Posts Tagged ‘2020 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION’
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Medical, Politics, Social commentary on August 2, 2022 at 12:30 am
On July 23, 2021, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene found something to celebrate in Alabama.
Alabama had the lowest COVID-19 vaccination rate of any state in the nation.
Days later, Alabama’s health leader said officials had tossed out more than 65,000 coronavirus vaccines that expired. They had expired due to low demand.
And that low demand had resulted from Right-wingers’ politicization of the virus.
But that wasn’t enough to satisfy Greene.
Marjorie Taylor Greene
“Well, what they don’t know is that in the South we all love our Second Amendment rights. And we’re not real big on strangers showing up at our front door, are we? They might not like the welcome they get.”
In short: People should shoot volunteers promoting coronavirus vaccines through door-to-door outreach.
Her audience—at the Alabama Federation of Republican Women fundraiser—applauded and laughed at the idea of such murders.
Naturally, through her spokesman, Nick Dyer, Greene denied that she suggested people shoot those promoting vaccines.
“Your colleagues in the fake news are making things up and attributing things to her that she did not say,” he wrote in an email.
This despite the fact that Greene’s words had been captured in a video—and countless people had seen it after it was shared on the Internet.
When asked if Greene herself was vaccinated, Dyer refused to answer.
“It really gets at the heart of the public’s trust in our government and the messaging around solid public health measures based on the science,” said Lori Tremmel Freeman, CEO of the National Association of County and City Health Officials.
“Our local health officials who are working on the ground are not political. They are completely apolitical,” she told CNN.
She added that Greene’s comments were “disheartening and distressing.”
“Outrageous and violence-encouraging” would have been a more accurate description.
Greene’s comments demonstrate the twin pillars of Right-wing orthodoxy toward COVID-19:
- Ignorance and
- Violence.
Donald Trump, as President, vividly personified both.
The apex of his embrace of violence came on January 6, 2021, when he refused to permit an orderly transition from one administration to another.
Instead, he incited a mob of his fanatical followers to attack members of Congress who were about to count the Electoral College votes cast for the 2020 Presidential election.
Donald Trump addresses his Stormtrumpers
Trump had lost that election: 81,255,933 votes had gone to former Vice President Joseph Biden, as opposed to 74,196,153 votes for himself.
Yet even before embracing that final grotesque moment of infamy, Trump had been responsible for the deaths of 400,000 Americans.
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 it”)
Early on, Trump made the virus a referendum on himself. If you supported him, you didn’t wear a mask when you ventured out in public. This despite the fact that, throughout 2020, there was no vaccine available and hospitals were rapidly overwhelmed by debilitated and dying casualties of the virus.
“I think, once Donald Trump and other Republicans made it a manhood issue, or a freedom issue, or whatever kind of issue they made it, it’s hard to walk back that culture war signal,” said conservative New York Times columnist David Brooks on the PBS Newshour on July 23, 2021.
Washington Post Columnist Jonathan Capehart echoed him: “I think, 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.”
Jonathan Capehart
But neither Trump nor the Republican party urged Americans to “wash your hands, put on a mask, then go get the vaccine.”
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 – July 21, 2021
George Karabassis, CC BY 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
Many of those who had gotten one shot of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines refused to get the necessary second one. These must be given almost a month apart.
(The Johnson & Johnson vaccine requires only one shot.)
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.
By July 27, 2022, there were 90.8 million COVID-19 cases in the United States—and 1.03 million deaths.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Medical, Politics, Social commentary, Uncategorized on July 29, 2022 at 12:11 am
Whites comprised the overwhelming majority of the audiences at Donald Trump’s 2016 Presidential campaign 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.
Then came 2016—and the possibility that a black President might actually be followed by a woman: Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
And for macho, largely uneducated, anti-black Southern males, the idea of a woman dictating to men was simply too much to bear.
Thus, the third map of Southern infamy: The election of Donald Trump.
When Trump declared his candidacy:
- The country was essentially at peace.
- Thanks to government loans from President Obama, American capitalism had been saved from its own excesses during the George W. Bush administration.
- Employment was up. CEOs were doing extremely well.
- Unlike the administration of Ronald Reagan, there had been no corruption scandals during the Obama Presidency.
- Nor had there been any large-scale terrorist attacks on American soil—like 9/11 under President George W. Bush.
Above all, the news was filled with reputable reports—later confirmed—that Trump’s campaign was backed by Russian oligarchs linked to Vladimir Putin, the former head of the KGB and now President of Russia.
In short: Southerners—who had long portrayed themselves as America’s most dedicated patriots—flocked to the banner of a man who publicly called on “Russia” to interfere in an American Presidential election.
Red States voted for Donald Trump – 2016
BobWyatt07, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
The fourth map of Southern infamy.
Donald Trump’s four-year Presidency produced a legacy of unprecedented racism, criminality, abuse of power and treason.
But the crime for which he will be longest-remembered—and which finally 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”).
Early on, Trump made the virus a referendum on himself. If you supported him, you didn’t wear a mask when you ventured out in public. This despite the fact that, throughout 2020, there was no vaccine available and hospitals were rapidly overwhelmed by debilitated and dying casualties of the virus.
“I think, once Donald Trump and other Republicans made it a manhood issue, or a freedom issue, or whatever kind of issue they made it, it’s hard to walk back that culture war signal,” said conservative New York Times columnist David Brooks on the PBS Newshour on July 23, 2021.
Washington Post Columnist Jonathan Capehart echoed him: “I think, 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.”
Jonathan Capehart
But neither Trump nor the Republican party urged Americans to “wash your hands, put on a mask, then go get the vaccine.”
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 – July 21, 2021
George Karabassis, CC BY 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
Many of those who had gotten one shot of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines refused to get the necessary second one. These must be given almost a month apart.
(The Johnson & Johnson vaccine requires only one shot.)
What had happened?
“The people I know personally who are not getting the vaccine, for them, it was like, ‘They rushed this thing,'” theorized David Brooks. “‘Who knows what’s going to happen to all these people who get the shots in 10 years or 20 years?’ So, why should I take the risk?’
“And that’s not completely crazy, but it’s not—it’s based on some sense of general distrust for the establishment, including the medical establishment. And that establishment—that distrust is the core of this thing.”
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 percent 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 has now ignited a new wave of COVID-19 on America.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Medical, Politics, Social commentary on July 28, 2022 at 12:11 am
Throughout its history the South has been a hotbed of treason, racism and ignorance.
Today, it proudly continues holding fast to these traditions—even as it places the entire country in danger of contagion and dictatorship.
From 1860 to 1865, the South—Texas, Arkansas, Louisiana, Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Florida, South Carolina, North Carolina and Virginia—produced the greatest case of mass treason in America’s history.
Southern infamy’s first map was called the Confederate States of America.
Union (blue) and Confederate (red) states: 1860 – 1865
Júlio Reis, CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
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 less and less willing to do.
Finally, its citizens dared to elect Abraham Lincoln 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.”
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.
Southern infamy’s second map dates from 1964 to 2016.
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 58 years since the signing of the Act, and the South is still solidly within the Republican camp.
1968 election
The South’s third map of infamy culminated with the election of Donald Trump as President in 2016.
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 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:
- Democratic Presidential Nominee Hillary Clinton
- President Barack Obama
- Actress Meryl Streep
- Singer Neil Young
- Actor Arnold Schwarzenegger
- Comedian John Oliver
- News organizations
- The State of New Jersey
- Beauty pageant contestants
Others he clearly delighted in insulting during the campaign included:
- Women
- Blacks
- Hispanics
- Asians
- Muslims
- The disabled
- Prisoners-of-war
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.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Military, Politics, Social commentary on June 24, 2022 at 12:10 am
“At the time of the Civil War [white anger and resentment] took the form of Southern white men angry at the idea that the federal government would interfere with their right to own black slaves.
“Today, I think this takes the form of white people who believe that black and brown people are making gains, or getting special treatment, at their expense,” warns Nina Silber, co-president of the Society of Civil War Historians.
And California Democratic Representative Maxine Waters believes this anger could lead to civil war: “Since his first day in office, [Donald Trump] has spent four years abusing his power, lying, embracing authoritarianism (and) radicalizing his supporters against democracy.
“This corruption poisoned the minds of his supporters, inciting them to willingly join with white supremacists, neo-Nazis and paramilitary extremists in a siege of the United State Capitol building, the very seat of American democracy.”
Attack on the Capitol Building
But there is a way to abort that danger—provided that those who cherish democracy are willing to employ weapons as effective as those used by the Right.
Case in point: The FBI’s successful war on the Ku Klux Klan.
Klansmen had shot, lynched and bombed their way across the Deep South, especially in Alabama and Mississippi. Many Southern sheriffs and police chiefs were Klan sympathizers, if not outright members and accomplices.
On June 21, 1964, three civil rights workers disappeared in Philadelphia, Mississippi.
President Lyndon B. Johnson called J. Edgar Hoover, the legendary director of the FBI, and ordered an all-out investigation: “I want you to have the same kind of Intelligence [on the Klan] that you have on the communists.”
Poster for missing civil rights workers
For decades, Hoover had refused to tackle white hate groups. And, in truth, no President had been willing to give him the order to do so. But now a President had given him such an order.
In August, the FBI uncovered the bodies of the three missing civil rights activists—Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman and James Chaney.
On September 2, 1964, the Bureau launched a full-blown counterintelligence program against the Klan—COINTELPRO—WHITE HATE in FBI-speak.
Tim Weiner, author of Enemies: A History of the FBI, chronicles the methods used by the Bureau:
“WHITE-HATE intensified in the fall of 1964. It involved all the techniques in the FBI’s long-running attack on the Left. Once a week….FBI agents interrogated all known members of the White Knights of the KKK, blaming other Klansmen for being snitches and naming names, sowing deep suspicion among Klan members. Few knew who was an informer and who was not.
A Ku Klux Klan meeting
“The FBI dangled small fortunes before potential Klan informers, offered outright bribes to Klansmen who could serve as double agents inside state and local police forces, planted bugs and wiretaps in Klaverns, carried out black bag jobs to steal membership lists….”
Other tactics included:
- Contacting the news media to publicize arrests and identify Klan leaders;
- Informing the employers of known Klansmen of their employees’ criminal activity, resulting in the firing of untold numbers of them;
- Breaking up the marriages of Klansmen by circulating rumors of their infidelity among their wives.
“My father fought the Klan in Massachusetts,” recalled William C. Sullivan, who headed the FBI’s Domestic Intelligence Division in the 1960s. “I always used to be frightened when I was a kid and I saw the fiery crosses burning in the hillside near our farm.
“When the Klan reached 14,000 in the mid-sixties, I asked to take over the investigation of the Klan. When I left the Bureau in 1971, the Klan was down to a completely disorganized 4,300. It was broken.
“They were dirty, rough fellows. And we went after them with rough, tough methods.”
William C. Sullivan
According to Neil J. Welch, the retired Special Agent in Charge (SAC) of the FBI’s Buffalo, New York office:
In a rural county near Natchez, two Klansmen threatened to kill the next FBI agent who came to town. Agent Paul Cummings organized a squad of G-men and visited the Klansmen’s favorite bar. He dared the Klansmen to back up their threat. When none appeared, Cummings shot out the bar’s windows. There were no more threats on FBI agents in that area.
“A Klan Bureau of Investigation (KBI) was created to counter the FBI, and its members placed the wives and children of agents under surveillance, harassing them with taunts and anonymous phone calls,” wrote Welch in his memoir, Inside Hoover’s FBI.
“It was a serious miscalculation. The most dangerous members of the KBI were systematically identified and assigned to agents selected solely because they were comparatively dangerous. The agents had full discretion.
“During the next few months, a number of men previously involved in Klan violence around the state seemed, by remarkable coincidence, to experience misfortune. Some disappeared from the area. Some were forced to leave Mississippi for health reasons. A few took unplanned trips to places like Mexico and seemed to lose all interest in the Klan upon their return.”
The FBI’s counterintelligence war against the Klan ended in 1971.
Only when America has a President willing to wage all-out war on the Fascistic Right will the country be safe from this enemy within.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Military, Politics, Social commentary on June 23, 2022 at 12:11 am
to Donald Trump has left a legacy of lies, racism, criminality and treason from his four years in the White House.
But his longest-lasting—and most destructive—legacy revealed itself in the nation’s Capitol.
Every Presidential Inaugural proves a nightmarish challenge for Federal military and law enforcement agencies charged with protecting the next President and Vice President of the United States.
Inauguration of President Barack Obama – January 20, 2009
But that is not the end of their assignment.
Also needing protection are the dignitaries—members of Congress, Supreme Court Justices, invited foreign heads of state—and the crowd of thousands of onlookers attending.
But the January 20 swearing in of Joseph Robinette Biden as President and Kamala Devi Harris as Vice President was like no other in recent American history.
The reason: The outgoing President, Donald J. Trump, had fiercely resisted the peaceful transfer of power from himself to Biden.
On November 3, 2020, 81,255,933 Democratic voters elected former Vice President Biden the 46th President of the United States. Trump, running for a second term, got 74,196,153 votes.
Since then, Trump had:
- Refused to concede;
- Claimed he was the victim of massive vote fraud;
- Ordered his attorneys to file at least 60 lawsuits to overturn the election results;
- Tried to strongarm governors and secretaries of state in contested states to give him the election; and
- Encouraged members of the House and Senate to contest the counting of Electoral College votes.
With all of that failed, Trump played his final card to illegally gain another four years of power: He summoned thousands of his Stormtrumper followers to Washington, D.C. And, on January 6, he ordered them to “fight like hell” and “stop the steal.”
Donald Trump addressing his Stormtrumpers
Tens of thousands of Stormtrumpers attacked and breached the United States Capitol. They easily brushed aside Capitol Police, who made no effort to arrest or shoot them.
Many of the lawmakers’ offices were occupied and vandalized. One Capitol police officer was killed and more than 50 others were injured.
Not until nightfall—hours later—did police finally restore order to the capitol.
That night, members of Congress once again met to count Electoral College votes—and certify Biden as the winner.
Nevertheless, Trump still refuses to concede and even attend the inauguration of his successor—something that every outgoing President has done with one exception.
In 1869, outgoing President Andrew Johnson refused to attend the inaugural ceremonies, as President-elect Ulysses S. Grant had refused to sit with him in the carriage going to it.
Early on the morning of January 20, Trump took Air Force One to his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida. He didn’t intend to meet with Biden or ask him for use of Air Force One to reach Mar-a-Lago.
As a result of the January 6 assault on the Capitol Building, Federal law enforcement braced for the worst.
Before that assault, plans had called for 10,000 National Guard troops to protect the Inaugural celebration. Now 25,000 were being deployed—more troops in Washington than in Iraq and Afghanistan. Their gear included shields for COVID and combat.
Installing razor wire for security at Capitol
The FBI had warned of armed protests by Right-wing groups in Washington, D.C., and in state capitols across the country. Among the precautions taken:
- A seven-foot, non-scalable fence—topped with barbed wire—was erected around the Capitol Hill complex.
- Road traffic in much of Washington was halted.
- Streets were closed through January 21, the day after the Inauguration.
- The closures were centered around downtown Washington, Capitol Hill, Union Station, the Lincoln Memorial, the National Mall and the White House.
- Vehicles entering these restricted zones would be swept for weapons and explosives before being allowed to proceed.
- Four major bridges between Virginia and Washington, D.C., would also be closed to all traffic for 48 hours.
- National Guard troops were patrolling the city in Humvees.
- Agents from the FBI, Secret Service, the National Parks Service, FEMA and the Washington Metropolitan Police Department provided constant security until the event concluded.
In addition, the Joint Chiefs of Staff issued a statement that the United States Army would supply troops to ensure a smooth transition of power.
The last time Washington, D.C. saw such heavy precautions imposed was on March 4, 1861—with the First Inaugural of President Abraham Lincoln. The South had warned that the election of an anti-slavery President would mean the dissolving of the Union
There was a frightening sense of tension as rumors floated of a plot to assassinate Lincoln before or during the ceremony.
Inauguration of Abraham Lincoln
Historian Stephen B. Oates, in his highly acclaimed 1977 biography With Malice Toward None: The Life of Abraham Lincoln, writes:
“[The Presidential] carriage bumped over the cobblestones of Pennsylvania Avenue, part of a gala parade that featured horse-drawn floats and strutting military bands. Double files of cavalry road along the flanks of the carriage and infantry marched behind….
“And troops were everywhere, deployed by General [Winfield] Scott to guard against assassination. Cavalry on skittish horses cordoned off intersections. Infantry mingled with the sidewalk crowds, and sharpshooters peered over rooftops on both sides of the avenue. It was as though the country were already at war.”
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on May 20, 2022 at 12:12 am
On August 23, 2021, Jacob S. Blake, a 29-year-old black man, was shot and seriously injured by police in Kenosha, Wisconsin.
The shooting occurred as officers attempted to arrest him. Blake was tasered as he scuffled with police. When he opened the driver’s door to his SUV and leaned in, Officer Rusten Sheskey fired seven shots, striking him four times in the back.
Blake is now paralyzed from the waist down, and may never walk again.
Protests followed.
Kenosha County declared a state of emergency overnight on August 24 after police vehicles were damaged, a dump truck set on fire, and the local courthouse vandalized. Police urged 24-hour businesses to close owing to armed robberies and shots being fired. Up to 200 members of the Wisconsin National Guard were deployed to maintain public safety.
Missing from the story—in most news media—has been one crucial fact:
At the time of the shooting, Blake faced a criminal complaint charging him with third-degree sexual assault in connection with domestic abuse on July 6.
The officers had come to arrest Blake for violating a restraining order stemming from that complaint. A 911 call on August 23 alerted them that Blake was at the home of his alleged victim.
A sample restraining order
The restraining order stemmed from a criminal complaint, which accused Blake of breaking into the home of a woman he knew and sexually assaulting her in May. The victim told police she was asleep when Blake broke in at 6 a.m. and said, “I want my shit.”
She told police that Blake used his finger to sexually assault her. She said the incident “caused her pain and humiliation and was done without her consent.”
After Blake left, she realized her keys were missing and “immediately called 911,” the complaint said.
An arrest warrant was issued on July 7.
On August 9, 2014, a similar police/media incident had occurred.
Michael Brown, an 18-year-old black man, was fatally shot by a white police officer named Darren Wilson in Ferguson, Missouri, a suburb of St. Louis.
Brown’s 22-year-old friend, Dorian Johnson claimed that Wilson shot him in the back. Wilson claimed he shot Brown after the latter charged at him.
An FBI investigation found that there was no evidence that Brown had his hands up in surrender or said “don’t shoot” before he was shot. It also found that Brown was struck six times, all in the front of his body.
The shooting ignited nationwide protests.
Yet many of the media “covering” the story refused to note that, shortly before his shooting, a video camera taped Brown robbing a grocery store and manhandling its owner.
Michael Brown (left) roughing up a store owner
Had this been more widely noted, “Saint Michael” would have been seen as a mere thug who learned that assaulting a cop wasn’t the same as attacking a store owner.
On May 25, George Floyd, a former black security guard, was murdered in Minneapolis, Minnesota. While Floyd was handcuffed and lying face down on a city street during an arrest, Derek Chauvin, a white Minneapolis police officer, kept his knee on the right side of Floyd’s neck for eight minutes and 46 seconds.
Death of George Floyd
Across the nation, cities were convulsed by protests—including those in the San Francisco Bay Area. Among these: Oakland, San Jose, Emeryville, Walnut Creek and San Francisco itself.
On May 30, an initially peaceful protest march exploded into looting shortly before 9 p.m. as looters broke off and began smashing shop windows and ransacking stores in Union Square and on Market Street.
Among stores looted: A Sak’s Off-Fifth Avenue, an Old Navy clothing store, a Cartier Boutique and a Coach store. Looters especially targeted CVS and Walgreens drugstores. Liquor stores and a BevMo were also hit.
“Thirty businesses were looted or destroyed,” said David Perry, from Union Square Business Improvement District.
Undoubtedly many of victims of those looters and arsonists had been horrified by the Floyd killing. But many of them undoubtedly lost sympathy for the Black Lives Matter movement as they surveyed the wreckage of their stores.
Store owners were infuriated at having to replace stock that had been stolen or destroyed. And employees resented having to clean up the wreckage. Some stores no doubt were forced to close, leaving their former employees suddenly jobless.
And President Donald Trump quickly moved to capitalize on that resentment. His brand of “divide and rule” politics brought him to the White House in 2016. And he was determined to play on white fears of further black crime to win a second term.
White fears of black crime are reflected in the crime rate statistics for New York City.
While Blacks make up 24.3% of New York City’s population, they comprise:
- 58.0% of its murder and non-negligent manslaughter arrests;
- 40.7% of its rape arrests;
- 34.6% of its known other felony sex crime arrests;
- 59.4% of its robbery arrests;
- 51.8% of its felonious assault arrests;
- 51.7% of its grand larceny arrests;
- 71.6% of its shooting arrests;
- 45.0% of its drug felony arrests;
- 48.5% of its drug misdemeanor arrests;
- 54.7% of its felony stolen property arrests;
- 45.9% of its misdemeanor stolen property arrests;
- 51.8% of its violent crime suspects;
- 60.0% of its juvenile crime complaint arrests.
This is admittedly unfair to those blacks who are law-abiding citizens. But the fear factor will continue until crime rates among blacks start falling dramatically.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on May 19, 2022 at 12:10 am
On May 16, 2022, a white supremacist shot and murdered 10 people and wounded three others at the Tops Supermarket in Buffalo, New York.
Eleven victims were black; two were white.
The mass shooting has once again ignited calls for gun control and a national dialogue on race.
Undoubtedly the motivation for the killings was race. But the sensationalistic publicity given this crime obscures a brutal truth ignored by liberals—and blacks:
Blacks kill far more blacks than whites do. And blacks are responsible for a disproportionate portion of crimes.
Blacks make up 13% of the American population, according to the 2010 census of the United States.
But they committed 52% of homicides between 1980 and 2008, according to the Justice Department’s Bureau of Justice Statistics. Only 45% of whites were offenders in such cases.
Blacks were disproportionately likely to commit homicide and to be the victims.
In 2008 blacks were seven times more likely than whites to commit homicide. And they were six times more likely than whites to be homicide victims.
According to the FBI, blacks were responsible for 38% of murders, compared to 31.1% for whites, in 2013.
From 2011 to 2013, 38.5% of people arrested for murder, manslaughter, rape, robbery, and aggravated assault were black.
In 1971, Robert Daley, a reporter for the New York Times, became a deputy police commissioner for the New York Police Department (NYPD).
In that capacity, he saw the NYPD from the highest levels to the lowest—from the ornate, awe-inspiring office of Police Commissioner Patrick Murphy to the gritty, sometimes blood-soaked streets of New York.
He spent one year on the job before resigning—later admitting that when he agreed to take the job, he got more than he bargained for.
For the NYPD, 1972 proved to be a tumultuous year. Among those challenge faced were the murders of several police officers, committed by members of the militant Black Liberation Army.
Two of those murdered officers were Waverly Jones and Joseph Piagentini. Jones was black, Piagentini white; both were partners. Both were shot in the back without a chance to defend themselves.
Writing about these murders in a bestselling 1973 book—Target Blue: An Insider’s View of the N.Y.P.D.—Daley noted:
- Jones and Piagentini were the sixth and seventh policemen—of ten—murdered in 1971.
- About 18 men were involved in these murders. All were black.
- The city’s politicians knew this—and so did Commissioner Murphy. None dared say so publicly.
“But the fact remained,” wrote Daley, “that approximately 65% of the city’s arrested murderers, muggers, armed robbers, proved to be black men; about 15% were of Hispanic origin; and about 20% were white [my Italics].”
The overall racial breakdown of the city was approximately:
- Whites, 63%;
- Blacks, 20%;
- Hispanics 17%.
Stated another way: Blacks, who made up 20% of the city’s population, were responsible for 65% of the city’s major crimes.
Or, as Daley himself put it: “So the dangerous precincts, any cop would tell you, were the black precincts.”
That was 50 years ago.
Now, consider the following statistics released by the NYPD for “Crime and Enforcement Activity in New York City” in 2019:
Murder and Non-Negligent Manslaughter Victims
- Black (56.6%)
- Hispanic (31.2%)
- White (4.9%)
- Asian/Pacific Islander (6.9%)
Murder and Non-Negligent Manslaughter Suspects
- Black (62.4%)
- Hispanic (30.8%)
- White (3.0%)
- Asian/Pacific Islander (3.8%)
Murder and Non-Negligent Manslaughter Arrestees
- Black 58.0%
- Hispanic 35.2%
- White 3.3%
- Asian/Pacific Islander 3.0%
Rape Victims
Rape Suspects
- Black 46.5%)
- Hispanic (34.8%)
- White (10.8%)
- Asian/Pacific Islander (7.3%)
Rape Arrestees
- Black (40.7%)
- Hispanic (45.4%
- )White (6.7%)
- Asian/Pacific Islander (7.0%)
NYPD Headquarters at One Police Plaza
Other Felony Sex Crimes Victims
- Black (33.8%)
- Hispanic (37.3%)
- White (21.3%)
- Asian/Pacific Islander (7.0%)
Other Felony Sex Crime Suspects
- Black (41.6%)
- Hispanic (37.5%)
- White (12.9%)
- Asian/Pacific Islander (7.3%)
Other Felony Sex Crime Arrestees
- Black (34.6%)
- Hispanic (47.4%)
- White (11.3%)
- Asian /Pacific Islander (6.4%)
Robbery Victims
Robbery Suspects
- Black (66.2%
- Hispanic (27.1%)
- White (4.3%)
- Asian/Pacific islander (2.3%)
Robbery Arrestees
- Black (59.4%)
- Hispanic (32.2%)
- White (5.2%)
- Asian/Pacific Islander (3.2%)
NYPD officers
Nick.Allen, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
Misdemeanor Assault Victims
Misdemeanor Assault Suspects
Misdemeanor Assault Arrestees
Felonious Assault Victims
Felonious Assault Suspects
- Black (53.4%)
- Hispanic (32.6%)
- White (7.9%)
- Asian/Pacific Islanders (5.8%)
Felonious Assault Arrestees
- Black (51. 8%)
- Hispanic (33.1%)
- White (8.3%)
- Asian/Pacific Islanders (6.4%)
Grand Larceny Victims
- Black (24.4%)
- Hispanic (23.0%)
- White (35.9%)
- Asian/Pacific Islanders (15.7%)
Grand Larceny Suspects
- Black (50.5%)
- Hispanic (23.5%)
- White (11.7%)
- Asian/Pacific Islanders (3.9%)
Grand Larceny Arrestees
- Black (51.7%)
- Hispanic (28.5%)
- White (13.7%)
- Asian/Pacific Islanders (6.0%)
Firearm Arrest Population
Shooting Victims
Shooting Suspects
- Black (74.4%)
- Hispanic (22.0%)
- White (2.4%)
- Asian/Pacific Islander (1.1%)
Shooting Arrestees
- Black (71.6%)
- Hispanic (24.1%)
- White (2.7%)
- Asian/Pacific Islander (1.5%)
Drug Felony Arrest Population
- Black (45.0%)
- Hispanic (40.2%)
- White (9.7%)
- Asian Pacific Islanders (4.9%)
Drug Misdemeanor Arrestees
- Black (48.5%)
- Hispanic (35.3%)
- White (12.5%)
- Asian Pacific Islanders (3.6%)
Misdemeanor Sex Crime Victims
- Black (35.5%)
- Hispanic (36.7%)
- White (18.6%)
- Asian/Pacific Islanders (8.6%)
Misdemeanor Sex Crime Suspects
- Black (42.4%)
- Hispanic (34.2%)
- White (14.0%)
- Asian/Pacific Islanders (8.7%)
Misdemeanor Sex Crime Arrestees
- Black (52.5%)
- Hispanic (28.9%)
- White (14.5%)
- Asian/Pacific Islanders (4.0%)
Misdemeanor Stolen Property Arrest Population
- Black (45.9%)
- Hispanic (31.9%)
- White (16.8%)
- Asian/Pacific Islanders (5.1%)
Felony Stolen Property Arrest Population
- Black (54.7%)
- Hispanic (28.6%)
- White (11.5%)
- Asian/Pacific Islanders (5.0%)
Petit Larceny Victims
- Black (31.6%)
- Hispanic (29.9%)
- White (28.8%)
- Asian/Pacific Islanders (12.7%)
Petit Larceny Suspects
- Black (53.8%)
- Hispanic (26.8%)
- White (15.7%)
- Asian/Pacific Islanders (3.3%)
Petit Larceny Arrestees
- Black (44.7%)
- Hispanic (32.5%)
- White (17.9%)
- Asian/Pacific Islanders (3.3%)
Misdemeanor Criminal Mischief Victims
- Black (38.5%)
- Hispanic (29.8%)
- White (19.5%)
- Asian/Pacific Islanders (11.2%)
Misdemeanor Criminal Mischief Suspects
Misdemeanor Criminal Mischief Arrestees
Reported Crime Complaint Juvenile Victims
Juvenile Crime Complaint Suspects
Juvenile Arrest Population
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Military, Politics, Social commentary on April 21, 2022 at 12:10 am
Next hero: Marie Yovanovitch, the former United States ambassador to Ukraine (2016 – 2019). She had joined the Foreign Service in 1986, and served as ambassador to Kyrgyzstan (2005 – 2008) and Armenia (2008 – 2011).
In May 2019, on President Donald Trump’s orders, the State Department recalled Yovanovitch as ambassador to Ukraine. She had earned respect from the national security community for her efforts to encourage Ukraine to tackle corruption.
But she had been criticized by Right-wing media outlets—notably Fox News Network-–and by Trump’s personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani.
Marie Yovanovitch
CNN reported that Yovanovitch stopped Giuliani from interviewing witnesses in his search for politically damaging information against former Vice President Joe Biden, whose son, Hunter, had had business dealings in Ukraine.
On October 11, 2019, she appeared before the House Intelligence Committee, chaired by Representative Adam Schiff (D-CA). She did so in defiance of orders by the White House and State Department to not attend.
“She was a hero even before she hit the hearing room,” wrote Charles Pierce for Esquire magazine.
“She told them to stuff their directives, she would answer a congressional subpoena like a citizen is supposed to do. And she didn’t sneak in through the basement. She walked into the Capitol through the front doors, and she didn’t do so to fck around.”
Testifying for nearly 10 hours, Yovanovitch said that Trump had removed her from her post owing to “unfounded and false claims” and “a concerted campaign against me.”
She believed that associates of Trump’s personal lawyer, Giuliani, might have thought “that their personal financial ambitions were stymied by our anti-corruption policy in Ukraine.”
And she warned that the State Department was being “attacked and hollowed out from within. State Department leadership, with Congress, needs to take action now to defend this great institution, and its thousands of loyal and effective employees.”
Another victim on Trump’s hate-list was Chis Krebs.
During the 2016 Presidential race, Russian propaganda had played a major role in convincing millions of Americans to vote for Donald Trump. Social media platforms—especially Facebook and Twitter—were flooded with genuinely fake news to sow discord among Americans and create a pathway for Trump’s election.
And where Internet trolls left off, Russian computer hackers took over.
Trump didn’t win a majority of the popular vote. But he got enough help from Russian President Vladimir Putin to triumph in the Electoral College.
So notorious was the role played by Russian trolls and hackers in winning Trump the 2016 election that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) was determined to prevent a repetition in 2020.
And point man for this was Chris Krebs.
Born in Atlanta, Georgia, in 1977, Krebs had received a B.A. in environmental sciences from the University of Virginia in 1999, and a J.D. from the George Mason University School of Law in 2007.
Chris Krebs
Krebs had served as Senior Advisor to the Assistant Secretary of Homeland Security for Infrastructure Protection, and later worked in the private sector as Director for Cybersecurity Policy for Microsoft.
Now he was director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency at DHS.
In preparation for the 2020 Presidential election, Krebs launched a massive effort to counter lies spread by Russians—and Americans—on social media platforms. Among his duties:
- Sharing Intelligence from agencies such as the CIA and National Security Agency with local officials about foreign efforts at election interference.
- Ensuring that domestic voting equipment was secure.
- Attacking domestic misinformation head-on.
As a result, Krebs was widely praised for revamping the department’s cybersecurity efforts and increasing coordination with state and local governments.
By all accounts—except Trump’s—the November 3, 2020 election went very smoothly.
As a result of the vast increase in election security, Trump not only failed to win the popular vote again but couldn’t get the help he expected from Putin.
On November 17, Trump fired Chris Krebs.
The reason: Krebs had not only countered Russian propaganda lies—he had dared to counter Trump’s as well. For example: He rejected Trump’s claims of widespread voter fraud: There “is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised.”
In a November 17 story on the CNN website, CNN reporters Kaitlan Collins and Paul LeBlanc bluntly concluded:
“[Krebs’] dismissal underscores the lengths Trump is willing to go to punish those who don’t adopt his conspiratorial view of the election.
“Since CNN and other outlets called the race for President-elect Joe Biden, Trump has refused to accept the results, instead pushing baseless conspiracies that his second term is being stolen.”
Yet, by depriving Trump of Russian help, Krebs ensured a victory for democracy.
On January 6, the House and Senate counted the Electoral Votes—and pronounced Joseph Biden the winner—bringing an end to Trump’s reign of criminality and treason.
In his 1960 poem, “Conversation With an American Writer,” the Russian poet, Yevgeney Yevtushenko spoke for those Russians who had maintained their integrity in the face of Stalinist terror:
“You have courage,” they tell me.
It’s not true. I was never courageous.
I simply felt it unbecoming
to stoop to the cowardice of my colleagues.
Unfortunately, the same cannot be said of Republicans in the United States Senate and House of Representatives in the face of Trump terror.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Military, Politics, Social commentary on April 20, 2022 at 12:10 am
Next up: Nikolai Sergeyvich Zhilayev (pronounced Zill-lay-ev) was a Russian musicologist and the teacher of several 20th-century Russian composers.
Among these: Dimitri Shostakovich (September 25, 1906 – August 9, 1975)
Among his friends—to his ultimate misfortune—was Mikhail Nikolayevich Tukhachevsky, the former military hero now falsely condemned and executed as a traitor by Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin.
In 1938, Zhilayev (November 18, 1881 – January 20, 1938) also became a casualty of what has become known as The Great Terror.
In his posthumously-published memoirs, Testimony, Shostakovich, his pupil and friend, described how Zhilayev faced his end with a calmness that awed even the NKVD (the predecessor to the KGB) secret police sent to arrest him.
Dimitri Shostakovich
“He had a large picture of Tukhachevsky in his room, and after the announcement that Tukhachevsky had been shot as a traitor to the homeland, Zhilayev did not take the picture down.
“I don’t know if I can explain how heroic a deed that was….As soon as the next poor soul was declared an enemy of the people, everyone destroyed in a panic everything connected with that person….
“And naturally, photographs flew into the fire first, because if someone informed on you, reported that you had a picture of an enemy of the people, it meant certain death.
“Zhilayev wasn’t afraid. When they came for him, Tukhachevsky’s prominently hung portrait amazed even the executioners.”
“What, it’s still up?” one of the secret police asked.
“The time will come,” Zhilayev replied, “when they’ll erect a monument to him.”
As, in fact, has happened.
Meanwhile, Stalin has been universally condemned as one of history’s greatest tyrants.
Third hero—Brett Crozier, the former commanding officer of the aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt.
Graduating from the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis in 1992, he received his Master’s Degree in National Security and Strategic Studies from the Naval War College in 2007.
From 2017 to 2018 he commanded the USS Blue Ridge. In November, 2019, he was given command of the nuclear aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt.
On March 24, 2020, reports circulated that three members of the crew had tested positive for COVID-19. The next day the number of stricken sailors increased to eight. A few days later, it was “dozens.” The sailors reportedly became ill at sea, two weeks after a port call at Danang, Vietnam.
The initial cases were airlifted to a military hospital. The Roosevelt was ordered to Guam. After the ship docked on March 27, 2020, all 5,000 aboard were ordered to be tested for the virus. But only about 100 stricken sailors were allowed to leave the ship. The rest remained on board.
On March 30, Crozier emailed a four-page internal letter to multiple Naval officials, pleading to have the majority of the crew evacuated and quarantined on shore. Given the crowded sleeping quarters and narrow passageways of the vessel, Crozier wrote that it was impossible to follow social distancing and quarantine procedures:
“This will require a political solution but it is the right thing to do. We are not at war. Sailors do not need to die. If we do not act now, we are failing to properly take care of our most trusted asset—our Sailors….
“This is a necessary risk. Keeping over 4,000 young men and women on board the TR is an unnecessary risk and breaks faith with those Sailors entrusted to our care.”
Brett Crozier
Crozier sent his letter via a non-secure, unclassified email to 20 to 30 recipients, as well as the captain’s immediate chain of command. He reportedly believed that his immediate supervisor would not allow him to send it.
And his superior later confirmed that he would not have allowed Crozier to send it.
On March 31, someone leaked the letter to the San Francisco Chronicle, which published it.
On April 1, the Navy ordered the aircraft carrier evacuated. A skeleton crew of 400 remained aboard to maintain the nuclear reactor, the fire-fighting equipment, and the ship’s galley.
On April 2, Crozier was relieved of command by acting United States Secretary of the Navy Thomas Modly.
By that time, about 114 crew members—out of a total of around 4,000—reportedly tested positive for COVID-19.
As Crozier disembarked, sailors loudly saluted him with a standing ovation: “Cap-tain Cro-zier!”
Modly claimed that Crozier’s letter “raised alarm bells unnecessarily. It undermines our efforts and the chain of command’s efforts to address this problem, and creates a panic and this perception that the Navy’s not on the job, that the government’s not on the job, and it’s just not true.”
Actually, the Trump administration had frittered away January and February, with President Donald Trump giving multiple—and misleading—press conferences. In these, he played down the dangers of COVID-19, saying that “we’re on top of it”—even as the virus spread across the country.
“It was a betrayal. And I can tell you one other thing: because he did that he put it in the public’s forum and it is now a big controversy in Washington, DC,” continued Modly. [Italics added]
This was the United States Navy under Donald Trump—who threw “betrayal” and “treason” at anyone who dared reveal the truth about institutional crimes and failures.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Military, Politics, Social commentary on April 19, 2022 at 12:17 am
…A truly great man is ever the same under all circumstances. And if his fortune varies, exalting him at one moment and oppressing him at another, he himself never varies, but always preserves a firm courage, which is so closely interwoven with his character that everyone can readily see that the fickleness of fortune has no power over him.
The conduct of weak men is very different. Made vain and intoxicated by good fortune, they attribute their success to merits which they do not possess. And this makes them odious and insupportable to all around them. And when they have afterwards to meet a reverse of fortune, they quickly fall into the other extreme, and become abject and vile.
—Niccolo Machiavelli, The Discourses
Four heroes, three villains.
Two of the heroes are Russians; three are Americans.
The villains: One Russian (actually, Georgian); two American.
First up—in order of disappearance: Mikhail Nikolayevich Tukhachevsky (pronounced too-ka-chev-sky).
Tukhachevsky (February 4, 1893 – June 12, 1937) was a major Soviet military leader and theoretician from 1918 to 1937.
He commanded the Soviet Western Front during the Russian-Polish War (1920-21) and served as Chief of Staff of the Red Army (1925-1928).
He fought to modernize Soviet armament, as well as develop airborne, aviation and mechanized forces. Almost singlehandedly, he created the theory of deep operations for Soviet forces.
Mikhail Tukhachevsky
All of these innovations would reap huge dividends when the Soviet Union faced the lethal fury of Adolf Hitler’s Wehrmacht.
In 1936, Tukhachevsky warned Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin that Nazi Germany might attack without warning—and ignite a long and murderous war.
Stalin—the son of a Georgian cobbler—resented Tukhachevsky’s coming from a noble family. A monumental egomaniac, he also hated that Tukhachevesky’s fame rivaled his own.
Warned of the approaching German danger, Stalin shouted: “What are you trying to do—frighten Soviet authority?”
Joseph Stalin
The attack that Tukhachevsky warned against came five years later—on June 22, 1941, leaving at least 26 million Russians dead.
But Tukhachevsky wasn’t alive to command a defense.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Within hours of the verdict, Tukhachevsky was summoned from his cell and shot once in the back of the head.
From 1937 until 1956, Tukhachevsky was officially declared a traitor and fifth-columnist.
Then, on February 25, 1957, Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev delivered his bombshell “Secret Speech” to the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
In this, he denounced Stalin (who had died in 1953) as a ruthless tyrant responsible for the slaughter of millions of innocent men, women and children. He condemned Stalin for creating a “personality cult” around himself, and for so weakening the Red Army that Nazi Germany was able to easily overrun half of the Soviet Union from 1941 to 1943.
On January 31, 1957, Tukhachevsky and his co-defendants were declared innocent of all charges and were “rehabilitated.”
Today, he is once again—rightly—considered a Russian hero and military genius. And Stalin is universally—and rightly—seen as a blood-stained tyrant.
Postage stamp honoring Mikhail Tukhachevsky
Next hero: Nikolai Sergeyvich Zhilayev (pronounced Zill-lay-ev)
Zhilayev (November 18, 1881 – January 20, 1938) was a Russian musicologist and the teacher of several 20th-century Russian composers. Among these: Dimitri Shostakovich.
Zhilayev, a member of the Russian Academy of Art-Sciences, taught at the Moscow Conservatory. Among his friends—to his ultimate misfortune—was Mikhail Tukhachevsky.
In 1938, he, too, became a casualty of what has become known as The Great Terror.
In his posthumously-published memoirs, Testimony, Shostakovich, his pupil and friend, described how Zhilayev faced his end with a calmness that awed even the NKVD secret police sent to arrest him.
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VIRUS AND VIOLENCE
In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Medical, Politics, Social commentary on August 2, 2022 at 12:30 amOn July 23, 2021, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene found something to celebrate in Alabama.
Alabama had the lowest COVID-19 vaccination rate of any state in the nation.
Days later, Alabama’s health leader said officials had tossed out more than 65,000 coronavirus vaccines that expired. They had expired due to low demand.
And that low demand had resulted from Right-wingers’ politicization of the virus.
But that wasn’t enough to satisfy Greene.
Marjorie Taylor Greene
“Well, what they don’t know is that in the South we all love our Second Amendment rights. And we’re not real big on strangers showing up at our front door, are we? They might not like the welcome they get.”
In short: People should shoot volunteers promoting coronavirus vaccines through door-to-door outreach.
Her audience—at the Alabama Federation of Republican Women fundraiser—applauded and laughed at the idea of such murders.
Naturally, through her spokesman, Nick Dyer, Greene denied that she suggested people shoot those promoting vaccines.
“Your colleagues in the fake news are making things up and attributing things to her that she did not say,” he wrote in an email.
This despite the fact that Greene’s words had been captured in a video—and countless people had seen it after it was shared on the Internet.
When asked if Greene herself was vaccinated, Dyer refused to answer.
“It really gets at the heart of the public’s trust in our government and the messaging around solid public health measures based on the science,” said Lori Tremmel Freeman, CEO of the National Association of County and City Health Officials.
“Our local health officials who are working on the ground are not political. They are completely apolitical,” she told CNN.
She added that Greene’s comments were “disheartening and distressing.”
“Outrageous and violence-encouraging” would have been a more accurate description.
Greene’s comments demonstrate the twin pillars of Right-wing orthodoxy toward COVID-19:
Donald Trump, as President, vividly personified both.
The apex of his embrace of violence came on January 6, 2021, when he refused to permit an orderly transition from one administration to another.
Instead, he incited a mob of his fanatical followers to attack members of Congress who were about to count the Electoral College votes cast for the 2020 Presidential election.
Donald Trump addresses his Stormtrumpers
Trump had lost that election: 81,255,933 votes had gone to former Vice President Joseph Biden, as opposed to 74,196,153 votes for himself.
Yet even before embracing that final grotesque moment of infamy, Trump had been responsible for the deaths of 400,000 Americans.
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
Early on, Trump made the virus a referendum on himself. If you supported him, you didn’t wear a mask when you ventured out in public. This despite the fact that, throughout 2020, there was no vaccine available and hospitals were rapidly overwhelmed by debilitated and dying casualties of the virus.
“I think, once Donald Trump and other Republicans made it a manhood issue, or a freedom issue, or whatever kind of issue they made it, it’s hard to walk back that culture war signal,” said conservative New York Times columnist David Brooks on the PBS Newshour on July 23, 2021.
Washington Post Columnist Jonathan Capehart echoed him: “I think, 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.”
Jonathan Capehart
But neither Trump nor the Republican party urged Americans to “wash your hands, put on a mask, then go get the vaccine.”
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 – July 21, 2021
George Karabassis, CC BY 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
Many of those who had gotten one shot of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines refused to get the necessary second one. These must be given almost a month apart.
(The Johnson & Johnson vaccine requires only one shot.)
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.
By July 27, 2022, there were 90.8 million COVID-19 cases in the United States—and 1.03 million deaths.
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