bureaucracybusters

ONCE AGAIN, ACCOMPLICES TO OUR OWN DESTRUCTION: PART TWO (END)

In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Military, Politics, Social commentary on March 31, 2023 at 12:13 am

Once he became the 45th President of the United States, Donald Trump began undermining one public or private institution after another.         

On November 3, 2020, 80 million voters decided they wanted a change—and elected former Vice President Joe Biden as the 46th President of the United States.

Trump refused to accept that verdict. 

Speaking from the White House in the early hours of November 4, he said:

“Millions and millions of people voted for us tonight, and a very sad group of people is trying to disenfranchise that group of people and we won’t stand for it.”

For the first time in American history, a President demanded a halt to the counting of votes while the outcome of an election hung in doubt.

States ignored his demand and kept counting.

Next, Trump ordered his attorneys to file lawsuits to overturn the election results, charging electoral fraud.

Specifically:

  • Illegal aliens had been allowed to vote.
  • Trump ballots had been systematically destroyed.
  • Tampered voting machines had turned Trump votes into Biden ones.

Throughout November and December, cases were filed in Wisconsin, Arizona, Nevada, Michigan, Minnesota and Georgia challenging the election results. And, one by one, more than 30 cases were withdrawn by Trump’s attorneys or dismissed by Federal judges—some of them appointed by Trump himself.

For 20 days, General Services Administrator Emily Murphy refused to release $7.3 million in transition funding and Federal resources to the President-elect’s team.

Under the law governing presidential transitions, Murphy was responsible for determining the winner based on publicly available information before the actual Electoral College vote. 

Finally, on November 23, Murphy released the transition funding and resources.

Losing in the courts, Trump invited two Republican legislative leaders from Michigan to the White House to persuade them to stop the state from certifying the vote.

Nothing changed. 

On December 5, Trump called Georgia Governor Brian Kemp and asked him to call a special legislative session and convince state legislators to select their own electors that would support him, thus overturning Biden’s win.

Kemp refused, saying he lacked the authority to do so.

Meanwhile, top Republicans—such as Vice President Mike Pence and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell—refused to congratulate Biden as the winner. 

None of them branded Trump’s efforts to overturn the election as those of a tyrant.

Just as Germans did nothing to stop Adolf Hitler’s inexorable march toward war—and the destruction of millions of lives and Germany itself—so, too, did Americans seem paralyzed to put an end to the equally self-destructive reign of the man often dubbed “Carrot Caligula.”

Gaius Caligula was “the mad emperor” of ancient Rome. Like Trump, he lived by a philosophy of “Let them hate me, so long as they fear me.”

He ruled as the most powerful man of his time—three years, 10 months and eight days. And all but the first six months of his reign were drenched in slaughter and debauchery.   

There are basically three ways America’s continuing slide into tyranny could have been stopped:

Congressional Republicans could have revolted against Trump’s authority and/or agenda.

They could, for example, have demanded that Trump accept the verdict of the electorate—as every other past President had. But they didn’t.

Invoking the Twenty-Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution.

This allows the Vice President and a majority of the Cabinet to recommend the removal of the President in cases where he is “unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office.” It also allows the House and Senate to confirm the recommendation over the President’s objection by two-thirds vote. 

The Vice President then takes over as President.

A case could easily have been made that Trump, emotionally distraught over his loss and determined to circumvent the will of the electorate, had been rendered unfit to continue in office. But, once again, Republicans let fear be their guide.

He had fired FBI Director James Comey in 2017 and publicly humiliated his Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, for more than a year until firing him in 2018. Vice President Mike Pence in particular had set new records for sycophancy. 

The “Caligula solution.” Like Trump, Roman emperor Gaius Caligula delighted in humiliating others. His fatal mistake was taunting Cassius Chaerea, a member of his own bodyguard. Caligula considered Chaerea effeminate because of a weak voice and mocked him with names like “Priapus” and “Venus.”

Gaius Caligula

On January 22 41 A.D. Chaerea and several other bodyguards hacked Caligula to death with swords before other guards could save him.

Trump had similarly behaved arrogantly toward his Secret Service guards. He forced them to work without pay during his 35-day government shutdown in 2018. He also forced them to accompany him to COVID-infected states—both during the Presidential campaign and afterward. Many of them were stricken with this often lethal disease as a result. 

During the 12 years that Adolf Hitler ruled Nazi Germany, at least 42 assassination plots were launched against him.

The best-known of these literally exploded on July 20, 1944, when Colonel Count Claus Shenk von Stauffenberg planted a bomb in a conference room attended by Hitler and his generals. Hitler survived only by sheer luck. 

By contrast, no similar plot was aimed at Donald Trump.

ONCE AGAIN, ACCOMPLICES TO OUR OWN DESTRUCTION: PART ONE (OF TWO)

In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Military, Politics, Social commentary on March 30, 2023 at 12:13 am

“Why are we letting one man systematically destroy our nation before our eyes?”       

It’s a question millions of Americans asked themselves since Donald Trump became President of the United States.

Millions of Germans asked themselves the same question throughout the six years of World War II.

In September, 1938, as Adolf Hitler threatened to go to war against France and England over Czechoslovakia, most Germans feared he would. They knew that Germany was not ready for war, despite all of their Fuhrer’s boasts about how invincible the Third Reich was.

A group of high-ranking German army officers was prepared to overthrow Hitler—provided that England and France held firm and handed him a major diplomatic reverse.

But then England and France—though more powerful than Germany—flinched at the thought of war.

They surrendered to Hitler’s demands that he be given the “Sudetenland”—the northern, southwest and western regions of Czechoslovakia, inhabited mostly by ethnic Germans.

Hitler’s popularity among Germans soared. He had expanded the territories of the Reich by absorbing Austria and Czechoslovakia—without a shot being fired!

The plotters in the German high command, realizing that public opinion stood overwhelmingly against them, abandoned their plans for a coup. They decided to wait for a more favorable time.

It never came.

Adolf Hitler and his generals

Less than one year after the infamous “Munich conference,” England and France were at war—and fighting for the lives of their peoples.

As for the Germans: Most of them blindly followed their Fuhrer right to the end—believing his lies (or at least wanting to believe them), serving in his legions, defending his rampant criminality.

And then, in April, 1945, with Russian armies pouring into Berlin, it was too late for conspiracies against the man who had led them to total destruction. 

Soviet flag waves over defeated Nazi Germany

Berliners paid the price for their loyalty to a murderous dictator—through countless rapes, murders and the wholesale destruction of their city. And from 1945 to 1989, Germans living in the eastern part of their country paid the price as slaves to the Soviet Union. 

Have Americans learned anything from this warning from history about subservience to a madman? 

The answer seems to be half-no, half-yes.

Half-no: In 2016, almost 63 million Americans elected Donald Trump—a racist, serial adulterer and longtime fraudster—as President.

On November 3, 2020, 81,255,933 Democratic voters outvoted  74,196,153 Republican voters to elect former Vice President Joseph Biden as the 46th President of the United States.

Related image

Donald Trump

Upon taking office on January 20, 2017, Trump began undermining one public or private institution after another.   

  • Repeatedly attacking the nation’s free press for daring to report his growing list of crimes and disasters, calling it “the enemy of the American people.”
  • Siding with Russian dictator Vladimir Putin against the FBI, CIA and National Security Agency which unanimously agreed that Russia had subverted the 2016 Presidential election. 
  • Firing FBI Director James Comey for investigating that subversion.
  • Giving Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Russian Ambassador Sergey  Kislyak highly classified CIA Intelligence about an Islamic State plot to turn laptops into concealable bombs.  
  • Shutting down the Federal Government for 35 days because Democrats refused to fund his ineffective “border wall” between the United States and Mexico. An estimated 380,000 government employees were furloughed and another 420,000 were ordered to work without pay. The shutdown ended due to public outrage—without Trump getting the funding amount he had demanded.
  • Trying to coerce Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to smear former Vice President Joe Biden, who was likely to be his Democratic opponent in the 2020 Presidential election.
  • Allowing the deadly COVID-19 virus to ravage the country, infecting (to date) 14.8 million Americans and killing 282,000.
  • Attacking medical experts and governors who urged Americans to wear masks and socially distance to protect themselves from COVID-19.
  • Ordering his Right-wing followers to defy states’ orders to citizens to “stay-at-home” and wear of masks in public to halt surging COVID-19 rates.

And throughout all those outrages, House and Senate Republican majorities remained silent or vigorously supported him.

A typical example:

On June 4, 2020, during protests over the police murder of black security guard George Floyd, a curfew was imposed on Buffalo, New York. As police swept through Niagara Square, Martin Gugino, a 75-year-old peace activist with the Catholic Worker Movement, walked into their path as if attempting to speak with them.

Two officers pushed him and he fell backwards, hitting the back of his head on the pavement and losing consciousness. 

On June 9, Trump charged that Gugino was part of a radical leftist “set up.” Trump offered no evidence to back up his slander.

Typical Republican responses included:  

  • Kentucky Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell refused to say whether Trump’s tweet was appropriate.
  • Texas Senator Ted Cruz: “I don’t comment on the tweets.” 
  • Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson said he hadn’t seen the tweet—and didn’t want it read to him: “I would rather not hear it.”
  • Tennessee Senator Lamar Alexander: “Voters can evaluate that. I’m not going to give a running commentary on the President’s tweets.”

Half-yes: On November 3, 2020, 80 million voters decided they wanted a change—and elected former Vice President Joe Biden as the 46th President of the United States.

WAR ON DRUGS = SAVE THE STUPIDS FROM THEMSELVES: PART TWO (END)

In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Medical, Politics, Social commentary on March 29, 2023 at 12:10 am

As the author of three bestselling novels about America’s “War on Drugs,” Don Winslow is appalled at the terrifying carnage it has wreaked on Mexico.                    

Winslow sees the drug problem not as one being inflicted on Americans by outsiders—such as the Mexican drug cartels—but as one that Americans are inflicting on themselves

“Look, from my slice of this world, which is the narco world, the answers aren’t in Mexico. They’re here. And until we get our act straightened out, it will have the damaging effects on Mexico.

“That’s why it just pisses me off so much when these guys go down to the border and make these pronouncements about, you know, ‘Build a wall and stop crime from coming into the United States.’ I mean shit, if I were Mexican, I’d build the wall to keep American money from buying guns and weapons and making billionaires out of psychopaths.

“The hypocrisy of this is mind-boggling. Not in the history of the world have I ever heard of a Mexican coming into America, sticking a gun in somebody’s head and making them buy a drug.”

Opens profile photo

Don Winslow

It’s definitely time to seriously reexamine America’s decades-long war on drugs.

Today, the dangers of drug-abuse are available to anyone who wants to discover them. Yet people continue to play Russian Roulette by taking “recreational” drugs that can leave them sickened or dead. 

One “recreational” drug is Fentanyl, a potent synthetic opioid approved by the Food and Drug Administration to relieve pain. It’s approximately 100% more potent than morphine and 50% more potent than heroin.

“One pill. One time. It can kill you,” said Brian Clark, Special Agent in Charge of the Drug Enforcement Administration’s San Francisco office. “Fentanyl is without a doubt the deadliest threat that we’ve ever faced in this country. 

And with a powerful animal tranquilizer—Xylazine—being mixed into it, it’s even deadlier.

Another such drug is Krokodil (pronounced “crocodile”), an injectable opioid derivative. It’s made from over-the-counter codeine medicine mixed with ethanol, gasoline, red phosphorus, iodine, hydrochloric acid and paint thinner. 

It can produce gangrenous inflammations at the injection site, which resemble the scales of a crocodile. The skin can deteriorate so severely that flesh can fall from bone, producing a “zombie-like” appearance.

KROKODIL - THE 'POOR MAN'S HEROIN' - GRAPHIC IMAGES

Effects of Krokodil

Yet customers still line up to buy it.

In short: No amount of publicity about the dangers of illicit drug-abuse will stop those looking for a quick “high” from thumbing their nose at the law—and their own safety.

No matter how many low-level drug dealers are arrested, others quickly take their places. The profits are simply too great—especially for those who lack education or incentive to attain professional employment.

And no sooner does a cartel kingpin get imprisoned or killed than his place is taken by one or more successors.

A classic example of this: Joaquín Archivaldo Guzmán Loera, better known as “El Chapo.” As the head of the Sinaloa drug cartel, he reigned as one of the most powerful criminal kingpins in Mexico. His enterprise spanned continents and triggered waves of bloodshed throughout Mexico.

Booking photo of Joaquin “El Chapo“ Guzman (front).jpg

Joaquín Archivaldo “El Chapo” Guzmán

In 2016, Mexican authorities arrested him. With a history of two escapes from Mexican prisons, Guzmán was extradited to the United States the following year.

On February 12, 2019, a jury found him guilty on 12 counts, including engaging in a continuing criminal enterprise, conspiracy to launder narcotics proceeds, international distribution of cocaine, heroin, marijuana and other drugs, and use of firearms.

He was subsequently sentenced to life imprisonment plus 30 years.

As of 2023, the Sinaloa Cartel remains Mexico’s most dominant drug cartel. It’s now headed by Ismael Zambada García and Guzmán’s sons, Jesús Alfredo Guzmán and Ivan Archivaldo Guzmán Salazar.

So: What to do? 

Aim to protect drug-avoiding people from druggies.

  • Recognize that America’s drug epidemic is caused by Americans’ insatiable demand for drugs.
  • Recognize that so long as demand persists, suppliers will be eager to fill it.
  • Allow druggies to endanger themselves but not others—the way smokers are allowed to get cancer and emphysema but not give it to nonsmokers.
  • Limit the types of places where druggies are allowed to drug up—such as their own homes.
  • Druggies involved in auto accidents should be presumed guilty unless they can prove otherwise.
  • If convicted, they should face mandatory 10-year prison terms.
  • Ban open-air drug markets.
  • Don’t allow druggies who are charged with crimes like burglary or robbery to cite their addiction as a defense.
  • States should ship their druggies to Texas—the way Texas ships its illegal aliens to Blue states.

Quit trying to protect self-destructive people from themselves.

  • Stop providing Naloxone to opioid addicts.
  • Stop providing free needles to heroin users.
  • Stop providing welfare and free housing to known drug addicts.
  • Parents should tell their teenagers: “If you get arrested for drugs, don’t expect me to bail you out or pay for treatment. We can’t afford it.”
  • If their teens are arrested as druggies, parents should say: “You’re on your own.”
%d bloggers like this: