to be used against the American people. Again, I have to stress, such a use of the military would carry at least a figment of legal legitimacy. We don’t live under a tyranny just yet and, until we do, every action taken by our leaders has to be covered with a veneer of lawfulness. Otherwise, you risk public backlash and all actions taken are subject to legal review by the judicial branch, even if they seemed completely legal at the time.
None of this serves as a criticism of the Insurrection Act - clearly, there are times such an action is warranted. It’s just to show the president has an array of measures at his disposal lawfully permitting him to do whatever it takes to maintain order and we the people don’t exactly have a say in the matter. It’s a statement of fact.
Does this mean President Biden’s warnings and/or threats to Americans ought to be regarded with great concern? The good news is that he’s likely using his influence and bully pulpit to convey his hatred for Americans who don’t support him and didn’t vote for him, nothing more. The bad news is, if Biden or some future president decided to deploy military force against those Americans, they have both the historical precedent and legal authority for doing so. It’ll undoubtedly happen again, with a high likelihood of it this decade.
Don’t think it will? Look at what happened in Atlanta this past week. As I’ve said before, our country isn’t a tranquil place:
I’ll leave you with another classic Biden moment: the time he gaslit the American public by claiming this very real left-wing extremist organization, Antifa, to be just an “idea.”
A president who raises the prospect of armed civil conflict, while providing cover for violent extremists. What could go wrong?
Max Remington writes about armed conflict and prepping. Follow him on Twitter at @AgentMax90.
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