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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Military, Politics, Social commentary on March 31, 2023 at 12:13 am
Once he became the 45th President of the United States, Donald Trump began undermining one public or private institution after another.
On November 3, 2020, 80 million voters decided they wanted a change—and elected former Vice President Joe Biden as the 46th President of the United States.
Trump refused to accept that verdict.
Speaking from the White House in the early hours of November 4, he said:
“Millions and millions of people voted for us tonight, and a very sad group of people is trying to disenfranchise that group of people and we won’t stand for it.”
For the first time in American history, a President demanded a halt to the counting of votes while the outcome of an election hung in doubt.
States ignored his demand and kept counting.
Next, Trump ordered his attorneys to file lawsuits to overturn the election results, charging electoral fraud.
Specifically:
- Illegal aliens had been allowed to vote.
- Trump ballots had been systematically destroyed.
- Tampered voting machines had turned Trump votes into Biden ones.
Throughout November and December, cases were filed in Wisconsin, Arizona, Nevada, Michigan, Minnesota and Georgia challenging the election results. And, one by one, more than 30 cases were withdrawn by Trump’s attorneys or dismissed by Federal judges—some of them appointed by Trump himself.
For 20 days, General Services Administrator Emily Murphy refused to release $7.3 million in transition funding and Federal resources to the President-elect’s team.
Under the law governing presidential transitions, Murphy was responsible for determining the winner based on publicly available information before the actual Electoral College vote.
Finally, on November 23, Murphy released the transition funding and resources.
Losing in the courts, Trump invited two Republican legislative leaders from Michigan to the White House to persuade them to stop the state from certifying the vote.
Nothing changed.
On December 5, Trump called Georgia Governor Brian Kemp and asked him to call a special legislative session and convince state legislators to select their own electors that would support him, thus overturning Biden’s win.
Kemp refused, saying he lacked the authority to do so.
Meanwhile, top Republicans—such as Vice President Mike Pence and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell—refused to congratulate Biden as the winner.
None of them branded Trump’s efforts to overturn the election as those of a tyrant.
Just as Germans did nothing to stop Adolf Hitler’s inexorable march toward war—and the destruction of millions of lives and Germany itself—so, too, did Americans seem paralyzed to put an end to the equally self-destructive reign of the man often dubbed “Carrot Caligula.”
Gaius Caligula was “the mad emperor” of ancient Rome. Like Trump, he lived by a philosophy of “Let them hate me, so long as they fear me.”
He ruled as the most powerful man of his time—three years, 10 months and eight days. And all but the first six months of his reign were drenched in slaughter and debauchery.
There are basically three ways America’s continuing slide into tyranny could have been stopped:
Congressional Republicans could have revolted against Trump’s authority and/or agenda.
They could, for example, have demanded that Trump accept the verdict of the electorate—as every other past President had. But they didn’t.
Invoking the Twenty-Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution.
This allows the Vice President and a majority of the Cabinet to recommend the removal of the President in cases where he is “unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office.” It also allows the House and Senate to confirm the recommendation over the President’s objection by two-thirds vote.
The Vice President then takes over as President.
A case could easily have been made that Trump, emotionally distraught over his loss and determined to circumvent the will of the electorate, had been rendered unfit to continue in office. But, once again, Republicans let fear be their guide.
He had fired FBI Director James Comey in 2017 and publicly humiliated his Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, for more than a year until firing him in 2018. Vice President Mike Pence in particular had set new records for sycophancy.
The “Caligula solution.” Like Trump, Roman emperor Gaius Caligula delighted in humiliating others. His fatal mistake was taunting Cassius Chaerea, a member of his own bodyguard. Caligula considered Chaerea effeminate because of a weak voice and mocked him with names like “Priapus” and “Venus.”
Gaius Caligula
On January 22 41 A.D. Chaerea and several other bodyguards hacked Caligula to death with swords before other guards could save him.
Trump had similarly behaved arrogantly toward his Secret Service guards. He forced them to work without pay during his 35-day government shutdown in 2018. He also forced them to accompany him to COVID-infected states—both during the Presidential campaign and afterward. Many of them were stricken with this often lethal disease as a result.
During the 12 years that Adolf Hitler ruled Nazi Germany, at least 42 assassination plots were launched against him.
The best-known of these literally exploded on July 20, 1944, when Colonel Count Claus Shenk von Stauffenberg planted a bomb in a conference room attended by Hitler and his generals. Hitler survived only by sheer luck.
By contrast, no similar plot was aimed at Donald Trump.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Military, Politics, Social commentary on March 30, 2023 at 12:13 am
“Why are we letting one man systematically destroy our nation before our eyes?”
It’s a question millions of Americans asked themselves since Donald Trump became President of the United States.
Millions of Germans asked themselves the same question throughout the six years of World War II.
In September, 1938, as Adolf Hitler threatened to go to war against France and England over Czechoslovakia, most Germans feared he would. They knew that Germany was not ready for war, despite all of their Fuhrer’s boasts about how invincible the Third Reich was.
A group of high-ranking German army officers was prepared to overthrow Hitler—provided that England and France held firm and handed him a major diplomatic reverse.
But then England and France—though more powerful than Germany—flinched at the thought of war.
They surrendered to Hitler’s demands that he be given the “Sudetenland”—the northern, southwest and western regions of Czechoslovakia, inhabited mostly by ethnic Germans.
Hitler’s popularity among Germans soared. He had expanded the territories of the Reich by absorbing Austria and Czechoslovakia—without a shot being fired!
The plotters in the German high command, realizing that public opinion stood overwhelmingly against them, abandoned their plans for a coup. They decided to wait for a more favorable time.
It never came.
Adolf Hitler and his generals
Less than one year after the infamous “Munich conference,” England and France were at war—and fighting for the lives of their peoples.
As for the Germans: Most of them blindly followed their Fuhrer right to the end—believing his lies (or at least wanting to believe them), serving in his legions, defending his rampant criminality.
And then, in April, 1945, with Russian armies pouring into Berlin, it was too late for conspiracies against the man who had led them to total destruction.
Soviet flag waves over defeated Nazi Germany
Berliners paid the price for their loyalty to a murderous dictator—through countless rapes, murders and the wholesale destruction of their city. And from 1945 to 1989, Germans living in the eastern part of their country paid the price as slaves to the Soviet Union.
Have Americans learned anything from this warning from history about subservience to a madman?
The answer seems to be half-no, half-yes.
Half-no: In 2016, almost 63 million Americans elected Donald Trump—a racist, serial adulterer and longtime fraudster—as President.
On November 3, 2020, 81,255,933 Democratic voters outvoted 74,196,153 Republican voters to elect former Vice President Joseph Biden as the 46th President of the United States.
Donald Trump
Upon taking office on January 20, 2017, Trump began undermining one public or private institution after another.
- Repeatedly attacking the nation’s free press for daring to report his growing list of crimes and disasters, calling it “the enemy of the American people.”
- Siding with Russian dictator Vladimir Putin against the FBI, CIA and National Security Agency which unanimously agreed that Russia had subverted the 2016 Presidential election.
- Firing FBI Director James Comey for investigating that subversion.
- Giving Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak highly classified CIA Intelligence about an Islamic State plot to turn laptops into concealable bombs.
- Shutting down the Federal Government for 35 days because Democrats refused to fund his ineffective “border wall” between the United States and Mexico. An estimated 380,000 government employees were furloughed and another 420,000 were ordered to work without pay. The shutdown ended due to public outrage—without Trump getting the funding amount he had demanded.
- Trying to coerce Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to smear former Vice President Joe Biden, who was likely to be his Democratic opponent in the 2020 Presidential election.
- Allowing the deadly COVID-19 virus to ravage the country, infecting (to date) 14.8 million Americans and killing 282,000.
- Attacking medical experts and governors who urged Americans to wear masks and socially distance to protect themselves from COVID-19.
- Ordering his Right-wing followers to defy states’ orders to citizens to “stay-at-home” and wear of masks in public to halt surging COVID-19 rates.
And throughout all those outrages, House and Senate Republican majorities remained silent or vigorously supported him.
A typical example:
On June 4, 2020, during protests over the police murder of black security guard George Floyd, a curfew was imposed on Buffalo, New York. As police swept through Niagara Square, Martin Gugino, a 75-year-old peace activist with the Catholic Worker Movement, walked into their path as if attempting to speak with them.
Two officers pushed him and he fell backwards, hitting the back of his head on the pavement and losing consciousness.
On June 9, Trump charged that Gugino was part of a radical leftist “set up.” Trump offered no evidence to back up his slander.
Typical Republican responses included:
- Kentucky Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell refused to say whether Trump’s tweet was appropriate.
- Texas Senator Ted Cruz: “I don’t comment on the tweets.”
- Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson said he hadn’t seen the tweet—and didn’t want it read to him: “I would rather not hear it.”
- Tennessee Senator Lamar Alexander: “Voters can evaluate that. I’m not going to give a running commentary on the President’s tweets.”
Half-yes: On November 3, 2020, 80 million voters decided they wanted a change—and elected former Vice President Joe Biden as the 46th President of the United States.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Medical, Politics, Social commentary on August 4, 2022 at 12:10 am
The July 29 edition of The PBS Newshour offered a clear lesson on why so many liberals are unable to cope with a weaponized—and Fascistic—Republican party.
It came during an exchange between conservative New York Times columnist David Brooks and Washington Post associate editor Jonathan Capehart .
Judy Woodruff, moderating the weekly “Politics Friday” segment, opened:
“Well, one of the measures that has hit a bump in the road after this deal emerged was a piece of — it’s called the PACT Act. It’s all about providing government aid to American military veterans who were exposed to toxic substances, toxic chemicals in the war in Iraq and wounded, and eventually — I mean, these are — these were veterans who came home with serious medical problems.
“This looked like it was on the way to passage. It’s now Republicans in the Senate in particular saying, wait a minute. And it’s caused a lot of reaction. Jon Stewart, the former late-night talk show host — he’s now an activist — this is what he had to say just outside the Capitol yesterday”:
Jon Stewart, Comedian/Activist: “These people thought they could finally breathe. You think their struggles end because the PACT Act passes? All it means is, they don’t have to decide between their cancer drugs and their house. Their struggle continues. These people will not give up, they will not give in and they will not relent.
Jon Stewart
“This is an embarrassment to the Senate, to the country, to the founders, and all that they profess to hold dear. “
Judy Woodruff: “He….used much stronger language than that in going after the Republicans, Pat Toomey and others, who are — who he says are holding this up.
“What about this argument he’s making, that, essentially, they said yes, and now they’re saying no, and it’s just….”
David Brooks: “Yes. Well, it’s — let’s say, at best, it’s a mystery. At worst, it’s mind-boggling. The mystery is, just a month ago, the vast majority of Republican senators voted for this thing. And then I think 25 or some large, significant numbers shift and now, suddenly, they’re against it. Is it payback for what Manchin — for what Manchin and Schumer did?”
David Brooks
And what was it that Democratic West Virginia Senator Joseph Manchin and Democratic New York Senator Charles Schumer did?
As summed up by Woodruff: “When we were last together last Friday, we all thought that the President’s budget was dead, the package with climate and health care in it. Little did we know that Joe Manchin was having these secret talks with Chuck Schumer.”
But then Manchin decided—for still-unclosed reasons—to back the Democrats’ budgetary bill. And that’s when Republicans decided that helping wounded veterans would be helping President Joseph Biden. And that’s when 25 Republicans who had previously backed the PACT Act changed their minds—and votes.
David Brooks couldn’t imagine that Republicans could be so cruel: “It — that would be mind-boggling. You have got men and women who served this country suffering from cancer and other ailments, and we’re going to take away benefits because of a legislative pique? Who does that?
“[Republican Pennsylvania United States Senator] Pat Toomey, I think, has some principal reasons having to do with budget policy and what we can afford. That’s one thing.
“But if the votes were changed because Mitch McConnell said, we need to screw somebody, that would just be appalling.”
Jonathan Caphart: “And Senator Toomey’s arcane problem was that funding was being moved from discretionary within the bill to mandatory. And he was calling it a budget gimmick.
“But you know who doesn’t care whether it’s a budget gimmick? It’s those families that Jon Stewart was talking about. It’s the….veterans who worked in those burn pits and are suffering with the ailments. It’s the families of those veterans who are sick and/or have died.”
Jonathan Capehart
But on August 2, Republicans caved, in a vote of 86-11.
The reason: Jon Stewart kept the public pressure on. And so did more than 60 veterans groups. Many of the veterans had camped on the Senate steps, braving heat, humidity and thunderstorms.
As a result, veterans will receive expanded lifesaving health care benefits for those exposed to toxic burn pits in Iraq and Afghanistan.
From this Democratic liberals—and Americans generally—should draw two lessons:
Lesson #1: Republicans are evil. They will viciously hurt anyone—including those constituents (such as veterans) they claim to care about if they believe it will hurt Democrats. What they do care about is gaining—and maintaining—absolute power over Americans.
Lesson #2: Trying to compromise with Republicans is not only useless but dangerous. They regard any effort at compromise as a sign of weakness. The same was true for the Nazis during the reign of Adolf Hitler (1933 – 1945).
The appeasement efforts of British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain to prevent World War II not only led to the destruction of Czechoslovakia but whetted Hitler’s appetite for further conquest—resulting in World War II.
In short: Standing up to Fascism saved the United States during World War II. It can do the same for the United States today.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Military, Politics, Social commentary on June 8, 2022 at 12:11 am
In Vladimir Putin’s Russia, conscience comes with a price. It can range anywhere from house arrest to years of imprisonment in the Gulag—to being shot or poisoned by the FSB, the secret police successor to the infamous KGB.
It has always been so.
Mikhail Nikolayevich Tukhachevsky was a major Soviet military leader and theoretician from 1918 to 1937. He fought to modernize Soviet armament, as well as develop airborne, aviation and mechanized forces. Almost singlehandedly, he created the theory of deep operations for Soviet forces.
But he fell victim to the paranoia of Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin.
Mikhail Nikolayevich Tukhachevsky
Arrested on May 22, 1937, he was interrogated and tortured. As a result, he “confessed” to being a German agent plotting to overthrow Stalin and seize power.
On June 11, 1937, the Soviet Supreme Court quickly sentenced Tukhachevsky for treason. Hours later, he was executed.
Among his friends had been Nikolai Sergeyvich Zhilayev. a Russian musicologist and the teacher of several 20th-century Russian composers. Knowing that he was a marked man, Zhilayev did something truly extraordinary.
He had a large portrait of Tukhachevsky in his room, and after the announcement that Tukhachevsky had been shot as a traitor to the homeland, Zhilayev did not take the picture down. If discovered, it meant instant arrest—and almost certain execution.
When the secret police came for him, even they were awed: ”“What, it’s still up?”
“The time will come,” Zhilayev replied, “when they’ll erect a monument to him.”
As, in fact, has happened.
Standing before a Russian judge, accused of vandalism for participating in a demonstration against Putin’s suppression of human rights, 19-year-old Olga Misik dared to speak truths most Russians fear to even whisper.
Olga Misik
From her statement to the court on May 11, 2021:
The prosecution is putting all its efforts into proving that I am implicated in the incident. I’m not going to spend much time showing that they can’t even do that professionally: They are using falsified fingerprint analysis, and, as you saw when you were examining the evidence, there was no trace of paint on my clothes….
But what does that matter when no law was broken? What difference does it make whether I was there or not when no crime was committed?….There is a crime, and it was committed by the police and the prosecutors. And I very much hope, Comrade Judge, that you will not become an accomplice to this crime.
This is precisely why I demand a complete and unconditional acquittal. I am not accepting any half measures, like settling for a fine. I am sure of my innocence and am prepared to uncompromisingly defend it to the end….
The past nine months have been very difficult, you know, and I wouldn’t like to repeat them. I kept thinking to myself, What could have happened if, and, Everything could have gone differently. But I was lying to myself, because nothing could have gone differently.
From the moment I picked up the constitution, my fate was set in stone, and I accepted it with pride. I made the right choice, and making the right choice in a totalitarian state will always have horrifying consequences. I always knew I’d end up behind bars—it was only a matter of when.
My lawyer brought up Sophie Scholl [a German student and anti-Nazi political activist] today. Her story is shockingly similar to mine. She was put on trial for flyers and graffiti; I’m being tried for posters and paint.
Like she was, I am essentially on trial for thought crimes. My trial is very similar to Sophie’s, and today’s Russia really resembles Nazi Germany.
Right up to the guillotine, Sophie did not stray from her beliefs. Her story inspired me not to agree to charges being dropped. Sophie Scholl is the embodiment of youth, individuality, and freedom. I would like to believe that to be another thing that makes us similar.
The Nazi regime eventually crumbled, as will the fascist regime in Russia. I don’t know when it will happen, be it a week, a year, or decade, but I know that someday we will be victorious, because love and youth always prevail….
Sophie Scholl’s last words before her execution were, “The sun still shines.” Indeed, the sun still shines. I couldn’t see it out the window of the detention center, but I always knew it was there. And if now, in such dark times, we can turn to the light, then maybe victory isn’t so far after all.
In his 1960 poem, “Conversation With an American Writer,” the Russian poet, Yevgeney Yevtushenko spoke for those Russians who had maintained their integrity in the face of Stalinist terror:
“You have courage,” they tell me.
It’s not true. I was never courageous.
I simply felt it unbecoming
to stoop to the cowardice of my colleagues.
Demonstrating his own moral courage, on August 22, 1968—the day after the Soviet Union invaded Czechoslovakia—Yevtushenko sent a telegram protesting the invasion to Communist Party Boss Leonid Brezhnev and Premier Aleksei Kosygin:
In Russia—under Czars or Commissars—acting on moral courage is no small thing.
A revered poet demonstrated it in 1968. And a teenage girl demonstrated it in 2021.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Military, Politics, Social commentary on June 7, 2022 at 12:11 am
For 300 years, Russians feared the wrath of their czars, who ruthlessly decreed what their subjects could read, write and say.
Protests were brutally punished, even by so-called “enlightened” Czars. Catherine the Great had Cossack rebel Yemelyan Ivanovich Pugachev beheaded, then drawn and quartered.
Catherine the Great
Czarist rule ended in 1917, when the installation of a democratic Provisional Government. But just nine months later, the Bolsheviks seized power—and starvation, mass executions, forced exiles and repression of religion, speech and press followed until Communism collapsed in 1991.
Then came the wholesale corruption and ineptness of Boris Yeltsin’s brief reign. When Yeltsin picked Vladimir Putin, a former member of the KGB, as his successor, many Russians welcomed his arrival.
Unlike the fat, alcoholic Yeltsin, he appeared to be a man’s man who plunged into icy rivers, slammed opponents to the floor in judo matches, and—shirtless—hunted tigers and bears.
He promised that so long as ordinary Russians stayed out of politics, they would enjoy a level of personal independence totally absent during the 74-year Communist regime.
But, gradually, that promise was revealed as a lie.
At no time has that been more true than following his brutal invasion of Ukraine on February 24. Most Russians can’t imagine waging war against a “brotherly nation.”
Ukraine vs. Russia
Putin’s government unleashed a massive propaganda campaign to convince Russians that Russia was battling Fascists and taking no casualties. And many have believed it.
(Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine’s president, is Jewish, and Western intelligence agencies estimate that 7,000 to 15,000 Russian soldiers have died.)
Nevertheless, thousands flocked to streets and squares throughout Russia despite government threats of prosecution for high treason.
More than 6,500 demonstrators were arrested over a five-day period. Several Russian and Ukrainian news outlets were blocked for covering the invasion.
One of those who has repeatedly demonstrated against Putini’s repressive regime is Olga Misik, a former journalism student at the University of Moscow.
Olga Misik
Accused of vandalism, standing before a judge who could sentence her to literally any punishment he wished, 19-year-old Olga Misik dared to speak forbidden truths about life in Vladimir Putin’s Russia.
On May 11, 2021, she did so again in a Moscow district court.
Below follows relevant portions of her statement to the court:
And maybe I was scared on the way to the protest after all, but I knew I had no other choice. I understood that anything else would be wrong. That if I stayed silent this time, I would never be able to forgive myself….
Of course I was at that protest. I don’t regret it and more so am proud of my actions. In reality, I had no choice. I had to do everything in my power, thus I have no right to regret it. And if I had the option to go back in time, I would do it again.
If I was being threatened with execution, I would do it again. I would do it time and time again, until it finally started to make some change. They say that doing the same thing over and over expecting a different result is the definition of insanity.
I guess hope is insanity. But not doing something you believe in, just because everyone around you thinks it’s pointless, that is learned hopelessness. And better to be insane in your eyes than hopeless in my own….
Denying my participation in the protest would not only be unprincipled, it would erase all of the fear and agony, all we have achieved, all of my pain and rage. I can’t afford such dishonor with which our interrogator and prosecutor live their days….
A fascist government never seems fascist from the inside. It seems like just some minuscule, inconsequential censorship and some targeted repression that will never reach you. I’m not the one on trial today. Today, you are deciding not my fate but yours, and you still have a chance to do the right thing.
You can’t keep lying to yourselves. You know what goes on here. You know what it’s called. You know that there is good and evil, freedom and fascism, love and hatred, and denying that there are sides to take would be a colossal lie.
Those who chose evil have preordered their tickets to the defense table. The Hague awaits all who had a hand in this chaos. I am not promising victory tomorrow, the day after, in a year, or 10. But someday we will win, because love and youth always win. I can’t promise to make it there alive, but I really hope you live to see it.
You’re lying to yourselves if you maintain that I am here because of the protest at the office of the prosecutor general….You know why I’m here….You know what I’m actually being tried for.
For reading the constitution. For my political positions. For being named person of the year. For my principles. For my actions.
I might even be flattered by being singled out for a political trial, if only I really were singled out—when in fact the state is repressing anyone who has an opinion.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on June 6, 2022 at 12:10 am
“I just read her final speech. And you know what? I felt ashamed,” Andrei Chvanov, from Tatarstan, wrote on Facebook.
He was referring to Olga MisIk, a 17-year-old activist in the Russia of President Vladimir Putin.
“Because my threshold of fear is much lower….She holds strong, jokes, writes, and is 100 percent sure that she is right. And she is right. She sees the truth. And she is not afraid. Not many people in our country have such a gift.”
On July 27, 2019, Olga was among thousands of people attending an unauthorized protest in Moscow against the bar on opposition activists competing for seats in the Duma (parliament) election against Putin’s lackeys.
Heavily-armed riot police—wielding shields, batons and helmets—stood behind her. As if oblivious to their presence, Olga sat cross-legged in the middle of the street.
She pulled out her copy of Russia’s 1993 constitution and began reading from it.
Olga Misik
“I read four sections,” she said in a later interview “An article talking about the right to peacefully protest, an article saying that everyone can take part in elections, has the right to freedom of speech and that the people’s will and power are the most important thing for the country.”
Olga left the scene after the reading, but was later arrested on her way to a metro station. She was among more than 1,000 protesters arrested as a result of the rally. She had been detained four times in the past three months. She says she was peacefully protesting each time.
Misik was released after the protest in 2019, but she later found herself facing charges related to a protest in 2020.
According to the Moscow Times, Olga and two friends were accused of vandalism after police said they hung a banner supporting Putin arch-foe Alexi Navalny and other political prisoners on a government building.
In addition, said the indictment, they “splashed red paint on a security booth outside the Prosecutor General’s Office building in August 2020.”
Vladimir Putin
Misik wrote on social media that she was dragged out of her home by police after the 2020 protest.
Olga was sentenced on May 11, 2021, for vandalism. She received two years and two months of “restricted liberty,” which amounted to home confinement, including a curfew that required her to be inside her house from 10 p.m. and 6 a.m. Her two friends received similar sentences.
Prior to her sentencing, Misik read a prepared statement to the court. At a time when millions of Right-wing Americans lust to replace democracy with the dictatorship of Donald Trump, this statement speaks volumes to Americans who would oppose this.
Here are its most moving passages:
People often asked, “Aren’t I scared?” More commonly outside the country than in Russia, because they don’t get the reality of life in Russia. They don’t understand the knock on the door in the middle of the night, the arrests and imprisonment without reason or cause.
They don’t realize that the feeling of despair is passed on to us through our mothers’ milk. And that that feeling of despair causes any semblance of fear to atrophy, infecting us with learned hopelessness. What use is fear if you have no say in your future?
I have never been afraid. I have felt despair, hopelessness, helplessness, disorientation, anxiety, frustration, burnout, but neither politics nor activism ever struck fear in me.
I wasn’t scared when armed thugs stormed my home in the night, threatening me with prison. They wanted to scare me, but I wasn’t afraid. I made jokes and laughed, knowing that the moment I stopped smiling, I would have lost.
I wasn’t scared when they put me in the detention center….My own fate was the last thing on my mind. It is very strange, maybe some sort of coping mechanism, but in those days I wasn’t afraid once….
I was worried and stressed about how things would play out, but unafraid. The night was beautiful. I was aware that it could be my last one in freedom, and yet that did not scare me.
However, after the search, for the past nine months, I have been scared constantly. Ever since the night in the detention center, I haven’t been able to get a good night’s sleep once.
Every night I wake from the smallest of sounds. I keep imagining footsteps in the hallway. Panic washes over me from the sound of the gravel crunching under the wheels of cars outside my window.
I feel like all of the fear accumulated over the past nine months is most concentrated in this exact moment, in my final statement, because public speaking scares me more than the sentencing. My heart is racing at 151 beats per minute, and it feels as though it could explode any second now….
Someone said, “It’s impossible to be afraid if you know you’re right.” But Russia teaches us to always be afraid. A country that attempts to kill us every day, and if you’re not part of the system, you might as well be dead already.
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In Bureaucracy, Entertainment, History, Politics, Social commentary on May 9, 2022 at 12:10 am
In 1942, two British-trained Czech commandos assassinated SS Obergruppenführer (General) Reinhard Heydrich.
A tall, blond-haired former naval officer, he was both a champion fencer and talented violinist. Heydrich joined the Schutzstaffel, or Protective Squads, better known as the SS, in 1931, and quickly became head of its counterintelligence service.
Reinhard Heycrich
In September, 1941, Heydrich was appointed “Reich Protector” of Czechoslovakia, which had fallen prey to Germany in 1938 but whose citizens were growing restless under Nazi rule.
Heydrich immediately ordered a purge, executing 92 people within the first three days of his arrival in Prague. By February, 1942, 4,000-5,000 people had been arrested.
In January, 1942, Heydrich convened a meeting of high-ranking political and military leaders to streamline “the Final Solution to the Jewish Question.”
At the now-infamous Wannsee conference, Heydrich decreed that, henceforth, all Jews in Reich-occupied territories would be shipped to extermination camps. No exceptions would be made for women, children or the infirm.
An estimated six million Jews were thus slaughtered.
Returning to Prague, Heydrich continued his policy of carrot-and-stick with the Czechs—improving the social security system and requisitioning luxury hotels for middle-class workers, alternating with arrests and executions.
The Czech government-in-exile, headquartered in London, feared that Heydrich’s incentives might lead the Czechs to passively accept domination. They decided to assassinate Heydrich.
Two British-trained Czech commandos—Jan Kubis and Joseph Gabcik—parachuted into Prague.
Unexpectedly, they got help from Heydrich himself. Supremely arrogant, he traveled the same route every day from home to his downtown office and refused to be escorted by armed guards, claiming no one would dare attack him.
On May 27, 1942, Kubis and Gabcik waited at a hairpin turn in the road always taken by Heydrich. When Heydrich’s Mercedes slowed down, Gabcik raised his machinegun–which jammed.
Rising in his seat, Heydrich aimed his revolver at Gabcik—as Kubis lobbed a hand grenade at the car. The explosion drove steel and leather fragments of the car’s upholstery into Heydrich’s diaphragm, spleen and lung.
Hitler dispatched doctors from Berlin to save the Reich Protector. But infection set in, and on June 4, Heydrich died at age 38.
The assassination sent shockwaves through the upper echelons of the Third Reich. No one had dared assault—much less assassinate—a high-ranking Nazi official.
Nazis had slaughtered tens of thousands without hesitation—or fear that the same might happen to them.
Suddenly they realized that the fury they had aroused could be turned against themselves.
Members of the Nazi government
Which brings us to the leaders of America’s own Right-wing.
The names of infamous Nazis were widely known:
- Reichsmarshall Hermann Goering;
- Propaganda Minister Paul Joseph Goebbels;
- Deputy Fuhrer Rudolf Hess;
- Propaganda Film Director Leni Riefenstahl;
- SS-Reichsfuhrer Heinrich Himmler;
- “Hanging Judge” Roland Freisler;
- Architect Albert Speer;
- Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop;
- SS Obergruoppenfuhrer Reinhard Heydrich; and
- The most infamous Nazi of all: Adolf Hitler.
And so are the names of the infamous leaders of the American Right:
- Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell;
- Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett;
- Texas Senator Ted Cruz;
- Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas;
- Commentator Tucker Carlson;
- Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch;
- Evangelist Franklin Graham;
- Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh;
- Florida Senator Marco Rubio;
- Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito;
- Florida Governor Ron DeSantis; and
- The most infamous Right-winger of all: Former President Donald Trump.
The difference between these two infamous groups is this:
In Nazi Germany, ordinary Germans could not learn about the personal lives of their dictators—including their home addresses—and to conspire against them.
In the United States, ordinary citizens have an array of means to do this. They can turn to newspapers, TV and magazines. And if that isn’t enough, “people finder” websites, for a modest price, provide addresses and names of relatives of potential targets.
In Nazi Germany, firearms were tightly controlled. In the United States, the Right’s National Rifle Association has successfully lobbied to put lethal firepower into the hands of virtually anyone who wants it.
Which brings us to the firestorm now erupting over the publication of an initial draft majority opinion of the Supreme Court. Backed by the Court’s five Right-wing Justices, it overturns the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion.
The Supreme Court
In one to two months, millions of women will likely become victims of Right-wing anti-abortion fanaticism.
According to the Center for Reproductive Rights, 23 states will institute bans, with trigger laws on the books in 13 of them. These are bans designed to take effect if Roe is overturned.
Republicans boast that they want to “get the government off the backs of the people.” Yet since 1973 they have furiously tried to re-insert it into the vagina of every American woman.
Interfering with the right to obtain medical care—especially when it applies to sexually-involved matters—is an act guaranteed to arouse fury in even the most pacifistic men and women.
This is especially true when a political party—such as that of the Nazis and Republicans—makes clear its intention to rule by force, rather than by public consent.
Reinhard Heydrich believed himself invulnerable from the hatred of the enemies he had made. That arrogance cost him his life.
The day may soon come when America’s own Right-wingers start learning the same lesson.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Military, Politics, Social commentary on March 29, 2022 at 12:11 am
On November 3, 80 million voters elected former Vice President Joe Biden as the 46th President of the United States.
President Donald Trump had often “joked” that America needed a “President-for-Life.” Now he demanded that he be awarded that title.
Trump refused to accept that verdict.
Speaking from the White House in the early hours of November 4, he said: “Millions and millions of people voted for us tonight, and a very sad group of people is trying to disenfranchise that group of people and we won’t stand for it.”
For the first time in American history, a President demanded a halt to the counting of votes while the outcome of an election hung in doubt.
States ignored his demand and kept counting.
Next, Trump ordered his attorneys to file lawsuits to overturn the election results, charging electoral fraud.
He claimed:
- Illegal aliens had been allowed to vote.
- Trump ballots had been systematically destroyed.
- Tampered voting machines had turned Trump votes into Biden ones.
Throughout November and December, cases were filed in Wisconsin, Arizona, Nevada, Michigan, Minnesota and Georgia challenging the election results. More than 30 cases were withdrawn by Trump’s attorneys or dismissed by Federal judges—some of them appointed by Trump himself.
For 20 days, General Services Administrator Emily Murphy refused to release $7.3 million in transition funding and Federal resources to the President-elect’s team.
Under the law governing presidential transitions, Murphy was responsible for determining the winner based on publicly available information before the actual Electoral College vote.
Finally, on November 23, Murphy released the transition funding and resources.
Trump invited two Republican legislative leaders from Michigan to the White House to persuade them to stop the state from certifying the vote.
Nothing changed.
On December 5, Trump called Georgia Governor Brian Kemp and asked him to call a special legislative session to convince state legislators to select their own electors that would support him, thus overturning Biden’s win.
Kemp refused, saying he lacked the authority to do so.
Top Republicans—such as Vice President Mike Pence and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell—refused to congratulate Biden as the winner.
None of them branded Trump’s efforts to overturn the election as those of a tyrant.
Just as Germans did nothing to stop Adolf Hitler’s inexorable march toward war—and the destruction of millions of lives and Germany itself—so, too, did Americans seem paralyzed to end the equally self-destructive reign of the man often dubbed “Carrot Caligula.”
Gaius Caligula was “the mad emperor” of ancient Rome. Like Trump, he lived by a philosophy of “Let them hate me, so long as they fear me.”
He ruled as the most powerful man of his time—three years, 10 months and eight days. And all but the first six months of his reign were drenched in slaughter and debauchery.
There were basically three ways America’s slide into tyranny could have been stopped:
First, Congressional Republicans could have revolted against Trump’s authority and/or agenda.
They could have demanded that Trump accept the verdict of the electorate—as every other past President had.
But they didn’t.
Republicans feared that if they openly defied him, his fanatical base would turn on them in coming elections—and end their comfortable reign of power and privileges.
Second, invoking the Twenty-Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution.
This allows the Vice President and a majority of the Cabinet to recommend the removal of the President in cases where he is “unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office.” It also allows the House and Senate to confirm the recommendation over the President’s objection by two-thirds vote.
The Vice President then takes over as President.
A case could easily have been made that Trump, emotionally distraught over his loss and determined to circumvent the will of the electorate, had been rendered unfit to continue in office.
This did not happen.
Most of Trump’s cabinet rightly feared him. He fired FBI Director James Comey in 2017 and publicly humiliated his Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, for more than a year until firing him in 2018. Vice President Mike Pence in particular had set new records for sycophancy.
Third, the “Caligula solution.” Like Trump, Caligula delighted in humiliating others. His fatal mistake was taunting Cassius Chaerea, a member of his own bodyguard. Caligula considered Chaerea effeminate owing to a weak voice and mocked him with names like “Priapus” and “Venus.”
Gaius Caligula
On January 22 41 A.D. Chaerea and several other bodyguards hacked Caligula to death with swords before other guards could save him.
Trump had similarly behaved arrogantly toward his Secret Service guards. He forced them to work without pay during his 35-day government shutdown in 2018. He also forced them to accompany him to COVID-infected states—both during the Presidential campaign and afterward. Many of them had been stricken with this often lethal disease as a result.
During Adolf Hitler’s 12-years reign of Nazi Germany, high-ranking military officers tried to kill him at least 42 times.
The best-known of these attempts occurred on July 20, 1944, when Colonel Count Claus Shenk von Stauffenberg planted a bomb in a conference room attended by Hitler and his generals. Hitler survived only by sheer luck.
By contrast, no similar plot was aimed at Donald Trump.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Military, Politics, Social commentary on March 28, 2022 at 12:10 am
“Why are we letting one man systematically destroy our nation before our eyes?”
It’s a question millions of Americans asked themselves after Donald Trump became President of the United States.
Millions of Germans asked themselves the same question throughout the six years of World War II.
In September, 1938, as Adolf Hitler threatened to go to war against France and England over Czechoslovakia, most Germans feared he would. They knew that Germany was not ready for war, despite all of their Fuhrer’s boasts about how invincible the Third Reich was.
A group of high-ranking German army officers was prepared to overthrow Hitler—provided that England and France held firm and handed him a major diplomatic reverse.
But then England and France—though more powerful than Germany—flinched at the thought of war.
They surrendered to Hitler’s demands that he be given the “Sudetenland”—the northern, southwest and western regions of Czechoslovakia, inhabited mostly by ethnic Germans.
Hitler’s popularity among Germans soared. He had expanded the territories of the Reich by absorbing Austria and Czechoslovakia—without a shot being fired!
The plotters in the German high command, realizing that public opinion stood overwhelmingly against them, abandoned their plans for a coup. They decided to wait for a more favorable time.
It never came.
Adolf Hitler and his generals
Less than one year after the infamous “Munich conference,” England and France were at war—and fighting for the lives of their peoples.
As for the Germans: Most of them blindly followed their Fuhrer right to the end—believing his lies (or at least wanting to believe them), serving in his legions, defending his rampant criminality.
And then, in April, 1945, with Russian armies pouring into Berlin, it was too late for conspiracies against the man who had led them to total destruction.
Germans paid the price for their loyalty to a murderous dictator—through countless rapes, murders and the wholesale destruction of their cities. And from 1945 to 1989, Germans living in the eastern part of their country paid the price as slaves to the Soviet Union.
Have Americans learned anything from this this warning from history about subservience to a madman?
The answer seems to be half-yes, half-no.
In 2016, almost 63 million Americans elected Donald Trump—a racist, serial adulterer and longtime fraudster—as President.
Donald Trump
Upon taking office on January 20, 2017, Trump began undermining one public or private institution after another.
- Repeatedly attacking the nation’s free press for daring to report his growing list of crimes and disasters, calling it “the enemy of the American people.”
- Siding with Russian dictator Vladimir Putin against the FBI, CIA and National Security Agency which unanimously agreed that Russia had subverted the 2016 Presidential election.
- Firing FBI Director James Comey for investigating that subversion.
- Giving Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak highly classified CIA Intelligence about an Islamic State plot to turn laptops into concealable bombs.
- Shutting down the Federal Government for 35 days because Democrats refused to fund his ineffective “border wall” between the United States and Mexico. An estimated 380,000 government employees were furloughed and another 420,000 were ordered to work without pay. The shutdown ended due to public outrage—without Trump getting the funding amount he had demanded.
- Trying to coerce Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to smear former Vice President Joe Biden, who was likely to be his Democratic opponent in the 2020 Presidential election.
- Allowing the deadly COVID-19 virus to ravage the country, infecting (to date) 14.8 million Americans and killing 282,000.
- Attacking medical experts and governors who urged Americans to wear masks and socially distance to protect themselves from COVID-19.
- Ordering his Right-wing followers to defy states’ orders to citizens to “stay-at-home” and wear of masks in public to halt surging COVID-19 rates.
And throughout all those outrages, House and Senate Republican majorities remained silent or vigorously supported him.
A typical example:
On June 4, 2020, during protests over the police murder of black security guard George Floyd, a curfew was imposed on Buffalo, New York. As police swept through Niagara Square, Martin Gugino, a 75-year-old peace activist with the Catholic Worker Movement, walked into their path as if attempting to speak with them.
Two officers pushed him and he fell backwards, hitting the back of his head on the pavement and losing consciousness.
On June 9, Trump charged that Gugino was part of a radical leftist “set up.” Trump offered no evidence to back up his slander.
Typical Republican responses included:
- Kentucky Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell refused to say whether Trump’s tweet was appropriate.
- Texas Senator Ted Cruz: “I don’t comment on the tweets.”
- Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson said he hadn’t seen the tweet—and didn’t want it read to him: “I would rather not hear it.”
- Tennessee Senator Lamar Alexander: “Voters can evaluate that. I’m not going to give a running commentary on the President’s tweets.”
On November 3, 2020, 81,255,933 Democratic voters outvoted 74,196,153 Republican voters to elect former Vice President Joseph Biden as the 46th President of the United States.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Military, Politics, Social commentary on December 8, 2020 at 12:15 am
Once he became the 45th President of the United States, Donald Trump began undermining one public or private institution after another.
On November 3, 80 million voters decided they wanted a change—and elected former Vice President Joe Biden as the 46th President of the United States.
Trump refused to accept that verdict. Speaking from the White House in the early hours of November 4, he said:
“Millions and millions of people voted for us tonight, and a very sad group of people is trying to disenfranchise that group of people and we won’t stand for it.”
For the first time in American history, a President demanded a halt to the counting of votes while the outcome of an election hung in doubt.
States ignored his demand and kept counting.
Next, Trump ordered his attorneys to file lawsuits to overturn the election results, charging electoral fraud. Specifically:
- Illegal aliens had been allowed to vote.
- Trump ballots had been systematically destroyed.
- Tampered voting machines had turned Trump votes into Biden ones.
Throughout November and December, cases were filed in Wisconsin, Arizona, Nevada, Michigan, Minnesota and Georgia challenging the election results. And, one by one, more than 30 cases were withdrawn by Trump’s attorneys or dismissed by Federal judges—some of them appointed by Trump himself.
For 20 days, General Services Administrator Emily Murphy refused to release $7.3 million in transition funding and Federal resources to the President-elect’s team. Under the law governing presidential transitions, Murphy was responsible for determining the winner based on publicly available information before the actual Electoral College vote.
Finally, on November 23, Murphy released the transition funding and resources.
Losing in the courts, Trump invited two Republican legislative leaders from Michigan to the White House to persuade them to stop the state from certifying the vote.
Nothing changed.
On December 5, Trump called Georgia Governor Brian Kemp and asked him to call a special legislative session and convince state legislators to select their own electors that would support him, thus overturning Biden’s win.
Kemp refused, saying he lacked the authority to do so.
Meanwhile, top Republicans—such as Vice President Mike Pence and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell—have refused to congratulate Biden as the winner. None of them branded Trump’s efforts to overturn the election as those of a tyrant.
Just as Germans did nothing to stop Adolf Hitler’s inexorable march toward war—and the destruction of millions of lives and Germany itself—so, too, did Americans seem paralyzed to put an end to the equally self-destructive reign of the man often dubbed “Carrot Caligula.”
Gaius Caligula was “the mad emperor” of ancient Rome. Like Trump, he lived by a philosophy of “Let them hate me, so long as they fear me.”
He ruled as the most powerful man of his time—three years, 10 months and eight days. And all but the first six months of his reign were drenched in slaughter and debauchery.
There are basically three ways America’s continuing slide into tyranny could have been stopped:
Congressional Republicans could have revolted against Trump’s authority and/or agenda. They could, for example, have demanded that Trump accept the verdict of the electorate—as every other past President had. But they didn’t.
Invoking the Twenty-Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution. This allows the Vice President and a majority of the Cabinet to recommend the removal of the President in cases where he is “unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office.” It also allows the House and Senate to confirm the recommendation over the President’s objection by two-thirds vote.
The Vice President then takes over as President.
A case could easily have been made that Trump, emotionally distraught over his loss and determined to circumvent the will of the electorate, had been rendered unfit to continue in office. But, once again, Republicans let fear be their guide.
He had fired FBI Director James Comey in 2017 and publicly humiliated his Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, for more than a year until firing him in 2018. Vice President Mike Pence in particular had set new records for sycophancy.
The “Caligula solution.” Like Trump, Caligula delighted in humiliating others. His fatal mistake was taunting Cassius Chaerea, a member of his own bodyguard. Caligula considered Chaerea effeminate because of a weak voice and mocked him with names like “Priapus” and “Venus.”
Gaius Caligula
On January 22 41 A.D. Chaerea and several other bodyguards hacked Caligula to death with swords before other guards could save him.
Trump had similarly behaved arrogantly toward his Secret Service guards. He forced them to work without pay during his 35-day government shutdown in 2018. He also forced them to accompany him to COVID-infected states—both during the Presidential campaign and afterward. Many of them were stricken with this often lethal disease as a result.
During the 12 years that Adolf Hitler ruled Nazi Germany, at least 42 assassination plots were launched against him.
The best-known of these literally exploded on July 20, 1944, when Colonel Count Claus Shenk von Stauffenberg planted a bomb in a conference room attended by Hitler and his generals. Hitler survived only by sheer luck.
By contrast, no similar plot was aimed at Donald Trump.
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ONCE AGAIN, ACCOMPLICES TO OUR OWN DESTRUCTION: PART TWO (END)
In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Military, Politics, Social commentary on March 31, 2023 at 12:13 amOnce he became the 45th President of the United States, Donald Trump began undermining one public or private institution after another.
On November 3, 2020, 80 million voters decided they wanted a change—and elected former Vice President Joe Biden as the 46th President of the United States.
Trump refused to accept that verdict.
Speaking from the White House in the early hours of November 4, he said:
“Millions and millions of people voted for us tonight, and a very sad group of people is trying to disenfranchise that group of people and we won’t stand for it.”
For the first time in American history, a President demanded a halt to the counting of votes while the outcome of an election hung in doubt.
States ignored his demand and kept counting.
Next, Trump ordered his attorneys to file lawsuits to overturn the election results, charging electoral fraud.
Specifically:
Throughout November and December, cases were filed in Wisconsin, Arizona, Nevada, Michigan, Minnesota and Georgia challenging the election results. And, one by one, more than 30 cases were withdrawn by Trump’s attorneys or dismissed by Federal judges—some of them appointed by Trump himself.
For 20 days, General Services Administrator Emily Murphy refused to release $7.3 million in transition funding and Federal resources to the President-elect’s team.
Under the law governing presidential transitions, Murphy was responsible for determining the winner based on publicly available information before the actual Electoral College vote.
Finally, on November 23, Murphy released the transition funding and resources.
Losing in the courts, Trump invited two Republican legislative leaders from Michigan to the White House to persuade them to stop the state from certifying the vote.
Nothing changed.
On December 5, Trump called Georgia Governor Brian Kemp and asked him to call a special legislative session and convince state legislators to select their own electors that would support him, thus overturning Biden’s win.
Kemp refused, saying he lacked the authority to do so.
Meanwhile, top Republicans—such as Vice President Mike Pence and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell—refused to congratulate Biden as the winner.
None of them branded Trump’s efforts to overturn the election as those of a tyrant.
Just as Germans did nothing to stop Adolf Hitler’s inexorable march toward war—and the destruction of millions of lives and Germany itself—so, too, did Americans seem paralyzed to put an end to the equally self-destructive reign of the man often dubbed “Carrot Caligula.”
Gaius Caligula was “the mad emperor” of ancient Rome. Like Trump, he lived by a philosophy of “Let them hate me, so long as they fear me.”
He ruled as the most powerful man of his time—three years, 10 months and eight days. And all but the first six months of his reign were drenched in slaughter and debauchery.
There are basically three ways America’s continuing slide into tyranny could have been stopped:
Congressional Republicans could have revolted against Trump’s authority and/or agenda.
They could, for example, have demanded that Trump accept the verdict of the electorate—as every other past President had. But they didn’t.
Invoking the Twenty-Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution.
This allows the Vice President and a majority of the Cabinet to recommend the removal of the President in cases where he is “unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office.” It also allows the House and Senate to confirm the recommendation over the President’s objection by two-thirds vote.
The Vice President then takes over as President.
A case could easily have been made that Trump, emotionally distraught over his loss and determined to circumvent the will of the electorate, had been rendered unfit to continue in office. But, once again, Republicans let fear be their guide.
He had fired FBI Director James Comey in 2017 and publicly humiliated his Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, for more than a year until firing him in 2018. Vice President Mike Pence in particular had set new records for sycophancy.
The “Caligula solution.” Like Trump, Roman emperor Gaius Caligula delighted in humiliating others. His fatal mistake was taunting Cassius Chaerea, a member of his own bodyguard. Caligula considered Chaerea effeminate because of a weak voice and mocked him with names like “Priapus” and “Venus.”
Gaius Caligula
On January 22 41 A.D. Chaerea and several other bodyguards hacked Caligula to death with swords before other guards could save him.
Trump had similarly behaved arrogantly toward his Secret Service guards. He forced them to work without pay during his 35-day government shutdown in 2018. He also forced them to accompany him to COVID-infected states—both during the Presidential campaign and afterward. Many of them were stricken with this often lethal disease as a result.
During the 12 years that Adolf Hitler ruled Nazi Germany, at least 42 assassination plots were launched against him.
The best-known of these literally exploded on July 20, 1944, when Colonel Count Claus Shenk von Stauffenberg planted a bomb in a conference room attended by Hitler and his generals. Hitler survived only by sheer luck.
By contrast, no similar plot was aimed at Donald Trump.
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