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In Bureaucracy, History, Politics, Social commentary on August 23, 2017 at 12:06 am
“Judge not, that you not be judged. For with what judgment you judged, you shall be judged, and with what measure you mete, it shall be measured to you again.”
So warns the Gospel of St. Matthew, 7:1-2. It’s advice that Right-wingers Joseph McCarthy, Robert Welch and George H.W. Bush would have done well to heed.
Joseph McCarthy, Wisconsin’s gift to the United States Senate, became infamous as the demagogue whose Red-baiting accusations terrified America from 1950 to 1954.
Joseph McCarthy
Elected to the Senate in 1946, he rose to national prominence on February 9, 1950, after giving a fiery speech in Wheeling, West Virginia:
“The State Department is infested with communists. I have here in my hand a list of 205—a list of names that were made known to the Secretary of State as being members of the Communist Party and who nevertheless are still working and shaping policy in the State Department.”
Americans were already growing increasingly fearful of Communism:
- Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin had not withdrawn the Red Army from the countries it had occupied in Eastern Europe during World War II.
- In 1948, the Soviet Union developed–and demonstrated–its own atomic bomb, an achievement U.S. scientists had claimed would not happen for at least a decade.
- In 1949, China fell to the triumphant armies of Mao Tse Tung.
But anti-communism as a lever to political advancement sharply accelerated following McCarthy’s speech. Republicans–resentful at being denied the White House since 1932–seized upon anti-communism as their passport to power.
No American–no matter how prominent–was safe from the accusation of being a Communist or a Communist sympathizer–”a Comsymp” or “fellow traveler” in the style of the era.
Among those accused:
- Secretary of State George C. Marshall, who had overseen America’s strategy for defeating Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan
- President Harry S. Truman
- Playwright Lillian Hellman and Arthur Miller
- Actors Charlie Chaplin, Zero Mostel, Lloyd Bridges, Howard Da Silva, Edward G. Robinson and John Garfield
- Composers Arron Copland and Elmer Bernstein
- Physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, who presided over the creation of America’s atomic bomb
- Actressses Lee Grant, Delores del Rio, Ruth Gordon and Lucille Ball
- Journalists Edward R. Murrow and William L. Shirer, who had chronicled the rise of Nazi Germany
- Folksinger Pete Seeger
- Writers Irwin Shaw, Howard Fast, John Steinbeck and Dashiell Hammett
Even “untouchable” Republicans became targets for such slander.
The most prominent of these was President Dwight D. Eisenhower–labeled ”a conscious, dedicated agent of the Communist Conspiracy” by Robert Welch, who founded the John Birth Society in 1958.
Robert Welch
Welch, an independently wealthy businessman, used his money to publicize the Society and its views. Welch saw even hardline anti-Communists like Vice President Richard Nixon and actor Ronald Reagan as dangerously liberal.
Meanwhile, McCarthy finally overstepped himself. In 1953, he attacked the leadership of the United States Army as “a hotbed of traitors” and convened an inquiry through the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations.
But the hearings backfired, exposing McCarthy as the bullying demagogue he was. A Senate committee voted to condemn his behavior, charging that he had “acted contrary to senatorial ethics and tended to bring the Senate into dishonor and disrepute.”
Although McCarthy remained in the Senate another two and a half years, his political influence had ended.
Journalists who had raced to cover his latest slander now avoided him. So did his Republican colleagues–many of whom had once sought his help at election time.
Yet even without McCarthy, Republicans rode the issue of anti-Communism to victory from 1948 to 1960.
After holding the White House for eight years under Eisenhower, they lost it in 1960 to John F. Kennedy and again in 1964 to Lyndon Johnson.
By 1968, with the nation mired in Vietnam and convulsed by antiwar demonstrations, Americans turned once more to those who preyed upon their fears and hates. They elected Richard Nison–and re-elected him in 1972.
After Jimmy Carter won the Presidency in 1976 and lost it in 1980, Republicans held the White House until 1992. Throughout that time, they continued to accuse their opponents of being devious agents–or at least unwitting pawns–of “the Communist conspiracy.”
Even as late as 1992, President George H.W. Bush and the Republican establishment charged that Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton might be a KGB plant.
George H.W. Bush
Their evidence: During his tenure at Oxford University in 1969-70, Clinton had briefly visited Moscow.
Thus, the Republican charged that he might have been “programmed” as a real-life “Manchrian candidate” to become, first, Governor of Arkansas–one of America’s poorest states–and then President.
What made this charge all the more absurd: The Soviet Union had officially dissolved in December, 1991.
Although Republicans continued to hurl “Communist!” and “treason!” at their opponents, these charges no longer carried the weight they had while the Soviet Union existed.
Right-wingers had to settle for attacking their opponents as “liberals” and “soft on crime.”
Then, on September 11, 2001, Republicans–and their right-wing supporters–at last found a suitable replacement for the Red Menace.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Politics, Social commentary on August 22, 2017 at 12:02 am
“All revolutions,” said Ernst Rohem, leader of Adolf Hitler’s brown-shirted thugs, the S.A., “devour their own children.”
Ernst Rohem
Fittingly, he said this as he sat inside a prison cell awaiting his own execution.
On June 30, 1934, Hitler had ordered a massive purge of his private army, the S.A., or Stormtroopers. The purge was carried out by Hitler’s elite army-within-an-army, the black-uniformed Schutzstaffel, or Protective Squads, better known as the SS.
The S.A. Brownshirts had been instrumental in securing Hitler’s rise to Chancellor of Germany on January 30, 1933. They had intimidated political opponents and organized mass rallies for the Nazi Party.
But after Hitler reached the pinnacle of power, they became a liability.
Ernst Rohem, their commander, urged Hitler to disband the regular German army, the Reichswehr, and replace it with his own legions as the nation’s defense force.
Frightened by Rohem’s ambitions, the generals of the Reichswehr gave Hitler an ultimatum: Get rid of Rohem–-or they would get rid of the Fuhrer.
So Rohem died in a hail of SS bullets-–as did several hundred of his longtime S.A. cronies.
SS firing squad
Among the SS commanders supervising those executions was Reinhard Heydrich—a tall, blond-haired formal naval officer who was both a champion fencer and talented violinist.
Ultimately, he would become the personification of the Nazi ideal—”the man with the iron heart,” as Hitler eulogized at Heydrich’s funeral just eight years later.
Reinhard Heydrich
Even so, Heydrich had a problem: He could never escape vicious rumors that his family tree held a Jewish ancestor.
His paternal grandmother had married Reinhold Heydrich, and then Gustav Robert Suss. For unknown reasons, she decided to call herself Suss-Heydrich.
Since “Suss” was widely believed in Germany to indicate Jewish origin, the “stigma” of Jewish heritage attached itself to the Heydrich family.
Heydrich joined the SS in 1931 and quickly became head of its counterintelligence service. But his arrogance and overweening ambition created a great many enemies.
Only a year later, he became the target of an urgent investigation by the SS itself. The charge: That he was part-Jewish, the ultimate sin in Hitler’s “racially pure” Nazi Germany.
The investigation cleared Heydrich, but the rumor of his “tainted” origins persisted, clearly tormenting the second most powerful man in the SS. Even his superior, Heinrich Himmler, the Reichsfuhrer-SS, believed it.
When Heydrich was assassinated in 1942 by Czech assassins in Prague, Himmler attended his funeral. He paid tribute to his former subordinate at the service: ”You, Reinhard Heydrich, were a truly good SS-man.”
But he could not resist saying in private: “He was an unhappy man, completely divided against himself, as often happened with those of mixed race.”
Those who dare to harshly judge others usually find themselves assailed just as harshly.
A modern-day example is Liz Cheney, daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney and a 2014 candidate for U.S. Senator from Wyoming.
Liz tried to position herself as far more right-wing than her opponent, Republican U.S. Senator Michael Bradley “Mike” Enzi.
She found her work cut out for her: In March, 2007, Enzi was ranked by National Journal as the sixth-most conservative U.S. Senator. Among his legislative priorities:
- Supporting partial privatization of Social Security
- Consistently voting against expanding Medicare.
- Voting against enrolling more children or the poor in public healthcare.
Mike Enzi
And Liz had a problem Enzi did not: Her sister, Mary, was not only a lesbian but legally married to another woman: Heather Poe. This led many Wyoming voters to wonder if Liz Cheney was far-Right enough to merit their support.
So Liz went all-out to assure them that even though her sister led a degenerate lifestyle, she, Liz, stood foursquare against legalizing gay marriage: “I do believe it’s an issue that’s got to be left up to states. I do believe in the traditional definition of marriage.”
Liz Cheney
And, in another statement: “I am strongly pro-life and I am not pro-gay marriage.
“I believe the issue of marriage must be decided by the states, and by the people in the states, not by judges and not even by legislators, but by the people themselves.”
This stance led to a heated rift between her and Mary. “For the record, I love my sister, but she is dead wrong on the issue of marriage,” Mary Cheney wrote in a Facebook post in September, 2013.
“Freedom means freedom for everyone,” she continued. “That means that all families—regardless of how they look or how they are made—all families are entitled to the same rights, privileges and protections as every other.”
Adding to the complications: Their father, Dick Cheney—often ridiculed as “Darth Vader” for his own extreme Right-wing views—endorsed same-sex marriage in 2009.
(After a brief run, Cheney, on January 6, 2014, Cheney withdrew from the race.)
But, as was true for officials in Nazi Germany, so is it true for Right-wing Republicans: It’s impossible to be too radical a Right-winger.
In the 1930s and 40s, it was politically—and personally—dangerous to be labeled “pro-Jewish” or “pro-Communist” in Hitler’s Germany.
And today it is equally dangerous—at least politically—to be labeled “pro-liberal” or “pro-gay” in the Republican Party.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Military, Politics, Social commentary on August 21, 2017 at 12:08 am
The ancient historian, Plutarch, warned: “And the most glorious episodes 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.”
On August 15, President Donald Trump gave just such an example.
He did so by equating Nazis, Ku Klux Klamsmen and other white supremacists with those who protested against them in Charlottesville, Virginia, over the weekend of August 12-13.
Donald Trump
“I think there is blame on both sides,” said Trump in an impromptu press conference in the lobby of Trump Tower, in Manhattan, New York.
“I will tell you something. I watched those very closely, much more closely than you people [news media] watched it. And you had a group on one side that was bad and you had a group on the other side that was also very violent. And nobody wants to say that. But I’ll say it right now.
“You had a group on the other side [those opposing the white supremacists] that came charging in without a permit and they were very, very violent….
“Well, I do think there’s blame. Yes, I think there is blame on both sides. You look at both sides. I think there is blame on both sides. And I have no doubt about it. And you [news media] don’t have doubt about it either.”
Apparently, some of Trump’s fellow Republicans do doubt there was blame on both sides.
“There’s no moral equivalency between racists & Americans standing up to defy hate& bigotry. The President of the United States should say so,” tweeted Arizona Senator John McCain.
“Through his statements yesterday,” said South Carolina Senator Lindsay Graham, “President Trump took a step backward by again suggesting there is moral equivalency between the white supremacist neo-Nazis and KKK members who attended the Charlottesville rally and people like Ms. Heyer. I, along with many others, do not endorse this moral equivalency.”
Heather Heyer was the 32-year-old paralegal who was killed on August 13 when a car plowed into a crowd protesting a white supremacist “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville. Nineteen others were injured in the incident.
“Mr. President, you can’t allow #WhiteSupremacists to share only part of blame. They support idea which cost nation & world so much pain,” Florida’s Senator Marco Rubio tweeted.
And Arizona’s other Senator, Jeff Flake, tweeted: “We can’t accept excuses for white supremacy & acts of domestic terrorism. We must condemn. Period.”
Ohio Governor John Kasich, who had opposed Trump as a Presidential candidate in 2016, said on NBC’s “Today Show”:
“This is terrible. The President of the United States needs to condemn these kinds of hate groups. The President has to totally condemn this. It’s not about winning an argument.”
John Kasich
During the Presidential primaries, Kasich had run an ad comparing Trump to Germany’s Fuhrer, Adolf Hitler:
“And you might not care if Donald Trump says he’s going to round up all the Hispanic immigrants, because you’re not one.
“And you might not care if Donald Trump says it’s OK to rough up black protesters, because you’re not one.
“And you might not care if Donald Trump wants to suppress journalists, because you’re not one.
“But think about this:
“If he keeps going, and he actually becomes President, he might just get around to you. And you’d better hope that there’s someone left to help you.”
That point was forcibly driven home on the night of August 11.
That was when hundreds of torch-bearing Nazis, Ku Klux Klansmen and other white supremacists marched on the University of Virginia campus.
Their faces twisted with hatred, they repeatedly shouted:
“You will not replace us!”
“Jews will not replace us!”
“Blood and soil!”
“Whose streets? Our streets!”
For the vast majority of Americans, such scenes had existed only in newsreel footage of torch-bearing columns of Nazi stormtroopers flooding the streets of Hitler’s Germany.
The fall of Nazi Germany came 72 years ago—on May 7, 1945. Today, veterans of World War II are rapidly dying off.
But their sons and daughters are still alive to pass on, secondhand, the necessary for standing up to such barbarism.
And so can films like “Saving Private Ryan” and “Schindler’s List.”
At the end of “Saving Private Ryan,” a dying Captain John H. Miller (Tom Hanks) tells Private James Ryan (Matt Damon) whose life he has saved: “Earn this.”
A dying Captain Miller tells Ryan: “Earn this.”
Returning to Miller’s burial site in France decades later, an elderly Ryan speaks reverently to the white cross over Miller’s grave:
“Every day I think about what you said to me that day on the bridge. I tried to live my life the best that I could. I hope that was enough. I hope that, at least in your eyes, I’ve earned what all of you have done for me.”
Those are sentiments wasted on those who mounted the “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville.
And they are equally wasted on a President who condemns those who stand up to Fascism.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on August 17, 2017 at 12:01 am
It was a memo that could have been written by Joseph Goebbels—Adolf Hitler’s brilliant and fanatical Minister of Propaganda.
The only difference: This memo was written in English, not German.
Joseph Goebbels
The memo was released by the White House on the evening of August 15. Earlier that day, President Donald Trump had given a fiery, impromptu press conference defending white extremist groups.
This, in turn, had been prompted by Ku Klux Klan and Nazi violence that exploded in Charlottesville, Virginia, over the weekend of August 12-13.
Trump’s incendiary remarks laying blame on both violent Fascists and non-violent protesters had ignited anger throughout the nation. And they caused many Republicans—in a rare show of claimed moral outrage—to publicly break with the President.
Republican Speaker of the House Paul Ryan of Wisconsin tweeted: “We must be clear. White supremacy is repulsive. This bigotry is counter to all this country stands for. There can be no moral ambiguity.”
Paul Ryan
Arizona’s Republican United States Senator, Jeff Flake, released a statement on August 15: “We cannot accept excuses for white supremacy and acts of domestic terrorism. We must condemn them. Period.”
And John McCain, Arizona’s other Republican Senator, took to twitter on the same evening: “There is no moral equivalency between racists & Americans standing up to defy hate& bigotry. The President of the United States should say so.”
Faced with such overwhelming condemnation, Donald Trump did what he always does when faced with criticism: He leaned on others to defend him.
On the evening of August 15, the White House sent out official “talking points” to Republican members of Congress.
The memo urged them to say that Trump was “entirely correct” that “both sides of the violence in Charlottesville acted inappropriately, and bear some responsibility.”
With unintended irony, the memo claimed that Trump “has been a voice for unity and calm, encouraging the country to ‘rediscover the bonds of love and loyalty that brings us together as Americans.'”
Left out of this statement were the following truths:
Love has nothing to do with:
- Nazis and Ku Klux Klansmen who march down streets—as they did in Charlottesville—shouting: “Jews will not replace us!” and “Blood and soil!”
- Columns of angry-faced men strutting down streets, yelling, “Whose streets? Our streets!”
- Hordes of heavily armed men—carrying shields, clubs, pistols and even automatic rifles—terrorizing the local citizenry.
And loyalty does not have anything to do with:
- Those who proudly brandish Nazi swastika flags. Of the Nazis’ ultimate legacy, historian Klaus Fischer writes: “The Nazis’ New Order was little more than a slave empire, a vast system of organized oppression, exploitation, and extermination.”
- People who proudly carry flags of the Confederacy, which gave the United States its greatest case of mass treason. From 1861 to 1865, members of this group waged war against a legitimately-elected government. And the reason for that Confederacy: To maintain and expand a slave empire of millions of black men, women and children.
Here is the White House memo:
NEWS OF THE DAY
Charlottesville
- The President was entirely correct — both sides of the violence in Charlottesville acted inappropriately, and bear some responsibility.
- Despite the criticism, the President reaffirmed some of our most important Founding principles: We are equal in the eyes of our Creator, equal under the law, and equal under our Constitution.
- He has been a voice for unity and calm, encouraging the country to “rediscover the bonds of love and loyalty that brings us together as Americans.”
- He called for the end of violence on all sides so that no more innocent lives would be lost.
- The President condemned – with no ambiguity – the hate groups fueled by bigotry and racism over the weekend, and did so by name yesterday, but for the media that will never be enough.
- The media reacted with hysteria to the notion that counter-protesters showed up with clubs spoiling for a fight, a fact that reporters on the ground have repeatedly stated.
- Even a New York Times reporter tweeted that she “saw club-wielding “antifa” beating white nationalists being led out of the park.”
- The local ACLU chapter also tweeted that
- We should not overlook the facts just because the media finds them inconvenient:
- From cop killing and violence at political rallies, to shooting at Congressmen at a practice baseball game, extremists on the left have engaged in terrible acts of violence.
- The President is taking swift action to hold violent hate groups accountable.
- The DOJ has opened a civil rights investigation into this weekend’s deadly car attack.
- Last Thursday, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) announced it had completed the largest prosecution of white supremacists in the nation’s history.
- Leaders and the media in our country should join the president in trying to unite and heal our country rather than incite more division.
* * * * *
Many of those who oppose the goals of the Trump administration are now taking partial comfort in the sheer incompetence of the President.
He has always felt free to display his hatred, egomania and dictatorial nature. He has never been able to apologize or admit error.
As a real estate mogul, he could get away with such behavior in relative privacy. As President, these traits have turned into his worst enemies.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Military, Politics, Social commentary on August 10, 2017 at 12:05 am
“The White House is Propping Up Depressed Trump With Two Folders of Propaganda A Day.”
So read an August 8 headline on the PoliticusUSA website.
The story to which it was attached opened:
“Donald Trump receives two folders of screen grabs, transcripts, and pictures of himself looking strong each day as the White House using the communications office to compile propaganda that makes Trump feel better.”
It then quoted Vice News as stating:
“Twice a day since the beginning of the Trump administration, a special folder is prepared for the president. The first document is prepared around 9:30 a.m. and the follow-up, around 4:30 p.m.
“Former Chief of Staff Reince Priebus and former Press Secretary Sean Spicer both wanted the privilege of delivering the 20-to-25-page packet to President Trump personally, White House sources say.
Donald Trump
“These sensitive papers, described to VICE News by three current and former White House officials, don’t contain top-secret intelligence or updates on legislative initiatives.
“Instead, the folders are filled with screenshots of positive cable news chyrons (those lower-third headlines and crawls), admiring tweets, transcripts of fawning TV interviews, praise-filled news stories, and sometimes just pictures of Trump on TV looking powerful.”
And how reliable a news source is PoliticusUSA?
According to Media Bias / Fact Check, which bills itself as “The Most Comprehensive Media Bias Resource”:
“PoliticusUsa is a left wing biased news and opinion website. PoliticusUsa typically sources to credible media sources such as Reuters and are factual in reporting as we were unable to find any instances of failed fact checks.
“Though headlines tend to be somewhat sensational, the content of articles is evidence based with occasional use of loaded words that convey emotion. In short, PoliticusUsa is left biased through story choices and wording, but factual in reporting. (5/15/2016)”
Trump unhesitatingly takes credit for the achievements of others. In an August 9th tweet, he implied that, during his seven-month administration, he had greatly strengthened America’s nuclear arsenal:
“My first order as President was to renovate and modernize our nuclear arsenal. It is now far stronger and more powerful than ever before….”
In fact, President Barack Obama was responsible for much of the improvements to the arsenal. The Defense Department and Energy Department spent billions of dollars on refurbishing the arsenal and bringing aging nuclear weapons up to modern capabilities.
Barack Obama
While Trump never blushes to take the credit, he quickly shifts blame to others when an enterprise goes wrong.
In February, Trump approved and ordered a Special Forces raid in Yemen on an Al-Qaeda stronghold. The assault resulted in the death of Navy SEAL Chief Petty Officer William “Ryan” Owens.
Disavowing any responsibility for the failure, Trump said: “This was a mission that was started before I got here. This was something they wanted to do.
“They came to me, they explained what they wanted to do—the generals—who are very respected, my generals are the most respected that we’ve had in many decades, I believe. And they lost Ryan.”
But Trump is hardly unique among world leaders to listen only to “happy news.”
As his armies were forced to retreat on all fronts, Adolf Hitler increasingly demanded that his ministers refrain from “defeatist talk.”
Hoping for victory—and stating that it was inevitable—became the key to saving one’s job—if not life—in the steadily-declining Third Reich.
Adolf Hitler
This was best illustrated in his treatment of Albert Speer. Hitler had often proclaimed him “my genius architect” before appointing him Minister of Armaments in 1942. As Speer revved up the production of military hardware, Hitler continued to hail his “genius.”
But as Allied bombing raids increasingly devastated Germany’s industrial plants, armaments production began to fall. This forced Speer to tell his Fuhrer the unpalatable truth: Germany was losing its capacity to wage war.
Hitler didn’t want to hear it, turning instead to those who fed him a diet of “happy news.” When Speer’s deputy, Karl Otto Saur, told Hitler, “By Christmas, we’ll have air superiority!” Hitler was ecstatic.
At a meeting with his generals, the Fuhrer announced: “We have the good fortune to have a genius in our armaments ministry. I mean Saur.”
The promised air superiority never materialized.
As even Hitler came to realize that the end was near, he turned his anger on the Germany he had so often claimed to love.
“If the war is lost,” Hitler told Speer, “the nation will also perish….This nation will have proved to be the weaker one and the future will belong solely to the stronger eastern nation.”
He ordered a massive “scorched-earth” campaign throughout Germany.
All German agriculture, industry, ships, communications, roads, food stuffs, mines, bridges, stores and utility plants were to be destroyed.
If implemented, it would deprive the entire German population of even the barest necessities after the war.
Fortunately for Germany, Speer dared to sabotage the “Nero Order,” thus ensuring a future for those who survived the war.
But Hitler’s demands for only “happy news” did not save him—or his regime.
Feeding himself a diet of “happy news” detached from reality will not save Donald Trump. Nor will it save those Americans who insist on believing it.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Military, Politics, Social commentary on August 9, 2017 at 1:42 am
On June 22, 1941, Adolf Hitler ordered his powerful Wehrmacht to invade the Soviet Union.
Since September 1, 1939, his army had conquered Poland, Norway, Denmark, Holland, Belgium and France.
Now, he believed, it was time to “settle accounts” with the Soviet Union. Only there could Germany obtain the “living space” it “needed” for its expanding population.
And now seemed to be the perfect time to do it.
Joseph Stalin, dictator of the Soviet Union, had decimated the Red Army with a series of purges in 1937-38. Its best officers had been shot as “enemies of the State.” Their replacements were untried in war—and fearful of showing initiative that might get them executed.
Adolf Hitler with his generals
At first, Hitler felt giddy with excitement. Turning to Alfred Jodl, his chief of operations of the Wehrmacht, he said: “We have only to kick in the door and the whole rotten structure will come crashing down.”
But soon afterward–almost as if he had just looked into the future and seen that he had none–he told an aide: “At the beginning of each campaign, one pushes a door into a dark, unseen room. One can never know what is hiding inside.”
That certainly proved true for Hitler. Within four years, he was dead and the Red Army occupied Berlin.
Among the questions Hitler and his generals had refused to ask themselves—and answer:
- What if the Soviet Union didn’t collapse after “a few powerful blows”?
- What if the war lasted longer than the summer—while German troops were wearing summer uniforms?
- What if the war actually lasted into the winter?
- What if most of the roads in Russia were unpaved—and German tanks got bogged down in, first, autumn mud, and then winter snow?
- What if Stalin convinced ordinary Russians that they weren’t fighting to save his Communist dictatorship–but to save Holy Mother Russia itself?
By the end of the four-year conflict, all of these possibilities had become reality:
- The Soviet Union didn’t collapse—although, in October, 1941, it seemed about to do so.
- The war did last longer than the summer—and, when winter struck, countless German soldiers in summer uniforms froze to death in the below-zero cold.
- German tanks did become mired—first in mud, then in snow. Russian tanks, having wider tracks, easily outmaneuvered their German counterparts.
- Stalin did proclaim that this was a struggle to save Holy Mother Russia against a barbaric enemy. And widespread German atrocities convinced them this was true.
German soldiers marching through Russia
Now, fast forward from the Fuhrership of Adolf Hitler to the Presidency of Donald Trump.
During a July 19 meeting with his generals in the White House Situation Room, Trump said the United States was “losing” the war in Afghanistan. He blamed them for lacking a strategy to “win,” and suggested firing the top commander in the field, General John Nicholson.
Trump also asked the generals how the United States could take a portion of Afghanistan’s mineral wealth. He had previously said that the United States should have seized Iraq’s oil after America invaded in 2003.
Even more bizarrely, he repeatedly compared the war in Afghanistan to renovating the elite “21” Club in Manhattan.
Donald Trump
Trump claimed that after the restaurant had been closed for a year, a consultant suggested that a bigger kitchen be built in the establishment.
Trump told the generals that he would have been better served speaking to the waiters who worked there. And he added that he would do better speaking to veterans of Afghanistan rather than generals.
(Adolf Hitler displayed a similar obsession after the German Sixth Army was forced to surrender at Stalingrad on February 2, 1943. About 94,000 men fell into Russian hands.
(But what most infuriated Hitler was that Friedrich Paulus, the newly-promoted Field Marshal, had allowed himself to be taken prisoner. Hitler raged that Paulus should have committed suicide.
(Three times during his rant, Hitler spoke of a German woman who had killed herself after she found she could no longer go on. His point: If even a weak-willed woman could summon up the courage to take her own life, there was no excuse for a German soldier refusing to do so.)
Friedrich Paulus
Trump left the national security meeting without making a decision on a strategy. His advisers were stunned, administration officials and others briefed on the meeting said.
During the presidential campaign, Trump often boasted that he knew more than American military generals. This despite his having dodged the Vietnam war via five draft deferments.
American troops have been deployed in Afghanistan since October 7, 2001, when Operation Enduring Freedom was launched. The Taliban, which controlled the country, had refused to turn over Osama bin Ladin, the Al-Qaeda mastermind of the 9/11 attacks.
About 8,400 members of the U.S. military are now currently serving in Afghanistan, fighting the Taliban and Al-Qaeda. A total of 1,833 Americans have been killed in action there.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Politics, Social commentary on August 4, 2017 at 12:03 am
In Stalingrad, a 1993 war movie, a platoon of German Army soldiers leaves behind the beaches and beauties of Italy and find themselves fighting desperately to stay alive in Russia.
Early in the film, there is an exchange that has its real-life counterpart almost 75 years later.
A young, idealistic German lieutenant, newly transferred to the Russian front, is horrified when he sees a fellow soldier from another unit sadistically beat a Russian prisoner to death.
He seeks out the man’s superior, a captain, and says: “Captain, I must protest about the behavior of your men.”
“You want to protest?” asks the captain, grinning sardonically. “Tell the Fuhrer.”
Fast forward to January 28, 2017, the day after President Donald J. Trump signed into law an executive order which:
- Suspended entry of all refugees to the United States for 120 days;
- Barred Syrian refugees indefinitely;, and
- Blocked entry into the United States for 90 days for citizens from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen.
The new rules—and the efforts of security personnel at major international airports to enforce them—triggered a tsunami of chaos and fear among travelers.
“We’ve gotten reports of people being detained all over the country,” said Becca Heller, the director of the International Refugee Assistance Project. “They’re literally pouring in by the minute.”
Refugees on flights when the order was signed on January 27 were detained upon arrival.
Many students attending American universities were blocked from returning to the United States from visits abroad.
According to Homeland Security officials:
- 109 people who were already in transit to the United States when the order was signed were denied access;
- 173 were stopped before boarding planes heading to America;
- 81 who were stopped were eventually given waivers to enter the United States.
Internationally, travelers were seized by panic when they were not allowed to board flights to the United States. In Dubai and Istanbul, airport and immigration officials turned passengers away at boarding gates. At least one family was removed from a flight it had boarded.
Earlier on January 28, Trump, isolated in the White House from all the chaos he had unleashed in airports across the nation and throughout the world, said:
“It’s not a Muslim ban, but we were totally prepared. It’s working out very nicely. You see it at the airports, you see it all over.”
Then the American Civil Liberties Union intervened.
Two Iraqi immigrants, defended by the ACLU, accused Trump of legal and constitutional overreach.
The Iraqis had been detained at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York City. One had served as an interpreter for American forces in Iraq for a decade. The other was en route to reunite with his wife and son in Texas.
The interpreter, Hameed Khalid Darweesh, was released after nearly 19 hours of detention. So was the other traveler, Haider Sameer Abdulkhaleq Alshawi.
Before the two men were released, one of their lawyers, Mark Doss, a supervising attorney at the International Refugee Assistance Project, asked an official, “Who is the person we need to talk to?”
“Call Mr. Trump,” said the official, who refused to identify himself.
He might just as well have said: “You want to protest? Tell the Fuhrer.”
The ACLU action secured at least a temporary blocking of part of Trump’s order. A Brooklyn judge barred the government from deporting some arrivals who found themselves ensnared by the Presidential order.
Judge Ann M. Donnelly of the Federal District Court in Brooklyn, ruled that sending the travelers home could cause them “irreparable harm.” She said the government was “enjoined and restrained from, in any manner and by any means, removing individuals” who had arrived in the United States with valid visas or refugee status.
But she did not force the administration to let in people otherwise blocked by the executive order who have not yet traveled to the United States. Nor did she issue a broader ruling on the constitutionality of the order.
* * * * *
On November 8, millions of ignorant, hate-filled, Right-wing Americans elected Donald Trump—a man reflecting their own hate and ignorance—to the Presidency.
Summing up Trump’s character in a March 25, 2016 broadcast of The PBS Newshour, conservative political columnist David Brooks warned: “The odd thing about [Trump’s] whole career and his whole language, his whole world view is there is no room for love in it. You get a sense of a man who received no love, can give no love….
“And so you really are seeing someone who just has an odd psychology unleavened by kindness and charity, but where it’s all winners and losers, beating and being beat. And that’s part of the authoritarian personality.”
There were countless warning signs available for Trump’s supporters to see—if they had wanted to see them:
- His threats against his political opponents;
- His five-year “birtherism” slander against President Obama—which even he was forced to disavow;
- His rampant egomania;
- His attacks on everyone who dared to disagree with him;
- His refusal to release his tax returns;
- His history of bankruptcies and lawsuits filed against him;
- His bragging about sexually abusing women (“Grab them by the pussy”).
Those who voted against Trump are now experiencing the truth of the Nazi slogan: “The Fuhrer proposes and disposes for all.”
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Politics, Social commentary on August 3, 2017 at 12:02 am
When historians—and ordinary citizens—think about the Third Reich, the name of Werner Willikens doesn’t immediately spring to mind.
Adolf Hitler, Herman Goring, Joseph Goebbels, Heinrich Himmler, Adolf Eichmann—yes.
But Werner Willikens? Why him?
Ian Kershaw has unearthed the reason.
Ian Kershaw is a British historian and author who has written extensively about the Third Reich. He is best-known for his monumental, two-volume biography, Hitler 1889–1936: Hubris (1998) and Hitler 1936–1945: Nemesis (2000).
Ian Kershaw
Willikens, State Secretary in the Ministry of Food, gave a speech on February 21, 1934 that casts new light on how Hitler came to exercise vast authority over Nazi Germany:
“Everyone who has the opportunity to observe it knows that the Fuhrer can hardly dictate from above everything he intends to realize sooner or later.
“On the contrary, up till now everyone with a post in the new Germany has worked best when he has, so to speak, worked towards the Fuhrer….
“In fact, it is the duty of everybody to try to work towards the Fuhrer along the lines he would wish. Anyone who makes mistakes will notice it soon enough.
“But anyone who really works towards the Fuhrer along his lines and towards his goal will certainly both now and in the future one day have the finest reward in the form of the sudden legal confirmation of his work.”
Volker Ullrich, bestselling author of Hitler: Ascent 1889 – 1939, summed up the results of this interplay between Hitler and his subjects:
“Kershaw tried to show that in many instances Hitler didn’t need to do very much at all since German society—everyone from the underlings surrounding him to ordinary people on the street—were increasingly inclined to anticipate and fulfill the Fuhrer’s every wish, ‘working towards him.’
“…Kershaw did not minimize the historical role played by Hitler and his insane, ideological fixations, but he did illustrate that without the readiness of many people to work for the man in charge, there would have been no way he could have achieved his murderous aims.
“Kershaw’s main thesis was that the dynamics of the Nazi regime arose from the interplay of Hitler’s intentions with activism emanating from subordinate individuals and institutions. The results were ever more radical ‘solutions.’”
With the Third Reich dying in the flames of Berlin, at about 3:30 p.m. on April 30, 1945, Adolf Hitler simultaneously bit on a cyanide capsule and fired a pistol shot into his right temple.
The concept of “working towards the Fuhrer” seemed to have come to a literally fiery end.
Fast forward almost 72 years later—to 4:42 p.m. on January 27, 2017.
Newly inaugurated President Donald J. Trump signs into law an executive order that:
- Suspends entry of all refugees to the United States for 120 days;
- Bars Syrian refugees indefinitely; and
- Blocks entry into the United States for 90 days for citizens of Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen.
Trump’s executive order read: “In order to protect Americans, the United States must ensure that those admitted to this country do not bear hostile attitudes toward it and its founding principles.
“The United States cannot, and should not, admit those who do not support the Constitution, or those who would place violent ideologies over American law.”
President Donald Trump
But that statement excluded three extremely troubling facts.
First: Over the past four decades, there have been no fatal attacks within the United States by immigrants from any of those seven banned countries.
Second, approximately 3,000 Americans have been killed by immigrants from Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, and Turkey. Most of those victims died during the attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center on September 11, 2001.
In fact, 15 of the 19 highjackers who took part in those attacks came from Saudi Arabia. Osama bin Ladin, the mastermind of the attacks, was himself a Saudi from a wealthy family with strong ties to the Saudi Royal Family.
Third, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, and Turkey are all countries where President Trump has close business ties. His properties include two luxury towers in Turkey and golf courses in the United Arab Emirates.
Trump lists companies on his FEC filing possibly related to a development project in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia’s second-biggest city, located outside Mecca: DT Jeddah Technical Services Manager LLC, DT Jeddah Technical Services Manager Member Corp., THC Jeddah Hotel Manager LLC and THC Jeddah Hotel Manager Member Corp.
Trump lists two companies on his FEC filing possibly related to business in Egypt: Trump Marks Egypt and Trump Marks Egypt LLC.
The full dimensions of Trump’s holdings throughout the Middle East aren’t known because he has refused to release his tax returns.
On January 11, Trump said that:
- He would resign from his positions at the Trump Organization but that he would not divest his ownership.
- The organization would be managed by his sons Eric and Don Jr. and chief financial officer Allen Weisselberg.
- The organization would terminate pending deals and not seek new international business.
Walter Shaub, director of the Office of Government Ethics, said that these measures did not resolve the President’s conflict-of-interest problems and called them “meaningless.”
It was after Trump signed his executive order that the true consequences of “working towards the Fuhrer”—or President—were fully revealed.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Military, Politics, Social commentary on July 21, 2017 at 12:21 am
On March 6, 2017, House Republican leaders unveiled the American Health Care Act (AHCA) as their replacement for “Obamacare.”
Conservative Republicans immediately declared that it didn’t repeal and replace Obamacare. And “moderates” complained that it would leave too many people uninsured.
Democrats, meanwhile, stayed silent. They had pushed hard in 2009-10 to provide all Americans with access to healthcare. And they weren’t going to participate in dismantling their signature legislation.
On March 13, the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office released its report estimating that about 18 million people would be uninsured in 2018 if the AHCA were enacted. The number of uninsured people would reach 19 million in 2020 and 24 million in 2026.
Still, Republicans plunged forward, with House leaders tweaking it slightly to win conservative and “moderate” votes.
Still, conservatives felt the bill helped too many people. And “moderates” feared that the millions of voters who would lose their insurance would vote them out of office at the next election.
On March 24, President Donald Trump, knowing the AHCA couldn’t pass the House, asked Speaker Paul Ryan to pull it off the floor.
And Ryan did so, only moments before a scheduled vote.
Finally, on May 4, House Republicans were ready to vote to pass the AHCA.
The vote was preceded by a pep rally, which featured beer, the “Rocky” theme song, the “Taking Care of Business” song, a prayer and the reciting of the Pledge of Allegiance.
Some Republicans, asked whether they had read the bill they supported, refused to answer.
That up to 24 million Americans would lose their medical insurance meant nothing to Right-wingers.
What did matter to them was:
- Destroying the legacy of Barack Obama, the nation’s first black President; and
- Initiating a huge transfer of wealth from the poor and middle-class to the 1% wealthiest.
On May 4, House Republicans passed the AHCA and sent it the Senate. There it was expected to be significantly revised.
But this, too, didn’t matter to House Republicans. They had “kept faith” with their hate-filled. Right-wing constituents—and assured their own re-elections.
Speaking in front of nearly 100 GOP lawmakers in the White House Rose Garden, Trump boasted that the AHCA would “finish off” the “catastrophe” of Obamacare.
Donald Trump
At a White House celebration, Trump boasted: “This has brought the Republican Party together.”
But then came disaster—for Republicans—in the Senate.
With Democrats abstaining, Republicans found themselves fighting each other.
Some wanted to gut “Obamacare” entirely, whatever the consequences for the 24 million Americans who would be left without insurance.
Others feared that slashing more than $700 billion from Medicaid—the Federal medical insurance program for the poor—would lead to millions of angry voters turning out Republicans at the polls.
(And slashing Medicaid—as opposed to expanding it, as President Obama had sought to do—was a major reason why Republicans wanted to overturn “Obamacare.”)
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) desperately tried to hammer out a compromise between the two opposing sides. When this proved impossible, it was clear the “repeal and replace” bill wouldn’t pass the Senate.
At that point, President Trump tweeted his own solution: “Republicans should just ‘REPEAL’ failing ObamaCare now & work on a new Healthcare Plan that will start from a clean slate. Dems will join in!”
But this proved too politically risky for some Republicans.
On July 18, Republican Senators’ efforts to replace the ACA without a ready replacement collapsed.
As usual, Donald Trump had a ready “solution” to offer. Like Adolf Hitler issuing his “scorched earth” order in a doomed Berlin in 1945, the President said:
“Let Obamacare fail; it’ll be a lot easier. And I think we’re probably in that position where we’ll just let Obamacare fail.
“We’re not going to own it. I’m not going to own it. I can tell you the Republicans are not going to own it. We’ll let Obamacare fail, and then the Democrats are going to come to us and they’re going to say, ‘How do we fix it? How do we fix it?’ Or, ‘How do we come up with a new plan?’”
* * * * *
Allowing Obamacare to fail would deprive millions of Americans of healthcare. But that meant nothing to Donald Trump.
Just as destroying everything still remaining in Germany had meant nothing to Adolf Hitler.
Fortunately for Germany, one man—Albert Speer—finally broke ranks with his Fuhrer.
Albert Speer
Risking death, he refused to carry out Hitler’s “scorched earth” order. Even more important, he mounted a successful effort to block such destruction and persuade influential military and civilian leaders to disobey the order as well.
As a result, those targets slated for destruction were spared.
Since the election of America’s first black President, Republicans have waged a similar “scorched earth” campaign.
Acting as extortionists, they repeatedly threatened to shut down the government if they didn’t get their way in legislative matters. And they repeatedly blocked legislation to help the poor, the unemployed, the sick, women, the elderly, the disabled and the middle-class.
Like Adolf Hitler, their attitude has been: “If I can’t rule America, there won’t be an America.”
The country is still waiting for a Republican Albert Speer to step forward and save America from the self-destructive brutalities of its own Right-wing fanatics.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Military, Politics, Social commentary on July 20, 2017 at 12:50 am
Albert Speer, Minister of Armaments for the Third Reich, was appalled.
His Fuhrer, Adolf Hitler—the man he had idolized for 14 years—had just passed a death sentence on Germany, the nation he claimed to love above all others.
Albert Speer and Adolf Hitler pouring over architectural plans
On March 19, 1945, facing certain defeat, Hitler had ordered a massive “scorched-earth” campaign throughout Germany.
All German agriculture, industry, ships, communications, roads, food stuffs, mines, bridges, stores and utility plants were to be destroyed.
If implemented, it would deprive the entire German population of even the barest necessities after the war.
Now living in a bunker 50 feet below bomb-shattered Berlin, Hitler gave full vent to his most destructive impulses.
Adolf Hitler addressing boy soldiers as the Third Reich crumbles
“If the war is lost,” Hitler told Speer, “the nation will also perish. This fate is inevitable. There is no necessity to take into consideration the basis which the people will need to continue even a most primitive existence.
“On the contrary, it will be better to destroy these things ourselves, because this nation will have proved to be the weaker one and the future will belong solely to the stronger eastern nation.
“Besides, those who will remain after the battle are only the inferior ones, for the good ones have all been killed.”
Speer argued in vain that there must be a future for the German people. But Hitler refused to back down. He gave Speer 24 hours to reconsider his opposition to the order.
The next day, Speer told Hitler: “My Fuhrer, I stand unconditionally behind you!”
“Then all is well,” said Hitler, suddenly with tears in his eyes.
“If I stand unreservedly behind you,” said Speer, “then you must entrust me rather than the Gauleiters [district Party leaders serving as provincial governors] with the implementation of your decree.”
Filled with gratitude, Hitler signed the decree Speer had thoughtfully prepared before their fateful meeting.
By doing so, Hitler unintentionally gave Speer the power to thwart his “scorched earth” decree.
Speer had been the closest thing to a friend in Hitler’s life. Trained as an architect, he had joined the Nazi Party in 1931.
He met Hitler in 1933, when he presented the Fuhrer with architectural designs for the Nuremberg Rally scheduled for that year.
From then on, Speer became Hitler’s “genius architect” assigned to create buildings meant to last for a thousand years.
In 1943, Hitler appointed him Minister of Armaments, charged with revitalizing the German war effort.
Nevertheless, Speer now crisscrossed Germany, persuading military leaders and district governors to not destroy the vital facilities that would be needed after the war.
“No other senior National Socialist could have done the job,” writes Randall Hanson, author of Disobeying Hitler: German Resistance After Valkyrie.
“Speer was one of the very few people in the Reich—perhaps even the only one—with such power to influence actors’ willingness/unwillingness to destroy.”
Despite his later conviction for war crimes at Nuremberg, Speer never regretted his efforts to save Germany from total destruction at the hands of Adolf Hitler.
Fast-forward to the United States and the 2008 election of the nation’s first black President.
On March 23, 2010, President Barack Obama signed into law the Affordable Care Act (ACA), nicknamed Obamacare. Its purpose: To provide access to healthcare for millions of poor and middle-class Americans who had heretofore been unable to obtain it.
President Barack Obama
It became—and remains—Obama’s signature legislative accomplishment.
Republicans immediately declared “Obamacare” Public Enemy Number One and set out to repeal it. By March 2014 they had already voted against it 54 times, trying to undo or substantially change it.
In October, 2013, they shut down the Federal Government for 15 days. They hoped to extort Obama into de-funding the ACA: If he did, they would re-open Federal agencies.
But, facing pressure from voters unable to obtain basic government services, Republicans backed down.
During the 2016 Presidential campaign, every Republican candidate pledged to repeal Obamacare if s/he were elected.
Donald Trump—who won the Republican nomination and then the election—repeatedly made this the centerpiece of his campaign.
On October 25, he promised: “My first day in office, I am going to ask Congress to put a bill on my desk getting rid of this disastrous law and replacing it with reforms that expand choice, freedom, affordability.
“You’re going to have such great health care at a tiny fraction of the cost. And it’s going to be so easy.”
But after taking office on January 20, he found that replacing the ACA wasn’t so easy.
On March 6, 2017, House Republicans unveiled the American Health Care Act (AHCA). This was attacked by conservatives because it didn’t repeal and replace Obamacare. And “moderate” Republicans complained that it would leave too many people uninsured.
On March 13, 2017, the Congressional Budget Committee released its report estimating that about 18 million people would be uninsured in 2018 if the AHCA were enacted. The number of uninsured people would reach 19 million in 2020 and 23 million in 2026.
Still, Republicans plunged forward, with House leaders making slight changes to win conservative and moderate votes.
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FASCISTIC HATRED THEN–AND NOW: PART TWO (OF THREE)
In Bureaucracy, History, Politics, Social commentary on August 23, 2017 at 12:06 am“Judge not, that you not be judged. For with what judgment you judged, you shall be judged, and with what measure you mete, it shall be measured to you again.”
So warns the Gospel of St. Matthew, 7:1-2. It’s advice that Right-wingers Joseph McCarthy, Robert Welch and George H.W. Bush would have done well to heed.
Joseph McCarthy, Wisconsin’s gift to the United States Senate, became infamous as the demagogue whose Red-baiting accusations terrified America from 1950 to 1954.
Joseph McCarthy
Elected to the Senate in 1946, he rose to national prominence on February 9, 1950, after giving a fiery speech in Wheeling, West Virginia:
“The State Department is infested with communists. I have here in my hand a list of 205—a list of names that were made known to the Secretary of State as being members of the Communist Party and who nevertheless are still working and shaping policy in the State Department.”
Americans were already growing increasingly fearful of Communism:
But anti-communism as a lever to political advancement sharply accelerated following McCarthy’s speech. Republicans–resentful at being denied the White House since 1932–seized upon anti-communism as their passport to power.
No American–no matter how prominent–was safe from the accusation of being a Communist or a Communist sympathizer–”a Comsymp” or “fellow traveler” in the style of the era.
Among those accused:
Even “untouchable” Republicans became targets for such slander.
The most prominent of these was President Dwight D. Eisenhower–labeled ”a conscious, dedicated agent of the Communist Conspiracy” by Robert Welch, who founded the John Birth Society in 1958.
Robert Welch
Welch, an independently wealthy businessman, used his money to publicize the Society and its views. Welch saw even hardline anti-Communists like Vice President Richard Nixon and actor Ronald Reagan as dangerously liberal.
Meanwhile, McCarthy finally overstepped himself. In 1953, he attacked the leadership of the United States Army as “a hotbed of traitors” and convened an inquiry through the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations.
But the hearings backfired, exposing McCarthy as the bullying demagogue he was. A Senate committee voted to condemn his behavior, charging that he had “acted contrary to senatorial ethics and tended to bring the Senate into dishonor and disrepute.”
Although McCarthy remained in the Senate another two and a half years, his political influence had ended.
Journalists who had raced to cover his latest slander now avoided him. So did his Republican colleagues–many of whom had once sought his help at election time.
Yet even without McCarthy, Republicans rode the issue of anti-Communism to victory from 1948 to 1960.
After holding the White House for eight years under Eisenhower, they lost it in 1960 to John F. Kennedy and again in 1964 to Lyndon Johnson.
By 1968, with the nation mired in Vietnam and convulsed by antiwar demonstrations, Americans turned once more to those who preyed upon their fears and hates. They elected Richard Nison–and re-elected him in 1972.
After Jimmy Carter won the Presidency in 1976 and lost it in 1980, Republicans held the White House until 1992. Throughout that time, they continued to accuse their opponents of being devious agents–or at least unwitting pawns–of “the Communist conspiracy.”
Even as late as 1992, President George H.W. Bush and the Republican establishment charged that Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton might be a KGB plant.
George H.W. Bush
Their evidence: During his tenure at Oxford University in 1969-70, Clinton had briefly visited Moscow.
Thus, the Republican charged that he might have been “programmed” as a real-life “Manchrian candidate” to become, first, Governor of Arkansas–one of America’s poorest states–and then President.
What made this charge all the more absurd: The Soviet Union had officially dissolved in December, 1991.
Although Republicans continued to hurl “Communist!” and “treason!” at their opponents, these charges no longer carried the weight they had while the Soviet Union existed.
Right-wingers had to settle for attacking their opponents as “liberals” and “soft on crime.”
Then, on September 11, 2001, Republicans–and their right-wing supporters–at last found a suitable replacement for the Red Menace.
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