Sadly, this is not an aberration.
Last year, Trump reinstated the rank of former Navy SEAL Eddie Gallagher, whom fellow SEALs called "freaking evil", "toxic", and "perfectly O.K. with killing anybody that was moving," after being acquitted on a war crime charge of fatally stabbing a captured teenager.
Under the justification they should have "the confidence to fight" without legal ramifications, Trump also pardoned last year Army 1st Lt. Clint Lorance and Army Maj. Mathew Golsteyn, both convicted of killing Afghans.
In 2001, after the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center, former President George W. Bush proclaimed terrorists hate us because "They hate our freedoms."
But that's reductive.
The late great comedian Dick Gregory once said:
"If democracy is so good, why do we have to go to other countries and try to jam it down their throats with a gun? Stay here and make democracy work. If it's good you don't have to force it on others, they'll steal it."
"They" don't hate us because "they hate our freedoms."
They hate us because we're the ones bringing chaos to their lives.
Blackwater is a perfect example of "American exceptionalism" run amok.
It is an extra-governmental, paramilitary outfit put in a position of authority, holding the power of live and death for pure profit.
Profit kills.
Who knows how much is going to change under Joe Biden.
Maybe not much.
But as long as we keep slogging up the same hill, we'll always slide a little further back.
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