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FOR REPUBLICANS, WORDS ARE WEAPONS: PART TWO (END)

In Bureaucracy, History, Humor, Politics, Social commentary on March 12, 2024 at 12:50 am

Words are weapons—or can be, if used properly.   

Republicans learned this truth after World War II.

  • Richard Nixon became a United States Senator in 1950 by attacking Helen Gahagen Douglas as “The Pink Lady.”
  • From 1954 onward, Senator Joseph R. McCarthy and other Red-baiting Republicans essentially paralyzed the Democratic party through such slanderous terms as “Comsymps,” “fellow-travelers” and “Fifth Amendment Communists.”

Pulitzer-Prize winning author David Halberstam summed up the effectiveness of such tactics in his monumental study of the origins of the Vietnam War, The Best and the Brightest:

“But if they did not actually stick, and they did not, [Joseph McCarthy’s] charges had an equally damaging effect: They poisoned. Where there was smoke, there must be fire. He wouldn’t be saying these things [voters reasoned] unless there was something to it.”

Joseph McCarthy

Democrats have generally proven indifferent to or ignorant of the power of effective language.

Donald Trump solicited Russian Communist aid to win the Presidency in 2016. He solicited aid from Chinese Communists to retain it in 2020. 

He attacked countless Americans and world leaders—including those presiding over America’s NATO alliance. But he never even criticized Russian dictator Vladimir Putin.  

Yet even with such clear-cut evidence, Democrats refused to directly accuse him of treason, as in:

  • “TrumPutin”
  • “Commissar-in-Chief”
  • “El Dunce”
  • “Predator of the United States”
  • “Carrot Caligula”
  • “Red Donald”
  • “DJTraitor”

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The Kremlin

Similarly, Trump got a free pass on treason from the news media. None dared suggest the obvious: That he moved boxes of classified documents to his Mar-a-Lago estate to sell them to America’s enemies in exchange for huge sums to pay his upcoming legal bills.

While Trump branded the news media “the enemy of the people,” no media outlet had the courage to hurl the same charge at him.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Trump repeatedly lied about its lethality and opposed the use of masks and social distancing to combat it. As a result, 400,000 Americans had died by the time he left office.

Yet no Democrat dared label him “Coronavirus-in-Chief.” 

Nor has the news media directly held him accountable for those deaths.

Tyrants are conspicuously vulnerable to ridicule. Yet here, too, Democrats proved unable or unwilling to make use of this powerful weapon.  

In this YouTube-obsessed age, Democrats could effectively assail Trump with a series of ridiculing videos. For example, Trump’s well-established “bromance” with Putin could be turned into a parody of the famous song, “Johnny B. Good”:

Way back inside the Kremlin where the lights glow red
There ruled a man named Putin who would poison you dead.
He came up with a plan to make his Russia great
And all it took was bribes and Republican hate.
And Trumpy was a man who couldn’t read or spell
But he could sell out his land just like he’s ringing a bell.

Image result for Images of memes of Trump as Putin's puppet

Many of Trump’s fiercest defenders in the House and Senate have taken “campaign contributions” (i.e., bribes) from Russian oligarchs linked to Putin. They could be pointedly attacked by turning the Muppet song, “The Rainbow Connection,” into “The Russian Connection.”   

Why are there so many tales about Russians
And Right-wingers taking bribes?
Russians are Commies and have lots of rubles
For traitors with something to hide. 

So I’ve been told and some choose to believe it
It’s clear as the old KGB.
Someday we’ll find it
The Russian Connection—
The bribers, the traitors—you’ll see. 

A continuing theme among Republican politicians is that they are paragons of religious virtue, while Democrats are champions of Satan.

Yet Democrats have done nothing to publicize such truths as:   

  • Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich is a serial adulterer. 
  • Former Speaker Dennis Hastert is a convicted sodomizer of teenage boys.
  • Josh Duggar, a Right-wing star of the high-rated “reality” series, 19 Kids and Counting, has been sentenced to 12 years’ imprisonment for possessing child pornography. 
  • Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene has boasted: “Marriage is a wonderful thing and I’m a firm believer in it.” Yet she engaged in open affairs with at least two members of her local gym—for which Perry Greene divorced her.

Most Americans don’t follow political news closely—and know nothing of such revelations. 

Thus, Democrats must repeatedly advertise such facts—to counter Republicans’ constant claims of being the moral arbiters of America. And this needs to be done through major advertising campaigns on TV—where most Americans get their news about politics.  

Throughout 2016, liberals celebrated on Facebook and Twitter the “certain” Presidency of former First Lady Hillary Clinton. They were cheered on by First Lady Michelle Obama’s naive advice on political tactics: “When they go, we go high.”

Meanwhile, Donald Trump planned to subvert the 2016 election by Russian Intelligence agents and millions of Russian trolls flooding the Internet with legitimately fake news. 

History has proven which tactics proved superior.

Many Democrats echo former President Dwight D. Eisenhower on Joseph McCarthy: “I’m not going to get into the gutter with that man.”

The result: A series of lost elections.

Democrats need to accept that they—and the country’s democratic traditions—are engaged in a death-match with their Republican opponents.

Only certain defeat is guaranteed by adhering to Marquis of Queensbury when your enemy is using brass knuckles.

FOR REPUBLICANS, WORDS ARE WEAPONS: PART ONE (OF TWO)

In Bureaucracy, History, Politics, Social commentary on March 11, 2024 at 12:19 am

In 1996, Newt Gingrich, then Republican Speaker of the House of Representatives, wrote a memo that encouraged Republicans to “speak like Newt.”  

Entitled “Language: A Key Mechanism of Control,” it urged Republicans to attack Democrats with such words as “corrupt,” “selfish,” “destructive,” “hypocrisy,” “liberal,” “sick,” and “traitors.”

Even worse, Gingrich encouraged the news media to disseminate such accusations. Among his suggestions:

  • “Fights make news.”
  • Create a “shield issue” to deflect criticism: “A shield issue is, just, you know, your opponent is going to attack you as lacking compassion. You better…show up in the local paper holding a baby in the neonatal center.”

Newt Gingrich

This is in line with the advice of Florentine statesman Niccolo Machiavelli: “For men in general judge more by the eyes than by the hands; for everyone can see, but very few have to feel. Everyone sees what you appear to be, few feel what you are….”

In the memo, Gingrich advised:

“….In the video “We are a Majority,” Language is listed as a key mechanism of control used by a majority party, along with Agenda, Rules, Attitude and Learning. 

“…We believe that you could have a significant impact on your campaign and the way you communicate if we help a little. That is why we have created this list of words and phrases….

“This list is prepared so that you might have a directory of words to use in writing literature and mail, in preparing speeches, and in producing electronic media.

“The words and phrases are powerful. Read them. Memorize as many as possible. And remember that like any tool, these words will not help if they are not used.”

Here is the list of words Gingrich urged his followers to use in attacking “the opponent, their record, proposals and their party”:

  • abuse of power
  • anti- (issue): flag, family, child, jobs
  • betray
  • bizarre
  • bosses
  • bureaucracy
  • cheat
  • coercion
  • “compassion” is not enough
  • collapse(ing)
  • consequences
  • corrupt
  • corruption
  • criminal rights
  • crisis
  • cynicism
  • decay
  • deeper
  • destroy
  • destructive
  • devour
  • disgrace
  • endanger
  • excuses
  • failure (fail)
  • greed
  • hypocrisy
  • ideological
  • impose
  • incompetent
  • insecure
  • insensitive
  • intolerant
  • liberal
  • lie
  • limit(s)
  • machine
  • mandate(s)
  • obsolete
  • pathetic
  • patronage
  • permissive attitude
  • pessimistic
  • punish (poor …)
  • radical
  • red tape
  • self-serving
  • selfish
  • sensationalists
  • shallow
  • shame
  • sick
  • spend(ing)
  • stagnation
  • status quo
  • steal
  • taxes
  • they/them
  • threaten
  • traitors
  • unionized
  • urgent (cy)
  • waste
  • welfare

And to the dismay of both Republicans and Democrats, Donald Trump has learned his lessons well.

On May 27, 2016, conservative New York Times columnist David Brooks analyzed the use of insults by Republican Presidential front-runner Donald Trump. He did so with his counterpart, liberal syndicated columnist, Mark Shields, on The PBS Newshour.

DAVID BROOKS: “Trump, for all his moral flaws, is a marketing genius. And you look at what he does. He just picks a word and he attaches it to a person. Little Marco [Rubio], Lyin’ Ted [Cruz], Crooked Hillary [Clinton].

“And that’s a word.  And that’s how marketing works. It’s a simple, blunt message, but it gets under.

“It sticks, and it diminishes. And so it has been super effective for him, because he knows how to do that.  And she [Hillary Clinton] just comes with, ‘Oh, he’s divisive.’

“These are words that are not exciting people. And her campaign style has gotten, if anything…a little more stagnant and more flat.”

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Donald Trump

MARK SHIELDS: “Donald Trump gratuitously slandered Ted Cruz’s wife. He libeled Ted Cruz’s father for being potentially part of Lee Harvey Oswald’s assassination of the president of the United States, suggesting that he was somehow a fellow traveler in that.  

“This is a libel. You don’t get over it….”

Hillary Clinton wasn’t the only Presidential candidate who proved unable to cope with Trump’s gift for insult.  His targets—and insults—included:

  • Former Texas Governor Rick Perry: “Wears glasses to seem smart.”
  • Former Florida Governor Jeb Bush: “Low Energy Jeb.” 
  • Vermont U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders: “Crazy Bernie.” 
  • Ohio Governor John Kasich: “Mathematically dead and totally desperate.”

His victims, in turn, struggled to respond. Florida U.S. Senator Marco Rubio tried to out-insult Trump at the Republican Presidential candidates’ debate on March 3, 2016.

“I call him Little Marco. Little Marco. Hello, Marco,” said Trump.

Rubio retaliated with “Big Donald.” Since Americans generally believe that “bigger is better,” this was a poor choice of insult.

A better choice, given Trump’s “bromance” with Russian dictator Vladimir Putin: “Red Donald.”

Trump has reserved his most insulting words for women.  For example:

  • Carly Fiorina, his Republican primary competitor: “Look at that face. Would anyone vote for that?”
  • Megyn Kelly, Fox News reporter: “You could see there was blood coming out of her eyes. Blood coming out of her wherever.”
  • California Rep. Maxine Waters: “An extremely low IQ person.”
  • Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi: “MS-13 Lover Nancy Pelosi.”

Only one candidate has shown the ability to rattle Trump: Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren. 

As Mark Shields noted on The PBS Newshour.

“Elizabeth Warren gets under Donald Trump’s skin. And I think she’s been the most effective adversary.”

And David Brooks offered: “And so the tactics…is either you do what Elizabeth Warren has done, like full-bore negativity, that kind of [get] under the skin, or try to ridicule him and use humor.” 

NAZI GERMANY HAD JOSEPH GOEBBELS; AMERICA HAS RUPERT MURDOCH: PART THREE (END)

In Bureaucracy, Business, History, Law, Politics, Social commentary on February 22, 2024 at 12:09 am

Fox News began peddling “The Big Lie”—that President Donald J. Trump was cheated of electoral victory in 2020—on Election Night.         

But then the truth came to light.

On March 26, 2021, Dominion Voting Systems sued Fox News in Delaware Superior Court.

Dominion charged that Fox’s program hosts and guests had deliberately lied that Dominion’s voting machines had been rigged to steal the 2020 United States presidential election from then-president Donald Trump.

Fox News claimed that it was reporting news of what individuals were saying and was thus protected by the First Amendment to the Constitution.

But during pre-trial discovery, Dominion accessed a treasury of Fox News memos and emails proving that its prominent hosts and top executives knew they were lying about Dominion but continued doing so anyway.

With several prominent Fox senior executives and personalities slated to testify, the trial opened on April 18, 2023. Then Fox caved—and settled the case the same day for $787.5 million.

One month earlier, on the March 3, 2023 edition of The PBS Newshour, political commentators David Brooks (The New York Times) and  Jonathan Capehart (The Washington Post) had explained the significance of the upcoming lawsuit. 

David Brooks: Rupert Murdoch started a paper called The Australian a long time ago. He was a journalist, an actual journalist. And now he’s gotten to the point where you can lie on camera—as long as your ratings are OK. 

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

David Brooks

Those people who lied didn’t lie over little things. They lied about the election results of a presidential election, kind of a major deal. And we now know—as we all suspected—they all knew what was happening.

And Murdoch is sitting there atop this organization sort of blithely pretending it’s not really his problem. And so he can say it, and he has power over the corporation today. He owns it. He could fire Tucker [Carlson]. He could fire all the people—all the people who were in on this and whose journalistic integrity has been exposed as zero.

And yet he’s still trying to blithely rise above it. And so it’s amazing that we have a major news organization that is inaccurate about a presidential election. 

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

Jonathan Capehart

Jonathan Capehart: And what that says to me is, Rupert Murdoch and his anchors, those people who are peddling in lies, they are insulated from the effect of the lies that they tell. When you see someone saying, “Oh, our ratings are going down, and that’s going to affect the stock price.” So there’s no concern….

Rupert Murdoch

Hudson Institute, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0&gt;, via Wikimedia Commons

So that means you’re more concerned about your bottom line than the corrosive impact on our democracy and political discourse in this country. That, to me, was what’s really disturbing.

And what’s even more disturbing is that Fox News isn’t even really covering this lawsuit, which means that their audience, who should know about what’s being said about them and about the programming for them, they will never—they might not ever know….that what they’re being told is just a big bunch of lies.

Well, that’s the point I was trying to make. We don’t even know if they will even know about this case, as a result. And even if they do find out, either they might not trust it, or maybe they just don’t care. I don’t know. 

* * * * *

If Fox’s viewers didn’t learn about the lawsuit, it was because they watched Fox exclusively.

On the night of the Fox settlement, the Fox affiliate in San Francisco—KTVUdidn’t carry any mention of it. Those wanting to discover the latest twist in the case had to get their news from channels that believed in reporting facts, not Right-wing propaganda.

In the Soviet Union, the all-powerful Kremlin dictatorship made it extremely hard—and dangerous—to learn the truth about domestic and international events.

No correspondent for the official Soviet newspapers “Pravda” (“Truth”) and “Izvestia” (“News”) dared report what he actually knew about the failings and crimes of the regime.

Citizens who wanted to learn the truth risked imprisonment or worse if the authorities learned of their investigative efforts. As a result, the vast majority of Russians—and those enslaved by them—lived in a world of lies and half-truths. 

There is no excuse for that among American citizens who have access to a wide array of news sources.

An X user recently asked: “Are critical thinkers being vastly outnumbered in the USA because secondary education is just so damn expensive? It’s no wonder Republican states are among the most poorly educated.”

The answer is: No

You don’t have to accept Right-wing propaganda. 

You can question the official version of any story.

You can seek out multiple sources.

You don’t have to seek out only those sources that confirm your long-held prejudices.

And you don’t need a college education to do so.

If Right-wingers—who make up the audience for Fox News—are ignorant, it’s because they want to be ignorant.

And they will stay ignorant—because living in a world of Right-wing lies and hatred is more important to them than accepting reality for what it is.

NAZI GERMANY HAD JOSEPH GOEBBELS; AMERICA HAS RUPERT MURDOCH PART TWO (OF THREE)

In Bureaucracy, Business, History, Law, Politics, Social commentary on February 21, 2024 at 1:44 am

Reputable news organizations believe they’re hurt when a reporter gets his facts wrong—or, worse, invents a story for sensationalistic attention.   

For Fox News Network, getting hurt means that some of its own reporters have told the truth. And, as a result, many of its viewers are turning to other Right-wing propaganda outlets.      

In a series of email exchanges, Fox Network executives revealed they were not simply loyal to President Donald Trump but mortally afraid of him.

Star Host Tucker Carlson said that Trump was good at “destroying things. He’s the undisputed world champion of that. He could easily destroy us if we play it wrong.”

Nor was Carlson the only one. The fear started at the very top—with Fox CEO Rupert Murdoch: “Nobody wants Trump as an enemy. We all know that Trump has a big following. If he says, ‘Don’t watch Fox News, maybe some don’t.”

Up to January 26, 2021, Murdoch allowed Fox advertiser Mike “My Pillow” Lindell to appear on the Tucker Carlson Tonight Show to lie that Trump had been cheated of victory by massive voter fraud.

Questioned as to why he allowed it, Murdoch agreed with the statement, “It is not red or blue, it is green.” 

Rupert Murdoch - Flickr - Eva Rinaldi Celebrity and Live Music Photographer.jpg

Rupert Murdoch 

Eva Rinaldi, CC BY-SA 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0&gt;, via Wikimedia Commons

In short: Lust for money, not ideology, motivated Fox’s slant on politics.

And, as with all Fox News commentary, truth played no role in the decision to air it.

With unapologetic hypocrisy, Fox stars Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham brutally mocked the lies being peddled by Trumpand their own network.

In a text to Ingraham, Carlson said that Sidney Powell, an attorney who was representing the Trump campaign, was “lying” and that he had “caught her” doing so.

Ingraham: “Sidney is a complete nut. No one will work with her. Ditto with Rudy [Giuliani].” 

Hannity said Giuliani was “acting like an insane person” and Ingraham described him as “an idiot.”

And Hannity said: “That whole narrative that Sidney was pushing, I did not believe it for one second.” 

Sean Hannity 2020.jpg

Sean Hannity

How do we know all this? Certainly not because some outraged Fox whistleblower made these exchanges public.

It’s because Fox’s chief victim, Dominion Voting Systems, decided to strike back.

The Denver-based company produces and sells electronic voting hardware and software, including voting machines and tabulators, in Canada and the United States. 

Dominion, claimed Fox, had criminally enabled Democrats to steal the election for Joe Biden by programming its machines to throw out votes meant for Trump

Its reputation unfairly tarnished, its employees threatened with violence by Trump’s Fascistic supporters, Dominion filed a $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox News in March, 2021.

Dominion charged Fox News with pushing false conspiracy theories about the company to win back dissatisfied viewers upset with its coverage of Trump’s defeat.

Libel lawsuits are typically centered around one falsehood. But Dominion cites a lengthy list of Fox hosts making false claims even though they were known to be untrue.

According to an almost 200-page document Dominion filed in the lawsuit:

“From the top down, Fox knew ‘the Dominion stuff’ was ‘total BS.’ Yet despite knowing the truth—or at minimum, recklessly disregarding that truth—Fox spread and endorsed these ‘outlandish voter fraud claims’ about Dominion even as it internally recognized the lies as ‘crazy,’ ‘absurd,’ and ‘shockingly reckless.’

“As a result of the false accusations broadcast by Fox into millions of American homes, Dominion has suffered unprecedented harm and its employees’ lives have been put in danger,” Dominion’s attorneys wrote in the lawsuit.  

Dominion Voting Systems logo.svg

Backing up its assertions: A treasury of emails, texts, testimony, and other private communications from Fox News personnel contradicting the network’s claims that Dominion’s voting machines had rigged the presidential election in Joe Biden’s favor. 

These had all been obtained through the discovery process.

While Fox was echoing Trump’s claims of “massive voter fraud,” its executives and commentators knew that he—and they themselves—were lying. 

In mid-November 2020, Carlson texted one of his producers that “there wasn’t enough fraud to change the outcome” of the election.

Later, Carlson said that Sidney Powell, one of Trump’s attorneys and a prominent accuser of election fraud, “is lying.”

Who is NC attorney Sidney Powell? - YouTube

Sidney Powell

Dana Perino, an anchor, called allegations of voter fraud against Dominion “total bs,” “insane,” and “nonsense.” 

Murdoch told an executive on November 6, 2020 that “if Trump becomes a sore loser we should watch Sean [Hannity] especially and others don’t sound the same.”

And on January 5, 2021, Murdoch wrote to Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott:

“It’s been suggested our prime time three [Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham] should independently or together say something like, ‘the election is over and Joe Biden won.’ It would “go a long way to stop the Trump myth that the election [was] stolen.” 

But Fox never aired such a statement.

Fox repeatedly tried to get the case dismissed, but Superior Court Judge Eric Davis refused to do so. A trial was slated to begin on April 17. 

There is a difference between journalism and Fascistic propaganda. And Fox News Network routinely provides examples of the latter.

NAZI GERMANY HAD JOSEPH GOEBBELS; AMERICA HAS RUPERT MURDOCH: PART ONE (OF THREE)

In Business, History, Law, Politics, Social commentary on February 20, 2024 at 12:11 am

In the beginning was the audience. And the audience was filled with Fascistic hate and prejudice, and sought always to have its beliefs confirmed.                 

And then came Fox News Network, which sought to capture that audience—and, with it, huge ratings and profits.  

At the center of both Fox and its audience stood Donald Trump—first as a Presidential candidate, then as President.

In him, Right-wingers found their ideal representative: He promised to destroy all those groups they hated.

Among these: Blacks, Asians, “uppity” women, Muslims, liberals, Hispanics, Democrats. 

Related image

Donald Trump

So when Trump lost the 2020 Presidential election—by 81,284,666 votes for former Vice President Joe Biden versus 74,224,319 for Trump-–the Right was devastated. And furious.

Unlike its defeats in past Presidential elections, this time the Right refused to accept the will of the electorate.

Trump had often “joked” about how wonderful it would be for the United States to have a “President-for-Life”—as was the case in China.

This time the Right intended to make that a reality.

Central to making that happen was the Fox News Network.

In 2022, for its seventh consecutive year, Fox News stood as the top-rated cable news network in the United States. Fox averaged 1.4 million total day viewers.

By contrast, 733,000 watched MSNBC and 568,000 watched CNN.

In prime time,  Fox came in first with an average of 2.3 million viewers in 2022.

MSNBC came in second with 1.2 million and CNN ranked third with an average of 730,000.

As for profits: Fox’s net income for the twelve months ending December 31, 2022 was $1.507B, a 4.94% increase year-over-year.

Fox News - Wikipedia

In 2015, Trump launched his campaign for President. His chances for success seemed impossible at the time—even to many mainstream Republicans.

But as he won victory after victory in Republican primaries, Fox News stuck with him. And stayed with him through the four years of his Presidency.

Fox was Trump’s favorite network. It gave him unstinting praise and sought to put a favorable spin on everything he did. As a result, Trump rarely gave interviews to CBS, NBC or ABC News.

In turn, Fox profited hugely as its audience—and advertisers—eagerly tuned in. 

So when Trump lost the 2020 Presidential election, he and Fox decided they must get him back into the Oval Office.

Trump did his best—or worst—by filing about 60 lawsuits to overturn the results of the election. But none of his attorneys could prove their claims that widespread fraud had robbed him of victory. The suits were dismissed by judges or withdrawn by Trump’s own attorneys.

Fox News couldn’t file fraudulent cases on Trump’s behalf. But it could poison the public mind by claiming—endlessly and falsely—that Trump had been cheated by massive voter fraud.

Fox didn’t even wait for the final results of the 2020 election to be called before it intervened on the side of what would soon be dubbed “The Big Lie.”

On Election Night, Chris Stirewalt, the political editor of Fox News Channelwas the first to project Biden’s victory in Arizona. This turned out to be right—and brought a furious attack upon Stirewalt.

Tucker: Biden and his donors don't want you to think about this - YouTube

Tucker Carlson

“We worked really hard to build what we have,” Fox host Tucker Carlson texted his producer, Alex Pfeiffer. “Those fuckers are destroying our credibility. It enrages me.”

For Carlson, credibility didn’t mean ensuring integrity in news reporting. It meant telling Fox’s Right-wing audience what it wanted to hear—whether the “news” was true or not. 

Carlson added that he had spoken with fellow primetime commentators Laura Ingraham and Sean Hannity minutes earlier and that they were “highly upset.”

In a January 26, 2021 Op-Ed for the Los Angeles Times, Stirewalt wrote: “Having been cosseted by self-validating coverage for so long, many Americans now consider any news that might suggest that they are in error or that their side has been defeated as an attack on them personally.

“The lie that Trump won the 2020 election wasn’t nearly as much aimed at the opposing party as it was at the news outlets that stated the obvious, incontrovertible fact.” 

Fox News Politics Editor Chris Stirewalt on New Hampshire Primary | Fox News politics editor Chris Stirewalt breaks down the New Hampshire primary before all of the state's polls close. Tune in

Chris Stirewalt

Stirewalt was fired from Fox News in January, 2021.

Trump was furious about the Arizona call. After the election, he attacked Fox News and encouraged his followers to switch to Newsmax.

Which many of them did, costing Fox a big chunk of its audience.

For Fox, this was the ultimate catastrophe. The company began cracking down on its employees who had dared tell the truth on Election Night. 

One case involved White House correspondent Jacqui Heinrich. Her sin was fact-checking a Trump tweet accusing Dominion Voting Systems of election fraud.

Heinrich wrote that top election officials had determined “there is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised.”

“Please get her fired,” Star host Tucker Carlson texted his fellow host Sean Hannity: “Seriously….what the fuck? I’m actually shocked….It needs to stop immediately, like tonight. It’s measurably hurting the company. The stock price is down. Not a joke.” 

Hannity replied that he had already spoken to Suzanne Scott, the network’s chief executive. The next morning, Heinrich’s tweet had been deleted.

AMERICA’S PLAGUE–DDMBs: PART FOUR (END)

In Bureaucracy, Business, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Medical, Politics, Social commentary on February 9, 2024 at 12:31 am

The latest wrinkle in San Francisco’s “be kind to Untermenschen (the German word for “subhumans”) campaign is the creation of “Navigation Centers.”          

These are essentially holding pens for Untermenschen until they can be “navigated” to permanent housing. 

But housing is in short supply in San Francisco, and there is no telling how long many of these drug addicts, alcoholics, mentally ill and/or bums will stay in them. Or what harm they will wreak on the neighborhoods warehousing them.

Since 2015, eight Navigation Centers have been opened throughout San Francisco; six are in operation.

Among the “amenities” they provide:

  • Meals
  • Privacy
  • Space for pets
  • Space separate from sleeping areas
  • Laundry
  • Access to benefits
  • Wi-Fi

Hundreds—if not thousands—of their occupants are meth or heroin addicts. Such people commit virtually any crime to support their habit. And their crimes of choice are burglary and robbery. 

Little Falls Police Warning Public After Suspected Heroin Overdoses - YouTube

Thus, pouring large numbers of them into San Francisco neighborhoods via “Navigation Centers” guarantees that countless decent citizens will become targets for desperate criminals. 

At a public hearing in January, 2020, San Francisco Supervisor Aaron Peskin touted the importance of Navigation Centers—including the one that would soon be established at Post and Hyde Streets. 

When a local resident asked, “Is one of these centers located where you live?” Peskin replied: “No.”

In short: The city’s elite make sure their homes are far removed from the plague they so easily inflict on San Francisco residents.

In fact, when they’re not swallowing alcohol or injecting, swallowing or sniffing drugs, many of San Francisco’s “homeless” spend a lot of their time ripping off retail stores.

Walgreens drug stores have proven a particular target for these DDMBs—Druggies, Drunks, Mentals and Bums—the four groups that make up 90% of the “homeless” population.

“I feel sorry for the clerks, they are regularly being verbally assaulted,” a regular customer, Sebastian Luke, told the San Francisco Chronicle.

“The clerks say there is nothing they can do. They say Walgreens’ policy is to not get involved. They don’t want anyone getting injured or getting sued, so the guys just keep coming in and taking whatever they want.”

Walgreens 2020 primary logo.svg

“Retail theft across our San Francisco stores has continued to increase in the past few months to five times our chain average,” Walgreens spokesman Phil Caruso told the Chronicle in October, 2021. 

“During this time to help combat this issue, we increased our investments in security measures in stores across the city to 46 times our chain average in an effort to provide a safe environment.” 

As a result, Walgreens has closed at least 11 stores in San Francisco

One store in the San Francisco area reportedly lost $1,000 a day to theft. 

Many shoplifters then sell their stolen goods on the street—often near the store where they stole them.

Under California law, theft under $950 is considered a misdemeanor, but many prosecutors prefer to free those charged rather than holding them in jail.

The maximum sentence they could get: Six months. 

Shoplifting at Exchange costs military in many ways | Flickr

Low-income and disabled seniors who depend on these disappearing drug stores for prescriptions are especially at risk. 

The city budgeted $1.1 billion for fiscal year 2021-22 on DDMBs. Dividing that amount by about 7,754 DDMBs provides the figure of about $128,925 per DDMB per year.  

So what can San Francisco do to effectively combat the plague of DDMBs?

  • Launch a “Please Do Not Feed the Bums” publicity campaign—as it has against feeding pigeons. And those caught doing so should be heavily fined. 
  • Trash cans should be equipped with locked doors, to prevent bums from using them as food dispensers.
  • Those living on the street should be given two choices: (1) Go to a local shelter or face arrest and the immediate confiscation of their possessions;
  • (2) An “Untermenschen City” should be set up near the city dump. There they can live in their tents and/or sleeping bags while being unable to daily confront or assault others to obtain free money.
  • San Francisco’s rent control laws should be strengthened, to prevent future evictions owing to the unchecked greed of landlords. Tenants on fixed incomes should be given special protections against extortionate rent increases.
  • Bus drivers should be able to legally refuse passengers who stink of urine/feces, as they present a potential health-hazard to others.
  • The owners of restaurants, theaters and grocery stores should likewise be allowed to refuse service on the same basis.
  • Those applying for welfare benefits should be required to provide proof of residence. Too many people come to San Francisco because, upon arrival, they can immediately apply for such benefits.
  • Set up a special unit to remove “street people” and their possessions from city sidewalks. This could be a division of the Sanitation Department, since its personnel are used to removing filth and debris of all types.
  • Forcefully tell alcoholics and drug addicts: “Your anti-social behavior is not welcome here. Take your self-destructive lifestyles elsewhere. We won’t subsidize them.”
  • Take the mentally unstable off the street and place them in institutions where their needs can be met. 
  • Tell those who are just plain bums: “Don’t expect us to support you.”

Only then will San Francisco reclaim its place as America’s most beloved city..

AMERICA’S PLAGUE: DDMBs–PART THREE (OF FOUR)

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

If you are a firefighter, police officer, paramedic or schoolteacher, and want to live in San Francisco, forget it.            

According to Rent Cafe, which provides apartment listings directly from top property managers: “The average [monthly] rent for an apartment in San Francisco is $2,879.” And “the average size for a San Francisco apartment is 739 square feet.”

Patent 523 Apartments for Rent in Seattle, WA | Essex

But there’s hope for you yet—if you’re a Druggie, Drunk, Mental or Bum (DDMBs). 

Why? 

Because the Mayor of San Francisco—currently London Breed—and Board of Supervisors have deliberately created an Untermenschen-friendly program that actually encourages such people to move to the city.

“Untermenschen,” in German, means “subhuman.”

The short version of this is “Unters.”

A major part of this lies in placing these “guests” in hotels throughout the city. These range from the relatively low-budget Motel 6 to the luxurious Mark Hopkins.

“Guests” receive personal grooming, sanitary and cleaning supplies, three delivered meals, and laundry service for clothes and linens. 

The hotels were pressured into accepting the Unters, but they also wanted to recover monies lost to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The city is paying $200 per night per room, totaling $6,000 a monthnearly double the cost of a private one-bedroom apartment in San Francisco

But there is a big catch for the hotels: When the “homeless” are placed in subsidized housing, their mental illness, irresponsible addiction to drugs and/or alcohol and/or generally sloth-like habits usually trash those premises.

San Francisco is secretly placing DDMBs—Druggies, Drunks, Mentals and Bumsamong the tourists who check into these hotels. It does so by designating them as “emergency front-line workers.”

For most people, this means doctors, nurses and similar professionals.

It doesn’t mean DDMBs, if not outright criminals

The city has invoked emergency-disaster law to keep this information secret. Officials refuse to notify the public about the dangers within their midst. The list of hotels is withheld from the press and reporters are forbidden to enter the properties. 

City and hotel workers are required to sign nondisclosure agreements that forbid them to reveal the dangers they and their legitimate guests are exposed to. Doing so is punishable by a fine of up to $1,000, imprisonment for up to one year, or both.

Despite this, the truth has been leaking out. Security guards stand outside hotel entrances, alerting anyone who sees them that all is not well. Crime, vagrancy and drug usage/dealing have also increased around the hotels.

In one hotel, Unters receive needle kits and are advised to call the front desk before shooting up. Drug-related deaths have occurred. Containers for safely disposing of needles are placed on every floor. Even so, used syringes are often left where non-addicts can be infected by them.

“There are parties, drug overdoses, deaths, assaults on people, sexual harassment. It’s pandemonium,” City Journal writer Erica Sandberg reported. “This is very bad and it needs to be stopped.

“What they [hotel employees] told about the situation inside goes beyond any scope. They are not just terrified, they are traumatized by what they see. According to their stories, in hotels they found mattresses with feces, blood, hospital bandages on the floor. What people see is so terrible that they go out and say, ‘I don’t want to go back there.'”

City officials provide far more than free room and board to DDMBs

The Department of Public Health (DPH) runs the COVID-19 Alternative Housing Program. And it works in two stages:

Stage 1: Move the “homeless” into the city’s hotels—at city expense.

Stage 2: Provide them with not only free food and shelter but free alcohol, cannabis, and cigarettes. 

According to a May 11, 2020 story in City Journal.org:

“The program’s primary purpose is to keep homeless people, the majority of whom are addicts, out of harm’s way during the pandemic. By getting their substance of choice delivered, the thinking goes, the guests may be more apt to remain in their government-funded rooms.

“Another purpose of the program is to protect the public against the spread of coronavirus. The city doesn’t want homeless people who should be staying in their rooms roaming the neighborhood in search of the substances, potentially infecting others.”   

But the agency doesn’t require that its addict “guests” remain quarantined. It merely asks that they do so.San Francisco Department of Public Health - Crunchbase Company Profile & Funding

After news about these deliveries leaked on social media, DPH claimed that “rumors that guests of San Francisco’s alternative housing program are receiving taxpayer-funded deliveries of alcohol, cannabis and tobacco are false.”

Except that the reports weren’t false.

The program is funded by private philanthropists.  Nevertheless:

  • DPH administers and oversees the program.
  • It’s staffed by city workers, including doctors, nurse practitioners, nurses, social workers and security personnel.
  • The department manages, stores and distributes the substances.
  • Employee time is involved.

Thus, the program is financed by taxpayers, even if an outside group provides some of the funding. 

The latest wrinkle in San Francisco’s “be kind to Untermenschen campaign is the creation of “Navigation Centers.” These are essentially holding pens for Untersuntil they can be “navigated” to permanent housing. 

AMERICA’S PLAGUE–DDMBs: PART TWO (OF FOUR)

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

On November 3, 2021, National Public Radio’s website carried the following headline: “San Francisco’s new rapid response teams race to save lives as ODs dramatically rise.”       

From the story:   

“‘Fentanyl is a game-changer,’ Dr. Hillary Kunins, the city’s director of behavioral and mental health services, says of the opioid that’s 80 to 100 times stronger than morphine. ‘It requires a new way of thinking and resourcing.’ It also, she says, ‘requires people to learn to work across disciplines and sometimes across organizations.'”

And what is the ultimate result of repeatedly saving drug-abusers from their own self-destructive behavior?  

In his 2021 bestseller, San Fransicko: Why Progressives Ruin Cities, author Michael Shellenberger provides the answer. 

San Fransicko: Why Progressives Ruin Cities: Shellenberger, Michael: 9780063093621: Amazon.com: Books

According to its dust jacket:

“Progressives claimed they knew how to solve homelessness, inequality, and crime. But in cities they control, progressives made those problems worse.

“Michael Shellenberger has lived in the San Francisco Bay Area for thirty years. During that time, he advocated for the decriminalization of drugs, affordable housing, and alternatives to jail and prison.

“But as homeless encampments spread, and overdose deaths skyrocketed, Shellenberger decided to take a closer look at the problem. What he discovered shocked him. The problems had grown worse not despite but because of progressive policies.”

In a June 1, 2022 interview with The Spectator World, Shellenberger blamed liberal ideology for this epidemic:

“The first thing is that they don’t enforce laws. They don’t enforce laws against people that they consider victims, which includes addicts and the mentally ill. And if you don’t enforce laws it turns out people don’t follow them and you don’t have functioning civilization.

Michael Shellenberger.jpg

Michael Shellenberger

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

“The second is that they have pursued a radical de-incarceration, de-policing and decriminalization agenda, which has removed penalties for many laws, including shoplifting $950 worth of goods, or possessing three grams of fentanyl and meth, enough to produce paranoid psychosis. And they’ve pursued a so-called housing first anti-shelter policy.

“So they’ve defunded the shelters. The governor himself has established that housing should be a right. That anybody who comes to San Francisco or Los Angeles should have their own apartment unit in those cities. That is the state policy. It is so ridiculous. It is shocking to even say that that is what the policy is, but that is what it is.

“What we need is pretty straightforward. We need to enforce laws. We need a shelter-first housing-earned policy and you need statewide psychiatric and addiction care like they have in every civilized country.

“We’re reviving people from overdose six, nine, twelve times and then sending them right back onto the streets to smoke more fentanyl. It’s bonkers.

“Fifty percent to 75 percent of all fires put out by the San Francisco and Los Angeles fire departments are in homeless encampments. My own research, and the research of others, shows that most of these are arson fires, people just getting back at each other.”

Drunk guy passed out on the sidewalk - YouTube

And how did the city’s mayor, London Breed, respond to the closing of Whole Foods Market?  With a public statement that was pure boilerplate: 

“Public safety is Mayor Breed’s top priority and vital to the City’s work around restoring our economy and making our residents and workers feel safe. 

“Over the last several months, the San Francisco Police Department and the Mayor’s Office have been working collaboratively with Whole Foods’ leadership to address public safety issues at their 8th and Market location.

“We will continue to engage with them about the future use of the site. The Police will continue aggressively enforcing against open-air drug dealing, maximizing police response to urgent calls for assistance, partnering with retailers to address theft in their stores, and enforcing new street vending regulations to disrupt the sale of stolen goods.”

In short: Blah-blah-blah.

Nowhere in that statement is there any mention that from 2020 to July, 2022, San Francisco had a District Attorney—Chesa Boudin—who saw criminals as victims and sought any reason to excuse them for their crimes. 

Nor is there any mention that the current D.A.—Brooke Jenkins—remains stymied by the realities that, under California law: 

  • Theft under $950 is considered a misdemeanor.
  • As a result, many prosecutors prefer to free those charged rather than holding them in jail.
  • The maximum sentence offenders can get is six months.
  • This has led to massive shoplifting sprees at drugstores and merchandise discount stores like Target.

Also left unsaid:

  • Firefighters, police officers and schoolteachers are unable to afford the extortionate rents charged by San Francisco landlords.
  • But city officials have thrown out the welcome mat for DDMBs—Druggies, Drunks, Mentals and Bums
  • Many DDMBs refuse to enter the city’s available shelters. Some claim these places are dangerous—understandably so, since they’re peopled with drug addicts, alcoholics, psychotics and outright bums. 
  • Another reason why many of these shelters go unused: They don’t allow their “guests” to drink up or drug up.

The latest wrinkle in San Francisco’s “be kind to Untermenschen campaign is the creation of “Navigation Centers.” These are essentially holding pens for DDMBsuntil they can be “navigated” to permanent housing.

This is a triumph of misleading language over reality, since there is little available housing in San Francisco to “navigate” them to.

AMERICA’S PLAGUE: DDMBs–PART ONE (OF FOUR)

In Bureaucracy, Business, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Medical, Politics, Social commentary on February 6, 2024 at 12:10 am

The Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit forced San Francisco’s Mayor and Board of Supervisors to do what, for years, they had refused to do: Clear the city’s streets of DDMBsDruggies, Drunks, Mentals and Bums. 

APEC was established in 1989 to promote trade between the United States and Asian-Pacific nations.

From November 11-17, 2023, world and economic leaders were expected to descend on San Francisco. Among those expected to attend: President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping.

“APEC will be a major moment that will live in our City’s rich history. We will show the world San Francisco’s unique ability to create a world-class experience where people continue to want to live, work, and visit,” said San Francisco Mayor London Breed in a news release.

And that meant San Francisco had to counter the “Doom Loop” image it has acquired since the onset of COVID-19 in 2020.

This meant removing homeless camps that had become major health hazards, driving away tourists and infuriating local businesses. These, in turn, had spawned widespread drug abuse, public defecation, filth and rampant theft in the surrounding areas. 

During the week before the summit, the city cleared many camps from seven intersections around the Tenderloin, the most affected part of San Francisco. Key intersections near the APEC site—the Moscone Center in the South of Market area—became tent-free for the first time in months.

A typical street scene

The city also established a “security zone” area around the Moscone Center that only admitted APEC attendees and people who lived in the area.

This, of course, led many tax-paying San Francisco residents to demand: “Why does it take the appearance of self-important big-shots to persuade city leaders to make San Francisco a safe and desirable place to live and work?”

A massive casualty of the irresponsibility of “city leaders” had come on April 10, 2023: One of the largest supermarkets in downtown San Francisco—the Whole Foods Market at Eighth and Market streets—announced it would shut down at the close of business that day. 

The store, operated by Amazon, had been operating slightly more than a year. It had become the repeated victim of wholesale thefts courtesy of the city’s DDMBs.

Whole Foods Market 201x logo.svg

The Politically Correct name for these people is “unhoused.” The accurate name for them is summed up in a German word: “Untermenschen”“subhumans.”

Given the Politically Correct climate of San Francisco, the closing of the Whole Foods store was almost guaranteed to happen.

At its opening, on March 10, 2022, the store operated from 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. By October, it opened at 9 a.m. and closed at 7 p.m.

“It’s to better serve our customers, and it’s more or less because of the area and security issues,” said the store’s manager. “There’s just high theft and people being hostile.”

In November, the store enforced new rules for customers after syringes and crack pipes were found in the restroom. The bathroom was now open only to customers who showed security guards a receipt. Customers were then given a QR code for entry.

It was no coincidence that the bathrooms were often used by drug-abusers—the store was close to the Tenderloin Center, a safe drug-use site. 

Crack cocaine 

Argv0, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0&gt;, via Wikipedia Commons 

Another reason for the change in bathroom policy: Thieves would fill up suitcases with merchandise before going into the restroom.

And who is ultimately responsible for such outrages? 

San Francisco’s topmost officials—the Mayor, Board of Supervisors, District Attorney and chief of the San Francisco Police Department. Together, they have formed an “Untermenschen”-friendly alliance.

The start of the COVID-19 pandemic inflicted a massive loss in foot traffic in downtown San Francisco as employees fled high rises to work remotely from home. Many small businesses—especially restaurants—shuttered.

Compounding this disaster has been an increasing influx of hardcore alcoholics, hardcore drug addicts, psychotically mentally ill and parasitical bums. Sidewalks are littered with huge tents, used hypodermic syringes and needles, empty beer cans and wine bottles, human feces and pools of urine.

The local and national press have predicted a “Doom Loop” facing San Francisco, as the city’s tourism rate sharply declines and City Hall officials currently project a nearly $800 million deficit in San Francisco’s budget. 

Tech giants such as Meta and IBM have abandoned San Francisco for events in cities such as Denver and Orlando, Florida.

In September, 2023, Silicon Valley tech giant Alphabet announced that it would move its high-profile Google Cloud Next conference to Las Vegas in 2024.

But this has not prevented city officials from calling for increased efforts to comfort those very parasites who threaten not only their own lives but those of law-abiding San Franciscans and the city’s tourism industry. 

On November 3, 2021, National Public Radio’s website carried the following headline: “San Francisco’s new rapid response teams race to save lives as ODs dramatically rise.”

From the story:

“Faced with a stunning rise in drug overdose deaths the last few years, the vast majority tied to fentanyl, San Francisco has launched mobile teams made up of paramedics and nurses.

“The new Street Overdose Response Teams (SORT), a collaboration between the city’s health and fire departments, aim to deliver a broad range of support and care directly following an overdose.”

TRUMP AS A TRAGIC HERO?: PART THREE (END)

In Bureaucracy, Entertainment, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Medical, Politics, Social commentary on February 2, 2024 at 12:10 am

For historian and classicist Victor Davis Hanson, Donald Trump possesses an unappreciated self-awareness and sense of what it means to be a tragic hero.    

Trump was into the first year of his Presidency when Hanson penned his article, “Donald Trump, Tragic Hero,” published on April 12, 2018.  

To make his case, Hanson cites a series of popular Western movies featuring lethal men who risk—and sometimes sacrifice—their lives on behalf of others too weak to vanquish evil on their own.

Victor Davis Hanson (@VDHanson) | Twitter

Victor Davis Hanson

Thus in the classic 1960 film, The Magnificent Seven, the Seven slaughter the outlaw Calvera and his banditos—and then ride into the sunset. As they do, Chris (Yul Brynner) tells Vin (Steve McQueen): “The old man was right. Only the farmers won. We lost. We always lose.”

Writes Hanson: “He knows that few appreciate that the tragic heroes in their midst are either tragic or heroic — until they are safely gone and what they have done in time can be attributed to someone else. Worse, he knows that the tragic hero’s existence is solitary and without the nourishing networks and affirmation of the peasant’s agrarian life.”

Chris may know this, but there is absolutely no evidence that Trump does. He has never shown even an awareness of sensitivity and self-knowledge, let alone the possession of either. Trump is at best semi-literate. The concept of tragedy—as expressed in the Greek tragedies to which Hanson refers throughout his article—means nothing to Trump.

Moreover, the Seven have risked their lives—and four of them have died doing so—on behalf of villagers who can pay them almost nothing.

It is inconceivable that Trump would risk anything—especially his life—for people he regarded as poor and thus unworthy of his concern.

The Magnificent Seven (1960 poster).jpg

Copyright © 1960 – United Artists Corporation.”, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

In their first encounter with Calvera (Eli Wallach) the bandit chief offers to make the Seven partners in his ravaging of the village. Of his intended victims, Calvera sneers: “If God had not wanted them sheared, he would not have made them sheep.”

If Trump had heard Calvera’s offer, he would have instantly accepted it.

In June 2016, USA Today published an analysis of litigation involving Trump. Over the previous 30 years, Trump and his businesses had been involved in 3,500 legal cases in U.S. Federal and state courts.

Of the 3,500 suits, Trump or one of his companies were plaintiffs in 1,900; defendants in 1,450; and bankruptcy, third party, or other in 150. Trump was named in at least 169 suits in federal court.

Many of those cases centered around his refusal to pay contractors for their finished work on his properties. Most of the contractors didn’t have the financial resources—as Trump had—to spend years in court trying to obtain the monies they were owed. As a result, they never received payment—or, at best, only a small portion of what they were owed.

When he ran for President in 2015-16, Trump repeatedly promised poor and middle-class Americans a far better plan for medical care than the Affordable Care Act. 

He spent the next four years thuggishly trying to dismantle “Obanacare,” the signature achievement of Barack Obama, America’s first black President. But never did he offer even a general outline of his own alleged plan to “replace” it. 

Hanson tries to draw a further parallel between Trump and the fictional Tom Doniphon, the unsung hero of John Ford’s 1962 movie, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance.

The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962 poster).jpg

Copyright © 1962 Paramount Pictures Corporation and John Ford Productions, Inc.”, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Hanson sums up the movie thus:

“Tom Doniphon (John Wayne)…unheroically kills the thuggish Liberty Valance [Lee Marvin], births the [political] career of Ranse Stoddard [James Stewart] and his marriage to Doniphon’s girlfriend [Vera Miles] and thereby ensures civilization is Shinbone’s frontier future. His service done, he burns down his house and degenerates from feared rancher to alcoholic outcast.” 

It is inconceivable that Trump would take the risk of committing a crime on behalf of someone else—or being able to resist bragging about it if he did. It is equally inconceivable that he would give up a woman he wanted for the happiness of another man.

Most unbelievable of all is the suggestion that Trump would imitate Doniphon by quietly riding off into the sunset.

Trump has often “joked” about becoming “President-for-Life.” After losing the November 3, 2020  Presidential election to former Vice President Joe Biden, he filed 60 lawsuits to overturn the will of 80 million voters. Those failing, he tried some old-fashioned but unsuccessful arm-twisting of several state lawmakers to “find” non-existent votes for him.

Finally, on January 6, 2021, he incited a mob of his fanatical followers to attack the United States Capitol Building. Their mission: Stop the counting of Electoral College ballots certain to give Biden the victory.   

Victor Davis Hanson is a brilliant scholar and colorful writer. But his effort on Trump’s behalf is embarrassing and appalling.

In a series of bestselling books, he has eloquently chronicled the heroism of the ancient Greeks in defending their budding democracy.

It is depressing—and frightening—to discover that this same man can blatantly ignore the criminalities and even treason of the greatest and most destructive tyrant to ever attain the Presidency.