On Jan. 8, state Sen. Douglas Mastriano, R-Franklin County, formally introduced he was operating for governor of Pennsylvania.
The announcement had all of the suspense of the ending of a Hallmark film, since Mastriano has been operating a de facto gubernatorial marketing campaign for, properly, about so long as he’s been taking over house within the Pennsylvania Senate.
Searching for the subsequent transfer up the ladder is Mastriano’s factor, which isn’t uncommon, as a result of as an Military officer, you both transfer up otherwise you transfer out. His army time, which included a short fight project on his strategy to retiring as a colonel, appears to be closely laden with employees jobs and time spent on the tutorial aspect quite than in command slots you’ll often discover on the resume of a colonel.
Like all officer who spends time in army academia, Mastriano left a paper path, together with one paper that provides us a glance into the thoughts of an formidable man who desires energy, and may additionally reveal that Mastriano’s want for elective workplace goes again no less than twenty years.
Mastriano’s 2002 work, “The Civilian Putsch of 2018: Debunking the Fable of a Civil-Army Management Rift” was ready for the Air Command and Workers School Air College at Maxwell Air Pressure Base in Alabama and may give us perception into his considering. The primary theme of the paper considerations the query of the suitable position of the army in American politics, together with a subplot a few “putsch” (overthrow) carried out by a civilian dictator towards the army and authorities.
The story is informed by means of a fictional character, Col. Nathan A. Greene, who’s hiding in a cavern within the George Washington Nationwide Forest after a 2018 putsch by a civilian dictator named Benedict Aurelius. Aurelius, with the assistance of the United Nations and the European Union, overthrows the elected authorities of the USA, abolishes the Structure, dismisses Congress, and forces the resignation of the president.
Dictator Aurelius additionally purges thousands and thousands of People and forces others into re-education camps. Col. Greene is a part of the opposition, or presumably that a part of the army that doesn’t match into the brand new politically right mode that got here into being over earlier a long time.
After studying the story a number of instances, I may solely speculate that Mastriano, because the writer, noticed himself within the position of Col. Greene: as a part of a army “opposition,” remoted and alone in being one of many few opposing the brand new army that mirrored decaying societal norms.
Mastriano’s work is prescient in some respects in that it discusses the pattern of social engineering throughout the army, as is now evidenced by the “woke” management within the Division of Protection by our current secretary of protection and Joint Chiefs of Workers chairman.
In Mastriano’s story, he attributes the fictional 2018 overthrow of America to the marginalization of the army, beginning with, in his phrases, “the insertion of homosexuality into the army” and the false worry {that a} army tradition based on absolutes would problem civilian management. These elements render the army incapable of resisting Aurelius’ civilian takeover.
A major a part of Mastriano’s paper is devoted to encouraging and selling participation in politics by army retirees, stating, “They earned this freedom greater than a lot of their civilian counterparts.”
It’s attention-grabbing that this was going by means of his head 17 years earlier than he retired and embarked upon a scripted quest of political workplace, which has usually included his campaigning in uniform. Current occasions additionally replicate that he thinks that army retirees have greater than a proper to take part in politics. When the candidate he endorsed for lieutenant governor (and his desired operating mate), Teddy Daniels, was known as out for alleged wrongdoing in an in depth video by an opponent, Rep. Russ Diamond, Mastriano rushed to Daniels’ protection by implying that his army service ought to protect him from criticism.
Sorry, Doug, retirees have each proper to run for workplace, however the truth that they wore a uniform shouldn’t protect them from authentic criticism.
Mastriano’s pursuit of political energy has been a step-by-step publicity marketing campaign which has included leaping on all the correct points in addition to cultivating some media shops whose biased protection of him ought to qualify as “help in variety.”
It was previously thought that he began this pursuit the minute he retired, however his 2002 analysis paper appears to disclose that political energy was in his head 20 years in the past.
Dwight Weidman is a resident of Greene Township, Pennsylvania, and is a graduate of Shepherd College. He’s retired from the USA Division of Protection, the place his profession included assignments In Europe, Asia and Central America. He has been in management roles for the Republican Occasion in two states, most just lately serving two phrases as chairman of the Franklin County Republican Occasion. Concerned in net publishing since 1996, he’s the writer of The Franklin County Journal. He has been an novice radio operator since 1988, getting his first license in Germany, and is a previous volunteer with each Navy and Military MARS, Army Auxiliary Radio Service, and can also be a licensed firearms teacher.
