Yesterday, Joe Biden was on the the campaign trail in South Carolina. As part of his campaign rally, a US Army officer, in uniform, addressed the crowd and expressed her admiration for the leadership of Obama and Biden when she was in Afghanistan.

I’ve been saving these coins for six years to meet you and President Obama so if that I ever met you, I would give it to you. I’m so honored to have served under your administration and your leadership and I hope and pray that you will be our next president.

This is wrong on so many levels that one doesn’t even know where to start. It is a blatant, in-your-face, f*** you of Army Regulations and DOD policy for a member of the Armed Forces to attend  a partisan campaign rally in uniform. It is a bigger screw you to speak at the rally and to endorse a candidate for president. The fact that she’s a commissioned officer compounds the matter because she has now brought her political loyalties into her organization and that will have an effect of readiness. A soldier who is a Trump supporter would have every right to be concerned that if she had so little regard for Army Regulations and the traditions of the service as to pull a clown stunt like this that she’d probably have little compunction about punishing him for him being opposed to her politically.

But, unlike the treatment the media dished out to young enlisted men who accepted signed MAGA hats from their Commander-in-Chief (read this by Bonchie back when he was a mere diarist), they are utterly swooning over this lawless act:

WOW: Major Ginger Tate led 130 troops in Afghanistan and just told @JoeBiden she has been waiting 6 yrs to give him this coin. "I hope and pray that you will be our next president." [Credit: Iris Earls] @CBSNews via @LacraiMitchell pic.twitter.com/gZ4Jaku1DI

— Bo Erickson CBS (@BoKnowsNews) August 28, 2019

A really powerful moment on the campaign trail, as Major Ginger Tate gives @JoeBiden a coin from her unit when she was deployed in Afghanistan. She said she had been waiting for years to meet him and give it in person. He gave her his VP coin in return. pic.twitter.com/SPx6Vx5MoN

— Caitlin Huey-Burns (@CHueyBurns) August 28, 2019

Major Ginger Tate showed me the coin @JoeBiden gave her in their exchange. pic.twitter.com/bUuzwvFGNZ

— Garrett Haake (@GarrettHaake) August 28, 2019

A really powerful moment on the campaign trail, as Major Ginger Tate gives @JoeBiden a coin from her unit when she was deployed in Afghanistan. She said she had been waiting for years to meet him and give it in person. He gave her his VP coin in return. pic.twitter.com/SPx6Vx5MoN

— Caitlin Huey-Burns (@CHueyBurns) August 28, 2019

So far not a single Twitter blue-check personality has called for her to be punished. Think about this rank hypocrisy of this. Junior enlisted guys get a signed hat regardless of their political affiliation and the media demands they get punished. Commissioned officer attends a political rally in uniform in direct defiance of regulations and it is “bold” and “moving.”

One of the things that sets the US military apart from most other militaries in the world is that ours has never actively participated in partisan politics. Most other nations have had some point in their history where their military either ruled or were the power behind the throne. For that tradition we have exactly one man to thank, a wealthy, white slaveowner named George Washington, for how he responded to an impending military coup by the Continental Army. We can also thank him for establishing the tradition of presidents voluntarily leaving office after two term until that was thrashed by FDR. Maintaining that distance from politics is not easy and it is much harder today than it has been since the eve of the Civil War. It cannot be maintained if commissioned officers start visibly taking sides in political campaigns and endorsing candidates. And the only way you stop this kind of existential rot of the institutional soul is by hammering the living crap out of people who knowingly and willfully break the law.

The Army knows what she did.

The Army National Guard said they are aware of the situation with Maj. Ginger Tate. pic.twitter.com/ZSXdQ6cgWO

— Kristina Wong 🇺🇸 (@kristina_wong) August 29, 2019

Now let’s see if they have the guts to act. My bet is that they don’t.

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