UNPROFESSIONAL: Even the Joint Chiefs Can’t Resist Virtue Signaling

In a season where everything is political, even the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the United States Military couldn’t resist virtue signaling about the January 6th lawlessness.

In a poorly written memo attributed to the Joint Chiefs, they cannot resist characterizing the Capitol lawlessness as “sedition” and “insurrection,” and are apparently willing to pass the most serious of legal judgments without a trial or the presumption of innocence:

The definitions of sedition and insurrection are associated with direct action or calls to direct action and tend to give free speech the benefit of the doubt, yet in the current environment of disrespect for the rule of law, it seems that even those charged with defending the Constitution couldn’t resist getting in on the hyperbole and newspeak.

The authenticity of the memo was originally questioned as it does not conform to any known military writing style, and is missing many standard requirements of a properly written military memorandum such as outline formatting and date of writing. Also, the memo is curiously missing from the official Joint Staff Twitter feed or the official website. However, we have confirmed the “memo” was sent in the above format and as plain text to military email addresses from a confirmed Department of Defense account at the Pentagon.

The United States Army issued a much more measured statement that didn’t make assumptions about guilt or intention prior to the proper exercise of the legal process: