By Debra Sweet

Since 2008, when we began sending anti-war veterans into class rooms, their presentations have largely focused, very importantly, on their experience in wars across the world, from Vietnam to Iraq, when those running this country and its military were united in war on the world.

But those “normal imperialist” times are gone. Both former Trump Chief of Staff John Kelly and former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley have called Trump “fascist,” and “fascist to the core.” Trump has threatened to force both men back into the military so that he could court martial them in punishment and implied Milley should be executed. Milley has installed bullet proof glass in his home.

Trump has thrown about threats and plans to use the military to deport “10 million” people and to shoot protesters. As we have noted in the last several years, the U.S. military is increasingly reliant on troops — from the Army, Marines, Air Force, and, to some extent the Navy — of color with a mix of ethnicity and, in general, on people economically pressed to enlist in its ranks. While Colin Powell, the war criminal with responsibility for the destruction of Iraq was at the time a lone Black general in the command structure, there are now many more in positions of power, including Defense Secretary Austin.

Is integrating more people of color a strength for the U.S., allowing its military to adapt to invasion and occupation more effectively in the southern hemisphere? To what extent could it be a weakness? Would military and National Guard forces follow orders to violate peoples’ rights within this country and use violence here on a mass scale as Trump projects?

In the very near future, people in the military and National Guard could experience a breakdown of military order, a split in loyalties and real questions of whose orders they would follow. Rick Perlstein posed this sharply in a piece this week, What Will You Do? Life-changing choices we may be forced to make if Donald Trump wins:

WHAT IF YOU ARE IN THE ARMY, and are ordered to the border to transport children to deportation camps? Or shoot peaceful protesters?

Or you are a National Guardsman in Texas, and breathe a sigh of relief when the Supreme Court, in a 5-4 decision, draws the line against your governor’s interpretation of Article I, Section 10, Clause 3 of the Constitution, claiming that because refugees from Venezuela “actually invaded” that state, literal war can be waged against these poor huddled masses yearning to breathe free. But your heart sinks when the governor acts anyway, replying with a piece of apocrypha credited to President Andrew Jackson: The court has made its decision; now let them enforce it. What’s your decision?

This situation is giving us all pause. We will speak honestly to the students about what they may face.