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DONALD TRUMP: THE MIND OF A PSYCHOPATH COMES TO VIDEO: PART TWO (END)

In Bureaucracy, History, Military, Politics, Social commentary on November 1, 2024 at 12:09 am

After taking office as President on January 20, 2017, Donald Trump continued to hurl threats of violence against those he hates.           

“Trump’s language of violence started with immigrants when he launched his presidential campaign in 2015,” wrote Washington Post Reporter Eugene Scott.There is a direct line from his language to real violence against immigrants and other innocent Americans caught in the maniacal mass shootings of the past year.

“And this cancer is spreading: to Congress, to the media, to the intelligence community, to foreign allies. There is no end in sight as Trump becomes increasingly unhinged and the GOP remains frozen in abject silence.”

On October 2, 2019, Journalist Nina Burleigh wrote: “Since 2015, TV-watching Americans have been subject to the deimatic spectacle of more than 400 rallies (at least 80 since his election) in which Trump sometimes openly and more often coyly urged supporters to violence. These spectacles have conditioned many Americans to fear him and his more enthusiastic supporters.” 

Image result for Images of people giving the "Sieg heil" salute to Trump

Supporters giving the “Seig Heil” salute to Donald Trump

“Over the last few days, the President’s rhetoric of violence and hate has spread,” stated an October 3, 2019 press release by America’s Voice, a liberal immigration group.

“As Jamelle Bouie noted yesterday, ‘Over the weekend, in a rage over impeachment, President Trump accused Representative Adam Schiff of ‘treason,’ promised ‘Big Consequences’ for the whistle-blower who sounded the alarm about his phone call with President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine and shared a warning — from a Baptist pastor in Dallas — that impeachment ‘will cause a Civil War like fracture in this Nation from which our Country will never heal.’” 

Trump’s opponents have good reason to fear. And not simply the public demonstrations by the President’s fanatical base. They should fear the secret fantasies of the Right. 

Those secret fantasies have been revealed in a series of Right-wing videos featuring graphic acts of violence against those whom the Right—and Trump—hate.

From October 10 to 12, 2019, attendees of the American Priority Conference at the Trump National Doral Miami resort enjoyed many of those videos.

One of these, “The Trumpsman,” featured a digitized Trump shooting, stabbing and setting fire to such liberals—and even conservatives—as: 

  • Former President Bill Clinton
  • Former Vice President Joe Biden
  • Former Democratic Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton
  • Democratic Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi
  • Former President Barack Obama
  • Vermont United States Senator Bernie Sanders
  • Utah Senator Mitt Romney
  • The late Arizona Senator John McCain 

And legitimate news media—such as CBS, BBC, ABC, CNN, The New York Times and The  Washington Post—were also depicted as among Trump’s victims.

Image result for images of the trumpsman video

The video was produced by Rightists who believed it reflected what Donald Trump would do to his enemies if only he could get away with it. And given his near-constant calls for violence against his critics, they were absolutely correct.  

But the video’s critics were wrong to call for its suppression.

On the contrary—it should have bene widely seen for what it was: The Mein Kampf of Donald Trump and his fanatical followers, in and outside the Republican party.

Like Adolf Hitler’s autobiography, it depicted the future America can expect if the Right gains the power to live out its murderous fantasies. And the fantasy Right-wingers prize most: The brutal extermination of everyone who refuses to submit to their Fascistic tyranny.

“The Trumpsman” is part of a growing genre of pro-Trump memes that routinely earn thousands of views on sites like YouTube and Twitter. Many superimpose the faces of Trump and his chief supporters slaughtering Democrats, liberal celebrities and/or members of the media.

The event’s organizer, Alex Phillips, hurriedly claimed that the “unauthorized video” was shown “in a side room” at the American Priority Conference.

But there was an upside to this exercise in Right-wing porn. Democrats could have run TV ads showing limited clips from “The Trumpsman” video.

Unfortunately, the majority of Democrats lack the courage to attack their Right-wing enemies with the same ruthlessness used against them. That’s why they lost most Presidential elections of the 20th century.

Americans should be constantly warned: These videos were not made by liberals to parody the values and goals of the Republican party and its Right-wing supporters.

These videos were made by Right-wingers—and reflect the true values and intentions of the Republican party and its Right-wing supporters

The boiler-plate rhetoric that gushes out of Republican conventions—about love of family, God and flag—is the public mask of the Right.

The videos that depict Right-wingers ruthlessly slaughtering anyone who dares to disagree with them reflect the real face of the Right.

Of course, most Americans never imagined that a President would:

  • Refuse to accept the results of a legitimate Presidential election;
  • Spend four years lying that he had lost through massive voter fraud; 
  • Incite a mob to attack Congress while it counted Electoral College votes—which he knew proved he had lost in 2020.

Trump’s opponents should stop deluding themselves that: “Surely he’ll never do that.”

Whatever they fear he will do, he will do.

Like all predators, he will stop only when he meets a stronger opponent.

Germans—and the rest of the world—learned that about Adolf Hitler. But only when it was too late.

DONALD TRUMP: THE MIND OF A PSYCHOPATH COMES TO VIDEO: PART ONE (OF TWO)

In Bureaucracy, History, Military, Politics, Social commentary on October 31, 2024 at 12:14 am

On November 9, 1923, Nazi Party Fuhrer Adolf Hitler tried to overthrow the government in Munich, Bavaria.            

About 2,000 Nazis marched to the center of Munich, where they confronted heavily-armed police. A shootout erupted, killing 16 Nazis and four policemen. 

Hitler was injured during the clash, but managed to escape. Two days later, he was arrested and charged with treason.

Put on trial, he found himself treated as a celebrity by a judge sympathetic to Right-wing groups. He was allowed to brutally cross-examine witnesses and even make inflammatory speeches.

At the end of the trial, he was convicted of treason and sentenced to five years’ imprisonment. Of this he served only nine months before being released.

Hitler used his time in Landsberg Prison, in Bavaria, to write his infamous book, Mein Kampf“My Struggle.” Part autobiography, part political treatise, it laid out his future plans—for a revitalized Germany and the conquest of other nations.

Image result for Images of Adolf Hitler outside Landsberg prison

Adolf Hitler leaving Landsberg Prison, December, 20, 1924

Published in 1925, it was long ignored by all but the most fanatical Nazis. But as Hitler gained increasing numbers of votes in a series of elections, many people—inside and outside Germany—began paying attention to its contents.

By 1939 it had sold 5,200,000 copies and had been translated into 11 languages.

Most of those who bought the book never read it. Its style was bombastic, repetitious and illogical. The first edition contained grammatical errors, reflecting a self-educated man.

Few who read it took Hitler’s intentions seriously. Comedians portrayed him as a wildly gesturing  crank who screamed constantly.

Hitler made no effort to hide his program for Germany under his rule. His candor led many people to believe he was a lunatic who could be safely ignored. 

He was especially insistent on the need for eliminating world Jewry and conquering the Soviet Union. 

On the former topic he wrote: “The nationalization of our masses will succeed only when, aside from all the positive struggle for the soul of our people, their international poisoners are exterminated. 

“If at the beginning of the war and during the war twelve or fifteen thousand of these Hebrew corrupters of the nation had been subjected to poison gas, such as had to be endured in the field by hundreds of thousands of our very best German workers of all classes and professions, then the sacrifice of millions at the front would not have been in vain.”

A mere 17 years later, Hitler’s “Thousand-Year Reich” would translate those words into horrific action in a series of extermination camps equipped with gas chambers.

Mein Kampf(german Language Edition) (German Edition)

Hitler was equally insistent that Germany needed to find Lebensraum“Living space”-–in the east. And by “east” he meant “Russia.” 

Specifically: “And so we National Socialists consciously draw a line beneath the foreign policy tendency of our pre-War period. We take up where we broke off six hundred years ago.

“We stop the endless German movement to the south and west, and turn our gaze toward the land in the east. At long last we break off the colonial and commercial policy of the pre-War period and shift to the soil policy of the future.

“If we speak of soil in Europe today, we can primarily have in mind only Russia and her vassal border states.” 

Hitler finally attained power on January 30, 1933. He realized that Germany was not yet strong enough to impose its will on other nations. So he set out on a secret crash program to make Germany the strongest military power in Europe.

In 1936, he set out on his “mission of Providence”:

  • March, 1936: Ordering German troops to reoccupy the demilitarised zone between France and Germany (the Rhineland), in violation of the Versailles Treaty, which ended World War 1.
  • July, 1936: Sending troops to Spain to support the Fascist army of General Francisco Franco.
  • March 12, 1938: Occupying Austria and “unifying” it with Germany (the “Anschluss“).
  • September 29, 1938: Bullying British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain into surrendering Czechoslovakia’s Sudetenland districts to Germany.
  • September 1, 1939: Ordering the invasion of Poland, which unintentionally launched World War II.
  • June 22, 1941: Ordering the invasion of the Soviet Union. 
  • 1941: Secretly ordering “the Final Solution of the Jewish Question,” resulting in the extermination of at least six million Jews.

Only after Hitler set out to conquer, first Europe, then the Soviet Union, did his victims and intended victims realize that Mein Kampf had given them a deadly warning. A warning too many of them had refused to heed.

By the time World War II ended:

  • Fifty million men, women and children were died—most of them dying in agony.
  • The Soviet Union, having crushed Nazi Germany, become a world power.
  • Poland and eastern Europe—once captives of Nazi Germany—now found themselves captives of the Soviet Union.
  • The United States, untouched by the war, emerged as the world’s superpower—and the only country strong enough to contain the Soviet Union.

But Adolf Hitler isn’t the only would-be dictator to give ample warning of his murderous intentions.

And, like most Germans in the Weimar Republic, which preceded Nazi Germany, most Americans refuse to take that warning seriously. 

FIVE MAPS TO SOUTHERN INFAMY: PART TWO (END)

In Bureaucracy, History, Medical, Politics, Social commentary, Uncategorized on October 3, 2024 at 12:12 am

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

Infamy 4: 2000 – COVID-19 pandemic.   

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jonathan Capehart

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

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

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

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

Covid-19 Vaccination Map of USA.png

COVID-19 vaccination map – July 21, 2021

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

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

What had happened?

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

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

David Brooks

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

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

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

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

Infamy 5: 2024 – Backing Trump again 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In Bureaucracy, History, Medical, Politics, Social commentary on October 2, 2024 at 12:08 am

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Southerners found all of this intolerable.

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

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

Abraham Lincoln

But that was not enough for Southerners. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

1968 United States presidential election - Wikipedia

 1968 election 

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

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

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

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

Donald Trump

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

Among his targets:

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

Red States voted for Donald Trump – 2016

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

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

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

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

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

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

A TRAGIC DESTINY–IN FICTION AND REALITY: PART TWO (END)

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

President Joseph Biden now faces the most monumental decision of his life. And no matter what choice he makes, his name will live in infamy for millions of Americans—whether they lean Right or Left.    

Thanks entirely to the Supreme Court’s July 1 ruling giving almost unlimited immunity to former President Donald Trump, Biden can go down in history as the man who saved—at least temporarily—the American republic.

Official portrait of Joe Biden as president of the United States

Joseph Biden

Or he can go down in history as the man who presided over the end of the American republic.

To save it, he must

  • Purge, through arrests and trials, almost the entire treason-conspiring Republican party, starting with Trump, its Fuhrer-in-waiting.
  • Do this officially, because the Court has ruled that he (and future Presidents) can only be prosecuted for unofficial acts.
  • Do this while he still commands the full resources of the military and Justice Department.

DOJ Civil Rights Division (@CivilRights) / X

            File:Seal of the United States Department of Defense.svg - Wikipedia

  • Sweep clean the Federal courts of all Right-wing, treason-supporting judges—such as Aileen Cannon, who has repeatedly thwarted efforts to try Trump for stealing and hiding almost 300 highly classified government documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate.
  • This includes the six Right-wing Supreme Court Justices who have given future Presidents the legal authority to assassinate rivals, take bribes and/or foment coups.

If Biden does this, he will damned as the first President since Abraham Lincoln to brutally crush political opposition.

But he will also be hailed for having—at least temporarily—prevented a wholesale Right-wing takeover and dictatorship under Project 2025. Its’ goal: Replace existing federal civil service workers with tens of thousands of radical Right-wingers.

Image

To preside over the end of the American republic, all Biden need do is what he’s done for the last three years: Nothing. 

Example #1: Only on November 18, 2022, did Attorney General Merrick Garland appoint Jack Smith Special Counsel to investigate Trump’s attempt to overturn the legitimate results of the 2020 Presidential election and become “President-for-Life.” 

This was clearly treason—and Garland should have appointed Smith, at the latest, by mid-2021.

Official portrait of United States Attorney General Merrick Garland

Merrick Garland

Example #2: Trump’s accomplices included 147 members of Congress who voted to invalidate the 2020 Electoral College vote count. A total of 139 served in the House of Representatives, and eight served in the Senate.

To date, not one of these accessories has even been indicted, let alone convicted, for treason.

Arguably, Biden’s worst appointment has been Merrick Garland as Attorney General. 

In 1961, when Robert F. Kennedy became Attorney General, he moved quickly and forcefully to wage war on America’s organized crime syndicates. Unprecedented numbers of mobsters found themselves facing vigorous FBI investigations, indictments and/or convictions.  

By contrast, Garland’s timidity in prosecuting the crimes of Right-wing Republicans serves as not only a national embarrassment but a threat to national security. 

On May 30, a Manhattan jury convicted Donald Trump of 34 felonies for falsifying New York business records in 2016. He had done so to conceal his hush money payoff to porn “star” Stormy Daniels for his extramarital tryst with her.

Related image

Donald Trump

Even though the Biden administration had nothing to do with the case, Republicans immediately blamed the President—and demanded wholesale prosecutions of the Left.

Right-wing activist Charlie Kirk urged Republican prosecutors to get “creative” in bringing charges: “Indict the left, or lose America,” he said on X.

And Trump quickly issued his own calls for “vengeance”: 

“Wouldn’t it be terrible to throw the president’s wife and the former secretary of state, think of it, the former secretary of state, but the president’s wife, into jail? Wouldn’t that be a terrible thing? But they want to do it,” Trump said in an interview on Newsmax.

“It’s a terrible, terrible path that they’re leading us to. And it’s very possible that it’s going to have to happen to them.”

Nor has Trump forgotten former Republican Representative Liz Cheney, who chaired the House 1/6 Committee investigating the Trump-inspired attack on Congress.

“ELIZABETH LYNNE CHENEY IS GUILTY OF TREASON,” Trump posted on his social media website Truth Social. “RETRUTH IF YOU WANT TELEVISED MILITARY TRIBUNALS.”

There can be absolutely no doubt that Trump will pursue “vengeance” against everyone who has ever opposed him if he is re-elected President. 

There can also be no doubt that he will remain in office until he dies as “President-for-Life.”

When Andrew Jackson, seventh President of the United States from 1829 to 1837, was close to death, he asked his doctor: “What act of my administration will be most severely condemned by future Americans?”

“Perhaps the removal of the bank deposits,” said the doctor—referring to Jackson’s withdrawal of U.S. Government monies from the first Bank of the United States.

“Oh, no,” said Jackson, his eyes blazing. “I can tell you. Posterity will condemn me more because I was persuaded not to hang John C. Calhoun as a traitor than for any other act in my life!”

John C. Calhoun had once been Vice President under Jackson and later a United States Senator from South Carolina. His fiery, pro-slavery rhetoric and radical theories of “nullification” of Federal laws played a major role in bringing on the Civil War (1861-1865).   

Whether Biden moves to prevent a Trump/Republican dictatorship or allows it to become reality, he will be simultaneously praised and damned by future generations of Americans. 

A TRAGIC DESTINY–IN FICTION AND REALITY: PART ONE (OF TWO)

In Bureaucracy, Business, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Military, Politics, Social commentary on July 9, 2024 at 12:10 am

The Supreme Court has spoken. And Donald Trump, who tried to treasonously overturn the 2020 Presidential election and make himself “President-for-Life,” is now armed with the almost total immunity he has long sought.     

As Trump and his entrenched Right-wing allies move ever closer to establishing an absolute dictatorship, this is an apt time to discover—or rediscover—the frighteningly real world of The Profession, a 2011 futuristic novel by bestselling author Steven Pressfield. 

Steven Pressfield Focused Interview

Steven Pressfield 

Pressfield had previously made his mark as an author of historical novels—primarily set in ancient Greece.

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

In The Virtues of War (2004) Pressfield adopted the identity of Alexander the Great, explaining what it was like to command invincible armies that swept across the known world.

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

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

“The year is 2032. Everywhere military force is for hire. Oil companies, multi-national corporations and banks employ powerful, cutting-edge mercenary armies to control global chaos and protect their riches.

The Profession by Steven Pressfield | Goodreads

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

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

“A grandmaster military and political strategist, Salter plans to take vengeance on those responsible for his exile and then come home…as Commander in Chief.”

Salter appears as a hybrid of World War II General Douglas MacArthur and Iraqi War General Stanley McCrystal. Like MacArthur, Salter has butted heads with his President—and paid dearly for it. Now his ambition—like MacArthur—is to become President himself by popular acclaim.  

MacArthur in khaki trousers and open necked shirt with five-star-rank badges on the collar. He is wearing his field marshal's cap and smoking a corncob pipe.

Douglas MacArthur

And like McCrystal, he is a pure warrior who leads from the front and is revered by his men. Salter seizes Saudi oil fields and strategically rigs them with explosives to be used if threatened.

Then he offers them as a gift to America. By doing so, he makes himself the most popular man in the country—and a guaranteed occupant of the White House.

Stanley McCrystal

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

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

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

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

Yet unlike Donald Trump, who infamously shouted, “I love the poorly educated!” Salter is a highly intellectual man. He feels himself a tragic figure, lamenting that the United States has abandoned its longstanding political values even as he prepares to extinguish the most basic one by becoming dictator.

“The moment compels me to seize it. If I don’t someone or something worse will step in. But if I perform the bidding of Necessity, I violate the code of the republic to which all of us have sworn allegiance. I cross a line, beyond which there can be no return.

“But what, I ask, is the alternative? The nation has lost its way and is struggling desperately, merely to hang on. The nation can’t go on as it is, and everyone knows it. If not me, who? If not me, what?

“So, yes, I will go home. And yes, I will accept whatever crown, of paper or gold, that my country wants to press upon me. Not because I believe such a coronation will make any difference in the long run.

“But maybe in the short run, it’s better that my hand be on the wheel rather than some other self-aggrandizing sonofabitch whose motives might not be as well-intentioned or whose consciousness so painfully evolved.”

At a nationally televised press conference, Salter hands a loaded pistol to a longtime friend and disciple who now fears his dictatorial ambitions.

“Go ahead,” says Salter. “You’ll be saving the republic. And me, too.”

But the former disciple cannot bring himself to kill his longtime idol: “Now I’m guilty with you,” he says.

Steven Pressfield, in a work of fiction, has given us a nightmarish vision of a futuristic America.

Donald Trump and his Right-wing disciples may soon make that vision a reality.

WAR IS NOT FOR WIMPS

In Bureaucracy, History, Military, Politics on June 24, 2024 at 12:10 am

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

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

Most of those hostages have since been murdered.

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

Palestinians celebrating the attack on Israel

Israel responded by declaring a state of war—pounding Gaza with bombs, missiles. tanks and soldiers. Palestinian health authorities claim that Israel’s ground and air campaign has killed more than 35,000 people, 

Liberal Democrats have demanded that President Joseph Biden stop shipping military equipment to Israel.

The World Court has ordered Israel to immediately halt its military offensive in the southern Gaza city of Rafah.

Three European countries—Spain, Ireland, and Norway—announced that they would recognize a Palestinian state.

Across the United States, scores of university students have protested Israel’s retaliation against Gaza.

Among the universities targeted: Columbia, Harvard, Yale, the University of Texas at Austin, the University of Southern California, Emory University in Atlanta, Boston’s Emerson College.

Columbia University, Barnard College and the University of Southern California (USC) canceled their graduation ceremonies owing to fears of violent protests by terrorism-sympathizing students.

Such holier-than-thou attitudes ignore three important truths: 

First: Soldiering is by its nature a brutal business.

  • The purpose of boot camp is to “break down” the restraints of pacifism and individuality and turn “boys” into “fighting men.” This must be done in weeks, so the process is shockingly brutal.
  • Recruits are repeatedly taught such maxims as: “Ambushes are murder—and murder is fun.”
  • Denigrating the enemy is a time-worn habit in all armies—including the American army. During the Indian wars, soldiers referred to Indians as “Red niggers.”
  • In World War II—the “Good War”—America’s servicemen fought “Japs” and “Krauts.”  During the Vietnam war, Vietnamese became “dinks” and “gooks.”   

Marine Corps Boot Camp – Drill Instructors From Hell - YouTube

Marine drill instructor 

  • Today’s servicemen and women routinely (but unofficially) refer to their Islamic enemies as “ragheads” or “sand niggers.”
  • Soldiers who aren’t toughened by boot camp are by the battlefield. As General George S. Patton often warned: “When you put your hand into a bunch of goo, that a moment before was your best friend’s face, you’ll know what to do.”
  • Those who are demanding that Israel “pause” its offensive against Gaza ignore that when Allied armies were closing in on Berlin, the capitol of Nazi Germany, Americans did not demand that Nazis be given a chance to reorganize and counterattack.

Second: Atrocities in wartime are nothing new—including for U.S. forces.

  • During the Mexican War, Texas Rangers accompanying the U.S. Army acted as commandos—and exacted reprisals against Mexicans engaging in terrorist acts.
  • During the army’s wars against the Indians, soldiers and scouts—such as William F. “Buffalo Bill” Cody—routinely took scalps as trophies.
  • During World War II, Marines posted in the Pacific rarely took prisoners. The reason: Japanese soldiers often pretended to surrender––and thus lured American troops into ambushes.
  • GIs fighting in the European theater generally shot fanatical Waffen-SS soldiers—including those who tried to surrender. This was especially true during the Battle of the Bulge, when Germans dressed in American uniforms stirred panic among Allied forces.

Never-Before-Seen Document Reveals Nazi Soldier's Struggle

Waffen-SS soldier 

  • During the Vietnam war, some “grunts” made necklaces of ears taken from dead Vietcong. Vietnam Correspondent Michael Herr, in his book Dispatches, relates the story of a grunt who was “building his own gook” from actual body parts.   

Third: Those who provoke war do not have a right to dictate how their opponents should defend themselves.

  • In 1815, just before the Battle of New Orleans, General Andrew Jackson ordered American snipers to harass invading British forces—and especially to take out officers. The British commander angrily protested this “barbarism.” Jackson sent back a message of his own: “You have invaded our country and we will defend ourselves as we see fit.” 
  • William Tecumseh Sherman, defending the conduct of his men during their legendary “March to the Sea” through Georgia, said: “Those people made war on us, defied and dared us to come south to their country, where they boasted they would kill us and do all manner of horrible things. We accepted their challenge, and now for them to whine and complain of the natural and necessary results is beneath contempt.”

William Tecumseh Sherman

  • Israelis have learned to deter Palestinian suicide-bombers by the use of police dogs.  Muslims protest because they consider dogs defiled—and defiling—creatures. Islamic terrorists fear that blowing up themselves near a dog risks mingling their blood with that of the dead or wounded animal—thus forfeiting their opportunity to enter Paradise and claim those 72 willing virgins.
  • In early November, 2001—two months after 9/11—Muslims throughout the Islamic world demanded that the United States halt its attacks on Taliban forces in Afghanistan out of “respect” for Ramadan, the Islamic month of fasting. 
  • In short: Islamic “holy warriors” could launch attacks that murdered thousands of innocent men, women and children.  But “infidels” were supposed to defend themselves according to Islamic rules.
  • The United States wisely refused to bow to this Islamic version of “political correctness.”

ADVISORS FOR JOSEPH BIDEN: ANDREW JACKSON, WILLIAM TECUMSEH SHERMAN AND NICCOLO MACHIAVELLI

In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Military, Politics, Social commentary on June 14, 2024 at 12:11 am

When Andrew Jackson, seventh President of the United States from 1829 to 1837, was close to death, he asked his doctor: “What act of my administration will be most severely condemned by future Americans?”

“Perhaps the removal of the bank deposits,” said the doctor—referring to Jackson’s withdrawal of U.S. Government monies from the first Bank of the United States.

That act had destroyed the bank, which Jackson had believed was a source of political corruption.

“Oh, no!” said Jackson.

A portrait of Andrew Jackson, serious in posture and expression, with a grey-and-white haired widow's peak, wearing a red-collared black cape.

Andrew Jackson

Then, his eyes blazing, Jackson raged: “I can tell you. Posterity will condemn me more because I was persuaded not to hang John C. Calhoun as a traitor than for any other act in my life!”

John C. Calhoun had once been Vice President under Jackson and later a United States Senator from South Carolina. His fiery rhetoric and radical theories of “nullification” played a major part in bringing on the Civil War (1861-1865).   

John C. Calhoun

Calhoun was an outspoken proponent of slavery, which he declared to be a “positive good” rather than a “necessary evil.” He supported states’ rights and nullification—by which states could declare null and void federal laws they deemed unconstitutional.

Over time, Southern states’ threats of “nullification” turned to threats of “secession” from the Union—and then civil war.

The resulting carnage destroyed at least 750,000 lives. More Americans died in that war than have been killed in all the major wars fought by the United States since. 

When it ended, America was reinvented as a new, unified nation—and one where slavery was now banned by the 13th Amendment to the United States Constitution.

Equally important, the Federal Government had now set a precedent for using overwhelming military power to force states to remain in the Union.

But in 2012, within days of Barack Obama’s decisive winning of another four years as President, residents across the country filed secession petitions to the Obama administration’s “We the People” program.

States whose residents filed secession petitions included:

Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Nevada, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, Washington (state), West Virginia, Wisconsin and Wyoming.

Abraham Lincoln dedicated his Presidency—and sacrificed his life—to ensure the preservation of a truly United States.

And Robert E. Lee—the defeated South’s greatest general—spent the last five years of his life trying to put the Civil War behind him and persuade his fellow Southerners to accept their place in the Union.

But today avowed racists, Fascists and other champions of treason are working hard to destroy that union—and unleash a second Civil War.

On January 6, 2021, they illegally attacked the United States Capitol Building to halt the counting of Electoral College votes of the 2020 Presidential election. Their goal: Pressure Congress to overturn the election of former Vice President Joseph Biden’s in favor of President Donald Trump.

Not one of the Senators or Representatives who supported this treason has been indicted, let alone convicted.

And most importantly, the man who incited that treason—former President Donald Trump—has not been tried for it. He continues to spread the Big Lie that the election was “stolen” from him.

And most of his 74 million voters stand ready to commit additional acts of violence to “restore” him to office.

President Joseph Biden should follow Andrew Jackson’s example—before treasonous acts become the order of the day.

He should warn Stormtrumpers and Right-wing militia leaders that the United States Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines stand ready to squelch further outbreaks of treason. And that he will send modern-day counterparts of Union General William Tecumseh Sherman to wherever they are needed. 

Sherman’s March through Georgia

Sherman cut a swath of destruction through Georgia during his now-famous “March to the Sea.” In a letter to his commanding general, Ulysses S. Grant, he expressed his formula for dealing with domestic terrorists:

“They cannot be made to love us, but they may be made to fear us. We cannot change the hearts of those people of the South.

“But we can make war so terrible that they will realize the fact that….they are still mortal and should exhaust all peaceful remedies before they fly to war.”

And Sherman’s counsel is backed up by none other than Niccolo Machiavelli, the father of modern political science. 

In his masterwork, The Discouorses, he outlines the consequences of allowing lawbreakers to go unpunished: 

“…Having established rewards for good actions and penalties for evil ones, and having rewarded a citizen for conduct who afterwards commits a wrong, he should be chastised for that without regard to his previous merits….

“For if a citizen who has rendered some eminent service to the state should add to the reputation and influence which he has thereby acquired the confident audacity of being able to commit any wrong without fear of punishment, he will in a little while become so insolent and overbearing as to put an end to all power of the law.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

dunce cap meme - xite-salon.com

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Myth 6: Americans are health-conscious. 

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

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

Tombstones Pictures | Download Free Images on Unsplash

In 2019:

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

Myth 7: Americans only support democratic regimes.  

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

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

Central Intelligence Agency to make Instagram debut - Weekly Voice

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

* * * * * * * * * *

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

—John F. Kennedy 

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

Myth 1: Americans are highly educated.

According to the 2020 U.S. Census:

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

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

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

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

Marshall County, Indiana

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

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

Little Falls Police Warning Public After Suspected Heroin Overdoses - YouTube

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

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

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

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

Donald Trump

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

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

Myth 4: Americans take pride in their history. 

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

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