Mattis's Criticism Of Trump: Much Ado About Very Little

I'll admit that I was kind of avoiding reading Mattis's criticism of Trump. 

   Since I think we're doomed if the Dems take the presidency, I didn't want to lose all hope that Trump might not doom us. So I just didn't rush to read it. Also, I asked myself: do I really have any reason to hold Mattis in high regard other than thinking he has an awesome nickname? Answer: not really. Except, of course, that he is a Marine general. But anyway: he did get to see the inner workings of the Trump White House. So he's an authority on it. So I thought: this is probably going to be ugly.

   Turns out he doesn't say anything about that stuff--the stuff that he's an actual authority on. The letter is pretty much standard, boilerplate Orange Man Bad. Stuff that any progressive could have written. Nazi analogy, divider not uniter, blah blah blah. I do think that Trump is a divisive SOB. And I do think that's bad--very bad. He has a mean and demeaning mouth on him and a tendency to make conflicts worse. That's much of what, IMO, makes him unfit for the presidency. 

   However, that's not the stuff progressives tend to be talking about. Most of what they count as "dividing" is actually just Trump standing up for non-progressives--something progressives aren't used to. E.g.: pointing out, to the rage of the left, that there are good people on both sides of the disagreement about Confederate monuments, or that illegal immigration is harmful to the country. Das ist verboten! 

   So anyway, I breathed a sigh of relief. It's in no way good that somebody like Mattis thinks such things of Trump. But there's nothing in there like first-hand testimony of Trump's terribleness. 

   So, my threadbare, tattered hope that we will have one not-prohibitively-catastrophic option in November lives to fight another day...

[Oh and: as for using the military to "deny Americans their Constitutional rights"...that's just loony bullshit. That was never the plan, as Mattis must have known.

Criticize the real Trump.

Not the straw Trump.]