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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on August 5, 2019 at 1:00 am
On February 14, 2018, 19-year-old Nikolas Cruz slaughtered two faculty members and 15 students at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.
His weapon of choice: An AR-15 assault rifle, often favored by gun massacre killers.
Eight days later, on February 22, Wayne LaPierre, executive vice president of the National Rifle Association, attacked those he held responsible for the series of massacres plaguing American schools.
And it wasn’t crazed gunmen armed with automatic weapons designed for military use.
Wayne LaPierre
With funerals still being planned for some of the victims, LaPierre blamed “the elites,” “saboteurs” and “new European-style socialists” for this and other gun massacres.
He did so at the Conservative Political Action Conference (C-PAC) in National Harbor, Maryland.
“They hate the NRA, they hate the Second Amendment. They hate individual freedom. In the rush of calls for more government, they have also revealed…their true selves.
“The elites do not care about America’s schoolchildren. If they truly cared, they would protect them. For them, it is not a safety issue. It is a political issue.
“Their goal is to eliminate the Second Amendment and our firearms freedoms, so they can eradicate all individual freedoms.”
His C-PAC congregation gave him a wild ovation.
And he accused the Democratic party of being “infested with saboteurs who do not believe in capitalism, do not believe in the Constitution, do not believe in our freedom, and do not believe in America as we know it.”
These “saboteurs” were “new European-style socialists.”
Which was ironic: In 2016, the NRA spent $30 million to elect Donald Trump—who fiercely defends Russian Communist dictator Vladimir Putin against the FBI, NSA and CIA.
He then outlined his solution for protecting America’s schoolchildren: Turning schools into virtual concentration camps patrolled by heavily-armed security guards.
The highlight of LaPierre’s speech came at its close: “And there is no greater personal, individual freedom than the right to keep and bear arms, the right to protect yourself, and the right to survive.
“It is not bestowed by man, but granted by God to all Americans as our American birthright.”
Anyone who’s seen the 1970 sci-fi movie, Beneath the Planet of the Apes, remembers the final scene: Where seemingly normal underground dwellers strip off their human face masks and reveal themselves to be radiation-scarred mutants.
They wear white robes, and stand silently during a sermon or shout “Amen!” in what is clearly a dark parody of a religious service. It’s immediately clear what they are worshiping: An atomic bomb standing upright.
And they pay tribute to the engine of obliteration that has destroyed human civilization and brought about a world ruled by apes.
Their leader, Mendez, chants:
“Glory be to the Bomb, and to the Holy Fallout. As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be. World without end. Amen.
“His sound has gone out to all lands, and his light unto the end of the world.
“Almighty and everlasting Bomb, who came down among us to make Heaven under Earth. Lighten our darkness. O instrument of God—grant us thy peace!”
Reading Wayne LaPierre’s eulogy to the Gun and his passionate invoking of God, it’s easy to re-imagine his giving a slightly altered version of the sermon offered in Beneath the Planet of the Apes. It’s also easy to imagine this taking place during an NRA convention.
WAYNE LAPIERRE: The heavens declare the Glory of the Gun. And the body-count showeth His handiwork.
NRA CONGREGATION: His sound is gone out to all lands; and his Light unto the end of the world.
WAYNE LAPIEREE: He descendeth from the outermost part of Heaven; and there is nothing hid from the lead thereof. There is neither speech nor language after His voice is heard among them.
NRA CONGREGATION: Praise Him! Praise Him! My Strength and my Redeemer!
WAYNE LAPIERRE: Glory be to the Gun, and to the Holy Bodycount! As it was in the Beginning, is now and ever shall be, massacres without end. Amen!
NRA CHORUS: Amen! Amen! Amen! Amen!
WAYNE LAPIERRE: Almighty and Everlasting Gun, who came down among us to make Heaven unto Earth. Lighten our darkness with your muzzle flashes. O instrument of God, grant us They peace.
NRA CHOIR: Almighty Gun, who destroyed all men—to create corpses! Behold His glory!
WAYNE LAPIERRE: Behold that Truth that abides in us. To reveal that Truth unto that Maker.
WAYNE LAPIERRE AND NRA CONGREGATION: I reveal my inmost self unto my God.
NRA CHORUS (singing): Unto my God!
NRA CONGREGATION (singing):
All guns bright and beautiful. All creatures dead with lead.
The good Gun makes us what we are!
He takes out eyes to see with, and lips that might yet speak. How great the Gun Almighty, who has made all things dead. Amen!
WAYNE LAPIERRE: May the Blessing of the Gun Almighty and the fellowship of the Holy Bodycount descend on us all, this night and forevermore!
* * * * * *
On December 14, 2012, a psychotic gunman using military firepower slaughtered 20 first-graders and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School. Since then, at least 2,189 mass shootings have erupted nationwide, with at least 2,475 killed and 9,137 wounded.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Politics, Social commentary on June 26, 2019 at 12:06 am
Niccolo Machiavelli (1469 – 1527) was an Italian Renaissance historian, diplomat and writer. Two of his books continue to profoundly influence modern politics: The Prince and The Discourses on the First Ten Books of Titus Livy.
The Prince has often been damned as a dictator’s guide on how to gain and hold power. Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini and John Gotti have effusively praised its teachings.
But The Discourses outlines how citizens in a republic can maintain their liberty.
Machiavelli’s writings on republicanism greatly influenced the political thinking of America’s own Founding Fathers. For example: Benjamin Franklin, James Madison, and Thomas Jefferson feared that Alexander Hamilton was creating an American aristocracy through the Federalist Party. And they moved vigorously to oppose him.
Niccolo Machiavelli
In Chapter 26 of The Discourses, Machiavelli advises:
I hold it to be a proof of great prudence for men to abstain from threats and insulting words towards any one, for neither the one nor the other in any way diminishes the strength of the enemy—but the one makes him more cautious, and the other increases his hatred of you, and makes him more persevering in his efforts to injure you.
If Donald Trump has read Machiavelli, he’s clearly forgotten the Florentine statesman’s advice. Or he decided long ago that it simply didn’t apply to him.
On November 18, 2018, Trump hurled a scatological insult at Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), one of his frequent critics.
Trump’s was furious that Schiff had said on ABC’s “This Week” that the President’s appointment of Acting Attorney General Matt Whitaker was “unconstitutional” because he wasn’t confirmed by the Senate.
So, true to form, Trump responded with a tweet: “So funny to see little Adam Schitt (D-CA) talking about the fact that Acting Attorney General Matt Whitaker was not approved by the Senate, but not mentioning the fact that Bob Mueller (who is highly conflicted) was not approved by the Senate!”
Special counsel Robert Mueller was appointed by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein in May, 2017, after Trump suddenly fired FBI Director James Comey. Mueller didn’t require Senate confirmation for the position.
Schiff was quick to respond on Twitter: “Wow, Mr. President, that’s a good one. Was that like your answers to Mr. Mueller’s questions, or did you write this one yourself?”
What made Trump’s insult not only infantile but self-destructive was that, on November 6, the Democrats had retaken the House of Representatives.
For Trump, this spelled real danger. Even before taking office in 2017, he had been haunted by charges of conspiring with Russian Intelligence agents to subvert the 2016 Presidential election.
And in six weeks, Schiff would become Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee when Democrats returned in January. This would arm him with investigative powers even greater than those possessed by Mueller.
Adam Schiff
Trump similarly relishes tossing insults at another longtime critic—Rep. Maxime Waters (D-CA). On June 25, 2018, he tweeted: “Congresswoman Maxine Waters, an extraordinarily low IQ person, has become, together with Nancy Pelosi, the Face of the Democrat Party.”
This also proved a mistake. After voters returned Democrats to running the House, Waters was slated to become Chairwoman of the House Financial Services Committee.
For Trump, this had to be a nightmare come true. Throughout the 2016 Presidential race, Trump had refused to release his tax returns—which every Presidential candidate has done since Ronald Reagan in 1980.
Trump’s longstanding ties to Russian oligarchs and subservience to Vladimir Putin have fueled speculation that his returns could reveal some truly unscrupulous financial dealings.
Waters would now have the power to subpoena Trump’s tax returns and delve into the long-standing mystery of what he’s hiding.
Maxine Waters
As both a Presidential candidate and President, Trump has repeatedly attacked hundreds of real and imagined enemies in politics, journalism, TV and films.
From June 15, 2015, when he launched his Presidential campaign, until October 24, 2016, Trump fired almost 4,000 angry, insulting tweets at 281 people and institutions that had somehow offended him. The New York Times needed two full pages of its print edition to showcase them.
As President, he has bullied and insulted even White House officials and his own handpicked Cabinet officers:
- Trump waged a Twitter-laced feud against Jeff Sessions, his Attorney General. Sessions’ “crime”? Recusing himself from investigations into well-established ties between Russian Intelligence agents and members of Trump’s Presidential campaign. Trump fired him on November 7, 2018, the day after Democrats retook the House of Representatives in the mid-term elections.
- Trump humiliated his Chief of Staff, Reince Priebus—at one point ordering him to kill a fly that was buzzing about. On July 28, 2017, six months after taking the job, Priebus resigned.
- Trump similarly tongue-lashed Priebus’ replacement, former Marine Corps General John Kelly. Trump was angered by Kelly’s efforts to limit the number of advisers who had unrestricted access to him. Kelly told colleagues he had never been spoken to like that during 35 years of military service—and wouldn’t tolerate it again.
With Adam Schiff and Maxine Waters now heading powerful House investigative committees, Trump will undoubtedly come to regret the fury his ill-advised insults have raised up against him.
Which leads to a final warning by Machiavelli: Unwise princes cannot be wisely advised.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Military, Politics, Social commentary on June 21, 2019 at 12:02 am
“We will have so much winning if I get elected [President] that you may get bored with winning.”
So boasted Donald Trump at a September, 2015 Capitol Hill rally to protest President Barack Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran.
But as the 2020 Presidential race nears, President Trump is looking ever more like a loser.
Among the victims of Trump’s “winning” streak: Several pollsters whose internal polling numbers showed him lagging behind Democratic Presidential candidates in key states.
Donald Trump
When matched against Democratic contender and former Vice President Joe Biden, Trump’s numbers came to:
Trump Biden
VIRGINIA: 38% 53%
MAINE 38% 55%
MINNESOTA 40% 54%
MICHIGAN 40% 53%
In Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Florida and Michigan, Trump trails Biden by double-digits. These were states Trump won against Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.
Biden leads Trump by seven points in Iowa, by eight points in North Carolina, by 17 points in Virginia, by 14 points in Minnesota, and by 15 points in Maine.
Even worse for Trump, who cannot admit error or weakness: Some of his own pollsters dared to leak the bad news.
As a result, his Presidential campaign is cutting ties with several of his pollsters.
Predictably, Trump claimed he was doing just fine. He said his campaign had “great internal polling” and the numbers reported were from “fake polls.”
“We are winning in every single state that we’ve polled. We’re winning in Texas very big. We’re winning in Ohio very big. We’re winning in Florida very big,” he said.
Trump’s 2015 boast reflected he mindset, if not the words, of an earlier CEO whose ego carried him—and his country—to ruin: Adolf Hitler.
Among the fatal errors that led to the defeat of the Third Reich:
- Wasting hundreds of Luftwaffe [air force] pilots, fighters and bombers in a halfhearted attempt to conquer England.
- Ignoring the pleas of generals like Erwin Rommel to conquer Syria, Iraq and Saudi Arabia, which would have given Germany control of most of the world’s oil.
- Attacking his ally, the Soviet Union, while still at war with Great Britain.
- Turning millions of Russians into enemies rather than allies by his brutal and murderous policies.
- Needlessly declaring war on the United States after the Japanese attacked Pearl harbor. (Had he not done so, Americans would have focused all their attention on defeating Japan.)
- Refusing to negotiate a separate peace with Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin—thus granting Germany a large portion of captured Russian territory in exchange for letting Stalin remain in power.
- Insisting on a “not-one-step-back” military “strategy” that led to the needless surrounding, capture and/or deaths of hundreds of thousands of German servicemen.
As the war turned increasingly against him, Hitler became ever more rigid in his thinking.
He demanded absolute control over the smallest details of his forces. This, in turn, led to astonishing and unnecessary losses among their ranks.
On June 6, 1944, General Erwin Rommel ordered the Panzer tanks to drive the Allies from the Normandy beaches. But these could not be released except on direct orders of the Fuehrer.
Panzer tank
Hitler’s chief of staff, General Alfred Jodl, informed Rommel: The Fuhrer was asleep-–and was not to be awakened. By the time Hitler awoke and issued the order, it was too late.
Nor could Hitler accept responsibility for the policies that were leading Germany to certain defeat. He blamed his generals, accused them of cowardice, and relieved many of the best ones from command.
Among those sacked was Heinz Guderian, creator of the German Panzer corps—and responsible for the blitzkreig victory against France in 1940.
Heinz Guderian
Another was Erich von Manstein, designer of the strategy that defeated France in six weeks—which Germany had failed to do during four years of World War 1.
Erich von Manstein
Finally, on April 29, 1945—with the Russians only blocks from his underground Berlin bunker—Hitler dictated his “Last Political Testament.”
Once again, he refused to accept responsibility for unleashing a war that would ultimately consume 50 million lives:
“It is untrue that I or anyone else in Germany wanted war in 1939. It was desired and instigated exclusively by those international statesmen who either were of Jewish origin or worked for Jewish interests.”
Hitler had launched the invasion of Poland–and World War II—with a lie: That Poland had attacked Germany.
Fittingly, he closed the war—and his life—with a final lie.
Joachim C. Fest, author of Hitler (1973), writes of the surprise that awaited Allied soldiers occupying Nazi Germany in 1945: “Almost without exception, virtually from one moment to the next, Nazism vanished after the death of Hitler and the surrender.
“It was as if National Socialism had been nothing but the motion, the state of intoxication and the catastrophe it had caused….
“Once again it became plain that National Socialism, like Fascism in general, was dependent to the core on superior force, arrogance, triumph, and by its nature had no resources in the moment of defeat.”
The ancient Greeks believed that “a man’s character is his destiny.” For Adolf Hitler—and the nations he ravaged—that proved fatally true.
It remains to be seen whether the same will prove true for Donald Trump—and the United States.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Politics, Social commentary on June 7, 2019 at 12:07 am
Niccolo Machiavelli (1469 – 1527) was an Italian Renaissance historian, diplomat and writer. Two of his books continue to profoundly influence modern politics: The Prince and The Discourses on the First Ten Books of Titus Livy.
The Prince has often been damned as a dictator’s guide on how to gain and hold power. But The Discourses outlines how citizens in a republic can maintain their liberty.
Niccolo Machiavelli
In Chapter 26 of The Discourses, he advises:
I hold it to be a proof of great prudence for men to abstain from threats and insulting words towards any one, for neither the one nor the other in any way diminishes the strength of the enemy—but the one makes him more cautious, and the other increases his hatred of you, and makes him more persevering in his efforts to injure you.
If Trump has read Machiavelli, he’s utterly forgotten the Florentine statesman’s advice. Or he decided long ago that it simply didn’t apply to him.
Consider his treatment of Meghan Markle, the Duchess of Sussex, in advance of his scheduled June 3 visit to the United Kingdom.
Interviewed by London’s The Sun newspaper on May 31, Trump said it would be his great honor to once again meet with 93-year-old Queen Elizabeth II. Then the conversation turned to Markle—and Trump’s uncanny ability to inflame rather than nurture relations between longtime allies.
Markle, an American citizen born in Los Angeles in 1981, had accused Trump of being “divisive” and “misogynistic” during the 2016 Presidential campaign.
Meghan Markle
Northern Ireland Office [CC BY 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)%5D
The Sun reporter told Trump that Markle, 37, was on maternity leave with her three-week-old son, Archie. As a result, she would not join other members of the royal family in meeting with the President.
“Are you sorry not to see her? Because she wasn’t so nice about you during the campaign. I don’t know if you saw that,” the Sun reporter added.
Trump: “I didn’t know that, no. I didn’t know that. No, I hope she’s OK. I did not know that, no.”
Reporter: “She said she’d move to Canada if you got elected. It turned out she moved to Britain.”
Trump: “A lot of people moving here, so what can I say? No, I didn’t know that she was nasty.”
Donald Trump
The remark predictably triggered a torrent of outrage among Britons. So, equally predictably, on June 1 the President’s “Official Trump War Room” Twitter account went into denial.
“Fake News CNN is at it again, falsely claiming President Trump called Meghan Markle ‘nasty,’” the account tweeted. Accompanying the tweet was a 44-second audio clip of Trump’s interview with The Sun. “Here is what he actually said. Listen for yourself!”
The only problem with the clip: It completely validated reports that Trump had used the word “nasty.”
Having insulted the Duchess of Sussex before leaving for Great Britain, Trump decided to launch another missile-insult while he was still in flight.
On June 1, The (London) Observer had published an opinion column by London Mayor Sadiq Khan. The headline: “It’s Un-British to Roll Out the Red Carpet for Donald Trump.”
And Khan hadn’t spared any reasons for his verdict:
“Praising the ‘very fine people on both sides’ when torch-wielding white supremacists and antisemites marched through the streets clashing with anti-racist campaigners. Threatening to veto a ban on the use of rape as a weapon of war.
“Setting an immigration policy that forcefully separates young children from their parents at the border. The deliberate use of xenophobia, racism and “otherness” as an electoral tactic. Introducing a travel ban to a number of predominately Muslim countries. Lying deliberately and repeatedly to the public.
“No, these are not the actions of European dictators of the 1930s and 40s. Nor the military juntas of the 1970s and 80s. I’m not talking about Vladimir Putin or Kim Jong-un. These are the actions of the leader of our closest ally, the president of the United States of America….
“History teaches us of the danger of being afraid to speak truth to power and the risk of failing to defend our values from the rise of the far right. At this challenging time in global politics, it’s more important than ever that we remember that lesson.”
As Air Force One was on its final approach to Britain, Trump, like a petulant child, tweeted back.
“@SadiqKhan, who by all accounts has done a terrible job as Mayor of London, has been foolishly ‘nasty’ to the visiting President of the United States, by far the most important ally of the United Kingdom. He is a stone cold loser who should focus on crime in London, not me….
“….Kahn reminds me very much of our very dumb and incompetent Mayor of NYC, de Blasio, who has also done a terrible job – only half his height. In any event, I look forward to being a great friend to the United Kingdom, and am looking very much forward to my visit. Landing now!”
Khan’s spokesman said “childish insults” should be “beneath the president of the United States.”
But they aren’t. They’re simply the stock-in-trade of a childish dictator.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on May 9, 2019 at 12:11 am
“You know the great thing about the state of Iowa is, I’m pretty sure you all define gun control the same way we do in Texas—hitting what you aim at.
“My wife, Heidi, who is a petite, 5’2 California blonde, she was standing at the tripod unloading the full machine gun with a pink baseball cap that said ‘Frmed and Fabulous.’”
Yes, it was United States Senator Rafael “Ted” Cruz (R-Texas) on the prowl for laughs–-and votes—at a town hall meeting in Iowa.
Normally, Cruz would do his vote-hunting in Texas. But now Cruz had a bigger prize on his mind than simply being re-elected a United States Senator. Cruz wanted to be President in 2016.
U.S. Senator Rafael Cruz
And Iowa held its precinct causes on February 1-2, 2016.
Cruz’ jokes about gun control came on June 19, 2015, only two days after Dylann Roof, a white high school dropout, gunned down three unarmed black men and six black women at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina.
Dylann Roof
Following his remarks, Cruz headed to a shooting range, where he fired off rounds on a semiautomatic .223-caliber Smith and Wesson M&P 15.
Cruz’ remarks no doubt appeared insensitive to those who now mourned for the latest victims of gun violence. But Charles L. Cotton took insulting the dead to a whole new level.
Cotton is a National Rifle Association (NRA) board member who also runs TexasCHLForum.com, an online discussion forum about guns and gun owners’ rights in Texas and beyond.
In a discussion thread on June 18, 2015—one day after the church slaughter—a board member noted that Clementa C. Pinckney, one of the nine people slain, was a pastor and a state legislator in South Carolina.
Cotton responded: “And he voted against concealed-carry. Eight of his church members who might be alive if he had expressly allowed members to carry handguns in church are dead. Innocent people died because of his position on a political issue.”
That discussion thread has since been deleted.
During a subsequent phone interview, Cotton emphasized that he had been speaking as a private citizen—and not as an NRA board member:
“It was a discussion we were having about so called gun-free zones. It’s my opinion that there should not be any gun-free zones in schools or churches or anywhere else. If we look at mass shootings that occur, most happen in gun-free zones.”
If private citizens were allowed to carry guns everywhere, Cotton says, there will be fewer mass shootings because “if armed citizens are in there, they have a chance to defend themselves and other citizens.”
Cotton’s position—“there should not be any gun-free zones”—is exactly that of the NRA itself.
Under such circumstances, America will become a nation where anyplace, anytime, can be turned into the O.K. Corral.
Another point that Cotton didn’t mention: Dylann Roof did believe in concealed-carry–and it cost the lives of nine innocent men and women.
Finally, there is this: Even highly-trained shooters—such as those assigned to the United States Secret Service–don’t always respond as expected.
On May 15, 1972, Alabama Governor George Wallace was campaigning for President in Laurel, Maryland. He gave a speech behind a bulletproof podium at the Laurel Shopping Center. Then he moved from it to mingle with the crowd.
Since the 1968 assassination of Senator Robert F. Kennedy, all those campaigning for President have been assigned Secret Service bodyguards. And Wallace was surrounded by them as he shook hands with his eager supporters.
Suddenly, Arthur Bremer, a fame-seeking failure in life and romance, pushed his way forward, aimed a .38 revolver at Wallace’s abdomen and opened fire. Before he could be subdued, he hit Wallace four times, leaving him paralyzed for the rest of his life.
Arthur Bremer shoots George Wallace
Nor was he Bremer’s only victim. Three other people present were wounded unintentionally:
- Alabama State Trooper Captain E. C. Dothard, Wallace’s personal bodyguard, who was shot in the stomach;
- Dora Thompson, a campaign volunteer, who was shot in the leg; and
- Nick Zarvos, a Secret Service agent, who was shot in the neck, severely impairing his speech.
None of Wallace’s bodyguards got off a shot at Bremer—before or after he pulled the trigger.
On October 6, 1981, Egyptian President Anwar Sadat was reviewing a military parade in Cairo when a truck apparently broke down directly across from where he was seated.
Anwar Sadat, moments before his assassination
Suddenly, soldiers bolted from the rear of the vehicle, throwing hand grenades and firing assault rifles. They rushed straight at Sadat—who died instantly under a hail of bullets.
Meanwhile, Sadat’s bodyguards—who had been trained by the CIA—panicked and fled.
Sadat had been assassinated by army officers who believed he had betrayed Islam by making peace with Israel in 1977.
The ultimate test of the NRA’s mantra that “there should not be any gun-free zones…anywhere” will come only when one or more heavily-armed gunmen target an NRA convention.
It will then be interesting to see if the surviving NRA members are as quick to blame themselves for being victims as they are to blame the victims of other mass gun-slaughters.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on March 4, 2019 at 11:58 am
Donald Trump has a unique menagerie of friends.
Some of them are Communist dictators—such as North Korea’s Kim Jong Un and Russia’s Vladimir Putin.
Some of them are accused pedophiles—such as billionaire Jeffrey Epstein, who, in 2008, was convicted of soliciting an underage girl for prostitution.
And some of them apparently knew that others were being sexually abused, but did nothing to stop the assaults—like Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH).
Jordan has long defended Trump’s litany of demonstrated lies and documented criminality. Appearing on CNN’s “Anderson Cooper 360,” on April 16, 2018, Jordan accused Andrew McCabe, the former deputy director of the FBI, of being a liar. He accused the Washington Post of lying. He asked Cooper if he had ever lied.
But, pressed by Cooper on whether he had ever heard Trump lie, Jordan replied: “I have not. I don’t know of it. Nothing comes to mind.”
Rep. Jim Jordan
Jordan pushed to impeach Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who oversees Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of Russia’s subversion of the 2016 Presidential election.
Jordan, a member of the House’s Right-wing Freedom Caucus, fanatically supports President Donald Trump, whose campaign received documented support from Russian Intelligence agents.
Jordan believes there should not be any investigation into this unholy alliance.
And on February 27, Jordan appeared at the House or Representatives’ Committee on Oversight and Reform to attack the credibility of Michael Cohen.
Trump’s former attorney and fixer
- Accused the President of being a racist, a conman and a cheat.
- Testified that “Donald Trump is a man who ran for office to make his brand great, not to make our country great. He had no desire or intention to lead this nation—only to market himself and to build his wealth and power.”
- Produced a copy of a check Trump “wrote from his personal bank account—after he became president—to reimburse me for the hush money payments I made to cover up his affair with an adult film star and prevent damage to his campaign.”
- Testified that “Mr. Trump knew of and directed the Trump Moscow negotiations throughout the campaign and lied about it. He also lied about it because he stood to make hundreds of millions of dollars on the Moscow real estate project.”
Michael Cohen
IowaPolitics.com [CC BY-SA 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)%5D
As a result of his work for Trump, on August 21, 2018, Cohen pleaded guilty to tax fraud, bank fraud and campaign finance violations. He was sentenced in December, 2018, to three years in federal prison and ordered to pay a $50,000 fine.
Like every other Republican at the hearing, Jordan ignored Cohen’s damning allegations. He didn’t try to defend Trump. He simply indulged in character assassination.
After Jordan claimed that Cohen showed “non-existent” remorse, Cohen counterattacked: “I am remorseful. I am going to prison. I will be away from my wife and children for years.”
Meanwhile, Jordan is being haunted by a scandal of his own.
Jordan served as an assistant coach at Ohio State University (OSU) from 1987 to 1995. Several former OSU wrestlers claim Jordan ignored sexual abuse of students by the team’s doctor.
In April, 2018, OSU announced it was investigating charges that Richard Strauss had abused team wrestlers while he served as the team doctor from the mid-1970s to the late 1990s. Strauss died in 2005.
Jordan claims he didn’t know about the abuse.
Yet several former wrestlers assert that they told Jordan about the abuse or remember Jordan being a part of conversations about the abuse.
“I considered Jim Jordan a friend,” Mike DiSabato, a former wrestler, told NBC. It was DiSabato’s allegations against Strauss that led OSU to open the investigation. “But at the end of the day, he is absolutely lying if he says he doesn’t know what was going on.”
In an email to Ohio State’s legal counsel, DiSabato wrote: “Strauss sexually assaulted male athletes in at least fifteen varsity sports during his employment at OSU from 1978 through 1998.”
“There’s no way unless he’s got dementia or something that he’s got no recollection of what was going on at Ohio State,” former Ultimate Fighting Championship world champion Mark Coleman told the Wall Street Journal. “I have nothing but respect for this man, I love this man, but he knew as far as I’m concerned.”
Which immediately raises the question: How can you respect and love a man who knew that students were being sexually abused—and did nothing to stop it?
Speaking with reporters in Ohio, Jordan offered a Sergeant Schultz “I know nothing” defense:
“We knew of no abuse, never heard of abuse. If we had, we would have reported it. If, in fact, there’s problems, we want justice for the people who were victims, obviously, and as I said, we are happy to talk with the folks who are doing the investigation. But the things they said about me just were flat-out not true.”
Trump says he believes his ally Jordan “100 percent”: “I don’t believe them at all,” Trump told reporters, referring to the wrestlers who have come forward.
Thus, a President accused of moral depravity finds himself defended by a man accused of ignoring the sexual abuse of young men.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on February 15, 2019 at 12:10 am
Hear that sound?
It’s the sound of Niccolo Machiavelli laughing at President Donald J. Trump.
Machiavelli (1469 – 1527) was an Italian Renaissance historian, diplomat and writer. Two of his books continue to profoundly influence modern politics: The Prince and The Discourses on the First Ten Books of Titus Livy.
The Prince has often been damned as a dictator’s guide on how to gain and hold power. But The Discourses outlines how citizens in a republic can maintain their liberty.
Niccolo Machiavelli
In Chapter 26 of The Discourses, he advises:
I hold it to be a proof of great prudence for men to abstain from threats and insulting words towards any one, for neither the one nor the other in any way diminishes the strength of the enemy—but the one makes him more cautious, and the other increases his hatred of you, and makes him more persevering in his efforts to injure you.
If Trump has read Machiavelli, he’s utterly forgotten the Florentine statesman’s advice. Or he decided long ago that it simply didn’t apply to him.
Consider his treatment of James Comey, the former FBI director whom the President fired on May 9, 2017.
James B. Comey (By Federal Bureau of Investigation)
In a move that Joseph Stalin would have admired, Trump gave no warning of his intentions.
Instead, he sent Keith Schiller, his longtime bodyguard and henchman, to the FBI with a letter announcing Comey’s dismissal.
Trump had three reasons for firing Comey:
- Comey had refused to pledge his personal loyalty to Trump. Trump had made this “request” during a private dinner at the White House in January. After refusing to make that pledge, Comey told Trump that he would always be honest with him. But that didn’t satisfy Trump’s demand that the head of the FBI act as his personal KGB chief.
- Trump had tried to coerce him into dropping the FBI’s investigation into former National Security Adviser Mike Flynn, for his secret ties to Russia and Turkey. Comey had similarly resisted that demand.
- Comey had recently asked the Justice Department to fund an expanded FBI investigation into contacts between Trump’s 2016 Presidential campaign and Russian Intelligence agents.
On May 10, 2017—the day after firing Comey—Trump met in the Oval Office with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavov and Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak.
Donald Trump
Kislyak was reportedly a top recruiter for Russia’s SVR foreign intelligence agency. He has been closely linked with former Attorney General Jeff Sessions and fired National Security Adviser Mike Flynn.
“I just fired the head of the FBI,” Trump told the two dignitaries. “He was crazy, a real nut job. I faced great pressure because of Russia. That’s taken off.”
Two days later, on May 12, Trump tweeted a threat to the fired FBI director: “James Comey better hope that there are no ‘tapes’ of our conversations before he starts leaking to the press.”
It clearly didn’t occur to Trump that Comey might have created his own record of their exchanges. Or that he might choose to publicly release it.
But shortly afterward, that’s exactly what he did.
News stories surfaced that Comey had written memos to himself immediately after his private meetings with Trump. He had also told close aides that Trump was trying to pressure him into dropping the Russia investigation.
The news stories led to another result Trump had not anticipated: Acting Attorney General Rod Rosenstein yielded to demands from Democrats and appointed former FBI Director Robert Mueller III as a Special Prosecutor to investigate Trump’s Russian ties.
A Special Prosecutor (now euphemistically called an “Independent Counsel”) holds virtually unlimited power and discretion.
In 1993, Kenneth Starr was appointed Special Prosecutor to investigate Bill and Hillary Clinton’s involvement in “Whitewater.” This was a failed Arkansas land deal that had happened while Clinton was still governor there. It had nothing to do with his role as President.
Starr never turned up anything incriminating about Whitewater. But he discovered that Clinton had gotten oral sex in the Oval Office from a lust-hungry intern named Monica Lewinsky.
Clinton’s lying about these incidents before a Federal grand jury led to his impeachment by a Republican-dominated House of Representatives. But he avoided removal when the Senate refused to convict him by a vote of 55 to 45.
Finally, Trump’s implying that he had illegally taped his conversations with Comey was yet another dangerous mistake, with four possible outcomes:
- If Trump had such tapes, they could and would be subpoenaed by the Special Prosecutor and the House and Senate committees investigating Russia’s meddling in the 2016 election.
- If Trump had such tapes and refused to turn them over, he could be charged with obstruction of justice—and impeached for that reason alone.
- If he had burned or erased such tapes, that, too, would count as obstruction of justice.
- If he didn’t have such tapes, he would be revealed as a maker of empty threats.
Eventually the truth emerged: Trump didn’t have such tapes. This claim was just one more in a long series of Trump lies and slanders.
As Machiavelli also warns: Unwise princes cannot be wisely advised.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on February 5, 2019 at 12:09 am
“On August 7, 2017, I witnessed a brutal assault on a friend of mine named Hal [not his real name]. I was a passenger in his car as he waited for a parking space to open in front of the apartment building where we both live.”
So opened a letter from a man named Dave [not his real name] to the San Francisco Police Department (SFPD).
Summarizing his experience as a witness and assault victim, Dave wrote:
- A man commits assault and battery on another without the slightest provocation.
- He then uses his Jeep Cherokee to twice ram his victim’s car.
- These violations of criminal law are reported to the SFPD by two eyewitnesses/victims within an hour of their occurrence.
- One eyewitness gives the SFPD a photo of the license plate of the car used in the vehicular assaults.
- The SFPD doesn’t contact either witness/victim in this incident.
- Despite being provided with all this evidence, the SFPD does NOTHING.
Dave subsequently received a Complainant Satisfaction Survey from the SFPD’s Department of Police Accountability (DPA). After bluntly stating his disgust at the complete indifference of the SFPD to the assault, he got a letter from DPA on December 13, 2018, which stated:
“Your Request for an Investigative Hearing in the above-captioned case has been received. We have reviewed the investigative file and have determined that the facts and circumstances supported the DPA’s findings.”
And: “We understand that you may not agree with our finding(s), but it may be of some use to contact the investigator for better clarity and understanding in this matter.”
In short: We aren’t going to arrest the man who assaulted you, but we’ll try to convince you that it’s all for the best.
Determined to not let the SFPD have the last word, Dave sent back a letter to David Henderson, executive director of DPA.
He noted that he had never requested an investigative hearing. Nor had he written a December 5, 2018 letter to the SFPD, as the letter claimed.
He also noted that, 16 years earlier, on May 19, 2002, the San Francisco Chronicle had published a series of devastating reports on the SFPD. Among the newspaper’s findings:
- Violent criminals in San Francisco’s had a better chance of getting away with their crimes than predators in any other large American city.
- The San Francisco Police Department solved, on average, just 28% of the city’s murders, rapes, robberies, shootings, stabbings and other serious assaults between 1996 and 2000.
- Among the nation’s 20 largest cities, that was the lowest violent crime ‘clearance rate.
- The large-city average clearance rate was 42 percent.
“Judging from the results of my own experience with your agency, little—if anything—has changed within the SFPD during the last 16 years,” Dave wrote.
Referring to the DPA’s false claim that he had requested an investigative hearing, he ended his letter in cold fury:
“It’s a misdemeanor to file a false report with the police. It should be a felony for a police agency to write and send a letter filled with demonstrably false information.
“It is also the height of arrogance and stupidity to believe you can convince the victim of an assault that the criminal negligence he experienced at the hands of the police department didn’t happen.
“Undoubtedly this letter was written for placement in the official files of your department, as a way to cover itself against any possible legal action. No doubt this is common practice within your agency.
“It is precisely such conduct—as well as the refusal of your agency to aggressively investigate crimes of violence against San Francisco residents—that is guaranteed to produce widespread contempt for and refusal to cooperate with your police department.”
Dave didn’t receive another letter from the SFPD.
* * * * *
Unfortunately, real-life police departments do not operate like the ones depicted in movies and on TV. Among the realities of those departments:
Unless you’re wealthy, a politician or—best of all—a cop, don’t expect the police to protect you if your life is threatened. You’ll simply be told: “We don’t have the resources to protect everybody.”
Above everyone else, police look out for each other. If a citizen murders his lover, he’ll be tracked by two detectives. But whoever kills a cop is sought by the entire department.
Police departments are plagued by the same problems that haunt all major bureaucracies, such as:
- Often lacking state-of-the-art crime labs to analyze evidence.
- Often losing or accidentally destroying important files.
- Staffed by those who are lazy, indifferent, incompetent or even corrupt.
- Often refusing to share information with other police agencies, thus making it easier for criminals to run amok.
The result of all this can only be increased disrespect for law enforcement from a deservedly—and increasingly—cynical public.
When citizens believe police lack the ability-–or even the will-–to protect them or avenge their victimization, that is a deadly blow to law enforcement.
When public support vanishes, so does much of that public funding for hiring more cops and buying necessary equipment.
The result can only be a return to the days of the lawless West, where citizens—as individuals or members of vigilante committees—look only to themselves for protection.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on February 4, 2019 at 12:09 am
Officers of the San Francisco Police Department (SFPD) wear a shoulder patch bearing the motto, “Oro en Paz, Fierro en Guerra”—“Gold in peace, Iron in war.”
But for many San Franciscans, the true motto of the SFPD should be “You’re on your own.”
A friend of mine named Dave [not his real name] who lives in San Francisco, offers the following case:
“On August 7, 2017, I witnessed a brutal assault on a friend of mine named Hal [not his real name]. I was a passenger in his car as he waited for a parking space to open in front of the apartment building where we both live.
“A man—clearly in an agitated state—approached the driver’s side and accused Hal of using the wrong signal. After hearing him out, Hal asked him to back away. Instead, the man quickly began striking Hal in the face at least a half dozen times.”
Dave got out on the passenger’s side and threatened to call police. The assailant returned to his Jeep Cherokee truck, which was parked right behind Hal’s car. Dave re-entered Hal’s car and thought that the worst was over.
Suddenly the Jeep Cherokee slammed into the rear of Hal ‘s car. Then the driver pulled out.
“Hal started his car and followed the Jeep Cherokee to get a photo of its license plate. Using his iPhone, he did. The truck continued a short distance forward, then suddenly reversed and slammed into the front of Hal’s car. The driver then roared off.
“Hal and I then drove to the SFPD’s Central Station, where we both filled out statements and spoke individually with an officer. In addition, Hal provided a photo of the license plate of the vehicle that had rammed him.
“After that, Hal and I waited for a response from the SFPD. We never received one.
In early November, 2017—after waiting three months for a police response—Dave called the SFPD and arranged an appointment with a sergeant at Central Station.
“She showed me a series of photos that seemed to resemble the man who had assaulted Hal. Frankly, I had caught only a brief glimpse of the man when I exited Hal’s car and saw him heading for his Jeep. It certainly didn’t help that, three months later, I was now being asked to give an accurate description of him.
Later, Dave learned that the SFPD had chosen to not pursue criminal charges against the assailant. No reason was given for this decision.
In January, 2018, Dave filed a complaint with the SFPD’s Department of Police Accountability (DPA), formerly known as its Internal Affairs Division.
The investigator he met with was friendly and concerned. Even so, his complaint didn’t lead the SFPD to pursue criminal charges against the assailant. Again, no reason was offered by the agency.
“In November, 2018, I received a Complainant Satisfaction Survey from the SFPD’s Department of Police Accountability. But its Q&A format didn’t let me address the issues I thought important.”
To do so, on November 26, he sent back a memo, offering the following summation:
- A man commits assault and battery on another without the slightest provocation.
- He then uses his Jeep Cherokee to ram the rear of his victim’s car.
- He then uses his Jeep Cherokee to ram the front of his victim’s car.
- These violations of criminal law are reported to the SFPD within an hour of their occurrence.They are reported by not one but two eyewitnesses/victims.
- One of those eyewitnesses provides the SFPD with a photo of the license plate of the car used in the vehicular assaults.
- The SFPD makes no effort to contact either witness/victim in this incident.
- Despite being provided with all this evidence, the SFPD does NOTHING.
And he concluded his indictment:
“I have nothing but contempt for [the SFPD’s] refusal to take even a cursory interest in this case.
“If a friend of mine became the victim of a crime, I would advise him: ‘Don’t waste your time contacting the SFPD. There is simply no reason to set yourself up for a double injury—the first one inflicted by the criminal, and the second one inflicted by the criminally negligent SFPD.'”
San Francisco Hall of Justice
Dllu [CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)%5D, from Wikimedia Commons
To his surprise, Dave received a letter from the DPA, dated December 13, 2018:
“Your Request for an Investigative Hearing in the above-captioned case has been received. We have reviewed the investigative file and have determined that the facts and circumstances supported the DPA’s findings.
“More specifically, we reviewed your letter dated December 5, 2018. The DPA strongly recommends that you call and make an appointment with your investigator in your case at (415) ###-#### to discuss our finding(s).
“We understand that you may not agree with our finding(s), but it may be of some use to contact the investigator for better clarity and understanding in this matter.
“Your Request for Investigative Hearing is therefore denied. Thank you for the time you took to ensure that the DPA understood your concerns. We view this as a positive step in keeping with the goals of the DPA.”
And it was signed by Paul David Henderson, the agency’s executive director.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on January 23, 2019 at 12:56 am
Forty-nine years ago—on January 22, 1973—the United States Supreme Court struck down most of America’s laws banning abortion.
Its decision in Roe v. Wade marked the first time American law recognized the right of a woman to choose whether she wanted to become a mother.
Fittingly, on this date in 2019, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo signed into law the Reproductive Health Act that had just passed the Senate and Assembly.
The law
- Allows abortions after the 24-week mark to protect the mother’s health or in cases where the fetus won’t survive.
- Protects doctors from prosecution by shifting abortion law from the state’s penal code to its health code.
- Allows physician assistants, nurse practitioners and midwives to provide non-surgical abortion care.
The bill had been introduced to the Assembly in 2007 by Democratic Governor Eliot Spitzer. But it had been blocked for 11 years in the Republican-controlled State Senate.
Then, in November, 2018, Democrats overwhelmingly gained control of the Senate.
But since 1980, starting with Ronald Reagan, every “small government” Republican President has tried to force the government into the vagina of every abortion-seeking woman.
Several factors are responsible for all this fetus fanaticism.
First, there is an energized constituency for politicians willing to wave this red flag. Almost every major Republican Presidential candidate since Ronald Reagan has tapped into this voting bloc. And each has found plenty of votes to be gotten from it.
Second, many fetus fanatics simply dislike women. They fear and resent the women’s movement, which has given women the right to enter the workforce and compete directly with men.
And what they hate most is the legal right of a woman to avoid becoming pregnant via birth control—or to abort the result of a male’s sperm if they do. They see this as a personal rejection.
The Right is made up overwhelmingly of white males. And many of these men would feel entirely at home with a Christianized version of the Taliban. They long for a world where women meekly cater to their every demand and believe only what their male masters approve for them to believe.
Third, many fetus fanatics are not truly “pro-life.” They totally oppose abortion under most—-if not all—circumstances. But they also fully support:
- making military-style assault weapons available to nutcases;
- capital punishment;
- going to war for almost any reason;
Remington AR-15 Bushmaster
- wholesale massacres of wildlife;
- despoiling of the environment; and
- even nuclear war.
And many of those who fanatically defend the right of a fetus to emerge from the womb just as fanatically oppose welfare for those who can’t support that newborn.
Fourth, many fetus fanatics are “family values” hypocrites. For example: Representative Scott DesJarlais (R-TN), an anti-abortion, “family values” doctor, had an affair with a patient and later pressured her to get an abortion. He also agreed that his wife should have two abortions.
Fifth, many fetus fanatics feel guilty about their own past sexual transgressions—especially if these resulted in pregnancy. And they want to prevent others from living the same life they did.
Some of these people are well-intentioned. Even so, they usurp unto themselves a God-like right to intrude on the most intimate decisions for others—regardless of what those people may need or want.
Sixth, many fetus fanatics embrace their own pas. On one hand, most of them claim they want to “get government off the backs of the people.” That usually means allowing corporations to pollute, sell dangerous products and treat their employees as slaves.
On the other hand, they want to empower State and Federal authorities to prevent women from getting an abortion—even in cases of rape, incest, or to save the life of the mother.
Seventh, many leaders of the fetus fanatics movement are independently wealthy. This means that even if abortion could be outlawed for the vast majority, they could always bribe a willing doctor—-here or abroad—–to perform such an operation on their wife, daughter and/or mistress. For them, there is always an escape clause.
Eighth, many fetus fanatics are “pro-life” when it comes to fetuses, but hypocritically refuse to support the needs of children from low-income families.
Ninth, many fetus fanatics believe that since their religion teaches that abortion is wrong, they have a moral duty to enforce that belief on others.
Evangelical Christians harshly condemn Muslims—such as those in Afghanistan—for segregating women, forbidding them to drive and forcing them to wear burqas—black robes covering them from head to foot.
Taliban: Islam’s version of the “Right-to-Life” movement
But while they condemn Islamics for their general intolerance of others’ religious beliefs, they lust to impose their own upon those who belong to other churches. Or who belong to no church at all.
Tenth, many fetus fanatics are just as opposed to birth control as they are to abortion. Thus, when Georgia University law student Sandra Fluke asked Congress to require insurance companies to cover birth control, Rush Limbaugh branded her a “slut” and a “prostitute.”
* * * * *
It’s time to face the blunt truth: A “Conservative Victory,” as the title of Sean Hannity’s book puts it, would impose an anti-women Taliban on America.
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THE NRA’S “GUN-TIME RELIGION” AND ITS “HOLY BODYCOUNT”
In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on August 5, 2019 at 1:00 amOn February 14, 2018, 19-year-old Nikolas Cruz slaughtered two faculty members and 15 students at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.
His weapon of choice: An AR-15 assault rifle, often favored by gun massacre killers.
Eight days later, on February 22, Wayne LaPierre, executive vice president of the National Rifle Association, attacked those he held responsible for the series of massacres plaguing American schools.
And it wasn’t crazed gunmen armed with automatic weapons designed for military use.
Wayne LaPierre
With funerals still being planned for some of the victims, LaPierre blamed “the elites,” “saboteurs” and “new European-style socialists” for this and other gun massacres.
He did so at the Conservative Political Action Conference (C-PAC) in National Harbor, Maryland.
“They hate the NRA, they hate the Second Amendment. They hate individual freedom. In the rush of calls for more government, they have also revealed…their true selves.
“The elites do not care about America’s schoolchildren. If they truly cared, they would protect them. For them, it is not a safety issue. It is a political issue.
“Their goal is to eliminate the Second Amendment and our firearms freedoms, so they can eradicate all individual freedoms.”
His C-PAC congregation gave him a wild ovation.
And he accused the Democratic party of being “infested with saboteurs who do not believe in capitalism, do not believe in the Constitution, do not believe in our freedom, and do not believe in America as we know it.”
These “saboteurs” were “new European-style socialists.”
Which was ironic: In 2016, the NRA spent $30 million to elect Donald Trump—who fiercely defends Russian Communist dictator Vladimir Putin against the FBI, NSA and CIA.
He then outlined his solution for protecting America’s schoolchildren: Turning schools into virtual concentration camps patrolled by heavily-armed security guards.
The highlight of LaPierre’s speech came at its close: “And there is no greater personal, individual freedom than the right to keep and bear arms, the right to protect yourself, and the right to survive.
“It is not bestowed by man, but granted by God to all Americans as our American birthright.”
Anyone who’s seen the 1970 sci-fi movie, Beneath the Planet of the Apes, remembers the final scene: Where seemingly normal underground dwellers strip off their human face masks and reveal themselves to be radiation-scarred mutants.
They wear white robes, and stand silently during a sermon or shout “Amen!” in what is clearly a dark parody of a religious service. It’s immediately clear what they are worshiping: An atomic bomb standing upright.
And they pay tribute to the engine of obliteration that has destroyed human civilization and brought about a world ruled by apes.
Their leader, Mendez, chants:
“Glory be to the Bomb, and to the Holy Fallout. As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be. World without end. Amen.
“His sound has gone out to all lands, and his light unto the end of the world.
“Almighty and everlasting Bomb, who came down among us to make Heaven under Earth. Lighten our darkness. O instrument of God—grant us thy peace!”
Reading Wayne LaPierre’s eulogy to the Gun and his passionate invoking of God, it’s easy to re-imagine his giving a slightly altered version of the sermon offered in Beneath the Planet of the Apes. It’s also easy to imagine this taking place during an NRA convention.
WAYNE LAPIERRE: The heavens declare the Glory of the Gun. And the body-count showeth His handiwork.
NRA CONGREGATION: His sound is gone out to all lands; and his Light unto the end of the world.
WAYNE LAPIEREE: He descendeth from the outermost part of Heaven; and there is nothing hid from the lead thereof. There is neither speech nor language after His voice is heard among them.
NRA CONGREGATION: Praise Him! Praise Him! My Strength and my Redeemer!
WAYNE LAPIERRE: Glory be to the Gun, and to the Holy Bodycount! As it was in the Beginning, is now and ever shall be, massacres without end. Amen!
NRA CHORUS: Amen! Amen! Amen! Amen!
WAYNE LAPIERRE: Almighty and Everlasting Gun, who came down among us to make Heaven unto Earth. Lighten our darkness with your muzzle flashes. O instrument of God, grant us They peace.
NRA CHOIR: Almighty Gun, who destroyed all men—to create corpses! Behold His glory!
WAYNE LAPIERRE: Behold that Truth that abides in us. To reveal that Truth unto that Maker.
WAYNE LAPIERRE AND NRA CONGREGATION: I reveal my inmost self unto my God.
NRA CHORUS (singing): Unto my God!
NRA CONGREGATION (singing):
All guns bright and beautiful. All creatures dead with lead.
The good Gun makes us what we are!
He takes out eyes to see with, and lips that might yet speak. How great the Gun Almighty, who has made all things dead. Amen!
WAYNE LAPIERRE: May the Blessing of the Gun Almighty and the fellowship of the Holy Bodycount descend on us all, this night and forevermore!
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On December 14, 2012, a psychotic gunman using military firepower slaughtered 20 first-graders and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School. Since then, at least 2,189 mass shootings have erupted nationwide, with at least 2,475 killed and 9,137 wounded.
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