On March 19, 1945, facing certain defeat, German Fuhrer Adolf Hitler ordered a massive “scorched-earth” campaign throughout Germany.
Albert Speer, Minister of Armaments for the Third Reich, was appalled. All German agriculture, industry, ships, communications, roads, food stuffs, mines, bridges, stores and utility plants were to be destroyed.
Albert Speer and Adolf Hitler pouring over architectural plans
If implemented, it would deprive the entire German population of even the barest necessities after the war.
Now living in a bunker 50 feet below bomb-shattered Berlin, Hitler gave full vent to his most destructive impulses.
Adolf Hitler addressing boy soldiers as the Third Reich crumbles
“If the war is lost,” Hitler told Speer, “the nation will also perish. This fate is inevitable. There is no necessity to take into consideration the basis which the people will need to continue even a most primitive existence.
“On the contrary, it will be better to destroy these things ourselves, because this nation will have proved to be the weaker one and the future will belong solely to the stronger eastern nation.
“Besides, those who will remain after the battle are only the inferior ones, for the good ones have all been killed.”
Republicans have adopted the same “my-way-or-else” stance as Hitler. Like him, they are determined to gain and hold absolute power—or destroy the Nation they claim to love.
Take their current attitude toward—and attacks on—the U.S.Department of Justice and its chief investigative agency, the FBI.
On May 9, 2017, President Donald Trump fired FBI Director James Comey. Comey had been leading an investigation into alleged collusion between Trump advisers and Russian officials when he was fired.
At first, Trump claimed that he fired Comey for mishandling the FBI’s investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server.
James Comey
But, during a May 10 meeting at the White House, Trump admitted to Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak: “I faced great pressure because of Russia. That’s taken off.”
Following the uproar over Comey’s firing, on May 17, the Justice Department appointed former FBI director Robert Mueller as Special Counsel to investigate any links the between Russian government and Trump campaign members.
Congressional Republicans joined Democrats in praising the appointment.
- House Oversight and Government Reform Chairman Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, who had relentlessly pursued Hillary Clinton, said: “Mueller is a great selection. Impeccable credentials. Should be widely accepted.”
- “I commend (Department of Justice) for bringing in an independent voice to help bring clarity to this situation,” said Senator Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, a senior member of the Senate Judiciary Committee.
- House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., said, “My priority has been to ensure thorough and independent investigations are allowed to follow the facts wherever they may lead. That is what we’ve been doing here in the House. The addition of Robert Mueller as special counsel is consistent with this goal, and I welcome his role at the Department of Justice.”
Yet, since May, Trump, his shills in Congress and Right-wing Fox News have relentlessly attacked Mueller’s integrity and investigative methods. This despite the fact that Mueller was appointed by Republican President George W. Bush and served with an impeccable reputation for 12 years as FBI director (2001-2013).
The attacks grew increasingly vicious as Mueller uncovered evidence linking former high-ranking members of the Trump Presidential campaign to Russian Intelligence officials:
- Former national security adviser Michael Flynn pleaded guilty in December to lying to the FBI about his private conversations with Russian ambassador Kislyak. He is now cooperating with Mueller’s office.
- Trump’s former campaign chairman Paul Manafort and his deputy Rick Gates were indicted in October. They have pleaded not guilty and ordered under house arrest.
- George Papadopoulos, the former Trump campaign foreign policy adviser, pleaded guilty in October to lying to the FBI about his dealings with two Russians who had ties to the Russian government.
And the Republican response?
- “A witch hunt continues against the president with tremendous bias, no purpose and no end in sight,” charged Rep. Matthew Gaets (R-Florida).
- Gaetz joined Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Arizona) and Louie Gohmert (R-Texas) in demanding that Mueller resign because he was the FBI director in 2010 when Federal agencies approved the sale of Uranium One, a Canadian energy company, to a Russian nuclear-energy firm.
- “I think the public trust in this whole thing is gone,” said Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), a founder of the Right-wing Freedom Caucus.
- “Let’s start off with the head of the snake,” said Sean Hannity, the Fascistic commentator on Right-wing Fox News. “Mueller’s credibility is in the gutter tonight with these new discoveries, his conflicts of interests, his clear bias, the corruption are on full display. Mueller is frankly a disgrace to the American justice system and has put the country now on the brink of becoming a banana republic.”
There are three reasons for these attacks:
First, Republicans fear that Trump’s followers—the hard-core Fascists who turn out in mid-term elections—will reject them if they reject Trump.
Second, they fear that if Mueller’s investigation leads to Trump’s impeachment, they will be turned out of Congress—as many were after Richard Nixon resigned in disgrace.
Third, reports have circulated that many Congressional Republicans have received financial (and possibly intelligence) support from the Kremlin.
Bureaucracybuster's Blog 
ABC NEWS, ALTERNET, AP, BREITBART, BUZZFEED, CBS NEWS, CNN, CROOKS AND LIARS, DAILY KOZ, DONALD TRUMP, FACEBOOK, FOX NEWS NETWORK, GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS, JEFF FLAKE, JOE SCARBOROUGH, JOSEPH STALIN, MEDIA, MORNING JOE, MOTHER JONES, MOVEON, NBC NEWS, NEWSWEEK, NIKITA KHRUSHCHEV, NPR, POLITICO, RAW STORY, REUTERS, SALON, SEATTLE TIMES, SLATE, THE ATLANTIC, THE CHICAGO SUN-TIMES, THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE, THE DAILY BEAST, THE GUARDIAN, THE HILL, THE HUFFINGTON POST, THE LOS ANGELES TIMES, THE NATION, THE NEW YORK TIMES, THE WASHINGTON POST, THIS WEEK, TIME, TWITTER, U.S. NEWS & WORLD REPORT, UPI, USA TODAY, USA TODAY JOSEPH STALIN, VLADIMIR PUTIN
WHY SETTLE FOR PRESIDENT WHEN YOU CAN BE COMMISSAR?
In Bureaucracy, History, Politics, Social commentary on January 15, 2018 at 1:07 amOn January 17, Arizona United States Senator Jeff Flake is expected to do the unthinkable.
According to CNN, he will deliver a speech on the floor of the Senate where he will compare President Donald Trump’s attacks on the news media to the poisonous rhetoric of former Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin.
U.S. Senator Jeff Flake
In one of those attacks—on February 17, 2017—Trump had called the press “the enemy of the American people.”
“The FAKE NEWS media,” he tweeted, “(failing @nytimes, @NBCNews, @ABC, @CBS, @CNN) is not my enemy, it is the enemy of the American People!”
A day earlier, during a press conference in the East Room of the White House, Trump had delivered an unhinged rant, full of anger, personal attacks, self-pity and self-glorification.
Among the topics he covered was his all-out hatred for the press: “….The press has become so dishonest that if we don’t talk about it, we are doing a tremendous disservice to the American people. Tremendous disservice. We have to talk about it to find out what is going on, because the press, honestly, is out of control. The level of dishonesty is out of control.”
Both during his 2016 Presidential campaign and since his inauguration, Trump has called for “opening up” the libel laws to penalize reporters and authors with draconian fines. He has repeatedly attacked any story he dislikes as coming from the “fake media.”
Donald Trump
On the other hand, he has lavishly praised such Right-wing media as Breitbart and Fox News Network. These have steadfastly supported him despite overwhelming evidence that his 2016 Presidential campaign received subversive support from Russian Intelligence officials.
“Mr. President,” says an excerpt of Flake’s upcoming speech made available to CNN, “it is a testament to the condition of our democracy that our own President uses words infamously spoken by Joseph Stalin to describe his enemies.
“It bears noting that so fraught with malice was the phrase ‘enemy of the people,’ that even Nikita Khrushchev forbade its use, telling the Soviet Communist Party that the phrase had been introduced by Stalin for the purpose of ‘annihilating such individuals’ who disagreed with the supreme leader.
Joseph Stalin
“This alone should be a source of great shame for us in this body, especially for those of us in the president’s party. For they are shameful, repulsive statements.
“And, of course, the president has it precisely backward—despotism is the enemy of the people. The free press is the despot’s enemy, which makes the free press the guardian of democracy.
“When a figure in power reflexively calls any press that doesn’t suit him ‘fake news,’ it is that person who should be the figure of suspicion, not the press.”
Flake—or someone acting on his orders—had clearly leaked an advance text of the speech to the media.
On the January 14 edition of “This Week,” ABC News Chief Anchor George Stephanopoulos already knew about Flake’s plan to deliver the speech.
“What are you trying to do?” Stephanopoulos asked.
“What I’m trying to say,” replied Flake, “is you can talk about crowd size, and that is pretty innocuous if there is a falsehood there. But when you reflexively refer to the press as the ‘enemy of the people’ or ‘fake news,’ that has real damage. It has real damage to our standing in the world.”
This will be part of a series of speeches Flake intends to give about Trump’s relationship with the truth and the press.
It is especially ironic that a Republican should condemn another Republican as following in the footsteps of an infamous Soviet dictator.
From the end of World War 11 to the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Republicans slandered every Democratic Presidential candidate as a witting or unwitting agent of “the Communist conspiracy.”
Trump, however, has repeatedly praised Russian President Vladimir Putin, both during his Presidential candidacy and since taking office. In fact, Putin remains the only major public figure that Trump has never criticized.
Perhaps his most infamous defense of Putin came on the December 18, 2015 edition of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.”
The host, Joe Scarborough, was upset by Trump’s praise for Putin: “Well, I mean, [he’s] also a person who kills journalists, political opponents, and invades countries. Obviously that would be a concern, would it not?”
TRUMP: He’s running his country, and at least he’s a leader. Unlike what we have in this country.
SCARBOROUGH: But again: He kills journalists that don’t agree with him.
TRUMP: I think our country does plenty of killing, also, Joe, so, you know. There’s a lot of stupidity going on in the world right now, Joe. A lot of killing going on. A lot of stupidity. And that’s the way it is.
There may be more than a little envy on Trump’s part for how Putin has dealt with his media.
On July 2, 2017, Trump tweeted a video showing him punching a man with the CNN logo superimposed on his head during a WWE wrestling match.
And on August 15, the President retweeted a cartoon photo of a “Trump Train” running over a CNN reporter.
Joseph Stalin ordered his critics executed in prison or exiled to Siberia. It’s clear that Donald Trump would like to have that same power.
Share this: