Political legitimacy does not collapse when a soldier chooses to fire a blank. It collapses when no soldier remembers how to distinguish a blank from a live round. The decision to retain the capacity for empty casings—to preserve the knowledge of how a cartridge feels when its projectile has been removed, to maintain the muscle memory of administrative delay, to pass down the grammar of the counter-accusation—is not an act of disobedience. It is a legitimacy-preserving practice. By definition...