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SEVEN MYTHS AND THE STUPIDS WHO BELIEVE THEM: PART TWO (END)

In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on May 17, 2024 at 12:10 am

Americans live by a series of myths—myths they would be the wiser to abandon. Some are embraced by liberals, others by conservatives, and still others by both.   

Myth 4: Americans are knowledgeable about their own history—and that of other nations. 

Americans’ ignorance of  history—their own and that of other nations—has long been a scandal.

  • A 2018 national survey by the Institute for Citizens & Scholars found that only one in three Americans (36%) can actually pass a multiple choice test consisting of items taken from the U.S. Citizenship Test.
  • More than half of respondents (60%) didn’t know which countries the United States fought in World War II (Germany, Italy and Japan).
  • Only 24% correctly identified one thing Benjamin Franklin was famous for; 37% believed he invented the lightbulb (that inventor was Thomas Edison).
  • Twelve percent incorrectly thought WWII General Dwight Eisenhower led troops in the Civil War; six percent thought he was a Vietnam War general. 

dunce cap meme - xite-salon.com

if Americans are flagrantly ignorant of their own history, they are even worse at the history of other countries. 

A major reason for this lies in Americans’ belief that other nations aren’t worth bothering about except when they threaten us. During the Vietnam war, soldiers referred to the United States as “The World”—as if the rest of the planet didn’t exist. 

Americans, protected from Europe by the Atlantic Ocean and the Far East by the Pacific Ocean, allowed geography to isolate themselves from the messiness of the rest of the world. 

Donald Trump, as President, gave a frightening example of this during a conversation with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi: “It’s not like you’ve got China on your border.” In fact, India does share a border with China. 

Myth 5: The “Bible Belt” (the Deep South) is the spiritual capitol of America.

You won’t find these truths on “Green Acres” or “The Andy Griffith Show” but they form a stain on rural America that can’t be ignored:

  • A 2015 study published in the Archives of Sexual Behavior found that religious conservatives search more for online pornography on Google than anyone else. 
  • Educational attainment and college graduation rates in the Bible Belt are among the lowest in the nation.
  • Smoking rates are high in West Virginia, Kentucky, Arkansas, Tennessee, Louisiana, and Mississippi—and so are rates for smoking-related diseases and deaths.
  • Heart disease, obesity, homicide and teenage pregnancies are among the highest in the nation.     

Myth 6: Americans are health-conscious. 

The United States is experiencing an epidemic of drug overdose deaths. In 2020, the age-adjusted rate of drug overdose deaths increased 31% compared to 2019.

Adults aged 35-44 experienced the highest rates of drug overdose deaths while young people aged 15-24 experienced the greatest percentage increase in deaths.

Tombstones Pictures | Download Free Images on Unsplash

In 2019:

  • 12 million Americans 12 or older used marijuana 
  • 9.1 million Americans used tobacco 
  • 14.5 million Americans aged 12 or older used alcohol 
  • 9.7 million people misused pain relievers
  • 6 million people misused hallucinogens
  • 5.9 million people misused depressants
  • 5.5 million people misused cocaine
  • 4.9 million people misused prescription stimulants
  • 2.1 million people misused inhalants  
  • 2 million people used meth
  • 745,000 Americans used heroin      

Myth 7: Americans only support democratic regimes.  

The United States has long supported foreign dictators—so long as they’re reliably Right-wing.

  • Between 1898 and 1934, the United States repeatedly intervened with military force in Central America and the Caribbean. 
  • The United States occupied Nicaragua almost continuously from 1912 to 1933. Its legacy was the imposition of the tyrannical Somoza family, which ruled from 1936 to 1979. 
  • In 1953, the Eisenhower administration ordered the CIA to overthrew the democratically-elected government of of Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh. His crime: Nationalizing the Iranian oil industry, which had been under British control since 1913. 

Central Intelligence Agency to make Instagram debut - Weekly Voice

  • He was succeeded by Mohammad-Reza Shah Phlavi, a dictator who depended on United States government support to retain power until he was overthrown in 1979 by the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.
  • In 1954, the CIA overthrew the democratically-elected government of Guatemalan President Jacobo Arbenz. His crime: Installing a series of reforms that expanded the right to vote, allowed workers to organize, legitimized political parties and allowed public debate. 
  • In 1970, President Richard M. Nixon ordered the CIA to prevent Marxist Salvador Allende from being democratically elected as president of Chile. When that failed, he ordered the CIA to overthrow Allende.
  • His  crime: A series of liberal reforms, including nationalizing large-scale industries (notably copper mining and banking). 
  • in 1973, he was overthrown by Chilean army units and national police. He was followed by Right-wing dictator Augusto Pinochet, who slaughtered 3,200 political dissidents, imprisoned 30,000 and forced another 200,000 Chileans into exile. 

* * * * * * * * * *

Behind these myths: The belief in “American exceptionalism”—that the United States is unlike other nations in its innocence and steadfast dedication to human rights above all else.

Wrote Christian G. Appy, in his 2015 book, American Reckoning: The  Vietnam War and Our National Identity:

“It was still unimaginable to most Americans that their own nation would wage aggressive war and justify it with unfounded claims, that it would support undemocratic governments reviled by their own people, and that American troops would be sent to fight in countries where they were widely regarded not as liberators but as imperialist invaders.”

For millions, that belief died a horrific death during the Vietnam war. Yet so long as millions remain convinced that America is guided by God and that its people are His faithful servants, these myths will remain vividly alive. 

SEVEN MYTHS AND THE STUPIDS WHO BELIEVE THEM: PART ONE (OF TWO)

In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on May 16, 2024 at 1:33 am

“The great enemy of truth is very often not the lie—deliberate, contrived and dishonest—but the myth, persistent, persuasive and unrealistic. Too often we hold fast to the clichés of our forebears. We subject all facts to a prefabricated set of interpretations. We enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought.”   

—John F. Kennedy 

Americans live by a series of myths—myths they would be the wiser to abandon. Some are embraced by liberals, others by conservatives, and still others by both.

Myth 1: Americans are highly educated.

According to the 2020 U.S. Census:

  • In 2022, the highest level of education of the population age 25 and older in the United States ranged from less than high school to advanced degrees beyond a bachelor’s degree.
  • 9% had less than a high school diploma or equivalent;
  • 28% had high school as their highest level of school completed;
  • 15% had completed some college but didn’t have a degree;
  • 10% had an associate degree;
  • 23% had a bachelor’s degree;
  • 14% had completed advanced education such as a master’s degree, professional degree or doctorate.

Myth 2: Rural America is the repository of old-fashioned virtues.

Years of “hayseed” comedies such as “The Beverly Hillbillies,” “The Real McCoys,” “Green Acres” and “Petticoat Junction” convinced millions of Americans: If you want to find the “real” America, move to rural America. 

If rural America is where you’ll find the “real” Americans, the future of the United States lies in peril. 

Marshall County, Indiana

Derek Jensen (Tysto), CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0&gt;, via Wikimedia Commons

  • Rural Americans overwhelmingly support Donald Trump—who refused to accept defeat in a legitimate Presidential election, schemed to overturn the voters’ decision, and finally incited an attack on Congress to illegally remain in office.
  • Rural America is home to fundamentalist Christians, who demand an end to legalized abortion and birth control—and thus hope to gain dictatorial control over women’s lives. They brand pro-choice Democrats as “baby killers.” 
  • During the 2020 Presidential election, Joe Biden won 91 of the nation’s 100 largest counties, but hardly anywhere else. 
  • Trump won about five times as many counties. Democrats are thriving in major metropolitan areas, but tanking elsewhere.
  • Rather than being a Garden of Eden, rural America shares many big-city ills, such as crime, opioid addiction and a decline in life expectancy.
  • Nearly all of the economic growth that occurred between the Great Recession and the start of the pandemic happened in a small number of metropolitan areas, making rural residents feel that the recession had never ended.

Little Falls Police Warning Public After Suspected Heroin Overdoses - YouTube

  • Rural Americans refuse to abandon industries that are now dying out—such as in coal mining and steel.
  • Trump promised—falsely—to bring those jobs back. Rural voters have forgiven him for this because he delivered on cultural issues—such as appointing anti-abortion Justices to the Supreme Court who overturned Roe v. Wade
  • Nearly half (46.7 percent) of all people living in rural areas are in the South. For a century following the Civil War (1861-1865) the South was accurately known as a Democratic stronghold. But that changed after Democratic President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the 1964 Civil Rights Act into law.
  • In short: When Democrats went from suppressing black rights to protecting them, the great mass of white, racist rural Southerners moved to the Republican party.

Myth 3: Most Americans take a vital interest in politics.

Most Americans are dismayingly ignorant of politics at all levels—local, state and federal.

  • The attempted coup of January 6, 2021, was largely fueled by ignorance. The rioters believed that Donald Trump was the real winner of the 2020 election, and that Joe Biden had “stolen” it through fraud.
  • They clung to this belief, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, including numerous court decisions rejecting GOP claims of fraud, many of them authored by conservative, Republican-appointed judges.
  • And this ignorance continues: A large majority of rural Republicans still believe that Biden is an illegitimate President—just 21% say that he “probably” or “definitely” won. 

Donald Trump

  • Most Americans don’t know the names of their state and federal representatives or even the names of the three branches of government.
  • Only one third of Americans can name the three branches of our federal government: executive, legislative, judicial.  
  • Most voters overestimate the percentage of the federal budget spends on foreign aid (actually, about 1%). Yet they underestimate the amount going to entitlement programs, such as Medicare and Social Security. As a result, they believe we can solve our fiscal problems without either cutting entitlements or raising taxes on the vast majority of Americans.  
  • Voters also often reward or punish elected officials for events they did not cause, such as short-term economic trends or droughts.

Such ignorance makes people more susceptible to lies and conspiracy theories, including those about the 2020 election. 

Myth 4: Americans take pride in their history. 

Americans’ ignorance of history—their own and that of other nations—has long been a scandal.

  • A 2018 national survey by the Institute for Citizens & Scholars found that only one in three Americans (36%) can actually pass a multiple choice test consisting of items taken from the U.S. Citizenship Test.
  • More than half of respondents (60%) didn’t know which countries the United States fought in World War II (Germany, Italy and Japan).

STANDING UP TO TYRANTS: PART THREE (END)

In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on May 15, 2024 at 12:14 am

On September 2, 1964, the FBI launched a full-blown counterintelligence program against the Ku Klux 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.

“When the Klan reached 14,000 in the mid-sixties, I asked to take over the investigation of the Klan,” recalled William C. Sullivan, who headed the FBI’s Domestic Intelligence Division in the 1960s. “When I left the Bureau in 1971, the Klan was down to a completely disorganized 4,300. It was broken.”

William C. Sullivan

According to Neil J. Welch, the retired Special Agent in Charge (SAC) of the FBI’s Buffalo, New York office:

“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.” 

A similar effort, focusing on Right-wing terrorism, could include the following:

  • The FBI’s designating Right-wing political and terrorist groups as the Nation’s #1 enemy.  
  • Reviving the FBI’s legendary COINTELPRO (“Counterintelligence Program”) that destroyed the Ku Klux Klan in the late 1960s. Among the methods that can be used:  
  • Turning the Bureau’s powerful arsenal—bugs, wiretaps, informants, SWAT teams—on them.
  • Buying the cooperation of informants within Right-wing organizations.
  • Conducting “black bag jobs” to steal membership lists of of Right-wing organizations.
  • Breaking up the marriages of prominent Right-wingers by circulating rumors of their infidelity among their wives.
  • Informing the employers of known Right-wing terrorists of their employees’ criminal activity, resulting in the firing of untold numbers of them.
  • Contacting the news media to publicize the arrests of prominent Right-wing leaders.
  • When Right-wing terrorists target Federal law enforcement agents and/or their families for harassment or worse, they can be targeted for similar intimidation or removal.

FBI SWAT Team Training - YouTubeFBI — Tools of the Trade: FBI SWAT (Text Version)

FBI SWAT member

A revised COINTELPRO could be supplemented by the following: 

  • Creating tip hotlines for reporting illegal Right-wing activities—and offering rewards for information that leads to arrests.
  • Prosecuting militia groups for violating Federal firearms laws. 
  • Treating calls for the murder of members of Congress—as Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene has done-–as felonies punishable by lengthy imprisonment.
  • Prosecuting Right-wing leaders involved in the treasonous assault on the United States Capitol Building.
  • Prosecuting as “accessories to treason” all those Republican members of Congress who stoked Right-wing anger by lying that the 2020 Presidential election had been stolen from Donald Trump, although every objective news source proved he had lost.
  • Directing the Treasury Department’s Terrorist Finance Tracking Program (TFTP) at fundamentalist Christian churches that finance Right-wing terrorism—just as it halts the financing of Islamic terrorist groups by Islamic organizations.

Related image

  • Using drones, planes and/or helicopters to provide security against similar Right-wing terror demonstrations—especially in Washington, D.C.
  • Using the Federal Communications Commission to ban Fox News—the Nation’s #1 Right-wing propaganda network—from representing itself as a legitimate news network, and requiring that its stories carry labels warning viewers: “This is Right-wing propaganda, NOT news.”
  • Encouraging victims of Right-wing hate-speech to file libel/slander lawsuits against their abusers—such as the parents of murdered children at Sandy Hook Elementary School successfully did against Alex Jones. 
  • Using Federal anti-terrorist laws to arrest, prosecute and imprison Right-wingers who openly carry firearms and threaten violence, even if states allow such display of firearms. 
  • Seizing the assets of individuals and organizations found guilty of Right-wing terrorism offenses. 

When you are constantly looking over your shoulder, your enemies are winning. When your enemies are constantly looking over their shoulder, you are winning.

STANDING UP TO TYRANTS: PART TWO (OF THREE)

In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on May 14, 2024 at 12:10 am

Donald Trump’s followers are doing what even the Mafia has never dared: Threatening the lives of FBI agents and openly challenging the authority of the Justice Department. 

On August 8, 2022, the FBI, under a search warrant issued by the Justice Department, seized 11 sets of classified documents from the former President’s home at Mar-a-Lago. These included four sets that were classified as “top secret,” according to the unsealed search warrant.

Since then, Trump’s legions of fanatical Right-wing followers have vented their fury at a wide range of their self-declared enemies: President Joe Biden, Democrats, Attorney General Merrick Garland, the Justice Department—-and especially the FBI.

On August 12, 2022, the FBI and Department of Homeland Security [DHS] issued a joint Intelligence bulletin warning of the increased threats aimed at federal law enforcement agencies.

Federal Bureau of Investigation's seal

FBI seal

“Since 8 August 2022, the FBI and DHS have identified multiple articulated threats and calls for the targeted killing of judicial, law enforcement, and government officials associated with the Palm Beach search, including the federal judge who approved the Palm Beach search warrant.

“The FBI and DHS have also observed the personal identifying information of possible targets of violence, such as home addresses and identification of family members, disseminated online as additional targets.”

“These threats are occurring primarily online and across multiple platforms, including social media sites, web forums, video sharing platforms, and image boards. The FBI and DHS would like to ensure that law enforcement, court, and government personnel are aware of the range of threats and criminal and violent incidents.  

“The FBI and DHS have observed an increase in violent threats posted on social media against federal officials and facilities, including a threat to place a so-called dirty bomb in front of FBI Headquarters and issuing general calls for ‘civil war’ and ‘armed rebellion.'”

Even the Mafia—with one or two exceptions—has never threatened the lives of FBI agents. And when individual mobsters did, they found the consequences frightening.

In  April, 1963, four New York mobsters knocked FBI agent John Foley to the ground, and then severely beat and kicked him.  Foley had been conducting surveillance at the Brooklyn funeral of Carmine “The Doctor” Lombardozzi, a capo in the Gambino Mafia Family. 

The FBI retaliated by launching an all-out war against the Gambinos. Agents leaned on the cartel’s boss, underboss, counselor and lieutenants. The Bureau also intensified the use of illegal electronic surveillance (wiretaps and hidden microphones) against the mobsters.

American Mafia - Wikipedia

Map of Mafia families

Angelo Bruno, the boss of the Philadelphia crime syndicate, unwittingly informed a hidden microphone about how the FBI brutally drove home the message to “boss of all bosses” Carlo Gambino: 

BRUNO: “They [the FBI] went to Carlo and named all his capos [lieutenants] to him. The FBI asked him: “Did you change the laws in your family, that you could hit FBI men, punch and kick them? Well, this is the test—that if you change the laws, and now you are going to hit FBI men, every time we pick up one of your people we are going to break their heads for them.’

“And, really, they picked up our guy, they almost killed him, the FBI. They don’t do that, you know. But they picked up one of his fellows and crippled him. They said, ‘This is an example. Now, the next time anyone lays a hand on an FBI man, that’s just a warning. There’s nothing else we have got to tell you.'”

Word traveled quickly through the nationwide organized crime network—and its leaders decreed there should be no further assaults on FBI agents.

The FBI may be gearing up to declare war on the radical Right. And it could be done the same way the FBI destroyed the Ku Klux Klan in the mid-1960s.

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.”

Related image

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.”

STANDING UP TO TYRANTS: PART ONE (OF THREE)

In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on May 13, 2024 at 1:22 am

After taking office as President, Donald Trump openly waged war on his own Justice Department—and especially its chief investigative agency, the FBI. 

Related image

FBI headquarters

Among his attacks on federal law enforcers:

  • Fired James Comey, the FBI director pursuing an investigation into Russia’s meddling in the 2016 Presidential race to ensure Trump’s election.     
  • Threatened to fire Independent Counsel Robert Mueller, who continued that investigation after he fired Comey.
  • Repeatedly attacked—verbally and on Twitter—his Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, for recusing himself from overseeing the Russia investigation.
  • (Sessions did so after the press revealed that, during the 2016 race, he twice met secretly with Russian Ambassador Sergei Kislyak.)
  • Repeatedly attacked the integrity of the FBI, raising the possibility of his firing more of its senior leadership for investigating his ties to Russian president Vladimir Putin.
  • Forced House Republicans to release a memo falsely accusing the FBI of pursuing a vendetta against him.

But the FBI could have refused to meekly accept such assaults.

A February 2, 2022 episode of the popular CBS police drama, “Blue Bloods,” offered a vivid lesson on bureaucratic self-defense against tyrants.

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A shootout erupts in a crowded pub between a gunman and NYPD officers. Results: One dead gunman and one wounded bystander.

Problem: The bystander is an aide to New York Governor Martin Mendez.

Mendez visits One Police Plaze, NYPD headquarters, for a private chat with Commissioner Frank Reagan (Tom Selleck). From the outset, he’s aggressive, rude and threatening.

MENDEZ:  I know you guys like to whitewash officer-involved shootings.

REAGAN: I do not.

MENDEZ: That’s not going to happen here. I want the cop who shot my guy fired and charged.

REAGAN: If the grand jury indicts, my officer could be terminated.

MENDEZ:  We all want to protect our people, but mine come first.

Governor Mendez leaves Commissioner Reagan’s office.  Later, he returns:

MENDEZ:  We’ve got a serious problem.

REAGAN:  Why? The grand jury declined to indict my officer.

MENDEZ: Your cop fired into a crowded room.

REAGAN: She returned fire, took out the shooter and likely saved lives.

MENDEZ: What are you going to do?

REAGAN: Our Internal Affairs investigation supports the grand jury’s finding, so the case is closed.

MENDEZ: Either you fire this cop, or I’ll order the Attorney General to investigate every questionable police shooting in the past 10 years and hold public hearings out loud and lights up.

REAGAN: Everybody loves a circus.

MENDEZ: Except the guy who’s got to shovel up afterwards.

At the end of the episode, a third—and final—meeting occurs in a restaurant between Reagan and Mendez.

MENDEZ: Have you dumped the cop who shot my guy?

REAGAN: No.

MENDEZ: Bad news.

REAGAN: Depends on what you compare it to. It turns out that your aide wasn’t drinking alone the night he was shot.

MENDEZ: So what? He’s single.

REAGAN: He was with a married woman.

MENDEZ: That’s on her, not on him.

REAGAN: Except she is married to his boss, your Chief of Staff.

MENDEZ: Sheesh!

REAGAN: Turns out this has been going on for over a year.

MENDEZ:  So what are we doing?

REAGAN:  If this gets out, the circus comes to Albany [where the governor has his office].

MENDEZ: Who else knows?

REAGAN:  Right now it’s safe in the notebook of my lead detective. Whether or not it finds its way into an arrest report that’s subject to a Freedom of Information Act request—that’s a judgment call.

MENDEZ: Your judgment?

REAGAN: Yes.

MENDEZ: And if my investigation goes away?

REAGAN: Neither of us is shoveling up after the circus.

MENDEZ: I have your word on that?

REAGAN: Yes.

MENDEZ: You have a good evening, Commissioner.

J. Edgar Hoover, the legendary FBI director, used Realpolitik to ensure his reign for 48 years.

J. Edgar Hoover

As William C. Sullivan, the onetime director of the FBI’s Domestic Intelligence Division, revealed after Hoover’s death in 1972:

“The moment [Hoover] would get something on a senator, he’d send one of the errand boys up and advise the senator that ‘we’re in the course of an investigation, and we by chance happened to come up with this data on your daughter.

“‘But we wanted you to know this. We realize you’d want to know it.’ Well, Jesus, what does that tell the senator? From that time on, the senator’s right in his pocket.”

Donald Trump has long pursued a strategy of intimidation. But when people have refused to be cowed by his threats, he’s backed off.

During the 2016 Presidential campaign, more than a dozen women accused Trump of sexual misconduct, ranging from inappropriate comments to assault.

Trump responded: “The events never happened. Never. All of these liars will be sued after the election is over.”

Yet he didn’t file a single slander suit.

Similarly, when New York’s Attorney General Eric Schneiderman sued Trump for running a fraudulent university, Trump initially said he would fight the charge.

Instead, he settled the case by paying $25 million to compensate the 3,700 students Trump University had defrauded.

“You never have to frame anyone,” says Governor Willie Stark in Robert Penn Warren’s Pulitzer Prize-winning 1946 novel, All the King’s Men. “Because the truth is always sufficient.”

MACHIAVELLI’S ADVICE TO ISREAL: BE FEARED, NOT DESPISED

In Bureaucracy, History, Politics, Social commentary on May 10, 2024 at 12:11 am

On October 7, 2023, about 2,500 Hamas terrorists launched coordinated attacks on Israeli outposts and settlements, firing over 5,000 rockets and burning houses.          

They killed over 1,139 people, of which 695 were civilians—including women, children and the elderly. They also kidnapped over 250 others—including 30 children—to Gaza.

Israel responded by declaring a state of war.

Almost nine years earlier—on November 18, 2014—a similar outrage had occurred in Jerusalem. 

Screaming “Allah akbar!”–the Islamic battle cry, “God is Great!”—two Palestinians wielding meat cleavers and a gun slaughtered five worshippers in a Jerusalem synagogue.

Three of the dead were Americans holding Israeli citizenship.  Four of them were rabbis.

Eight people were injured—and one later died—before the attackers were killed in a shootout with police.

 Aftermath of the attack on unarmed rabbis in a Jerusalem synagogue

The attack was the deadliest in Israel’s capital since 2008, when a Palestinian gunman shot eight people in a religious seminary school.

And how did Palestinians react to the grisly murders of five unarmed worshippers?

They celebrated:

  • Revelers in the Gazan city of Rafah handed out candy and brandished axes and posters of the suspects in praise of the deadly attack.
  • Hamas-affiliated social media circulated violent and anti-Semitic cartoons hailing the killings.
  • Students in Bethlehem joined in the festivities by sharing candy.

Why Hamas and Israel reached this moment now — and what comes next | WBUR

Palestinians celebrating the attack 

  • The parents of the two terrorists joyfully declared: “They are both Shahids (martyrs) and heroes.”
  • A resident of the terrorists’ neighborhood stated: “We have many more youngsters and nothing to lose. They are willing to harm Jews, anything for al-Aqsa.”
  • Another resident said: “People here won’t sit quietly, they will continue to respond. We will make the lives of the Jews difficult everywhere.”

And how did Israelis respond to that atrocity?

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered the demolitions of the homes of the attackers.

The blunt truth was that Palestinians had no interest in preventing such attacks on Israeli citizens—because Israel hadn’t given them any. 

Blowing up houses only takes out anger on lifeless buildings. Those who lived there are still alive—and able to seek revenge in the future.

As Niccolo Machiavelli once warned:  

…Above all [a ruler] must abstain from taking the property of others, for men forget more easily the death of their father than the loss of their inheritance.

But there was an alternative which Israelis could have considered.

To instill a sense of civic responsibility—however begrudgingly—in their Islamic citizens: Every time such an atrocity occurred, Israel could have deported at least 10,000 Arabs from its territory.

Suddenly, Arabs living in Israel would have had real incentive for preventing such attacks against Israelis. Or at least for reporting to police the intentions of those they knew were planning such attacks.

“Hey,” they would have thought, “if Abdul blows up that police station like he said he wants to, I could get sent to a refugee camp.”

It’s extremely likely there would have been s sudden rush of Arab informants to Israeli police stations.

Machiavelli, the 15th century Florentine statesmen, carefully studied both war and politics. In his most famous—or infamous—work, The Prince, he advises:

Niccolo Machiavelli

From this arises the question whether it is better to be loved than feared, or feared more than loved.  The reply is, that one ought to be both feared and loved, but as it is difficult for the two to go together, it is much safer to be feared than loved. 

For it may be said of men in general that they are ungrateful, voluble, dissemblers, anxious to avoid danger and covetous of gain; as long as you benefit them, they are entirely yours: they offer you their blood, their goods, their life and their children, when the necessity is remote, but when it approaches, they revolt.

And the prince who has relied solely on their words, without making other preparations, is ruined; for the friendship which is gained by purchase and not through grandeur and nobility of spirit is bought but not secured, and at a pinch is not to be expended in your service.

And men have less scruple in offending one who makes himself loved than one who makes himself feared; for love is held by a chain of obligations which, men being selfish, is broken whenever it serves their purpose; but fear is maintained by a dread of punishment which never fails.

Machiavelli knew—and warned—that while it was useful to avoid hatred, it was fatal to be despised. 

And he also warned that humility toward insolent enemies only encourages their hatred and contempt.

Accompanying this is the advice of perhaps the greatest general of the American Civil War: William Tecumseh Sherman.

Sherman, whose army cut a swath of destruction through the South in 1864, said it best. Speaking of the Southern Confederacy, he advised:

“They cannot be made to love us, but they may be made to fear us.” 

Israelis will never be able to make its sworn Islamic enemies love them. But they can instill such a healthy fear in most of them that such atrocities as the synagogue butchery and settlement attacks will become a rarity.

DEMOCRACY’S FALLING? BUT WHAT ABOUT MY CAREER?

In Bureaucracy, Business, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Medical, Politics, Social commentary on May 9, 2024 at 12:05 am

And the most glorious exploits do not always furnish us with the clearest discoveries of virtue or vice in men. Sometimes a matter of less moment, an expression or a jest, informs us better of their characters and inclinations, than the most famous sieges, the greatest armaments, or the bloodiest battles whatsoever.
—Plutarch, “Life of Alexander” 

Hope Hicks served in President Donald Trump’s administration as White House Director of Strategic Communication from January to September, 2017.    

Today she’s a prominent witness at his trial for concealing hush money payments in 2016 to porn “actress” Stormy Daniels.

On January 6, 2021, Hicks had a problem: She feared she might never work again.

From 2017 to 2018 she served as White House Communications Director. After leaving the White House, she returned to serve as Counselor to the President from 2020 to 2021.

Hope Hicks November 2017.jpg

Hope Hicks

And then came the Trump-inspired attack on Congress on January 6.

Among the infamies and crimes Trump committed—and Hicks witnessed—during his four years as President:

  • Repeatedly attacking the nation’s free press as “the enemy of the American people” for daring to report his growing list of crimes and disasters.
  • Publicly siding with Russian dictator Vladimir Putin against American Intelligence agencies—such as the FBI, CIA and National Security Agency—which unanimously agreed that Russia had interfered with the 2016 Presidential election.
  • Giving highly classified CIA Intelligence to Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak. 
  • Using his position as President to further enrich himself, in violation of the Emoluments Clause of the Constitution.
  • Firing FBI Director James Comey for refusing to pledge his personal loyalty to Trump—and continuing to investigate Russian subversion of the 2016 election.

Keep Laughing!: Songs about Nuclear Annihilation from 1940's-80's

  • Shutting down the Federal Government on December 22, 2018, because Democrats refused to fund his useless “border wall” between the United States and Mexico. An estimated 380,000 government employees were furloughed and another 420,000 were ordered to work without pay for 35 days.
  • Allowing the deadly COVID-19 virus to ravage the country, killing 400,000 Americans by the time he left office.
  • Attacking medical experts and governors who urged Americans to wear masks and socially distance to protect themselves against the deadly COVID-19 virus.
  • Repeatedly lying—while still in office and afterward—that the 2020 election had been “stolen” from him by massive voter fraud.
  • Illegally trying to pressure state legislatures and governors to stop the certification of the vote that had made Joe Biden the president-elect.
  • Inciting his followers to attack the Capitol Building where Senators and Representatives were meeting to count the Electoral Votes won by himself and Joe Biden. His objective: Stop the count, which he knew would prove him the loser.

So Hope had plenty to feel tormented about.  

Yet it wasn’t any of these offenses that upset her.

It was something far more personal: She feared that the public’s association of her with Trump’s attack on Congress would doom her, at age 32, to permanent unemployment.

On January 6, 2021, she exchanged a series of texts with Julie Radford, First Daughter Ivanka Trump’s chief of staff. 

HICKS: “In one day he [Trump] ended every future opportunity that doesn’t include speaking engagements at the local proud boys [sic] chapter

“And all of us that didn’t have jobs lined up will be perpetually unemployed

“I’m so mad and upset

“We all look like domestic terrorists now”

RADFORD: “Oh yes I’ve been crying for an hour”

HICKS: “This made us all unemployable

“Like untouchable

“God I’m so fucking mad”

RADFORD: “I know there isn’t a chance of finding a job 

“Visa also sent me a blow off email today

“Already”

HICKS: “Nope. Not being dramatic, but we are all fucked.

[Referring to Trump]: “Attacking the VP [Vice President Mike Pence]?

“Wtf is wrong with him” 

Albert Speer, former architect and Minister of Armaments for his late Fuhrer, Adolf Hitler, would have fully empathized. 

Monochrome photograph of the upper body of Albert Speer, signed at the bottom

Albert Speer

Bundesarchiv, Bild 146II-277 / Binder / CC-BY-SA 3.0, CC BY-SA 3.0 DE <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/de/deed.en&gt;, via Wikimedia Commons

With the collapse of the Third Reich, he found himself hurled from power and facing trial as a war criminal at Nuremberg.

His prosecutor, Robert H. Jackson, said: “Speer joined in planning and executing the program to dragoon prisoners of war and foreign workers into German war industries, which waxed in output while the workers waned in starvation.”

Yet Speer falsely claimed he had simply been an apolitical architect who had been drafted into serving as Minister of Armaments—and hadn’t known about the Holocaust. 

The prosecution couldn’t prove he had. So he escaped a death sentence—and was sentenced to 20 years’ imprisonment.

Emerging from prison in 1966, Speer lamented that no architectural firm in postwar Germany would hire “Hitler’s architect.” 

So he spent the rest of his life writing—at great profit—about his 12 years as a high-ranking official in the Third Reich. As “The Good Nazi,” he portrayed himself as a political innocent deceived into hell by a Mephistopheles-like Hitler.

Like Speer, Hope Hicks has repudiated her own former Fuhrer—after serving him during his worst infamies.

And, like Speer, she isn’t facing the dangers of poverty. Her net worth is estimated at $1 million, owing to her past work as a model and public relations agent.

TIME TO REFRESH OUR MEMORIES OF EVIL: PART TWO (END)

In Bureaucracy, Business, History, Medical, Politics, Social commentary on May 8, 2024 at 12:10 am

Millions of Americans have forgotten the crimes and infamies committed by President Donald J. Trump during his four years in office. 

Especially during the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020. 

On March 26, 2020, during an interview on Fox News, Trump blamed the failures of his administration’s response to Coronavirus on Democratic state governors like Andrew Cuomo (NY), Jay Inslee (WA), and Gretchen Whitmer (MI).

On March 27, Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer told a local radio station: “What I’ve gotten back is that vendors with whom we’ve procured contracts—they’re being told not to send stuff to Michigan. It’s really concerning. I reached out to the White House last night and asked for a phone call with the president, ironically at the time this stuff was going on.”

On March 29, the Washington Monthly highlighted Whitmer’s inability to secure desperately-needed ventilators from her longtime vendors: “What If Trump Decides to Save Republicans But Not Democrats?”

Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (cropped).jpg

Gretchen Whitmer

A sub-headline read: “He’s providing vital resources to red states and ignoring blue states.” 

Florida submitted a request to the Federal Emergency Management Administration (FEMA) on March 11 for 430,000 surgical masks, 180,000 N95 respirators, 82,000 face shields and 238,000 gloves—and received a shipment with everything three days later.

On Fox News, Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s personal lawyer, bluntly told governors: “Take the blame when you have to. When you play with your boss, sometimes it’s better when you don’t win the golf game. He’s the boss, he’s got all the resources.” 

The mentality of the Black Hand had come to the Oval Office.

Black Hand - No Racism" Art Print by AsbrinfitzTv | Redbubble

The Black Hand

Trump wasn’t simply refusing to provide states with vitally-needed medical supplies—he was illegally seizing those supplies that states had ordered.

According to an April 20 Forbes story: “Maryland Gov. Hogan Takes Extraordinary Steps to Keep Feds From Confiscating COVID Tests”:

Governor Larry Hogan had heard reports that the federal government had confiscated crucial medical supplies from other states—like Massachusetts. After obtaining 500,000 test kits from South Korea, Hogan ordered them flown into Baltimore–Washington International Airport rather than the larger Dulles International Airport in Virginia.

From there they were escorted under guard to a secret location and constantly protected by the National Guard. As they were sent out for distribution across the state, the tests remained under protection by the National Guard and state police.

The precautions were absolutely necessary. Hospitals in Florida and California reported that FEMA had seized their supplies without explanation.

Massachusetts ordered three million masks that were confiscated by the Federal Government at the Port of New York. This forced the state to ask New England Patriots’ owner Robert Kraft to use his team plane to fly in one million N95 masks from China. 

N95 Mask - Vented

N95 mask

The Federal Government seized vitally-needed medical supplies in at least seven states. 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 had seized if they would receive the materials they had ordered and paid for. That fueled concerns about whether the Trump administration was fairly distributing scarce medical supplies.

“We can’t get any answers,” said a California hospital official who asked not to be identified for fear of retaliation from the White House.

Richardson County FEMA office open until April 26 - Falls City Journal

Trump said it was the states’ responsibility to obtain critically-needed medical supplies. But when they weren’t outbid by the Federal Government, hospital systems and states found their shipments of medical supplies seized with no explanation.

Where did they go?

To China?

To Trump’s private warehouses?

To Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, for sale on the black market?

No one still knows.

A March 2, 2020 Washington Monthly story concluded ominously: “What if the White House simply gives all the masks and ventilators to red states and counties, leaving blue ones to struggle? What mechanisms of accountability are left?

“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.”   

By the time Trump left office, on January 20, 2021, more than 400,000 Americans had died of COVID-19. 

* * * * * * * * * *

Seventy-four years earlier, Chief United States Counsel Robert H. Jackson had been assigned to prosecute the major Nazi defendants for war crimes at Nuremberg. 

On July 26, 1946, Jackson delivered his closing remarks to the court. He might as well have been speaking about Donald Trump and Republicans’ treasonous refusal to protect American citizens from a raging and deadly pandemic:

Robert H. Jackson

Citing William Shakespeare’s play about the murderous Richard III, Jackson concluded:

“If you were to say of these men that they are not guilty, it would be as true to say that there has been no war, there are no slain, there has been no crime.” 

If Americans find Donald Trump blameless for refusing to take decisive action against the Coronavirus threat, it will be as true to say there has been no plague, there are no thousands of dead Americans, there has been no criminal dereliction of Presidential responsibility. 

TIME TO REFRESH OUR MEMORIES OF EVIL: PART ONE (OF TWO)

In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Medical, Politics, Social commentary, Uncategorized on May 7, 2024 at 12:10 am

Voters often have hazy memories of the ex-Presidents they—or their opponents—had elected. One reason for this: Ex-Presidents can no longer affect the lives of Americans—or non-Americans.   

When Donald Trump left the White House on January 20, 2021, his approval rating was 34%.

For most Americans—including even many Republicans—his inciting a violent attack on the Capitol Building so he could become “President-for-Life” was simply too much. He seemed to have forfeited any chance at a political future.

Yet today he’s the guaranteed Republican nominee for President—and may well win a second term in office this November against President Joseph Biden.

“What’s been clear for a while, especially among swing voters, is that Biden is just more front and center,” said Sarah Longwell, a Republican consultant. “They know about what they don’t like about Biden, and they have forgotten what they don’t like about Trump.”

Millions of Americans have forgotten the infamies and crimes Trump committed during his four years as President—such as: 

  • Repeatedly attacking the nation’s free press as “the enemy of the American people” for daring to report his growing list of crimes and disasters.
  • Publicly siding with Russian dictator Vladimir Putin against American Intelligence agencies—such as the FBI, CIA and National Security Agency—which unanimously agreed that Russia had interfered with the 2016 Presidential election.
  • Giving highly classified CIA Intelligence to Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak. 
  • Using his position as President to further enrich himself, in violation of the Emoluments Clause of the Constitution.
  • Firing FBI Director James Comey for refusing to pledge his personal loyalty to Trump—and continuing to investigate Russian subversion of the 2016 election.

Related image

Donald Trump

  • Shutting down the Federal Government on December 22, 2018, because Democrats refused to fund his useless “border wall” between the United States and Mexico. An estimated 380,000 government employees were furloughed and another 420,000 were ordered to work without pay for 35 days.
  • Allowing the deadly COVID-19 virus to ravage the country, killing 400,000 Americans by the time he left office.
  • Attacking medical experts and governors who urged Americans to wear masks and socially distance to protect themselves against the deadly COVID-19 virus.
  • Repeatedly lying—while still in office and afterward—that the 2020 election had been “stolen” from him by massive voter fraud.
  • Illegally trying to pressure state legislatures and governors to stop the certification of the vote that had made Joe Biden the president-elect.
  • Inciting his followers to attack the Capitol Building where Senators and Representatives were meeting to count the Electoral Votes won by himself and Joe Biden. His objective: Stop the count, which he knew would prove him the loser.

But concentrating on the major event of 2020—the last year of his White House tenure—should stir up enough frightening memories.

For 2020 was the year of COVID-19—a new and deadly virus that originated in Wuhan, China, in December, 2019. By January 19, the first Coronavirus case appeared in the United States.

On February 7, Trump shared his thoughts—and the latest medical Intelligence—about the Coronavirus with Washington Post editor/investigative reporter Bob Woodward: 

It goes through air, Bob. That’s always tougher than the touch. The touch, you don’t have to touch things, right? But the air, you just breathe the air and that’s how it’s passed. And so that’s a very tricky one. That’s a very delicate one. It’s also more deadly than even your strenuous flues. People don’t realize, we lose 25,000, 30,000 people a year here. Who would ever think that, right?”

Yet from January to early March, Trump and his allies within the Republican party and Fox News Network repeatedly assured Americans they had nothing to fear. 

SARS-CoV-2 without background.png

Coronavirus

In addition, Trump pitted cities and states against each other. He made it clear that each state was responsible for securing its needed supply of Personal Protective Equipment (PPEs) for its doctors and nurses aiding Coronavirus patients.

This resulted in a dog-eat-dog atmosphere of cutthroat competition and scarcity, with Americans not only fighting the virus but each other.

Even worse: Trump and Republicans used the deadly plague as a weapon against those Americans they hated. 

On March 26, during an interview on Fox News, Trump blamed the failures of his administration’s response to Coronavirus on Democratic state governors like Andrew Cuomo (NY), Jay Inslee (WA), and Gretchen Whitmer (MI).

On March 27, during his press briefing, Trump said he told Vice President Mike Pence—officially in charge of the White House’s response effort—to not call Inslee and Whitmer because they weren’t “appreciative” enough of his efforts.

Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (cropped).jpg

Gretchen Whitmer

Trump said this even as hospitals in each of their states were being overwhelmed with Coronavirus patients:

“I tell him—I mean I’m a different type of person—I say, ‘Mike, don’t call the governor in Washington, you’re wasting your time with him. Don’t call the woman in Michigan. If they don’t treat you right, I don’t call.”   

At his March 27 press briefing, Trump echoed French King Louis X1V’s infamous remark—“I am the State”: “When they’re [governors] not appreciative to me, they’re not appreciative to the Army Corps, they’re not appreciative to FEMA [Federal Emergency Management Agency]. It’s not right.”

WHEN PATRIOTS BECOME PREDATORS

In Business, History, Military, Politics, Social commentary on May 6, 2024 at 12:12 am

Bill O’Reilly, the former host of the Fox News Channel program The O’Reilly Factor, has offered his own solution to fighting terrorism: A multinational mercenary army, based on a NATO coalition and trained by the United States.    

“We would select them, special forces would train them—a 25,000-man force to be deployed to fight on the ground against worldwide terrorism. Not just ISIS,” O’Reilly said on “CBS This Morning” on September 24, 2014.

Bill O’Reilly

Actually, O’Reilly’s idea is the subject of The Profession, a 2011 novel by bestselling author Steven Pressfield. 

Pressfield made his literary reputation with four classic novels about classical Greece.

In Gates of Fire (1998) he explored the rigors and heroism of Spartan society—and the famous last stand of its 300 picked warriors at Thermopylae.

In Tides of War (2000) Pressfield depicted the rise and fall of Alcibiades, Athens’ greatest general, as he shifted his loyalties from that city to its arch-enemy, Sparta, and then to Persia, the enemy of both.

In The Virtues of War (2004) he took on the identity of Alexander the Great, explaining to his readers what it was like to command armies that swept across the known world, destroying all who dared oppose them.

Finally, in The Afghan Campaign (2006) Pressfield—this time from the viewpoint of a lowly Greek soldier—refought Alexander’s brutal, three-year anti-guerrilla campaign in Afghanistan.

Steven Pressfield Focused Interview

Steven Pressfield 

But in The Profession, Pressfield created a seemingly plausible world set into the future of 2032. The book’s own dust jacket offers the best summary of its plot-line:

“The year is 2032. The third Iran-Iraq war is over.  The 11/11 dirty bomb attack on the port of Long Beach, California is receding into memory.  Saudi Arabia has recently quelled a coup. Russians and Turks are clashing in the Caspian Basin.

“Iranian armored units, supported by the satellite and drone power of their Chinese allies, have emerged from their enclaves in Tehran and are sweeping south attempting to recapture the resource rich territory that had been stolen from them, in their view, by Lukoil, BP, and ExxonMobil and their privately-funded armies.

“Everywhere military force is for hire.  Oil companies, multi-national corporations and banks employ powerful, cutting-edge mercenary armies to control global chaos and protect their riches.

“Even nation states enlist mercenary forces to suppress internal insurrections, hunt terrorists, and do the black bag jobs necessary to maintain the new New World Order.

“Force Insertion is the world’s merc monopoly. Its leader is the disgraced former United States Marine General James Salter, stripped of his command by the president for nuclear saber-rattling with the Chinese and banished to the Far East.”

Salter appears as a hybrid of World War II General Douglas MacArthur and Iraqi War General Stanley McCrystal. Like MacArthur, Salter has butted heads with his President—and paid dearly for it. Now his ambition is no less than to become President himself—by popular acclaim.  

And like McCrystal, he is a pure warrior who leads from the front and is revered by his men. Salter seizes Saudi oil fields, then offers them as a gift to America.  By doing so, he makes himself the most popular man in the country—and a guaranteed occupant of the White House.

And in 2032 the United States is a far different nation from the one its Founding Fathers created  in 1776.

“Any time that you have the rise of mercenaries…society has entered a twilight era, a time past the zenith of its arc,” says Salter.”The United States is an empire…but the American people lack the imperial temperament.  We’re not legionaries, we’re mechanics.  In the end the American Dream boils down to what? ‘I’m getting mine and the hell with you.'”

Americans, asserts Salter, have come to like mercenaries: “They’ve had enough of sacrificing their sons and daughters in the name of some illusory world order. They want someone else’s sons and daughters to bear the burden….

“They want their problems to go away. They want me to to make them go away.”

And so Salter will “accept whatever crown, of paper or gold, that my country wants to press upon me.”

More than 500 years ago, Niccolo Machiavelli warned of the dangers of relying on mercenaries:

“Mercenaries…are useless and dangerous. And if a prince holds on to his state by means of mercenary armies, he will never be stable or secure; for they are disunited, ambitious, without discipline, disloyal; they are brave among friends; among enemies they are cowards.

Niccolo Machiavelli

“They have neither the fear of God nor fidelity to men, and destruction is deferred only so long as the attack is. For in peace one is robbed by them, and in war by the enemy.”

Centuries ago, Niccolo Machiavelli issued a warning against relying on men whose first love is their own enrichment.  

Steven Pressfield, in a work of fiction, has given us a nightmarish vision of a not-so-distant America where “Name your price” has become the byword for an age.

Both warnings are well worth heeding.