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UNTERS, AWAY!–PART FOUR (END)

In Bureaucracy, Business, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Medical, Politics, Social commentary on April 22, 2025 at 12:06 am

California has a population of nearly 40 million people—and has nearly one-third of the nation’s homeless population: 187,084.                    

The majority of that population consists of DDMBs—Druggies, Drunks, Mentals and Bums.   

Drunk guy passed out on the sidewalk - YouTube

In a June 1, 2022 interview with The Spectator World, Michael Shellenberger, author of San Fransicko: Why Progressives Ruin Cities, blamed liberal ideology for this epidemic:

“The first thing is that they don’t enforce laws. They don’t enforce laws against people that they consider victims, which includes addicts and the mentally ill. And if you don’t enforce laws it turns out people don’t follow them and you don’t have functioning civilization.

Michael Shellenberger.jpg

Michael Shellenberger

Michael Shellenberger, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0&gt;, via Wikimedia Commons

“The second is that they have pursued a radical de-incarceration, de-policing and decriminalization agenda, which has removed penalties for many laws, including shoplifting $950 worth of goods, or possessing three grams of fentanyl and meth, enough to produce paranoid psychosis. And they’ve pursued a so-called housing first anti-shelter policy.

“So they’ve defunded the shelters. The governor himself has established that housing should be a right. That anybody who comes to San Francisco or Los Angeles should have their own apartment unit in those cities. That is the state policy. It is so ridiculous. It is shocking to even say that that is what the policy is, but that is what it is.

“What we need is pretty straightforward. We need to enforce laws. We need a shelter-first housing-earned policy and you need statewide psychiatric and addiction care like they have in every civilized country.

“We’re reviving people from overdose six, nine, twelve times and then sending them right back onto the streets to smoke more fentanyl. It’s bonkers.

“Fifty percent to 75% of all fires put out by the San Francisco and Los Angeles fire departments are in homeless encampments. My own research, and the research of others, shows that most of these are arson fires, people just getting back at each other.”

Some cities are fighting back.

  • In 2021, the Los Angeles City Council prohibited people from sleeping in public spaces.
  • The city of Riverside quickly followed suit.
  • Los Angeles banned camping near schools and daycares. 
  • Sacramento has banned camping along sidewalks and along the scenic river trail. 

Yet San Francisco refuses to confront reality in a suitably aggressive way.

In 2024, the DDMB population in San Francisco was officially estimated to be 8,323.

The latest wrinkle in San Francisco’s “be kind to Untermenschen“—subhumans—campaign is the creation of “Navigation Centers.” These are essentially holding pens for DDMBs until they can be “navigated” to permanent housing. 

But housing is in short supply in San Francisco, and there is no telling how long many of these will stay in them. Or what harm they will wreak on the neighborhoods warehousing them.

And when “homeless” people are placed in subsidized housing, their mental illness, irresponsible addiction to drugs and/or alcohol and/or generally sloth-like habits usually trash those premises.

Since 2015, eight Navigation Centers have been opened throughout San Francisco; six are in operation.

Among the “amenities” they provide:

  • Meals
  • Privacy
  • Space for pets
  • Space separate from sleeping areas
  • Laundry
  • Access to benefits
  • Wi-Fi

Hundreds—if not thousands—of their occupants are meth or heroin addicts. Such people will commit virtually any crime to support their habit. And their crimes of choice are burglary and robbery. 

Little Falls Police Warning Public After Suspected Heroin Overdoses - YouTube

Thus, pouring large numbers of them into San Francisco neighborhoods via “Navigation Centers” guarantees that countless decent citizens will become targets for desperate criminals.

“Navigation Centers” boast that they ban drug-abuse or drug-dealing on their own premises. But they allow DDMBs to come and go at will. Which means they are free to engage in drug-abuse and/or drug-dealing in the neighborhoods where these centers exist. 

Huge areas of the city are covered in feces, urine, trash and used hypodermic needles. Hospitals overflow with patients that have fallen ill due to the contamination.

The city budgeted $677 million for 2024–2026 fiscal years on DDMBs. Dividing that amount by about 8,323 DDMBs provides the figure of about $81,340 per DDMB per year.  

And what is the legacy of allowing San Francisco to become a Roach Motel for undesirables? 

  • Sidewalks are littered with tents, sleeping bags, human feces and urine, used hypodermic needles and empty cans or bottles of alcoholic beverages.
  • Elevators in the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) system are often unusable because “homeless” people urinate and/or defecate in them.
  • Restaurants have been forced to close because they’ve become havens for DDMBs. A Burger King at Civic Center Plaza suffered this fate. So did a McDonald’s in the Haight Ashbury district. 
  • Tourists—and residents—are daily forced to sit next to filth-encrusted men and women who reek of urine and/or feces in restaurants and movie theaters, as well as on buses.

It is a recipe for guaranteed disaster.   

Any pest control expert will tell you: If you have a roach problem, putting out sugar for them will only bring more roaches. 

It remains to be seen whether public officials in San Francisco—and other Untermenschen-infested cities—are willing to apply the new weapon made available by the Supreme Court.

UNTERS, AWAY!–PART THREE (OF FOUR)

In Bureaucracy, Business, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Medical, Politics, Social commentary on April 21, 2025 at 12:06 am

Run by the San Francisco Department of Public Health (DPH), the COVID-19 Alternative Housing Program provides a host of amenities to drug addicts, alcoholics, the mentally ill and parasitic thieves and scammers.         

Otherwise known as Untermenschen, the German word for “subhumans.”     

Or Unters, for short.        

It works in two stages:    

Stage 1: Move the “homeless” into the city’s hotels—at city expense.

Stage 2: Provide them with not only free food and shelter but free alcohol, cannabis, and cigarettes. 

“Managed alcohol and tobacco use makes it possible to increase the number of guests who stay in isolation and quarantine and, notably, protects the health of people who might otherwise need hospital care for life-threatening alcohol withdrawal,” says DPH spokeswoman Jenna Lane.

Related image

A typical cockroach scene

Notice the word “guests.” As if San Francisco—or any city—should welcome hordes of drug addicts, alcoholics, mentally ill and outright bums as assets to its community. 

“Many isolation and quarantine guests tell us they use these substances daily,” says Lane, “and this period in our care has allowed some people to connect for the first time with addiction treatment and harm reduction therapy.”

DPH said in a statement that these “guests” are screened for substance addictions and asked if they’d like to stop or have support to reduce their use.

If they say they want to remain alcoholics and/or drug addicts, they’re provided with their substance of choice.

The department also provides methadone for “guests” who are addicted to opioids.

DPH staffers have helped people buy “medical marijuana,” the agency told local affiliate ABC7.

But the agency doesn’t “facilitate purchases of recreational cannabis,” according to the San Francisco Chronicle’s website, SFGate.

Unequal Scenes - San Francisco / Los Angeles

A typical San Francisco scene: Unters’ tents in front of City Hall

When they’re not swallowing alcohol or injecting, swallowing or sniffing drugs, many of San Francisco’s “guests” spend a lot of their time ripping off retail stores.

Walgreens drug stores have proven a particular target for these DDMBs—Druggies, Drunks, Mentals and Bumsthe four groups that make up 90% of the “homeless” population.

“I feel sorry for the clerks, they are regularly being verbally assaulted,” a regular customer, Sebastian Luke, told the San Francisco Chronicle.

“The clerks say there is nothing they can do. They say Walgreens’ policy is to not get involved. They don’t want anyone getting injured or getting sued, so the guys just keep coming in and taking whatever they want.”

“Retail theft across our San Francisco stores has continued to increase in the past few months to five times our chain average,” Walgreens spokesman Phil Caruso told the Chronicle.

“During this time to help combat this issue, we increased our investments in security measures in stores across the city to 46 times our chain average in an effort to provide a safe environment.” 

As a result, Walgreens has closed at least 22 stores in San Francisco since 2019

One store in the San Francisco area reportedly lost $1,000 a day to theft. 

CVS Pharmacy has instructed its employees to not intervene because the thieves so often attack them.

Many shoplifters then sell their stolen goods on the street—often near the store where they stole them.

Until December, 2024, theft under $950 was considered a misdemeanor. Many prosecutors chose to free those charged rather than holding them in jail. The maximum sentence they could get: Six months. 

In November, 2024, voters overwhelmingly approved Proposition 36, which stiffened penalties for shoplifting. Thieves can now get up to three years in jail or prison if they’ve been twice convicted for certain theft offenses.

Low-income and disabled seniors who depend on these disappearing drug stores for prescriptions are especially at risk. 

Some stores in the city are refusing to let themselves be ripped off.

Target’s largest store, at Geary and Masonic, is guarded by armed security from IPS. Its officers wear dark green uniforms resembling those of sheriff’s deputies and carry .40 caliber automatics.

They are unfailingly courteous—but don’t hesitate to restrain anyone who poses a threat to customers or is apparently stealing merchandise.

Of course, corporations aren’t in business to lose money. So costs for such security are passed on to customers.

A red bullseye with one ring.

Many DDMBs refuse to enter the city’s available shelters. Some claim these places are dangerous—understandably so, since they’re peopled with drug addicts, alcoholics, mentally ill and outright bums. 

But another reason why many of these shelters go unused is: They don’t allow their “guests” to drink up or drug up.

The city makes no effort to force DDMBs to shut down their tent encampments that block sidewalks and pose a threat to public health through their accompanying feces, urine and used hypodermic needles.

If a citizen complains about a DDMB blocking a sidewalk, police may ask him to enter a shelter. But if he refuses, he’s simply left where he is. Thus, the “rights” of DDMBs take precedence over the rights of tax-paying San Franciscans.

The latest wrinkle in San Francisco’s “be kind to Untermenschen campaign is the creation of “Navigation Centers.” These are essentially holding pens for DDMBs until they can be “navigated” to permanent housing. 

UNTERS, AWAY!–PART TWO (OF FOUR)

In Bureaucracy, Business, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Medical, Politics, Social commentary on April 18, 2025 at 12:28 am

Why do California politicians—especially those in San Francisco—cater so fervently to hardcore drug addicts, hardcore alcoholics, the mentally ill and those who refuse to work?                                         

In his 2021 bestseller, San Fransicko: Why Progressives Ruin Cities, author Michael Shellenberger provides the answer. According to its dust jacket: 

“San Francisco and other West Coast cities — Los Angeles, Seattle, Portland — had gone beyond merely tolerating homelessness, drug dealing, and crime to actively enabling them.

San Fransicko reveals that the underlying problem isn’t a lack of housing or money for social programs. The real problem is an ideology that designates some people, by identity or experience, as victims entitled to destructive behaviors. The result is an undermining of the values that make cities, and civilization itself, possible.”

In December, 2022, the Palo Alto-based cloud computing company VMware canceled its contract with the Moscone Center for its 2023 conference and said it would relocate the event.

No specific reason was given. But it’s almost a certainty that the city’s refusal to get tough on the druggies, drunks, mentals and bums who infest its streets and accost its tourists is a major one.

This is only the latest blow to a city that depends overwhelmingly on tourism for its economic prosperity—if not survival.

San Francisco saw the steepest drop of any major metro with a loss of $1.68 billionor 68.8%—when compared with 2019.

The COVID-19 pandemic has been especially hard on the city. Huge numbers of tech workers who once flooded into San Francisco began working at home. And a great many of them still do.

Thus, those businesses—such as restaurants—which had benefitted from their presence are now desperate to stay afloat.

But even before the pandemic, an exodus of high-profile conventions had already started—such as Oracle’s CloudWorld—which left San Francisco for Las Vegas.

Unlike VMware, CloudWorld did cite the reasons for its departure: Filthy street conditions and exorbitant hotel prices.  

San Francisco’s politicians—its Mayor and the 11 members of the Board of Supervisors—like to think of the city as a city-state. That is: As a power comparable to ancient Sparta or Athens.

Reality proves otherwise.

San Francisco is not an economic powerhouse like New York City. It’s not an entertainment capital like Hollywood. It’s not a political center like Washington, D.C.

Here is what San Francisco is:

  • It’s a small (46.87 square miles) city with a relatively modest population (815,201).
  • Its largest industry is tourism.
  • This generates more than $8.4 billion annually for the local economy and supports over 71,000 jobs.  

And if the tourism industry disappears, so will San Francisco. 

Meet the new untouchables of San Francisco: Hardcore drug addicts. Hardcore alcoholics. The mentally ill. Parasitic scam artists/thieves who refuse to work for a living. 

If you doubt it, consider the following:

If you are a firefighter, police officer, paramedic or schoolteacher, and want to live in San Francisco, forget it.

According to Rent Cafe, which provides apartment listings directly from top property managers: “The average [monthly] rent for an apartment in San Francisco is $2,879.” And “the average size for a San Francisco apartment is 739 square feet.”

Patent 523 Apartments for Rent in Seattle, WA | Essex

So unless you’re a hugely successful IT professional—or narcotics dealer—your chances of being able to afford a San Francisco apartment are lower than Donald Trump’s of winning a “Mr. Congeniality” contest.

But there’s hope for you yet—if you’re a Druggie, Drunk, Mental or Bum (DDMBs). 

Why? 

Because the previous Mayor of San Francisco—London Breed—and Board of Supervisors have deliberately created an Untermenschen-friendly program that actually encourages such people to move to the city.

Run by the city’s Department of Public Health (DPH) it’s called the COVID-19 Alternative Housing Program. And it works in two stages:

Stage 1: Move the “homeless” into the city’s hotels—at city expense.

Stage 2: Provide them with not only free food and shelter but free alcohol, cannabis, and cigarettes. 

According to a May 11, 2020 story in City Journal.org:

“The program’s primary purpose is to keep homeless people, the majority of whom are addicts, out of harm’s way during the pandemic. By getting their substance of choice delivered, the thinking goes, the guests may be more apt to remain in their government-funded rooms.

“Another purpose of the program is to protect the public against the spread of coronavirus. The city doesn’t want homeless people who should be staying in their rooms roaming the neighborhood in search of the substances, potentially infecting others.”   

But the agency doesn’t require that its addict “guests” remain quarantined. It merely asks that they do so.San Francisco Department of Public Health - Crunchbase Company Profile & Funding

After news about these deliveries leaked on social media, DPH claimed that “rumors that guests of San Francisco’s alternative housing program are receiving taxpayer-funded deliveries of alcohol, cannabis and tobacco are false.”

Except that the reports weren’t false.

The program is funded by private philanthropists. Nevertheless:  

  • DPH administers and oversees the program.
  • It’s staffed by city workers, including doctors, nurse practitioners, nurses, social workers and security personnel.
  • The department manages, stores and distributes the substances.
  • Employee time is involved.

Thus, the program is financed by taxpayers, even if an outside group provides some of the funding. 

UNTERS, AWAY!–PART ONE (OF FOUR)

In Bureaucracy, Business, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Medical, Politics, Social commentary on April 17, 2025 at 12:06 am

Spend any amount of time in California, and a new foreign word will enter your vocabulary: Untermenschen.           

In German, this means “subhumans.”           

Or “Unters,” for short.

California has a population of nearly 40 million people—and has nearly one-third of the nation’s “homeless” population. The majority of that population consists of hardcore drug addicts, hardcore alcoholics, the mentally ill, and those who refuse to work for a living.

In short: Druggies, Drunks, Mentals and Bums—or DDMBs.  

And their numbers are growing much faster in California than in other states, according to an analysis of federal data by the Public Policy Institute of California.

Tent encampments block pedestrians (especially those with canes or in wheelchairs) from walking along sidewalks. And when pedestrians aren’t contending with tents, they’re forced to navigate around empty beer cans, empty wine bottles, piles of human feces, pools of human urine and used hypodermic syringes.

On October 4, 2024, California’s Governor Gavin Newsom awarded $131 million to 18 local communities to to clear homeless encampments and provide shelter, care, and support. It’s projected to help an additional 3,364 people currently living in encampments and permanently house 1,565 people. 

But 1,565 is essentially meaningless when the numbers of Untermenschen in California are estimated at 171,000.   

And how much has Newsom committed to spend on people who make absolutely no positive contribution to society?  More than $27 billion.

The money partially comes from general obligation bonds that go toward construction of “campus-style” facilities along with smaller homes and long-term residential settings. 

  Gavin Newsom 

This is a difficult time for California. The state has an estimated $22.5 billion deficit, with state revenues falling as the stock market slows.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, California’s total population declined by more than 500,000 between April 2020 and July 2022. California is one of only 18 states that saw its numbers decline and had the fourth biggest drop as a share of its population.

And a major reason for their unhappiness: The state’s intractable “homeless” problem.

California Base and Elevation Maps

Fortunately, the United States Supreme Court has finally supplied at least a partial answer to this problem.

On June 28, 2024, the Court handed down its opinion in City of Grants Pass vs. Johnson. Voting six to three along ideological lines, the Justices empowered cities to enforce laws prohibiting camping and vagrancy. 

On September 28, 2018, a three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals had issued Martin v. City of Boise. This held that “the Eighth Amendment prohibits the imposition of criminal penalties for sitting, sleeping, or lying outside on public property for homeless individuals who cannot obtain shelter.” People could be evicted only if beds or shelter were available to those who were being evicted.

The Supreme Court’s decision overrules that decision, stating that the Eighth Amendment does not prevent a municipality from evicting homeless people from public spaces. 

It’s a win for the small Oregon city of Grants Pass, which brought the case, and dozens of Western cities that needed more enforcement powers as they grappled with record high rates of homelessness. The lower court rulings had prevented them from keeping public spaces open and safe for everyone.

The Court’s ruling makes it easier for communities nationwide to fine, ticket or arrest DDMBsDruggies, Drunks, Mentals and Bums—who make up 80% of the “homeless.” But it doesn’t force communities to take any specific actions or to actively engage in criminal punishment.

Decades ago, being “homeless” meant you lost your home due to fire, flood or earthquake. For a few weeks or months, you lived with friends or family as you searched for a new residence. Then you resumed your former life as a productive citizen. 

Today, being “homeless” means living for years—even decades—on the street. Selling drugs, using drugs, getting drunk, staying drunk, living in filth, refusing treatment for drug and/or alcohol addiction, refusing even shelter from the cold, rain and terrors of street life—these are the realities of most of today’s “homeless” population. 

To fully understand the consequences of this, one needs only to look at what this population has done to San Francisco.

In 2022, the San Francisco “homeless” population was officially estimated to be 7,754. Of these, 3,357 were staying in shelter. Many of those who could find shelter refused to make use of it—or were refused entry due to their rampant drug and/or alcohol addictions.

In his 2021 bestseller, San Fransicko: Why Progressives Ruin Cities, author Michael Shellenberger provides the answer. 

San Fransicko: Why Progressives Ruin Cities: Shellenberger, Michael: 9780063093621: Amazon.com: Books

According to its dust jacket:

“Progressives claimed they knew how to solve homelessness, inequality, and crime. But in cities they control, progressives made those problems worse.

“Michael Shellenberger has lived in the San Francisco Bay Area for thirty years. During that time, he advocated for the decriminalization of drugs, affordable housing, and alternatives to jail and prison.

“But as homeless encampments spread, and overdose deaths skyrocketed, Shellenberger decided to take a closer look at the problem. What he discovered shocked him. The problems had grown worse not despite but because of progressive policies.”

FIVE MAPS TO SOUTHERN INFAMY: PART TWO (END)

In Bureaucracy, History, Medical, Politics, Social commentary on April 4, 2025 at 12:09 am

Southern treason, racism and ignorance have given the United States five periods of infamy. 

Infamy 4: 2000 – COVID-19 pandemic.         

Donald Trump’s four-year Presidency produced a legacy of unprecedented racism, criminality, abuse of power and treason. 

But the crime which brought him down was his unwillingness to protect Americans from the deadly COVID-19 pandemic.

The COVID-19 catastrophe slammed into the United States in January, 2020. It was the inevitable result of a natural disaster colliding with an evil and incompetent administration.

Trump’s “cures” for COVID-19 included denial, lies, Republican subservience, chaos, extortion, propaganda as news, quackery as medicine, demands to “re-open the country,” Ignoring the danger and—finally—resignation (“Learn to live with the virus”). 

Trump quickly made the virus a referendum on himself. If you supported him, you didn’t wear a mask in public—even though no vaccine was available and hospitals were rapidly overwhelmed by debilitated and dying casualties of the virus. 

On the July 21, 2021, edition of the PBS Newshour, Washington Post Columnist Jonathan Capehart outlined the catastrophic results of Trump’s behavior: “If we had had a president of the United States who took this seriously when this first came on the scene, if we had a Republican party that took this seriously enough to warn everyone, their constituents, saying, ‘Wash your hands, then put on a mask, then go get the vaccine,’ we wouldn’t be where we are right now.”

PBS NewsHour | Brooks and Capehart on voting and gun violence legislation | Season 2021 | PBS

Jonathan Capehart

But neither Trump nor the Republican party urged Americans to “wash your hands, put on a mask, then go get the vaccine.”

It took the election of Joseph R. Biden to fashion a comprehensive attack on COVID-19.

By March, 2021, three vaccines—by Pfizer, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson—became available. A total of 90.4 million doses of these vaccines had been given. And 30.7 million Americans had been fully vaccinated against the virus. 

But after a triumphant beginning, the pace of vaccinations slowed, then halted. By late July, 2021, only 49.6% of Americans had been fully vaccinated.

Covid-19 Vaccination Map of USA.png

COVID-19 vaccination map – July 21, 2021

George Karabassis, CC BY 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0&gt;, via Wikimedia Commons

Many of those who had gotten one shot of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines refused to get the necessary second one.

What had happened? 

“The people I know personally who are not getting the vaccine, for them, it was like, ‘They rushed this thing,'” theorized conservative New York Times columnist David Brooks on the PBS Newshour on July 23, 2021. 

Shields and Brooks on Trump's COVID-19 diagnosis and the debate | PBS NewsHour

David Brooks

And leading the way to this catastrophe of self-destruction were the states of the South and Midwest: Mississippi (47.1%,), Alabama (50.5%), Arkansas (53.2%), and Tennessee (52.9%) with the lowest rates of residents who have gotten at least one shot.

By late July, 2021, three states—Florida, Texas and Missouri-–with lower vaccination rates accounted for 40% of all cases nationwide.

And colliding head-on with the refusals of millions to get vaccinated was the newer—and deadlier—Delta variant of COVID-19.

Just as the South unleashed the Civil War on America, it had ignited a new wave of COVID-19 on America. 

Infamy 5: 2024 – Backing Trump again 

Donald Trump is the only American President to be impeached twice—once for trying to extort “a favor” from Ukraine and again for inciting a violent attack on Congress.

On January 6, 2021, having failed to win re-election, he incited a deadly attack on Congressional members who were counting Electoral College votes. His goal: To intimidate them into throwing out the results and allowing him to become “President-for-Life.”

As a Presidential candidate in 2024, he has constantly repeated the lie that he won in 2020 but was cheated by massive vote fraud. 

He has viciously attacked immigrants—both legal and illegal. During his September 11 debate with Vice President Kamala Harris, he falsely charged that legal Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, were “eating the dogs. They’re eating the cats. They’re eating the pets of the people that live there.” 

The results: In Springfield, a string of bomb threats have shut down city and school buildings. Public events have been canceled. And state troopers have been sent in to guard students going to school.

Most ominously, Trump intends to implement Project 2025, the Right-wing Heritage Foundation’s blueprint for a Fascistic dictatorship. Under this:

  • Career civil servants will be fired en masse and replaced by fanatical Right-wingers whose only loyalty is to Trump.
  • The FBI director will be personally accountable to Trump—just as the KGB director is accountable to Vladimir Putin.
  • The Department of Homeland Security will be abolished.
  • Fossil fuels—the leading cause of global warming—will be favored and environmental regulations to combat climate change abolished.
  • Abortion will be outlawed.

And, once again, it’s the South that threatens to end American democracy. 

His attacks on nonwhites speak directly to Southerners’ longstanding racism. His attacks on the federal government feed into their resentment over losing the Civil War 159 years ago.

Most Southerners have abandoned democracy and lustily embraced the creation of a Right-wing dictatorship. Where they were once fiercely anti-Communist, they are now fiercely anti-liberal.

In 1776, Southerners’ fervent embrace of slavery almost aborted the Declaration of Independence and the birth of the American Republic. 

In 2024, Southerners’ fervent embrace of racism, hatred and treason may signal its demise.

FIVE MAPS TO SOUTHERN INFAMY: PART ONE (OF TWO)

In Bureaucracy, History, Medical, Politics, Social commentary on April 3, 2025 at 12:05 am

Throughout its history the South has been a hotbed of treason, racism and ignorance.    

Today, it proudly continues holding fast to these traditions—as it threatens the entire country with a Fascistic dictatorship under Donald Trump.   

Infamy 1: 1860 – 1865 – The Confederate States of America. 

Map of U.S. showing two kinds of Union states, two phases of secession and territories

Union (blue) and Confederate (red) states: 1860 – 1865

Júlio Reis, CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0&gt;, via Wikimedia Commons

From 1860 to 1865, the SouthTexas, Arkansas, Louisiana, Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Florida, South Carolina, North Carolina and Virginia—produced the greatest case of mass treason in America’s history.

According to The Destructive War, by Charles Royster, it wasn’t the cause of “states’ rights” that led 13 Southern states to withdraw from the Union in 1860-61. It was their demand for “respect,” which, in reality, translates into “e-g-o.”

“The respect Southerners demanded did not consist simply of the states’ sovereignty or of the equal rights of Northern and Southern citizens, including slaveholders’ right to take their chattels into Northern territory.

“It entailed, too, respect for their assertion of the moral superiority of slaveholding society over free society,” writes Royster.

It was not enough for Southerners to claim equal standing with Northerners; Northerners must acknowledge it. But this was something that the North was increasingly unwilling to do. 

Finally, its citizens dared to elect Abraham Lincoln as President in 1860.

Lincoln and his new Republican party damned slavery—and slaveholders—as morally evil, obsolete and ultimately doomed. And they were determined to prevent slavery from spreading any further throughout the country. 

Southerners found all of this intolerable.

Lincoln—during his First Inaugural Address—bluntly said that he did not intend to “directly or indirectly…interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so.”

An iconic photograph of a bearded Abraham Lincoln showing his head and shoulders.

Abraham Lincoln

But that was not enough for Southerners. 

Only 10% of Southerners owned slaves. The other 90% of the population “had no dog in this fight,” as Southerners liked to say.

Yet they so admired and aspired to be like their “gentleman betters” that they threw in their lot with them.

On April 12, 1861—just over a month since Lincoln’s inauguration on March 4—Southern batteries opened fire on Union Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor, South Carolina.

This ignited the American Civil War, costing the lives of 750,000 Americans—at a time when the population of the United States stood at 31,443,321.

Four years later, Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia to Union General Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Courthouse.

Huge sections of the South had been laid waste by Union troops and more than 258,000 Southerners had been killed.

And slavery, the mainstay of Southern plantation life, had been ended forever.

The South had paid a high price for its investment in treason.

Infamy 2: 1964 – 2024 – Racism breeds Southern Republicans.

In 1964, Democratic President Lyndon B. Johnson pushed the Civil Rights Act through Congress, ending more than a century of blatant discrimination against blacks.

The South—which before the Civil War had been solidly Democratic—suddenly went solidly Republican.

To understand this mammoth shift, it’s vital to realize: In Lincoln’s time, the Republicans were the party of progressives

The party was founded on an anti-slavery platform. Its members were thus reviled as “Black Republicans.” And until the 1960s, the South was solidly Democratic. 

Democrats were the ones defending the status quo—slavery—and opposing the rights of freed blacks in the South of Reconstruction and long afterward.

When, in the early 1960s, Democrats championed the rights of blacks, Southerners bolted for the Republican party—which held to the same values that slavery/discrimination-supporting Democrats once did.  

After signing the Civil Rights Act of 1964 into law, President Lyndon B. Johnson told an aide: “We have just lost the South for a generation.”   

Johnson was wrong: A generation lasts 20 to 30 years. It’s been 60 years since the signing of the Act, and the South is still solidly within the Republican camp.

To compete successfully in this region, Democrats would need to demand the reinstatement of segregation—if not slavery.

1968 United States presidential election - Wikipedia

 1968 election 

Infamy 3: 2016 – Fascist racism elects Donald Trump as President.

Repeatedly, when asked why they supported Trump, his followers said: “He says what I’ve been thinking!” 

And what Trump appealed to, above all else, was racist hatred.  

From June 15, 2015, when he launched his Presidential campaign, until October 24, 2016, Trump fired almost 4,000 angry, insulting tweets at 281 people and institutions that had somehow offended him. 

Donald Trump

The New York Times needed two full pages of its print edition to showcase them. 

Among his targets:

  • Women
  • Blacks
  • Hispanics
  • Asians
  • Muslims
  • The disabled
  • Prisoners-of-war

Red States voted for Donald Trump – 2016

BobWyatt07, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0&gt;, via Wikimedia Commons

Whites comprised the overwhelming majority of the audiences at Trump rallies. Not all were racists, but many of those who were advertised it on T-shirts: “MAKE AMERICA WHITE AGAIN.”

And the vast majority of the white votes Trump got were in the South

The 2008 election of Barack Obama as the first black President had shocked whites. His 2012 re-election had deprived them of the hope that 2008 had been an accident.

In 2016 macho, largely uneducated, anti-black Southern males couldn’t accept a woman—Hillary Clinton—occupying the White House.

They ignored reputable reports—later confirmed—that Trump’s campaign was backed by Russian oligarchs linked to Russian dictator Vladimir Putin, the former head of the KGB.

HOW TRUMP WON IN 2024: WHAT DIDN’T HAPPEN–PART THREE (OF FOUR)

In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Medical, Social commentary on March 19, 2025 at 12:08 am

There were numerous instances where intervention by Federal legislators or law enforcement authorities could have utterly changed the outcome of the 2024 Presidential election.         

Case #9: Americans had become increasingly worried and angry about surging numbers of illegal aliens pouring into the country. But the Biden administration refused—until its closing months—to dramatically address this issue.   

A Vox story, dated July 12, 2024, warned:  “According to Gallup,  2024 is the first time since 2005 that most of the public have wanted less immigration, and this year marks the largest share of Americans feeling resistant to immigration since 58 percent said so in 2001….” 

Illegal alien climbing over the border fence in Brownsville, Texas

Six months later, on January 17, 2025, another Vox story offered: “What Democrats must learn from Biden’s disastrous immigration record.” 

It opened: “One of the main reasons Vice President Kamala Harris lost the election is the Biden administration’s record on immigration and the border — polls show it ranks up close with inflation among the top issues that drove swing voters to Trump….

“During Biden’s first three years in office, the number of arriving migrants skyrocketed, leading to a backlash as even blue states and cities complained they were overwhelmed. The peak came in December 2023, a month when officials reported about 250,000 encounters with migrants at the border, a record.” 

Then, starting early in 2024, and continuing throughout the year, border arrivals plummeted—by more than 80%.

The reasons:

  1. The Biden administration got the Mexican government to launch an extensive crackdown on migrants passing through its territory to the United States. 
  2. Biden decreed that new unauthorized migrants would be ineligible for asylum if too many people were coming to the border. Essentially, this meant shutting down the asylum process.

Unfortunately for Harris, the downturn in illegal immigration came too late.

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Donald Trump

In times of economic uncertainty, hostility rises toward immigrants—especially those who are alien to a host country’s language and culture. This has proven true in Europe as well as the United States.

Case #10: Americans blamed President Biden for inflationary price increases—especially for groceries such as eggs. 

According to a December 20, 2024 article—“Why are groceries so expensive? What you need to know”—by the Center for Science in the Public Interest:

“Since January 2019, food prices have risen nearly 30 percent in the US, leaving many households struggling to afford groceries.”

Among the issues responsible for this:

  • COVID-19: Caused worldwide disruptions in supply chains.
  • Transportation costs and fuel prices: Fuel costs are directly tied to how much retailers charge for groceries and other goods.
  • Animal diseases, weather events, crop failures: When bird flu (H5N1) first struck the U.S. in 2022, eggs were priced at around $2 per dozen. They peaked at $4.82/dozen in January 2023, and in December 2024—following the infection of over 123 million chickens—prices fell to about $4.15/dozen.
  • Global conflict: In February, 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine, which exports wheat, corn and agricultural fertilizer, among other products. Russia has tried to strangle Ukraine’s exports by attacking the nation’s agricultural centers.

No President—including Biden and Trump—can control such events. Unfortunately, every Presidential candidate virtually promises to be Superman. And voters repeatedly fall victim to this absurdity.

So when elected Presidents fail to perform miracles, those voters turn on them—and turn them out of office.

Case #11: Americans don’t want a woman President.

American voters proved that in 2016 when former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton ran for President—and lost to Trump in the Electoral College by a count of 227 to 304. 

And Hillary had an advantage that Vice President Kamala Harris lacked: Hillary was white.

England has elected a female Prime Minister: Margaret Thatcher. And Mexico—notorious for the machismo of its men—has elected a woman President: Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo. But in the United States, electing a woman chief executive is unthinkable to most American men. 

According to Daniel Cassino, Professor of Government and Politics at Fairleigh Dickinson University, men who support Trump hold to a traditionally masculine identity.

“So, among that group, Trump is up over Harris by about 35 points. Huge gap, Among other men, the half of men who don’t put themselves at the extremes of masculinity, Harris is up by 20. In fact, Harris is also up by 20 among most groups of women. So, really the gap is not between men and women, it’s between this one group of traditional masculine men and everybody else.” 

Machismo played a major role in Trump’s popularity among Hispanics. Roughly six in 10 men described Trump as a strong leader, compared with 43% who said that in 2020. About half of Hispanic women said Trump was a strong leader, up from 37%. 

Case #12: Democrats expected to receive support from their traditional allies—such as blacks and Hispanics. But that didn’t happen.   

During the eight-year tenure of America’s first black President, Donald Trump attacked Barack Obama as a foreign-born citizen who was thus ineligible for that office. He also had a history of supporting—and being supported by—racist white groups like the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers.

Nevertheless, blacks deserted Vice President Kamala Harris in droves. About three in 10 back men under age 45 went for Trump, roughly double the share he got in 2020. 

HOW TRUMP WON IN 2024: WHAT DIDN’T HAPPEN–PART TWO (OF FOUR)

In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Medical, Politics, Social commentary on March 18, 2025 at 12:05 am

There were numerous instances where intervention by Federal legislators or law enforcement authorities could have utterly changed the outcome of the 2024 Presidential election.                  

Case #5: Even after Donald Trump left office, the Justice Department treated him with a deference not shown any other criminal defendant.

He was allowed, for example, to hurl insults and threats at Special Counsel Jack Smith and even Smith’s family.

One such post, published on Trump’s website, Truth Social, went: “Deranged Jack Smith, who is a sick puppet for A.G. Garland & Crooked Joe Biden, should be DEFUNDED & put out to rest. Republicans must get tough or the Dems will steal another Election. MAGA!” 

By “A.G. Garland” Trump meant Attorney General Merrick Garland. By “put out to rest,” he meant that his followers should assassinate Smith. 

Not even Mafia bosses like Charles “Lucky” Luciano and Albert “The Executioner” Anastasia dared issue such a threat.

Laura Rozen on Twitter: "Jack Smith bio from the Hague court https://t.co/5iOsfwMSAa https://t.co/wAG6RmQ7N4" / Twitter

Jack Smith

By contrast: Jimmy Hoffa was president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. But that didn’t prevent Robert F. Kennedy’s Justice Department from indicting him for jury tampering—and convicting him on March 4, 1964. He was sentenced to eight years in prison and a $10,000 fine. 

No one in the Kennedy Justice Department said: “He’s the elected president of the Teamsters Union—so we can’t touch him.” Yet that is precisely how the Biden Justice Department repeatedly acted—simply because, in 2016, he won a Presidential election.

Case #6: Throughout his struggles to stay out of prison, Trump was aided by the unrelenting support of the Republican party. 

Republicans loudly and repeatedly claimed that Donald Trump was the legitimate winner of the 2020 Presidential election—despite overwhelming evidence that he wasn’t.

They also claimed that, by appointing Special Counsel Jack Smith to investigate Trump, the Democrats had weaponized Federal law enforcement.

They also fully supported Trump’s demand for the release of those who attacked the Capitol Building on January 6, 2021.

Republican Disc.svg

For example: Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) has depicted these coup supporters as persecuted martyrs.

On March 24, 2022, members of the Republicans’ House Oversight Committee toured a Washington, D.C. jail where some of these defendants were held. “Their due process rights are being violated. And they have been mistreated and treated as political prisoners,” Greene told reporters after the tour.

Adolf Hitler similarly portrayed as martyrs the Nazis who tried to violently overthrow the government of Bavaria on November 9, 1923.

A March 2, 2020 Washington Monthly story concluded ominously:  “U.S. democracy wasn’t set up to deal with a president openly behaving like a James Bond villain while being protected by a political party behaving more like a mafia than a civic institution.” 

Case #7: While Congressional Republicans have relentlessly investigated President Joe Biden and his family, Democrats have refused to similarly investigate Trump’s family.

The United States House Oversight Committee opened its investigation into the Biden family on January 11, 2023. The investigation included the foreign business activities of Biden’s son, Hunter, and brother, James. 

By November 2023, the investigation had not found any evidence of wrongdoing by President Biden. 

Democrats, by contrast, have not probed why Jared Kushner, Donald Trump’s son-in-law and  former White House adviser, received $2 billion from Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. The money came to Kushner’s private equity firm after Kushner left the White House in 2021. 

DNC alleges Secret Service blocked it from serving lawsuit to Jared Kushner | CNN Politics

Jared Kushner

Salman has been implicated by U.S. Intelligence reports in the 2018 torture and dismemberment of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi. When asked if he believed the reports, Kushner said: “Are we really still doing this?” 

Democrats have also refused to investigate the Trump administration’s illegally seizing vitally-needed medical supplies in at least seven states during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) did not publicly report the thefts, despite the outlay of millions of dollars of taxpayer money. Nor did the administration explain how it decided which supplies to seize and where to reroute them.

The Federal Government did not inform states whose supplies it seized if they would receive the materials they ordered and paid for. 

Case #8: On July 13, 2024, Trump was allegedly wounded in his right ear by a gunman while speaking at an open-air Presidential campaign rally near Butler, Pennsylvania.

The would-be assassin, Thomas Matthew Crooks, fired eight rounds from an AR-15 style rifle from the roof of a nearby building. Trump dived for cover behind his lectern, as the shooter killed one audience member and critically injured two others. 

Crooks was shot and killed seconds later by the Secret Service’s Counter Sniper Team.

Had Trump not slightly turned his head at the moment Crooks fired, Republicans would have been forced to choose another nominee. 

In addition, Trump would not have been alive to win the 2024 Presidential election and openly threaten to imprison the Justice Department prosecutors who sought to hold him accountable for his litany of crimes.

The assassination attempt calls to mind that by Colonel Claus Schenk von Stauffenberg on July 20, 1944, to kill Adolf Hitler with a briefcase bomb. Had he succeeded, the war in Europe would no doubt have ended far earlier, with countless lives being saved.

THE ART OF THE PURGE–FIRST STALIN, NOW TRUMP: PART THREE (END)

In Bureaucracy, Business, History, Law, Medical, Military, Politics, Social commentary on March 13, 2025 at 12:18 am

Although Donald Trump’s purges—current and continuing—of his own government are unprecedented for the United States, they nevertheless have a historical precedent.    

Unfortunately for Americans, that precedent occurred in the Soviet Union of Joseph Stalin.

The 1930s were a frightening and dangerous time to be alive in the Soviet Union. In 1934, Stalin, seeing imaginary enemies everywhere, ordered a series of purges that lasted right up to the German invasion in 1941.

In 1937-38, the Red Army fell prey to Stalin’s paranoia.

Its victims included:

  • Three of five marshals (five-star generals);
  • Thirteen of 15 army commanders (three- and four-star generals);
  • Fifty of 57 army corps commanders; and
  • One hundred fifty-four out of 186 division commanders.

And heading the list of those marked for death was Marshal Mikhail Tukhachevsky, a major Soviet military leader and theoretician from 1918 to 1937. 

Joseph Stalin

Arrested on May 22, 1937, he was interrogated and tortured. As a result, he “confessed” to being a German agent plotting to overthrow Stalin and seize power. 

On his confession, which survives in the archives, his bloodstains can clearly be seen.

On June 11, 1937, the Soviet Supreme Court convened a special military tribunal to try Tukhachevsky and eight generals for treason.

It was a sham: The accused were denied defense attorneys, and could not appeal the verdict—-which was foregone: Death.

Within hours of the verdict, Tukhachevsky was summoned from his cell and shot once in the back of the head. 

In a Russian version of poetic justice, five of the eight generals who served as Tukhachevsky’s judges were themselves later condemned and executed as traitors.

From 1937 until 1956, Tukhachevsky was officially declared a traitor and fifth-columnist. 

On January 31, 1957, Tukhachevsky and his co-defendants were declared innocent of all charges and were “rehabilitated” by order of Stalin’s successor, Nikita Khrushchev. 

 Postage stamp honoring Mikhail Tukhachevsky

The Stalin purges—lasting to 1938—decimated the Russian army and left the Soviet Union vulnerable to attack by its arch enemy: Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Germany.

On June 22, 1941, that attack swept over the western part of the Soviet Union, up to the gates of Moscow and, in 1942, as far east as Stalingrad. It took four years of bitter warfare—and a loss of at least 25 million Soviet casualties—before the Nazi threat was finally destroyed.

As a result of Trump’s purges of America’s health and security institutions, the United States now faces the same threat of invasion—through disease, terrorism, natural disaster or military conquest.

Related image

Donald Trump

Meanwhile, House and Senate Republicans are openly or silently rubberstamping Trump’s agenda.

The reason: They fear that Trump will turn his Fascistic voting base upon them. They want to keep their seats in Congress—and all the power and perks that go with them. 

Republicans don’t care that Trump has trashed the institutions that Americans have cherished for more than 200 years. Institutions like an independent judiciary, a free press, and an incorruptible Justice Department.

He has viciously attacked all of these—and Republicans have either said nothing or rushed to his defense. Many of them tried to short-circuit Special Counsel Jack Smith’s investigation and prosecution of Trump’s inciting a deadly riot against Congress on January 6, 2021. 

But there are signs that even some Republicans might be thinking of breaking with Trump—at least on slashing the Medicaid program.

States and the federal government jointly pay for Medicaid, which offers nearly-free health care coverage for roughly 80 million poor and disabled Americans, including millions of children. It cost $880 billion to operate in 2023.

Nationally, 55% of Americans said the government spends too little on Medicaid.

And pollster Tony Fabrizio, a chief architect of Trump’s 2024 victory, has heard rumblings of Republican discontent. He’s warned the President that:

  • 59% of voters in 18 swing districts worry “about their personal financial situation.”
  • In these swing districts, 80% favor extending the Affordable Care Act subsidies for health insurance—which will expire this year after Democrats expanded them in 2021.
  • Majorities oppose cutting taxes on corporations.
  • 63% say their top priority for tax policy is helping “working-class families,” versus the 1%, which Trump and Republicans favor.

The House blueprint, which Trump supports, lays the groundwork for up to $880 billion in Medicaid cuts and tens of billions in cuts to food stamps.

According to a February 22 story in The New Republic—“Trump’s New Pollster Just Hit Him With Very Bad News and a Warning”:

“One caveat: The Fabrizio poll finds that a very slim majority supports extending Trump’s 2017 tax cuts when they are not defined. But that package contained enormous tax cuts for the rich and corporations, and those would get extended too.”

Yet even if Medicaid and Medicare remain untouched, that will do nothing for those thousands of federal workers who have lost their jobs.

Many of them waited months to undergo extensive background investigations. Many of them have been on the job only weeks or months before being pink-slipped.

Most of them won’t be given letters of recommendation, proving they were not removed for cause. Which will make it hard to convince new employers to hire them.

They are among the first casualties of Donald Trump’s “Make America Great” campaign. They won’t be the last.

THE ART OF THE PURGE–FIRST STALIN, NOW TRUMP: PART TWO (OF THREE)

In Bureaucracy, Business, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Medical, Military, Politics, Social commentary on March 12, 2025 at 12:13 am

Donald Trump made butchering the federal workforce a major issue during his 2024 campaign for President. And since taking office for the second time on January 20, he’s thoroughly made good on it—with relish.     

All of this was entirely predictable—long before Trump re-entered the White House.

And Part Two of my three-part series, “Love Thy Dictator,” published on August 21, 2024, did just that.  From that post: 

Under Project 2025:

  • The Department of Homeland Security would be abolished.
  • Traditionally independent federal agencies such as the Department of Justice, Federal Communications Commission and the Federal Trade Commission would be placed under Presidential control.
  • The Environmental Protection Agency would be stripped of its authority to protect the air, water and soil.
  • States would be prevented from adopting stricter regulations on vehicular emissions, like California, has done. 
  • Fossil fuels—the leading cause of global warming—would be favored and environmental regulations to combat climate change abolished. 
  • The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) which the project calls “one of the main drivers of the climate change alarm industry,” would be abolished.

  • Federal funding for all public transit systems across the country would be eliminated.
  • The wealthiest 1% would receive massive tax cuts at the expense of the poor and middle class.
  • Conception would be designated as the point where life begins.
  • Abortion would be outlawed.
  • Access to birth control would be sharply restricted, if not banned.
  • Christianity would be designated as the official religion of the United States.
  • The use of capital punishment would be revived and expanded—and the right of appeals sharply restricted.  

Trump’s declaring all-out war on America’s cherished institutions—such as the Forest Service, Department of Defense, the Federal Aviation Administration, the Food and Drug Administration—is unprecedented in United States history.

It will also prove catastrophic for Trump’s constituencies—as well for those who totally oppose his reign. 

Even billionaires—the constituency Trump cares about most—need reliable weather reports before  setting out on their private jets or yachts.

Eliminating the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration will deprive them (as well as millions Trump doesn’t care about) of reliable information on approaching storms and other unsafe weather conditions.

Eliminating the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will expose everyone—billionaires included—to the threats of widespread diseases such as Ebola and typhoid. 

And as of February 25, CBS and other reliable news media have reported a new virus rising out of the Democratic Republic of Congo. In the majority of cases, the interval between the onset of symptoms and death has been just 48 hours.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention logo

Firing workers at the Transportation Security Agency—which is responsible for preventing aircraft hijackings—can only result in a repetition of 9/11-style hijackings.

The TSA was born in 2001, just two months after Islamic terrorists slaughtered 3,000 Americans via hijacked planes in New York and Washington, D.C—and signed into law by Republican President George W. Bush.

Firing employees at the Department of Defense will endanger America’s national security by drastically lowering morale as remaining employees must carry out their own duties and those of fired workers.

Firing workers at the Federal Aviation Administration virtually guarantees an increase in airline disasters. Since Trump took office on January 20, there have been 14 aviation disasters, killing a total of 93 people. 

Firing employees at the Food and Drug Administration will result in a return to unsafe food, prescription and over-the-counter drugs, dietary supplements, vaccines, medical devices, cosmetics, electromagnetic radiation emitting devices and veterinary products.

The FDA dates back to 1906 and the administration of Republican President Theodore Roosevelt. Even billionaires—Trump’s preferred constituency—must eat and seek medical care, so they will be as disadvantaged by its demise as ordinary Americans.

Although Trump’s purges—current and continuing—of his own government are unprecedented for the United States, they nevertheless have a historical precedent. 

Unfortunately for Americans, that precedent occurred in the Soviet Union of Joseph Stalin.

The 1930s were a frightening and dangerous time to be alive in the Soviet Union. In 1934, Stalin, seeing imaginary enemies everywhere, ordered a series of purges that lasted right up to the German invasion of 1941.

Joseph Stalin

An example of Stalin’s paranoia occurred one day while the dictator walked through the Kremlin corridors with Admiral Ivan Isakov. Officers of the NKVD (the predecessor to the KGB) stood guard at every corner. 

“Every time I walk down the corridors,” said Stalin, “I think: Which one of them is it? If it’s this one, he will shoot me in the back. But if I turn the corner, the next one can shoot me in the face.”

In 1937-38, the Red Army fell prey to Stalin’s paranoia.

Its victims included:

  • Three of five marshals (five-star generals);
  • Thirteen of 15 army commanders (three- and four-star generals);
  • Fifty of 57 army corps commanders; and
  • One hundred fifty-four out of 186 division commanders.

And heading the list of those marked for death was Marshal Mikhail Tukhachevsky, a major Soviet military leader and theoretician from 1918 to 1937. 

Arrested on May 22, 1937, he was interrogated and tortured. As a result, he “confessed” to being a German agent plotting to overthrow Stalin and seize power.