Posts Tagged ‘DEMOCRATS’
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Politics, Social commentary on September 4, 2025 at 12:09 am
“The Holocaust never happened.”
“The Sandy Hook massacre never happened.”
“The MAGAbomber is a Democrat who’s mailing letter-bombs to make Republicans look bad.”
These are among the lies regularly hurled by “lunatic fringe” Right-wingers—and, more importantly, “mainstream” Republicans.
Many liberals believe Right-wingers simply lack correct information.
They assume that, if only Right-wingers knew the truth about such matters as:
- The millions slaughtered during the Holocaust;
- The horrific massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School; and
- The pro-Trump motives of the MAGAbomber
they would be telling the truth.
There are two motives behind such blatant lying—and mere ignorance is not one of them.
Motive #1: Right-wingers don’t want to admit the truth about events most people instinctively believe are evil.
Right-wingers intuitively know that:
- Shoving huge numbers of naked men, women and children into gas chambers
- Spraying scores of bullets into scores of helpless men, women and children in churches, nightclubs and schools; and
- Sending bombs through the mail to murder people
are indefensible examples of pure evil.
They know they can’t convince decent people that such atrocities are really acts of humanity. So it’s easier (for them) to simply deny that they actually happened.
The tobacco industry paved the way for such arguments.
The Tobacco Institute—a trade association created in 1958 to pose as a “smoking research” center—cast doubt on scientific studies linking smoking with lung cancer, emphysema and heart disease.
Tobacco Institute ad
Its premise: “We really don’t know if smoking causes cancer. We need more studies to make certain.”
And, for the Tobacco Institute, there could never be enough studies to prove that smoking was a thoroughly deadly habit—that reaped billions of dollars every year for the tobacco industry.
The longer they could convince the public of their lies, the less likely they were to be regulated.
Motive #2: Right-wingers claim Right-wing atrocities didn’t happen to put the victims of such atrocities on the defensive.
This, too, was a major aim of the tobacco industry. By constantly demanding “Prove to us that smoking is deadly” and then arrogantly dismissing all evidence put forward, tobacco executives put the onus on their opponents.
From October 22 to November 1, 2018, Cesar Sayoc mailed pipe-bombs to 10 prominent Democrats—including former President Barack Obama, then-former Vice President Joe Biden and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
After Sayoc was arrested and his van was found plastered with pro-Donald Trump stickers, Right-wingers reflexively seized on a series of lies to “cleanse” themselves:
- “He’s a liberal put up to it by other liberals.”
- “The bombs were fake, to stir up sympathy for liberals before the November elections.”
- Right-wing talk-show host Rush Limbaugh: “Would it make a lot of sense for a Democrat operative or Democrat-inculcated lunatic to do it? Because things are not working out the way they thought.”
- Right-wing propagandist Dinesh D’Souza: “I hear the FBI squeezed lemon juice on the suspicious packages and a very faint lettering revealed a single word: DEMOCRATS.”
Totally ignored was that FBI Director Christopher Wray—a Trump appointee after the firing of James Comey in May, 2017—publicly stated that the bombs were real: “Though we’re still analyzing these devices in our laboratory, these were not hoax devices.”
Christopher Wray
So how did Right-wingers react to Wray’s no-nonsense rebuttal of Right-wing conspiracy lies?
They attacked the FBI as part of the “deep state” determined to thwart and, if possible, impeach Donald Trump.
According to one Rightist theory: The FBI made the bombs and sent them out to implicate some poor Trump supporter—if not the President himself.
So how can such liars be defeated? Lawsuits based on the truth.
On August 1, 2018, families of four students and two educators who died in the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre filed a defamation lawsuit against Right-wing broadcaster and conspiracy theorist Alex Jones.
Jones hosts The Alex Jones Show from Austin, Texas. He had claimed the mass shooting was fake.
Twenty children and six adults were killed in the December 14, 2012, attack by 20-year-old Adam Lanza.
On his program in January, 2015, Jones said: “Sandy Hook is a synthetic completely fake with actors, in my view, manufactured. I couldn’t believe it at first. I knew they had actors there, clearly, but I thought they killed some real kids. And it just shows how bold they are, that they clearly used actors.”
Alex Jones
Michael Zimmermann [CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)%5D
According to the complaint filed against Jones:
“The Jones defendants concoct elaborate and false paranoia-tinged conspiracy theories because it moves product and they make money. Not because they truly believe what they are saying, but rather because it increases profits.”
Thus, a reasonable person would understand that Jones meant the massacre was staged and the deaths were fabricated.
So Jones responded with another lie: “This is all out of context….And it’s not even what I said or my intent. I’m not going to get into the real defects of this, I’m going to wait until it’s thrown out with prejudice.”
Jones’ lies did him no good. On August 4, 2022, a Texas jury ordered Jones to pay two plaintiffs $4.1 million in compensatory damages. The following day, he was ordered to pay $45.2 million in punitive damages.
Other trials are pending.
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In Bureaucracy, Business, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on August 28, 2025 at 12:10 am
Donald Trump, upon taking office as President, appointed Elon Musk the head of a newly-created government agency called DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency). Its stated goal: Eliminating inefficiency and waste within the federal bureaucracy.
DOGE’s activities included shuttering government agencies, defunding programs and firing up to 100,000 federal employees.
Musk initially claimed he would save taxpayers $2 trillion. But financial records now indicate a savings of $175 billion.
Musk’s tenure with DOGE officially ended on May 29.
Elon Musk
The Royal Society, CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
Musk donated $288 million to Trump’s 2024 Presidential campaign. He repeatedly praised Trump: “This election, I think, is going to decide the fate of America, and along with the fate of America, the fate of Western civilization.”
And Trump praised Musk: “Only Elon can do this,” Trump said of a SpaceX launch. “That’s why I love you, Elon.”
But that lovefest has brutally ended. On June 3, 2025, Musk blasted the massive tax-and-spending bill backed by Trump.
Dubbed the “One Big, Beautiful Bill” by Trump—and thus by House and Senate Republicans—the legislation will:
- Extend the 2017 Trump tax cuts, keeping taxes low on the richest Americans;
- Hurt millions of Americans by slashing $600 billion from Medicaid;
- Cost millions some or all of their food stamp benefits;
- Leave nine to 14 million people without health insurance by 2034;
- Add $3.1 trillion to the nation’s debt.
Having narrowly passed the House of Representatives by one vote, the bill passed the Senate on July 4, as Trump had demanded.
Elon Musk vigorously dissented. In a post on X, his social media site, he wrote: “I’m sorry, but I just can’t stand it anymore.
“This massive, outrageous, pork-filled Congressional spending bill is a disgusting abomination. Shame on those who voted for it: you know you did wrong. You know it.”
In a follow-up post, he added: “It will massively increase the already gigantic budget deficit to $2.5 trillion (!!!) and burden America citizens with crushingly unsustainable debt.”
Tesla headquarters
Larry D. Moore, CC BY 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
Even worse for Republicans, Musk wrote on X: “In November next year, we fire all politicians who betrayed the American people,” suggesting that he would fund campaigns in the upcoming 2026 midterm elections to remove those who voted for the bill.
Many Republicans were expecting Musk to fund their midterm campaigns against Democrats—and their own primary challengers.
Donald Trump
Trump has loudly proclaimed his belief in taking vengeance on those who cross him: “If someone screws you, screw them back 10 times harder,” he told business leaders during a 2005 speech in Colorado.
Trump is an alpha male who enjoys dominating others. So is Musk. As Dan McAdams, a psychology professor at Northwestern University, told Newsweek:
“Two alphas can probably get along well enough as long as they don’t interfere with each other’s respective domain.
“Musk is certainly a narcissist but his self-worth is caught up in what he achieves. He really cares about building electric cars, sending people into space, and so on.
“Trump does not care about anything except himself. His entire self worth depends on others adoring him and fearing him.”
Musk is the world’s richest man, with an estimated net worth of $314 billion as of November 2024, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. He owns Tesla, Inc., X (formerly Twitter), Space X and xAI, an artificial intelligence startup that he founded in 2023.
He commands unlimited resources in money, attorneys and the ability to reach millions through X. He’s received billions of dollars in Federal contracts—among them $733.5 million for the Space Development Agency (SDA) and two for the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO).
But Trump commands the Justice Department and Internal Revenue Service. He’s already turned that machinery on former federal officials he hates—such as Chris Krebs, the former director for cybersecurity.
Pam Bondi, Trump’s appointment for Attorney General, has proven her reliability. As Florida Attorney General, she solicited a political contribution from Trump while her office deliberated investigating alleged fraud at Trump University and its affiliates.
After Bondi dropped the Trump University case, Trump wrote her a $25,000 check for her re-election campaign. The money came from the Donald J. Trump Foundation.
And Trump has already started his attack on Musk: On July 1, when reporters asked him if he would deport South Africa-born Musk, Trump said: “We’ll have to take a look. We might have to put DOGE on Elon.”
And on July 3, The New Republic published that Trump was responsible for rumors about Elon Musk’s rampant White House ketamine use: “‘Actually, we dropped a dime to The New York Times….on Elon’s drug taking,’” said Trump, according to his biographer Michael Wolff,
Musk could easily be indicted for corruption—even if it’s totally unwarranted. At the very least, many—if not all—of Musk’s government contracts could be cancelled. At the worst, Musk could find himself locked in combat with Federal prosecutors for the length of Trump’s term and facing huge fines—if not imprisonment.
Ernst Rohm felt invulnerable at the start of 1934. After leaving government with an effusive send-off from Trump, Elon Musk may have felt the same.
Like Rohm, Musk may live to regret the devotion he’s lavished on his choice for Fuhrer.
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In Bureaucracy, Business, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on August 27, 2025 at 12:18 am
On June 30, 1934, German Chancellor Adolf Hitler ordered a massive purge of his private army, the S.A., (Sturmabteilungor). It was carried out by Hitler’s elite army-within-an-army, the Schutzstaffel, or Protective Squads, better known as the SS.
The Brownshirts (also known as “Storm Troopers”) had been instrumental in securing Hitler’s rise to Chancellor of Germany on January 30, 1933. They had violently intimidated political opponents (especially Communists) and organized mass rallies for the Nazi Party.
But after Hitler reached the pinnacle of power, they became a liability.
Ernst Rohm, their commander, had served as a tough army officer during World War 1. He was one of the few men allowed to use “du,” the personal form of “you” in German, when addressing Hitler.
Rohm urged Hitler to disband the regular German army, the Reichswehr, and replace it with his own undisciplined paramilitary legions as the nation’s defense force.
By 1934, the Storm Troopers numbered approximately three million. By contrast, about 100,000 soldiers served in the Reichswehr, owing to restrictions imposed by the 1919 Versailles Treaty which ended World War 1.
Ernst Rohm
Frightened by Rohm’s ambitions, the generals of the Reichswehr gave Hitler an ultimatum: Get rid of Rohm—or they would get rid of him.
Hitler didn’t hesitate. Backed by armed thugs, he stormed into Rohm’s apartment, catching him in bed with a young S.A. Storm Trooper.
Accusing his onetime friend of treasonously plotting to overthrow him, Hitler screamed: “You’re going to be shot!”
Rohm was not plotting a coup. But the generals had the whip hand—and, for Hitler, that was enough to literally sign Rohm’s death warrant.
Hours later, sitting in a prison cell, Rohm was offered a pistol with a single bullet.
“Adolf himself should do the dirty work,” said Rohm, adding: “All revolutions devour their own children.”
One hour later, Rohm died in a hail of SS bullets.
Earlier throughout that day, so had several hundred of his longtime S.A. cronies. Many of them yelled “Heil Hitler!” as they stood against barracks walls waiting to be shot.
SS soldiers marching
Thirteen days later, addressing the Reichstag, Germany’s parliament, Hitler justified his purge in a nationally broadcast speech:
“If anyone reproaches me and asks why I did not resort to the regular courts of justice, then all I can say is this: In this hour I was responsible for the fate of the German people, and thereby I became the Supreme Judge of the German people!
“I gave the order to shoot the ringleaders in this treason, and I further gave the order to cauterize down to the raw flesh the ulcers of this poisoning of the wells in our domestic life.
“Let the nation know that its existence—which depends on its internal order and security—cannot be threatened with impunity by anyone! And let it be known for all time to come that if anyone raises his hand to strike the State, then certain death is his lot.”
Adolf Hitler addressing parliament
Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-E11354 / CC-BY-SA 3.0, CC BY-SA 3.0 DE <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/de/deed.en>, via Wikimedia Commons
Ninety-one years after Adolf Hitler declared himself “the Supreme Judge of the German people,” the United States faces the same fate under re-elected President Donald J. Trump.
And his Number One victim may turn out to be Elon Musk, the man who played a pivotal role in sending him back to the White House.
Musk, the leader of Space X Tesla and X (formerly Twitter), had donated tens of millions of dollars to pro-Trump super PACs, jumped around the stage behind Trump during campaign rallies, and turned X into a Right-wing cheering squad for Trump.
Trump, upon taking office, appointed Musk the head of a fictional government agency called DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency). Its official goal: Eliminating inefficiency and waste within the federal bureaucracy.
But some—like former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen—had a warning for Musk: “Donald Trump is loyal to one person and one person only…himself.
“The moment Elon steps an inch out of Trump’s line, despite all he might have done for him, Donald will cut him off, disparage and denigrate him. Elon is no different than me or anyone else similarly situated. It’s just a matter of when.”
Cohen speaks from bitter personal experience.
A longtime executive of the Trump Organization, Cohen told ABC news in 2011: “If somebody does something Mr. Trump doesn’t like, I do everything in my power to resolve it to Mr. Trump’s benefit.”
In April 2018, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York began investigating Cohen. Charges reportedly included bank fraud, wire fraud and violations of campaign finance law.
Michael Cohen
By IowaPolitics.com (Trump executive Michael Cohen 012) [CC BY-SA 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)%5D, via Wikimedia Commons
On April 9, 2018, the FBI, executing a federal search warrant, raided Cohen’s office at the law firm of Squire Patton Boggs, as well as at his home and his room in the Loews Regency Hotel in New York City.
Agents seized emails, tax and business records and recordings of phone conversations that Cohen had made.
Trump’s response: “Michael Cohen only handled a tiny, tiny fraction of my legal work.”
Thus Trump undermined the argument of Cohen’s lawyers that he was the President’s personal attorney—and therefore everything Cohen did was protected by attorney-client privilege.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Medical, Politics, Social commentary on August 22, 2025 at 12:08 am
It’s the racism and sexism, stupid!
That’s how Lilliana Mason, an associate professor of political science at Johns Hopkins University’s SNF Agora Institute, sees the reason for the animosity between Republicans and Democrats.
“Part of the reason that partisan animosity between Democrats and Republicans is so terrible right now is because what the parties are fighting over are really matters of racial and gender equality—the traditional social hierarchy—and whether we’re going to go back to being a country where White Christian men were always at the top of that hierarchy or become a more egalitarian, multiethnic democracy.”
Lilliana Mason
Referring to the book she co-wrote with fellow political scientist Nathan P. Kalmoe, Radical American Partisanship: Mapping Violent Hostility, Its Causes, and the Consequences for Democracy, she said:
“What we found in our data was that, particularly on the right, Republicans who really hated Democrats the most were also the highest in racial resentment and sexism.
“And those who hated Democrats the least were those who were lowest in racial resentment and sexism. Actually, in our data, racial resentment is one of the most powerful predictors of Republicans hating Democrats.”
Once again—as in the years leading to the Civil War—it’s the South trying to impose a slavocracy mentality and control over the rest of the nation.
From 1860 to 1865, the South—Texas, Arkansas, Louisiana, Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Florida, South Carolina, North Carolina and Virginia-–produced the greatest case of mass treason in America’s history.
Union (blue) and Confederate (red) states: 1860 – 1865
According to The Destructive War, by Charles Royster, it wasn’t the cause of “states’ rights” that led 11 Southern states to withdraw from the Union in 1860-61. It was their demand for “respect.”
“The respect Southerners demanded did not consist simply of the states’ sovereignty or of the equal rights of Northern and Southern citizens, including slaveholders’ right to take their chattels into Northern territory.
“It entailed, too, respect for their assertion of the moral superiority of slaveholding society over free society,” writes Royster.
It was not enough for Southerners to claim equal standing with Northerners; Northerners must acknowledge it. But this was something that the North increasingly refused to do.
Finally, its citizens dared to elect Abraham Lincoln President in 1860.
Abraham Lincoln
Lincoln and his new Republican party damned slavery—and slaveholders—as morally evil, obsolete and ultimately doomed. And they were determined to prevent slavery from spreading any further throughout the country.
Southerners found all of this intolerable.
On April 12, 1861—just over a month since Lincoln’s inauguration on March 4—Southern batteries opened fire on Union Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor, South Carolina, triggering the Civil War.
More than 750,000.Americans died—when the population of the United States stood at 31,443,321.
Four years later, on April 9, 1865, Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia to Union General Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Courthouse.
Now Southerners are trying to win through political manipulation what they couldn’t by open treason.
Red states are adopting Fascistic social policies on such issues as abortion, gay rights and classroom censorship. And they are trying to prevent the federal government or their own largest metro areas to resist those policies.
In the case of abortion, Red states are not only outlawing it within their own borders but trying to prevent states where abortion is legal from providing that service.
Thus Republicans, who began as the party of freedom, have mutated into the party now trying to end it.
According to Donald Kettl, the former dean of the public policy school at the University of Maryland:
“The only time I can recall in American history even remotely like this [divergence] was after the Civil War when the separate but equal doctrine began to emerge” across the South as a backlash against the attempts of the 13th, 14th and 15th Constitutional amendments to ensure equality for the freed slaves.”
CNN Correspondent Ronald Brownstein warns of this development:
“The real threat in the red state effort to set their own course may be less an advantage for one side or another than a challenge to the nation’s underlying cohesion.
“As red states grow more aggressive about going their own way, while working to preempt challenges from above (the federal government) or below (blue local governments), they are testing how much divergence the nation’s fundamental cohesion can take before it begins to unravel.”
Thirty-one states voted for Donald Trump in 2024. Of these:
- Twenty-four rank in the bottom 25 for the percentage of adults holding at least a four-year college degree;
- Twenty-seven fall into the top half when ranked by the share of their population that are White Christians of who own guns;
- Twenty-one rank in the top 26 states for total energy-related CO₂ emissions;
- These states have long sought to reverse the “rights revolution” of the last 60 years—on such issues as abortion, same-sex marriage and contraception.
Today’s Republican party is no longer the party of Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt and Dwight D. Eisenhower.
It has become the party of John Wilkes Booth, Benito Mussolini and Donald Trump.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Military, Social commentary on August 14, 2025 at 12:14 am
Since February 24, 2022, Ukraine has been under Russian assault. For more than two years, President Joseph R. Biden supplied Ukrainians with arms and Intelligence.
Then voters elected Donald Trump President in 2024.
Suddenly, the future of Ukraine—and those countries making up the 75-year-old North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)—looked very different.
Numerous commentators have noted that Trump is a “transactional President.” Meaning that he doesn’t enter any enterprise unless he believes there’s something in it for him.
Thus, defending a nation simply because it’s a democracy is a waste of time—unless he can gain something from it.
Ukraine vs. Russia
Trump wants access to Ukraine’s rare earth minerals, which are key to manufacturing high-tech products like computer chips and military equipment.
The reason: In April, 2025, China announced export restrictions on some of these minerals in retaliation for Trump’s placing tariffs on Chinese goods.
In asserting the United States’ sphere of influence, Trump sees himself as the leader of a country that’s expansive and claims new territory,
As a result, he has attacked America’s longtime ally and neighbor, Canada with tariffs. He’s even threatened it with possible military invasion.
Vladimir Putin is another politician who believes in spheres of influence.
Since the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991, Putin has yearned for its reestablishment. He has called that breakup “the greatest geopolitical tragedy of the 20th century.”
Vladimir Putin
Kremlin.ru, CC BY 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
Russia has long resisted Ukraine’s move towards European institutions—especially entry into NATO.
Since late February, 2014, he began moving Russian troops into Ukraine and its autonomous Republic, Crimea. Russia annexed Ukraine’s southern Crimean peninsula and backed separatists who captured large swathes of eastern Ukraine.
On December 3, 2021, the Washington Post reported: “The Kremlin was planning a multi-front offensive as soon as early next year involving up to 175,000 troops” against Ukraine.
And where there is activity by Russians, American Rightists are eager to turn such events to their own political advantage.
All of which overlooks a number of brutal political truths.
First, all great powers have spheres of interest—and jealously guard them.
For the United States, it’s Latin and Central America, as established by the Monroe Doctrine.
And just what is the Monroe Doctrine?
It’s a statement made by President James Monroe in his 1823 annual message to Congress, which warned European powers not to interfere in the affairs of the Western Hemisphere.
The Monroe Doctrine has no legitimacy except the willingness of the United States to use armed force to back it up. When the United States no longer has the will or resources to enforce the Doctrine, it will cease to have meaning.
In 1962, President John F. Kennedy threatened Russian premier Nikita Khrushchev with nuclear oblivion unless Soviet nuclear missiles were withdrawn from Cuba.
For the Soviet Union, its spheres of influence include the Ukraine. Long known as “the breadbasket of Russia,” in 2011, it was the world’s third-largest grain exporter.
Russia will no more give up access to that breadbasket than the United States would part with the rich farming states of the Midwest.
Second, spheres of influence often prove disastrous to those smaller countries affected.
Throughout Latin and Central America, the United States remains highly unpopular for its brutal use of “gunboat diplomacy” during the 20th century.
Among those countries invaded or controlled by America: Mexico, Cuba, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Columbia, Panama and the Dominican Republic.
The resulting anger has led many Latin and Central Americans to support Communist Cuba, even though its political oppression and economic failure are universally apparent.
Latin and Central America
Similarly, the Soviet Union forced many nations—such as Poland, Hungary and Czechoslovakia—to submit to the will of Moscow.
The alternative? The threat of Soviet invasion—as occurred in Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968.
Third, even “great powers” are not all-powerful.
In 1949, after a long civil war, the forces of Mao Zedong defeated the Nationalist armies of Chiang Kai-Shek, who withdrew to Taiwan.
China had never been a territory of the United States. Nor could the United States have prevented Mao from defeating the corrupt, ineptly-led Nationalist forces.
Even so, Republican Senators and Representatives such as Richard Nixon and Joseph McCarthy eagerly blamed President Harry S. Truman and the Democrats for “losing China.”
The fear of being accused of “losing” another country led Presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson and Richard M. Nixon to tragically commit the United States to “roll back” Communism in Cuba and Vietnam.
Now Republicans—who claim the United States can’t afford to provide healthcare for its poorest citizens—want to turn the national budget over to the Pentagon.
They want the United States to “intervene” in Syria following the overthrow of Bashar al-Assad’s government in late 2024
This would insert the United States into yet another war in yet another Islamic country—after our disastrous forays in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Before plunging into conflicts that don’t concern us and where there is absolutely nothing to “win,” Americans would do well to remember the above-stated lessons of history. And to learn from them.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Medical, Politics, Social commentary on August 11, 2025 at 12:45 am
Donald Trump’s appearance at the Conservative Political Action Conference on March 2, 2019 was an occasion for rejoicing among his supporters.
But for those who prize rationality and decency in a President, it was a dismaying and frightening experience.
For two hours, Trump gave free reign to his anger and egomania.
Among his unhinged commentaries:
“We have people in Congress that hate our country.”
If you don’t agree 100% with Trump on everything, you’re a traitor.
“He called me up. He said, ‘You’re a great President. You’re doing a great job.’ He said, ‘I just want to tell you you’re a great President and you’re one of the smartest people I’ve ever met.'”
Trump attributed these remarks to California’s liberal governor, Gavin Newsom. On February 11, 2019, Newsom had announced he was withdrawing several hundred National Guardsmen from the state’s southern border with Mexico—defying Trump’s request for support from border states.
Donald Trump at CPAC
“You know if you remember my first major speech—you know the dishonest media they’ll say, ‘He didn’t get a standing ovation.’ You know why? Because everybody stood and nobody sat. They are the worst. They leave that out.”
Once again, he’s the persecuted victim of an unfair and totally unappreciative news media.
“And I love the First Amendment; nobody loves it better than me. Nobody. I mean, who use its more than I do? But the First Amendment gives all of us—it gives it to me, it gives it to you, it gives it to all Americans, the right to speak our minds freely. It gives you the right and me the right to criticize fake news and criticize it strongly.”
Trump has repeatedly called the nation’s free press “the enemy of the people”—a slander popularized by Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin. And while Trump brags about his usage of the First Amendment, he’s used Non-Disclosure agreements and threats of lawsuits to deny that right to others.
“For too long, we’ve traded away our jobs to other countries. So terrible.”
While this remark got rousing applause, he failed to mention that his own products are made overseas:
- Ties: Made in China
- Suits: Made in Indonesia
- Trump Vodka: Made in the Netherlands, and later in Germany
- Crystal glasses, decanters: Made in Slovenia
- And the clothing and accessories line of his daughter, Ivanka, is produced entirely in factories in Bangladesh, Indonesia and China.
“By the way, you folks are in here—this place is packed, there are lines that go back six blocks and I tell you that because you won’t read about it, OK.”
He’s obsessed with fear that the media won’t make him look popular.
“So we’re all part of this very historic movement, a movement the likes of which, actually, the world has never seen before. There’s never been anything like this. There’s been some movements, but there’s never been anything like this.”
Trump sees himself as the single greatest figure in history. So anything he’s involved with must be unprecedented.
“But I always say, Obamacare doesn’t work. And these same people two years ago and a year ago were complaining about Obamacare.”
In 2010, 48 million Americans lacked health insurance. By 2016, that number had been reduced to 28.6 million. So 20 million Americans now have access to medical care they previously couldn’t get.
“But we’re taking a firm, bold and decisive measure, we have to, to turn things around [with North Korea]. The era of empty talk is over, it’s over.”
- Trump has boasted that he and North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Un “fell in love.” Then he met with Kim in Vietnam—and got stiffed on a deal for North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons.
- On July 16, 2018, Trump attended a press conference in Helsinki, Finland, with Russian President Vladimir Putin. There he blamed American Intelligence agencies—such as the FBI and CIA—instead of Putin for Russia’s subversion of the 2016 Presidential election.
“I’ll tell you what they [agents of Immigration and Customs Enforcement] do, they came and endorsed me, ICE came and endorsed me. They never endorsed a presidential candidate before, they might not even be allowed to.”
Trump can’t stop boasting about how popular he is.
“These are hard-working, great, great Americans. These are unbelievable people who have not been treated fairly. Hillary called them deplorable. They’re not deplorable.”
On the contrary: “Deplorable” is exactly the word for those who vote their racism, ignorance, superstition and hatred of their fellow citizens.
A FINAL NOTE: Trump held himself up for adoration just three days after Michael Cohen, his longtime fixer:
- Damned him as a racist, a conman and a cheat.
- Revealed that Trump had cheated on his taxes and bought the silence of a porn “star” to prevent her revealing a 2006 tryst before the 2016 election.
- Estimated he had stiffed, on Trump’s behalf, hundreds of workers Trump owed money to.
And, only two days earlier, Trump had returned from a much-ballyhooed meeting in Vietnam with North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Un. Trump hoped to get a Nobel Peace Prize by persuading Kim to give up his nuclear arsenal.
Instead, Trump got stiffed—and returned empty-handed.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Medical, Politics, Social commentary on August 8, 2025 at 12:24 am
“Is Donald Trump simply crazy, or is he crazy like a fox?”
That was the question that Bandy X. Lee, an assistant clinical psychiatry professor at the Yale School of Medicine, wanted to answer.
And she tried to do so as the editor of The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 27 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President.
“It doesn’t take a psychiatrist to notice that our president is mentally compromised,” she and colleague Judith Lewis Herman asserted in the book’s prologue.
According to Dr. Craig Malkin, a Lecturer in Psychology for Harvard Medical School and a licensed psychologist, Trump is a pathological narcissist:
“Pathological narcissism begins,” Malkin writes, “when people become so addicted to feeling special that, just like with any drug, they’ll do anything to get their ‘high,’ including lie, steal, cheat, betray and even hurt those closest to them.
“When they can’t let go of their need to be admired or recognized, they have to bend or invent a reality in which they remain special despite all messages to the contrary. In point of fact, they become dangerously psychotic. It’s just not always obvious until it’s too late.”
Lance Dodes, a retired psychiatry professor at Harvard Medical School, believes that Trump is a sociopath: “The failure of normal empathy is central to sociopathy, which is marked by an absence of guilt, intentional manipulation and controlling or even sadistically harming others for personal power or gratification.”
But an observer didn’t need to be a psychiatrist to feel frightened by Trump’s behavior at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) on March 2, 2019.
For two hours, in National Harbor, Maryland, Trump delivered the longest address (so far) of his first term as President—and of any American President.
“You know, I’m totally off script right now,” Trump said early on. “This is how I got elected, by being off script.”
And from the moment he embraced an American flag as though he wanted to hump it, it was clear: He was “totally off script.”
“How many times did you hear, for months and months, ‘There is no way to 270?’ You know what that means, right? ‘There is no way to 270.'”
Once again, Trump reveals his obsession with his win in 2016—as if no one else had ever been elected President.
“If you tell a joke, if you’re sarcastic, if you’re having fun with the audience, if you’re on live television with millions of people and 25,000 people in an arena, and if you say something like, ‘Russia, please, if you can, get us Hillary Clinton’s emails. Please, Russia, please.'”
Here he’s trying to “spin” his infamous invitation to hackers in Vladimir Putin’s Russia to intervene in an American Presidential election by obtaining the emails of his campaign rival. Which they did that same day.
“So now we’re waiting for a report [from the office of Special Counsel Robert Mueller] and we’ll find out whether or not, and who we’re dealing with. We’re waiting for a report by people that weren’t elected.”
It doesn’t matter to Trump that America’s foremost enemy—Russia—tried to influence a Presidential election. What matters to him is that the report might end his Presidency.
“Those red hats—and white ones. The key is in the color. The key is what it says. ‘Make America Great Again’ is what it says. Right? Right?”
Color matters. Words, ideas don’t.
“Now, Robert Mueller never received a vote, and neither did the person that appointed him. And as you know, the attorney general says, ‘I’m going to recuse myself.'”
Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller and Assistant Attorney General Rod Rosenstein were career Justice Department officials. They weren’t voted into office.
Robert Mueller
“Number one, I’m in love, and you’re in love. We’re all in love together. There’s so much love in this room, it’s easy to talk. You can talk your heart out. You really could. There’s love in this room. You can talk your heart out. It’s easy. It’s easy. It’s easy.”
Trump apparently finds it easy to fall in love—with Right-wing audiences and Communist dictators such as Kim Jong-Un.
“And from the day we came down the escalator, I really don’t believe we’ve had an empty seat at any arena, at any stadium. They did the same thing at our big inauguration speech. You take a look at those crowds.”
Once again, he must brag about how popular he is and how many people want to listen to him.
“A few days ago I called the fake news the enemy of the people. And they are. They are the enemy of the people. Because they have no sources, they just make ’em up when there are none.”
By January 20, 2020, The Washington Post found that Trump had made “16,241 ‘false or misleading claims” in his first three years in office. He is in no position to talk about integrity.
“But we’re going to have regulation. It’s going to be really strong and really good and we’re going to protect our environment and we’re going to protect the safety of our people and our workers, OK?”
To “protect our environment,” Trump appointed Andrew R. Wheeler, a former coal company lobbyist, to head the Environmental Protection Agency.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Medical, Politics, Social commentary on August 7, 2025 at 12:12 am
What would happen if the President of the United States went stark-raving mad?
That is the premise of the 1965 novel, Night at Camp David, by Fletcher Knebel.
At the time of its release, its plot was considered so over-the-top as to be worthy of science fiction:
Iowa Democratic Senator Jim MacVeagh is summoned to Camp David, the Presidential retreat, by President Mark Hollenbach. MacVeagh is expected to become Hollenbach’s next Vice President. But he becomes alarmed that Hollenbach is clearly suffering from intense paranoia.
Hollenbach wants to develop a closer relationship between the United States and Russia—while cutting ties with American allies in Europe. Moreover, he believes the American news media are conspiring against him with his political enemies.
Only one person possesses evidence that Hollenbach is losing his grip on sanity—his mistress, Rita. Desperate to retain his power, Hollenbach orders the FBI to investigate both MacVeagh and Rita.
So why was a 53-year-old novel re-released in 2018? The answer lay in two words: Donald Trump.
In a November 30, 2018 review of Night at Camp David, Tom McCarthy, national affairs correspondent for the British newspaper, The Guardian, wrote:
“The current president has seen crowds where none exist, deployed troops to answer no threat, attacked national institutions – the military, the justice department, the judiciary, the vote, the rule of law, the press – tried to prosecute his political enemies, elevated bigots, oppressed minorities, praised despots while insulting global allies and wreaked diplomatic havoc from North Korea to Canada.
“He stays up half the night watching TV and tweeting about it, then wakes up early to tweet some more, in what must be the most remarkable public diary of insecurity, petty vindictiveness, duplicity and scattershot focus by a major head of state in history.”
And the nightmare isn’t over.
Among the outrages Trump has committed since returning to power on January 20:
- Pardoned about 1,500 of his followers who violently tried to overturn the outcome of the 2020 Presidential election in the January 6, 2021 attack on Congress. Move than 250 of those pardoned had been convicted of assaulting police.
- Withdrew the United States from the World Health Organization (WHO).
- Withdrew the United States from the Paris climate agreement.
- Ordered the dismissal of 5,000 FBI agents who investigated his incitement of the January 6 riot and his illegal hoarding of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago.
- Declared “a national emergency” targeting migrants—legal and illegal.
- Tried to cancel birthright citizenship—enshrined within the United States Constitution— for U.S.-born children.
- Demanded a military parade for his 79th birthday, poorly disguised as a salute to the 250th anniversary of the United States Army.
- Fired without cause the director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
- Angrily fired the Commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics following a weak jobs report, triggering fears about his extortionate tariff policy.
Donald Trump
- Demanded that the media refer to the Gulf of Mexico as “the Gulf of America” and banned the Associated Press from the White House for refusing to do so.
- Ordered the closure of all Federal Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Accessibility offices.
- Fired the inspectors general from more than a dozen federal agencies.
- Demanded that Canada become the 51st state and aggressively raised tariffs on Canadian goods.
- Aggressively stated that he wanted the United States to acquire Greenland, its longtime ally.
- Issued executive orders revoking the security clearance of Chris Krebs, former director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. Krebs’ “crime”: Preventing lies spread by Russians—and Americans—on social media platforms from swaying the 2020 Presidential election to Trump.
- Threatened Harvard University with the loss of billions of dollars in federal funding, claiming that 2023 student protests about Gaza violated the civil rights of Jewish students.
- Accepted a $400 million luxury jet from Qatar for his personal use, a violation of the Emoluments Clause of the Constitution.
Trump’s vindictiveness, his narcissism, his compulsive aggression, his complaints that his “enemies” in government and the press are trying to destroy him, have caused many to ask: Could the President of the United States be suffering from mental illness?
One who has dared to answer this question is John D. Gartner, a practicing psychotherapist.
John D. Gartner
Gartner graduated magna cum laude from Princeton University, received his Ph.D in clinical psychology from the University of Massachusetts, and served as a part-time assistant professor of psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University Medical School for 28 years.
During an interview by U.S. News & World Report (published on January 27, 2017), Gartner said: “Donald Trump is dangerously mentally ill and temperamentally incapable of being president.”
Gartner said that Trump suffers from “malignant narcissism,” whose symptoms include:
- anti-social behavior
- sadism
- aggressiveness
- paranoia
- grandiosity.
“We’ve seen enough public behavior by Donald Trump now that we can make this diagnosis indisputably,” says Gartner, who admits he has not personally examined Trump.
More of that behavior was on full display on March 2, 2019 at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), held at the Gaylord National Resort & Convention Center, National Harbor, Maryland.
For more than two hours, Trump delivered the longest speech (so far) of his first term as President to his fanatically Right-wing audience.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on August 6, 2025 at 12:10 am
On July 11, Federal Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong ordered the Trump administration to halt its indiscriminate immigration arrests across California.
Stephen Miller, President Donald Trump’s White House deputy chief of policy and homeland security advisor, was outraged.
Miller has been called one of the most powerful officials in the second Trump administration. According to the Wall Street Journal, he “has written or edited every executive order that Trump has signed.”
Miller now acts as the driving force behind Trump’s effort to arrest at least 3,000 Hispanics every day.
On July 12, he responded on X:
“The ruling has just been issued. A communist judge in LA has ordered ICE to report directly to her and radical left NGOs — not the president. This is another act of insurrection against the United States and its sovereign people.”
Stephen Miller
And that led California Governor Gavin Newsom to respond to Miller on X:
“This fascist cuck in DC continues his assault on democracy and the Constitution, and his attempt to replace the sovereignty of the people with autocracy. Sorry the Constitution hurt your feelings, Stephen. Cry harder.”
Newsom defended his language at a later news conference: “I don’t think they understand any other kind of language, so I have no apologies for standing tall and firm and pushing back against their cruelty.”
Mainstream liberals were stunned.
On July 20, the Los Angeles Times mourned: “Forger the high road: Newsom Takes the Fight to Trump and his allies.”
And the story noted: “The MAGA-embraced epithet from Gov. Gavin Newsom’s official press office in response, however, was hardly typical for a Democratic politician.
“Popular among the far right and the gutters of social media, the term is used to insult liberals as weak and is also short for ‘cuckold,’ which refers to the husband of an unfaithful wife.
“The low blow sanctioned by a potential 2028 presidential candidate set a new paradigm for the political left that has long embraced Michelle Obama’s “when they go low, we go high” motto to rise above the callousness of Trump and his acolytes.”
Gavin Newsom
Following that mantra had cost Democrats the 2016 election and that of 2024—as well as the United States Senate and House of Representatives.
But some Democrats have decided it’s time to fight fire with fire.
Questioned on the use of “Politically Incorrect” language by the governor, Newsom’s Director of Communications Izzy Gardon, said: “We were inspired by the White House’s use of the term.”
In June, Steven Cheung, the White House communications director, had called Newsom “the biggest cuck in politics.” And President Trump has repeatedly referred to the governor as “Gavin Newscum.”
Bob Salladay, Newson’s top communications advisor, added: “Sometimes the best way to challenge a bully is to punch them in the metaphorical face.
“These tactics may seem extreme to some and they are, but there’s a significant difference here: We’re targeting powerful forces that are ripping apart this country, using their own words and tactics. Trump and Stephen Miller are attacking the powerless like every fascist bully before them.”
By calling Miller a “fascist cuck,” Newsom was stealing a page from the Right-wing’s playbook.
In this case, “cuck” clearly refers to unsubstantiated online rumors that Miller’s wife, Katie, became romantically involved with Elon Musk after he set up the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
Musk selected her as a DOGE official. And when the billionaire left DOGE in May, Katie Miller left with him—to take a job at xAI, Musk’s artificial intelligence company.
Katie Miller
The Democratic party’s official X account posted a “cuck chair” meme, representing a hotel room chair where a husband or wife would sit while watching a partner have sex with someone else.
Political blogger Peter Sage had mixed feelings about Newsom’s foray into Trump-style rhetoric:
“I am not a big fan of Newsom adopting the Trump tactic of trolling and name-calling. There is a me-too quality to it. But my instincts here may be out of date for this media environment.
“Maybe trolling the other party needs to be everybody’s brand in a world where people get news via social media.
“Policy discussion bores most people. Many people think they want serious political discussion of the issues, but people at the margin who decide elections respond to quick shots that position a politician in the political universe. One defines oneself by one’s fights.”
In April, a Pew Research Center study found that a majority of Democrats believe in pushing back against Trump rather than finding common ground with him.
This division was demonstrated on July 29 by New Jersey United States Senator Cory Booker, who screamed at his Democratic colleagues that they needed “a wake-up call!”
He angrily blocked the passage of several bills—popular with Democrats and Republicans—to fund police programs. His reason: The Trump’s administration had withheld law enforcement money from Democratic states.
“This is the problem with Democrats in America right now,” Booker yelled, “we’re willing to be complicit with Donald Trump!”
Only the outcome of the 2026 midterm elections—and, more importantly, that of the 2028 Presidential one—will decide which was a better tactic for Democrats: Attempted conciliation with Trump—or brutal confrontation.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on August 5, 2025 at 12:13 am
Cuck: 1. a weak or servile man (often used as a contemptuous term for a man with moderate or progressive political views); 2. a man whose wife is sexually unfaithful; a cuckold.
It’s a term often used by Right-wingers to attack the masculinity of their enemies.
So imagine how Stephen Miller, President Donald Trump’s White House deputy chief of policy and homeland security advisor, felt when the term was trained on him.
And by no less a major political figure than California Governor Gavin Newsom.
Miller has been called one of the most powerful officials in the second administration of President Donald Trump. According to the Wall Street Journal, he “has written or edited every executive order that Trump has signed.”
And as Reinhard Heydrich, second-in-command of Adolf Hitler’s Schutzstaffel, or SS, acted as the architect of the Holocaust, Miller now acts as the driving force behind Trump’s wholesale effort to arrest at least 3,000 Hispanics every day.
Stephen Miller
During an interview with Fox News host Sean Hannity, Miller claimed that illegal aliens were a “clear and present danger” to national security, and charged that federal judges were “telling President Trump he can’t deport these threats from our community.
“This is the choice facing every American: Either we all side and get behind President Trump to remove these terrorists from our communities, or we let a rogue, radical-left judiciary shut down the machinery of our national security apparatus.”
Miller orchestrated the June 6 raids on Los Angeles by agents of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
On July 2, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed a lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and its sub-agency, ICE. Its introduction reads:
“Since early June, this District [Los Angeles] has been under siege.
“Masked federal agents, sometimes dressed in military-style clothing, have conducted indiscriminate immigration operations, flooding street corners, bus stops, parking lots, agricultural sites, day laborer corners, and other places, setting up checkpoints, and entering businesses, interrogating residents as they are working, looking for work, or otherwise trying to go about their daily lives, and taking people away.
“The raids in this District follow a common, systematic pattern. Individuals with brown skin are approached or pulled aside by unidentified federal agents, suddenly and with a show of force, and made to answer questions about who they are and where they are from.
“If they hesitate, attempt to leave, or do not answer the questions to the satisfaction of the agents, they are detained, sometimes tackled, handcuffed, and/or taken into custody. In these interactions, agents typically have no prior information about the individual and no warrant of any kind.
“Those who have borne the brunt of Defendants’ heavy-handed pattern of unlawful conduct include day laborers, car wash workers, farm workers, street vendors, service workers, caregivers and others who form the lifeblood of communities across Southern California.
“Over a thousand residents in [Los Angeles] have already been impacted, including a shocking (though hardly surprising) number of U.S. citizens and individuals lawfully present in the country.”
ICE agents in Los Angeles
The ACLU lawsuit specifically blamed Miller for these outrages:
“Federal immigration enforcement is constrained by law. But since the federal government began its mass immigration enforcement operations in [Los Angeles] on June 6, 2025, all of these legal requirements have given way to one overriding consideration: numbers, pure numbers. Quantity over quality.
”In late May, the White House and the Department of Homeland Security imposed a quota of 3,000 immigration-related arrests per day—with ‘consequences for not hitting arrest targets.’ In order to reach this target, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller directed high-level officials to change their approach to stops and arrests in the field.
“Agents and officers, according to him, should no longer conduct targeted operations based on investigations. Instead, they should ‘just go out there and arrest [unauthorized noncitizens] by rounding up people in public spaces like ‘Home Depot’ and ‘7-Eleven’ convenience stores.”
Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass and California Governor Gavin Newsom immediately protested the raids. They charged that Trump’s dispatching 4,700 federal troops to Los Angeles—4,000 National Guardsmen and 700 Marines—was both unnecessary and inflammatory.
Karen Bass
On June 9, Newsom sued the Trump administration for what he called an illegal federalization of the California National Guard. But a three-judge appeals court panel allowed Trump to maintain the Guard in Los Angeles.
On July 11, Federal Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong ordered the Trump administration to halt its indiscriminate immigration raids across California.
Concluding there was a “mountain of evidence” to prove that ICE was systematically targeting brown-skinned people in Southern California, she issued temporary orders which:
- Prohibited immigration agents from arresting people without reasonable suspicion that they were in the country illegally;
- Restricted ICE from relying on factors like race, language, or occupation when determining reasonable suspicion; and
- Required agents to allow detainees immediate access to legal counsel.
On July 12, Miller responded on X: “The ruling has just been issued. A communist judge in LA has ordered ICE to report directly to her and radical left NGOs — not the president. This is another act of insurrection against the United States and its sovereign people.”
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WHY RIGHT-WINGERS LIE ABOUT ATROCITIES
In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Politics, Social commentary on September 4, 2025 at 12:09 am“The Holocaust never happened.”
“The Sandy Hook massacre never happened.”
“The MAGAbomber is a Democrat who’s mailing letter-bombs to make Republicans look bad.”
These are among the lies regularly hurled by “lunatic fringe” Right-wingers—and, more importantly, “mainstream” Republicans.
Many liberals believe Right-wingers simply lack correct information.
They assume that, if only Right-wingers knew the truth about such matters as:
they would be telling the truth.
There are two motives behind such blatant lying—and mere ignorance is not one of them.
Motive #1: Right-wingers don’t want to admit the truth about events most people instinctively believe are evil.
Right-wingers intuitively know that:
are indefensible examples of pure evil.
They know they can’t convince decent people that such atrocities are really acts of humanity. So it’s easier (for them) to simply deny that they actually happened.
The tobacco industry paved the way for such arguments.
The Tobacco Institute—a trade association created in 1958 to pose as a “smoking research” center—cast doubt on scientific studies linking smoking with lung cancer, emphysema and heart disease.
Tobacco Institute ad
Its premise: “We really don’t know if smoking causes cancer. We need more studies to make certain.”
And, for the Tobacco Institute, there could never be enough studies to prove that smoking was a thoroughly deadly habit—that reaped billions of dollars every year for the tobacco industry.
The longer they could convince the public of their lies, the less likely they were to be regulated.
Motive #2: Right-wingers claim Right-wing atrocities didn’t happen to put the victims of such atrocities on the defensive.
This, too, was a major aim of the tobacco industry. By constantly demanding “Prove to us that smoking is deadly” and then arrogantly dismissing all evidence put forward, tobacco executives put the onus on their opponents.
From October 22 to November 1, 2018, Cesar Sayoc mailed pipe-bombs to 10 prominent Democrats—including former President Barack Obama, then-former Vice President Joe Biden and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
After Sayoc was arrested and his van was found plastered with pro-Donald Trump stickers, Right-wingers reflexively seized on a series of lies to “cleanse” themselves:
Totally ignored was that FBI Director Christopher Wray—a Trump appointee after the firing of James Comey in May, 2017—publicly stated that the bombs were real: “Though we’re still analyzing these devices in our laboratory, these were not hoax devices.”
Christopher Wray
So how did Right-wingers react to Wray’s no-nonsense rebuttal of Right-wing conspiracy lies?
They attacked the FBI as part of the “deep state” determined to thwart and, if possible, impeach Donald Trump.
According to one Rightist theory: The FBI made the bombs and sent them out to implicate some poor Trump supporter—if not the President himself.
So how can such liars be defeated? Lawsuits based on the truth.
On August 1, 2018, families of four students and two educators who died in the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre filed a defamation lawsuit against Right-wing broadcaster and conspiracy theorist Alex Jones.
Jones hosts The Alex Jones Show from Austin, Texas. He had claimed the mass shooting was fake.
Twenty children and six adults were killed in the December 14, 2012, attack by 20-year-old Adam Lanza.
On his program in January, 2015, Jones said: “Sandy Hook is a synthetic completely fake with actors, in my view, manufactured. I couldn’t believe it at first. I knew they had actors there, clearly, but I thought they killed some real kids. And it just shows how bold they are, that they clearly used actors.”
Alex Jones
Michael Zimmermann [CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)%5D
According to the complaint filed against Jones:
“The Jones defendants concoct elaborate and false paranoia-tinged conspiracy theories because it moves product and they make money. Not because they truly believe what they are saying, but rather because it increases profits.”
Thus, a reasonable person would understand that Jones meant the massacre was staged and the deaths were fabricated.
So Jones responded with another lie: “This is all out of context….And it’s not even what I said or my intent. I’m not going to get into the real defects of this, I’m going to wait until it’s thrown out with prejudice.”
Jones’ lies did him no good. On August 4, 2022, a Texas jury ordered Jones to pay two plaintiffs $4.1 million in compensatory damages. The following day, he was ordered to pay $45.2 million in punitive damages.
Other trials are pending.
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