You’re not crazy. The thing is there’s a difference between the national guard and the regular army. The national guard is used to control protests all the time by state governors. In D.C. Trump gets to act as that governor. What Trump wanted was a regular army Infantry division with lethal weapons. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs actually got into a shouting match with Trump over the issue.

When he couldn’t have that toy he tried to tell the National Guard to use live ammo without actually ordering it. He told them to use “all available means” to protect federal property. The National Guard however has trained extensively against using live ammo in protests since May 4, 1970. So they used every non-lethal method they knew, including the down wash of their medevac helicopters. Which the Pentagon later said not to do again as they consider that to be against the regulations for medevac helicopters.

Not American, I thought national guard and army are different because the national guard do stuff like security at disaster sites and riots which the army aren’t allowed to?

May seem sad, but in fact good if really works this way.

Since I’m in Russia and here shit went wrong (EDIT: after the last time shit went right) since Yeltsin using military to “resolve” a constitutional crisis in 1993 (not really a crisis, just when the Supreme Court says both Yeltsin and his opponents in the parliament should resign and have new parliament and presidential elections, that apparently is a crisis, because he’s the president, thus the boss and should be able to make all decisions ; that unironically was the main argument in support of Yeltsin, ex-Soviet people have a very weird idea of law and order, where the boss deciding something is “dura lex sed lex”, while referring to codified laws is “legal illiteracy”).

Why? It’s very slippery, and lubricating.