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THE CORRUPTIONS OF THE RICH ARE STILL WITH YOU ALWAYS: PART ONE (OF THREE)

In Bureaucracy, Business, History, Law, Politics, Social commentary on December 10, 2024 at 12:21 am

Americans are used to Presidential candidates telling lies (euphemistically known as “campaign promises”) to get elected.    

But when a candidate actually (and usually accidentally) tells the truth, the results can be electrifying.

A pointed example:

On June 18, 2019, Democratic Presidential candidate and front-runner Joe Biden addressed a roomful of donors in New York. Money is, after all, the lifeblood of all political campaigns, and Biden wanted to guarantee he got more of it than any of his 23 Democratic rivals.

So the former vice president had a message he felt sure would appeal to his well-heeled audience of billionaires: Don’t worry, if I’m elected, your standard of living won’t change.

Joe Biden presidential portrait.jpg

Joe Biden

Addressing the 100 or so guests at a fundraiser at the Carlyle Hotel in New York City, Biden said that he had taken heat from “some of the people on my team, on the Democratic side” because he had said that rich people were “just as patriotic as poor people.

“The truth of the matter is, you all, you all know, you all know in your gut what has to be done. We can disagree in the margins but the truth of the matter is it’s all within our wheelhouse and nobody has to be punished. No one’s standard of living will change, nothing would fundamentally change,” he said. 

And he added: “I mean, we may not want to demonize anybody who has made money.

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“When we have income inequality as large as we have in the United States today, it brews and ferments political discord and basic revolution. Not a joke. Not a joke. It allows demagogues to step in and say the reason where we are is because of the ‘other’….

“You’re not the other. I need you very badly. I hope if I win this nomination, I won’t let you down. I promise you. I have a bad reputation, I always say what I mean. The problem is I sometimes say all that I mean.”

Biden talked about decreasing income inequality and promoting workers’ rights. But he took a moderate stance when it came to taxation.

Vermont United States Senator Bernie Sanders, on the other hand, has attacked the ultra-rich as responsible for the ever-widening gap between themselves and the poor.

Bernie Sanders smiling

Bernie Sanders 

Palácio do Planalto from Brasilia, Brasil, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0&gt;, via Wikimedia Commons

“I love Bernie, but I’m not Bernie Sanders. I don’t think 500 billionaires are the reason why we’re in trouble,” Biden said in March, 2019.

Instead, he proposed expanding tax credits for the poor and middle class, and making the tax code less friendly to rich investors. 

Robert Payne, the distinguished British historian, had a different—and darker—view of the rich.

Payne authored more than 110 books. Among his subjects were Adolf Hitler, Ivan the Terrible, Winston Churchill, Joseph Stalin, Vladimir Lenin, William Shakespeare and Leon Trotsky.

In 1975, he published The Corrupt Society: From Ancient Greece to Present-Day America. It proved a summary of many of his previous works.Related image

Among the epochs it covered were the civilizations of ancient Greece, Rome and China; Nazi Germany; the Soviet Union; and Watergate-era America. And the massive corruption each of those epochs had spawned.

The Corrupt Society: From Ancient Greece to Present-Day America : Payne Robert: Amazon.co.uk: Books

In his chapter, “A View of the Uncorrupted Society,” Payne warned: Power and wealth are the main sources of corruption.

“The rich, simply by being rich, are infected with corruption. Their overwhelming desire is to grow richer, but they can do this only at the expense of those who are poorer than themselves.

”Their interests conflict with those of the overall society. They live sheltered from the constant anxieties of the poor, and thus cannot understand them.  Nor do they try to.

“They see the poor as alien from themselves, and thus come to fear and despise them. And their wealth and influence enables them to buy politicians—who, in turn, write legislation that protects the rich from the poor.”

But Payne foresaw an even greater danger from the rich and powerful than their mere isolation from the rest of society: “The mere presence of the rich is corrupting. Their habits, their moral codes, their delight in conspicuous consumption are permanent affronts to the rest of humanity. Vast inequalities of wealth are intolerable in any decent society.”

Writing in 1975, Payne noted that a third of the private wealth was possessed by less than five percent of the population—while about a fifth of the populace lived at the poverty level. By 2000, he predicted, about five percent of the population would possess two-thirds of America’s wealth. And more than half the population would be near or below the starvation level. 

Payne has proven to be an uncanny prophet.

On October 8, 2024, Fortune magazine noted that “over the past 30 years, the U.S.’s top 1% got richer, and now hold nearly a third of the nation’s wealth.

Oxfam is a British-founded confederation of 21 independent non-governmental organizations, focusing on the alleviation of global poverty, founded in 1942. On January 16, 2023, it noted:

“The richest 1 percent grabbed nearly two-thirds of all new wealth worth $42 trillion created since 2020, almost twice as much money as the bottom 99 percent of the world’s population.”

But this situation need not remain permanent.

TRUMP’S AMERICA AND HITLER’S GERMANY: PARTNERS IN FASCISM

In Bureaucracy, History, Politics, Social commentary on November 29, 2024 at 12:57 am

In his bestselling 1973 biography, The Life and Death of Adolf Hitler, British historian Robert Payne harshly condemned the German people for the rise of the Nazi dictator. 

“[They] allowed themselves to be seduced by him and came to enjoy the experience….[They] followed him with joy and enthusiasm because he gave them license to pillage and murder to their hearts’ content. They were his servile accomplices, his willing victims….

“If he answered their suppressed desires, it was not because he shared them, but because he could make use of them. He despised the German people, for they were merely the instruments of his will.”

On November 8, 2016, millions of ignorant, hate-filled, Right-wing Americans elected Donald Trump—a man reflecting their own hate and ignorance—to the Presidency.

Yet, in some ways, Americans had fewer excuses for turning to a Fascistic style of government than the Germans did.

Adolf Hitler, joined the National Socialist German Workers (Nazi) Party in 1919—the year after World War 1 ended.

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Adolf Hitler

In 1923, he staged a coup attempt in Bavaria—which was quickly and brutally put down by police. He was arrested and sentenced to less than a year in prison.

After that, Hitler decided that winning power through violence was no longer an option. He must win it through election—or appointment.

When the 1929 Depression struck Germany, the fortunes of Hitler’s Nazi party rose as the life savings of ordinary Germans fell. Streets echoed with bloody clashes between members of Hitler’s Nazi Stormtroopers and those of the German Communist Party.

Germans desperately looked for a leader—a Fuhrer—who could somehow deliver them from the threat of financial ruin and Communist takeover.

In early 1933, members of his own cabinet persuaded aging German president, Paul von Hindenburg, that only Hitler’s appointment as Chancellor could do this.

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Paul von Hindenburg

Hindenburg was reluctant to do so. He considered Hitler a dangerous radical. But he let himself be convinced that he could “box in” and control Hitler by putting him in the Cabinet. 

So, on January 30, 1933, Hindenburg appointed Adolf Hitler Chancellor (the equivalent of Attorney General) of Germany.

On August 2, 1934, Hindenburg died. Hitler immediately assumed the titles—and duties—of the offices of Chancellor and President. His rise to total power was complete.

It had taken him 14 years to do so.

In 2015, Donald Trump declared his candidacy for President.

Now, consider this:

  • America was technically at war in the Middle East—but its fate was not truly threatened, as it had been during the Civil War.
  • Government loans from President Barack Obama had saved American capitalism from its own excesses during the George W. Bush administration.
  • Employment was up. 
  • No scandals had plagued the Obama Presidency—unlike the Reagan one.
  • There been no large-scale terrorist attacks on American soil—such as 9/11 under George W. Bush.

Yet—not 17 months after announcing his candidacy for President—enough Americans fervently embraced Donald Trump to give him the most powerful position in the country and the world.

Image result for images of Donald Trump

Donald Trump

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

Birthrates among nonwhites were rising. By 2045, whites would make up less than 50 percent of the American population.

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

Then came 2016—and the possibility that a black President might actually be followed by a woman: Hillary Clinton.

During Trump’s four years in office, he:

  • Fired FBI Director James Comey for investigating Russia’s subversion of the 2016 Presidential election.
  • Attacked Federal judges whose rulings displeased him.
  • Repeatedly and enthusiastically defended Vladimir Putin, the dictator of Russia, America’s mortal enemy. 
  • Installed three Right-wing Justices on the Supreme Court who overturned Roe v. Wade, allowing states to once again outlaw abortion.
  • Attacked and alienated America’s oldest allies, such as Canada and Great Britain.
  • Shut down the United States Government, imperiling the lives of 800,000 Federal employees, to extort money from Congress for a worthless wall on the U.S.-Mexico border.
  • Attacked the free press as “the enemy of the people.”
  • Repeatedly lied about the dangers of COVID-19 while attacking governors who supported mask-wearing and social distancing; 400,000 Americans died.
  • Refused to accept his loss in the 2020 Presidential election and spread “The Big Lie” that he had been cheated of victory by massive voter fraud.
  • Incited a deadly attack on Congress to stop the counting of Electoral College votes—proving that Joe Biden had won the 2020 Presidential election—so he could remain in office as “President-for-Life.”

On November 5, 2024, 76,414,580 ignorant, hate-filled, Right-wing Americans eagerly voted to again install him as their Fuhrer. 

Imagine that, four years after World War II, Germans had voted to replace their “colorless” chancellor, Konrad Adenauer, with the one who had ignited World War II and slaughtered six million Jews: Adolf Hitler.

All of this should be remembered the next time an American blames Germans for their embrace of Adolf Hitler. 

SUPERSTITION IS US

In Bureaucracy, History, Politics, RELIGION, Social commentary on November 28, 2024 at 12:18 am

Pray: To ask that the laws of the universe be annulled for the sake of a single petitioner, confessedly unworthy.

Most voters aren’t moved by appeals to their rationality. Instead, what counts with them is emotions. And nothing conjures up emotions more than appeals to religion.

There is no better example of the power of irrationality than a gathering of QAnon followers in Dallas, Texas, on November 2, 2021.

Hundreds of people from around the country gathered at the grassy knoll in Dallas’ Dealey Plaza, where President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in 1963.

The congregation wasn’t there to commemorate the death of the 35th President of the United States. They expected to see the return of the Kennedys.

File:QAnon logo.png - Wikimedia Commons

QAnon logo 

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

“Word on the street is Junior—JFK Jr.—will show up and introduce his parents,” one believer told a local news station. “He’ll (JFK Jr.) probably be the vice president with Trump.”

Those who believed in rationality weren’t surprised when the elder former President and his son failed to magically appear.

Most of the gathered crowd went home. But others stayed, waiting for months in Dallas for the Kennedys to return.

According to followers of QAnon, the Kennedys, who once dominated the Democratic Party, had somehow become allies of Donald Trump. In this scenario, the Kennedys and Trump were direct descendants of Jesus Christ—and locked in a conflict between good and evil.

It’s essential to understand how such thoroughly irrational beliefs can dominate the lives of millions. An excellent starting point are those beliefs embraced by Christians—from their first-century origins to the present day. 

Among those beliefs: 

  • God creates Adam from dust. (This absolutely contradicts everything we know about how men and women reproduce. Would-be parents don’t throw dust into the air and see it instantly turn into newborn babies.)  

God creates Adam–as painted by Michelangelo

  • Adam and Eve meet a talking snake. (Presumably it spoke Hebrew. When was the last time a zoologist had a serious discussion with a serpent?)   
  • Noah saves the world’s wildlife by stuffing them into an ark. (Sure—untrained wild animals are going to meekly walk, two-by-two, into a huge building. Then they’re going to let themselves be caged. And Noah and his family must store a huge variety of food for each type of animal for an indefinite period of time. And the sheer stench of all that animal urine and feces would have been horrific.)
  • Moses parts the Red Sea. (Some scholars believe “Red” has been mistranslated from “Reed,” which is like upgrading “the White Quail” in Moby Dick to “the White Whale.”)

Image result for Images of Moses parting the Red Sea

Moses (played by Charlton Heston) parts the Red Sea

  • Lot’s wife becomes a pillar of salt. (A human being can be turned into ashes, but not salt.)
  • Samson kills 1,000 Philistines with the jawbone of an ass. (Even Arnold Schwarzenegger at the height of his physical strength couldn’t kill so many men—except with a machinegun.)
  • Daniel is thrown into a pit of lions—but survives because an angel closes their jaws. (This sounds inspiring—until you remember that didn’t happen when Christians were thrown to the lions by the Romans.)
  • The will of God violates physical laws. (Jesus turns water into wine and raises Lazarus from the dead; Jonah lives inside a fish for three days; Noah dies at 950 years.)
  • Jesus rises from the dead. (There have been near-death experiences, but there has never been a documented case of someone being certified as dead who came alive again.)
  • Jesus will return more than 2,000 years after he died to wipe all evil from the earth and usher in a paradise for his faithful followers. (There has never been a case in recorded history of anyone returning from the dead decades or hundreds of years later—let alone more than 2,000 years later.)

“The Transfiguration of Jesus” as painted by Carl Bloch

So why do millions of people unquestioningly accept so many stories that totally contradict the most basic truths of common sense?   

Like Muzak, these stories—and other Biblical tales—have been absorbed over time through several mediums:

  • Countless parents have told them to their children.
  • So have countless pastors and priests.
  • From the 1940s to the 1960s, audiences reveled in such spectaculars as “Samson and Delilah,” “The Ten Commandments” and “King of Kings.” When people watch Biblical movies, they believe they’re seeing The Truth as it’s laid out in the Bible.
  • The gospel music scene has produced mega-hits like: “Shall We Gather at the River?” “Take Me to the King,” “Down By the Riverside.”

It is not necessary to actually be religious to run for and win public office in the United States. But it is essential to claim to be. Donald Trump—totally lacking in humility and spirituality—became the darling of evangelicals in 2016.

As Niccolo Machiavelli wrote in The Prince: For men in general judge more by the eyes than by the hands, for every one can see, but very few have to feel. Everyone sees what you appear to be, few feel what you are, and those few will not dare to oppose themselves to the many.”

IT’S “JEZEBEL SPIRIT” VS. THE PORN MODEL: PART TWO (END)

In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on November 5, 2024 at 12:09 am

Christian nationalist leaders are telling their followers that Vice President Kamala Harris is under the influence of a “Jezebel spirit.”  

The term immediately conjures up the Biblical story of the evil Queen Jezebel, who persecuted prophets and worshiped false gods. As a result, she was punished by being thrown out a window, trampled by a horse, then eaten by dogs.

Harris is a former San Francisco District Attorney, California Attorney General and United States Senator from California.

Meanwhile, those who fanatically support Donald Trump have embraced a woman of an entirely different sort: A former illegal alien and porn model named Melania Trump.

The Associated Press has found documentation showing that Melania Trump broke immigration law when she first entered the country from Slovenia in August, 1996, on a tourist visa.

Tourist visas allow someone to stay in the United States for six months, but they can’t seek employment in the United States during that time. Nevertheless, Melania quickly gained work s a professional model.

Then on October 18, 1996, she got an H-1B visa for “skilled workers” allowing her to work legally in America as a model. Melania was “paid for 10 modeling assignments between September 10 and October 15”—while she was still on the tourist visa.

In March, 2001, she was granted a green card for permanent residency through the EB-1 program, nicknamed the “Einstein visa” due to its allocation to top academics, business leaders and Oscar-winning actors. 

Yet the only “genius” she demonstrated lay in posing for nude and seminude photos. One of them showed her being hugged by another naked woman.

Occupy Democrats - This HAS to be said! | Facebook

Another photo—published during the 2016 Presidential campaign by the New York Post—showed her totally nude, with stars covering her breasts. Its title: “The Ogle Office.”

Melania’s foray into nude modeling might now be forgotten except:

  1. Many of those photos were splashed across the Internet. And, has been often remarked: Everything is forever on the Internet; and 
  2. Melania herself has resurrected this sordid phase of her life to promote her new book: Melania.

Seeking to redeem the value of her “nude work,” she has placed it in the context of the esthetic value of “Art.”

In a post on X, she writes: “Are we no longer able to appreciate the beauty of the human body? Throughout history, master artists have revered the human shape, evoking profound emotions and admiration.

“We should honor our bodies and embrace the timeless tradition of using art as a powerful means of self-expression.” 

Some social media posters—enraged by her violation of the immigration laws when she did these shoots—haven’t bought into this: 

“I really don’t care that you were a nude model. What I do care about is the fact that you worked as a nude model while in this country on a visitor visa, that’s illegal. You had the audacity to attack President Obama, who was born a U.S. citizen, about his birth certificate and push racist lies.”

Others have been infuriated by Republican hypocrisy and the double moral standard they apply:

“I don’t take issue with her posing nude for any reason. My concern lies with the MAGA crowd who overlook her nude photos while criticizing and shaming other women for doing the same. The level of hypocrisy is remarkable.

“Right, her husband posted a meme suggesting Harris gave blowjobs to get where she is.” 

Whereas Melania became an American citizen by having an extramarital affair with Donald Trump while he was married to Marla Maples. 

After they married in 2005, she further anchored herself to America by giving birth to Barron, who was born in 2006.

During an interview with radio talk show host Larry King, Trump—who had cheated on his previous two wives–said: “There’s nothing like a good marriage.”

Kamala Harris has repeatedly said that she wants to be “the President of all Americans.” Assuming this is true, the blunt reality is: She will never be, even if she wins the Oval Office.

At least half of this country is solidly Fascistic, and will always remain so. Its members not only lust to live under a Right-wing dictatorship but, even more so, force non-Fascists to do so.

A similar situation existed in the United States in the decades leading up to the Civil War: Half of the country—that is, 13 Southern states—were determined to preserve slavery at all costs. The other half—19 Northern states—were determined to prevent its spread, if not end it altogether.

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

Civil War America

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

Newly-elected President Abraham Lincoln said in his Inaugural Address that he did not intend to abolish slavery. In fact, he emphatically declared that he did not have the legal power to do so.

Nevertheless, Southerners couldn’t live under an administration that condemned them as morally damned. Their tattered pride led to the April 12, 1861 attack on Union Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor, South Carolina. 

The resulting civil war lasted four years, killed 750,000 Americans—and rid the United States of legalized slavery after 246 years.

It may yet take another such wholesale bloodletting before the United States becomes wholly free—or wholly Fascist.

IT’S “JEZEBEL SPIRIT” VS. THE PORN MODEL: PART ONE (OF TWO)

In History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on November 4, 2024 at 12:05 am

Christian nationalist leaders are telling their followers that Vice President Kamala Harris is under the influence of a “Jezebel spirit.”    

The term immediately conjures up the Biblical story of the evil Queen Jezebel, who persecuted prophets and worshiped false gods. As a result, she  was punished by being thrown out a window, trampled by a horse, then eaten by dogs. 

The term has long been used against women, especially black women. During the 246 years that slavery existed throughout the South, it was used to justify the systemic sexual assault and rape of black women and girls.

It has been used to target other women such as Hillary Clinton and Michelle Obama, and to categorize movements such as feminism and abortion rights.

Jezebel 

19th-century painting by John Liston Byam Shaw  

As used by Right-wing white Christian nationalists, “Jezebel spirit” accuses a woman of being under the influence of demons in a spiritual battle between good and evil. Many of those who tried to violently overturn the 2020 victory of Joseph R. Biden were motivated such rhetoric—and beliefs.

The language is used to convince apocalyptic Christians that the next election is “do or die,” said Matthew Taylor, author of The Violent Take It By Force

This details the history of the New Apostolic Reformation and its influence in the January 6, 2021 coup attempt. During the attack, people sang religious songs, prayed and blew shofars—a horn in Jewish tradition that supposedly played a key role in the Biblical Battle of Jericho.

“It’s used as a means of justifying aggression. Christians are supposed to love their enemies. But Christians are allowed to hate demons,” Taylor said.

File:2021 storming of the United States Capitol 2021 storming of the United States Capitol DSC09363-2 (50820534723).jpg - Wikimedia Commons

January 6 coup attempt

“People … are hearing this woman is possessed by a demonic spirit that is hardcore, terrible, hates men, hates authority, is going to do whatever she wants to do,” said Anthea Butler, professor at the University of Pennsylvania and author of the book White Evangelical Racism

Christian nationalists seek a privileged role for Christianity in American public life—in the same way that Islam holds an all-powerful place in public life in Iran and Afghanistan.

Its leaders claim that “America is a Christian nation” whose followers hold the divine right to base national laws on the Bible and have religious leaders in positions of government.

One such leader is Lance Wallnau, who has one million Facebook followers. He has used “Jezebel spirit” to describe Harris, and says he receives messages directly from God. He’s considered a prophet in the New Apostolic Reformation. 

In a video he posted on X, he said, “With Kamala you have a Jezebel spirit, a characteristic in the Bible, that is a Jezebel spirit. The personification of intimidation, seduction, domination and manipulation. 

“She can look presidential and that’s the seduction of what I would say is witchcraft.”

Harris, formally dressed up and made up, smiles for her portrait.

Kamala Harris

Bradley Onishi, a former evangelical minister who once identified as a Christian nationalist, describes the movement as: “A national renewal project that envisions a pure American body that is heterosexual, white, native-born, that speaks English as a first language, and that is thoroughly patriarchal.

“They….are deeply invested in the notion of spiritual warfare, the idea that we are called as Christians to fight a cosmic battle between good and evil, and that it’s our duty to be boots on the ground for God in that conflict.

“What this has led to some decades later is, the New Apostolic Reformation leaders, the apostles and the prophets that are really at the head of this movement were some of the earliest to support Donald Trump in 2016. And they have remained steadfast in that support.

“They were at the very avant-garde of trying to get the 2020 election overturned in the wake of Joe Biden’s victory and mobilizing folks to be at January 6. There were hundreds, if not thousands, of New Apostolic Reformation Christians at January 6, as an example.”

According to Reverend Cathy Young, a retired pastor with the Presbyterian Church of the USA, the Christian Nationalist movement “is dangerous in its assertion that God has a special bond with the United States and with selected politicians. It is unwise, undemocratic and destructive. 

“A national survey conducted jointly by Public Religion Research Institute and the Brookings Institution, found 64 percent of white evangelical Protestants are Christian Nationalism adherents or sympathizers to the movement. Thirty-five percent of Americans have never heard of the term ‘Christian Nationalism.’  

Appeal to Heaven flag of The New Apostolic Reformation

“Christian Nationalism is fueled by white supremacy, the belief that white people are superior to those of other races and should dominate them. They are taught to shun LGBTQIA persons, embrace dominance of men over women and believe that only Christianity—one of 10,000 distinct religions—should rule Congress, state governments and the court system….

“Christian Nationalism is a political movement couched in religious language. Their ultimate goal is earthly power—control over people and issues they don’t like—which is the exact opposite of what the gospels teach us….”

Meanwhile, those who fanatically support Donald Trump have embraced a woman of an entirely different sort: A former illegal alien and porn model named Melania Trump.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Supporters giving the “Seig Heil” salute to Donald Trump

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Image result for images of the trumpsman video

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Whatever they fear he will do, he will do.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Adolf Hitler leaving Landsberg Prison, December, 20, 1924

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mein Kampf(german Language Edition) (German Edition)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

By the time World War II ended:

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

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

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

HAVE YOURSELF A MERRY PC HALLOWEEN–OR ELSE

In Business, History, Politics, Social commentary on October 28, 2024 at 12:12 am

Halloween isn’t just for kids anymore.

In 2024, more than 70% of Americans are planning to celebrate Halloween. They are expected to spend $11.6 billion: 

  • $3.8 billion on costumes;
  • $3.8 billion on decorations;
  • $3.5 billion on Halloween candy;
  • $500 million on greeting cards.

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Those putting out this avalanche of money will, of course, be adults. And a lot of those costumes will be worn by adults at parties across the nation.

This will be especially true in San Francisco.

In 1979, Halloween in its Castro District shifted from being a children’s event to a celebration among homosexuals.

The massive crowds quickly overwhelmed the streets, mass transit and due to the Castro’s location along two major transport corridors, disrupted traffic flow well outside the neighborhood.

In 2002, 500,000 people celebrated Halloween in the Castro and four people were stabbed.

It continued to grow into a massive annual street party until 2006, when a shooting wounded nine people and prompted the city to call off the event.

In 2007, 600 police were deployed in the Castro on HalloweenBy 2010, San Francisco had banned the event in the Castro, directing celebrants to various balls and parties elsewhere.

But there’s another force working to suppress Halloween joy among its participants: Political Correctness.

A number of articles highlight a series of costumes it’s now Politically Incorrect to wear on Halloween.  As a result, it’s now virtually impossible to enjoy this occasion without fearing that you’ll hurt the Politically Correct sensitivities of almost every group imaginable.

For example:

Adolf Hitler: PC types damn it as offensive and upsetting to many people—such as Jews generally and Holocaust survivors in particular. (The same could be said for any actor who portrays Hitler in a movie, such as Downfall or The Bunker.)

Homeless Persons: Such costumes will hurt the feelings of bums who won’t be attending Halloween parties anyway.

Illegal Alien: It’s not nice to spotlight people who constantly violate the immigration laws of the United States.

Terrorist: You might upset Islamics, who make up the vast majority of the world’s terrorists.

Others on the list of groups that uber-liberals believes it’s Politically Incorrect to dress up as include:

  • Blacks (if you’re white).
  • Naughty priests: It’s offensive to mock religious hypocrites who violate the bodies of children.
  • Caitlyn Jenner: It’s cruel to make fun of a man who, as a man, won gold medals as an Olympic athlete—and then had sophisticated surgery to make himself look like a woman. 
  • Mexicans (such as a woman wearing a mariachi outfit or a man sporting a sombrero, serape and drooping moustache).
  • Pimp: It’s offensive to blacks—especially those who make their living through the sale of women’s bodies. 
  • Sexy nurse: Because nursing is a serious profession—and everybody knows that nurses never enter into romances with doctors. 
  • Fat costumes: It will hurt the feelings of people who can barely fit into an airplane seat—many of them because they simply eat too much. 
  • Crazed Killer: Because it’s not fair to make fun of psychopathic murderers who prey on innocent men, women and children. 
  • Sexy Convict/Prison Guard: You could be accused of “trivializing” the United States prison system.  
  • The Wall: Wearing an imitation brick wall reminds people that millions of Hispanics have illegally violated America’s immigration laws—and millions more intend to.
  • Arab Sheik: It’s not nice to dress like a terrorism-bankrolling OPEC board member wearing a long flowing robe and headdress.   
  • Sexy Harem Slave: Consider this the flip side of “Arab Sheik.”  It’s uncool to remind people that women throughout the Islamic world are treated like chattel. 
  • “Droopers”: An obvious parody of the “Hooters” outfit, this features a fake pair of drooping breasts, thus winning it dual charges of “ageism” and “sexism.”
  • Geisha: You could be accused of “cultural appropriation.” 
  • Hillary in Prison: Depicting a woman who often skirted the law as paying the price for it is anti-feminist. 
  • Robert E. Lee: Once a Southern icon of the Civil War, he is now damned as a racist defender of slavery.
  • Escaped Mental Patient: Wearing an imitation straitjacket makes fun of real-life whackjobs who need to be restrained—for their own safety and that of others.
  • Indian Snake Charmer: This costume supposedly appropriates Middle Eastern culture and has “disturbing sexual undertones”—if you equate snakes with penises. 

If you follow the guidelines of these articles, you might as well skip Halloween altogether.

Yet no one objects to children—or adults—dressing up as pirates like Blackbeard, who once terrorized the oceans as modern-day terrorists menace the world.

Blackbeard - Wikipedia

Blackbeard

No one objects to those who dress up like skeletons—when almost everyone has lost a friend or family member to death.

No one objects to those who dress up as witches, who have been associated with evil for hundreds of years.

No one objects to those who dress up as Satan—the literal personification of evil for millions of Christians, Jews and Muslims.

The whole idea of Halloween is to momentarily step into a character that’s utterly different from you.

So if you are a terrorist, try dressing up at Halloween as Dr. Albert Schweitzer or Florence Nightingale.

“AMBUSHED AT CREDIBILITY GAP”: PART FOUR (END)

In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Military, Politics, Social commentary on October 21, 2024 at 12:10 am

After being presented with the Cecil B. DeMille Lifetime Achievement Award, Meryl Streep criticized Presidential candidate Donald Trump’s mocking of disabled New York Times reporter Serge Kovaleski.          

Kovaleski suffers from arthrogryposis, a congenital condition that restricts the movement of the muscles in his arms.  

At a South Carolina rally on November 24, 2015, Trump claimed that Kovaleski was backing away from an article he had written four years earlier.

Trump had earlier said the article proved that New Jersey Muslims had celebrated the September 11, 2001 terror attacks. Kovaleski had insisted there was no credible proof of such celebrations.  

Angered at being contradicted, Trump mocked Kovaleski: He flopped his right arm around with his hand held at an odd angle while imitating the reporter: “Now, the poor guy, you’ve got to see this guy: ‘Uhh, I don’t know what I said. Uhh, I don’t remember,’ he’s going like ‘I don’t remember. Maybe that’s what I said.'”

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Trump mocking Kovaleski, left; Kovaleski, right

At the Golden Globe Awards on January 8, Streep denounced this behavior that “broke my heart.”

“And this instinct to humiliate, when it’s modeled by someone in the public platform, by someone powerful, it filters down into everybody’s life, because it kind of gives permission for other people to do the same thing. 

“Disrespect invites disrespect. Violence incites violence. When the powerful use their position to bully others, we all lose.”

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Meryl Streep at the Golden Globes

Streep’s words outraged Trump’s supporters—especially his mouthpiece, Kelleyanne Conway. 

Appearing on Right-wing Fox and Friends the next morning, she said: “We have to now form a government, and I’m concerned that somebody with a platform like Meryl Streep is also, I think, inciting people’s worst instincts. 

“When she won’t get up there and say, ‘I don’t like it, but let’s try to support him and see where we can find some common ground with him, which [Trump] has actually done from moment one.”

Conway didn’t say what common ground Streep should find with Trump. Perhaps agreeing on mocking the disabled? 

Kellyanne Conway by Gage Skidmore 3.jpg

Kelleyanne Conway

Then Conway visited CNN’s “New Day,” where she offered a “black-is-white” defense for Trump’s videotaped ridiculing of Kovaleski: It didn’t happen.  

The host, Chris Cuomo, having seen the video, wasn’t buying it.

CUOMO: But is [Streep] wrong? Is she wrong that it was wrong for Trump to make gestures like that about a man with disabilities?  

CONWAY: He didn’t—but that is not what he did and he has said that a thousand times. As he tweeted out today—

CUOMO: He can say it a million. Look at the video.

CONWAY: Why can’t you—wait, excuse me. Why can’t you give him the benefit of the doubt the way the benefit of the doubt was given to CNN’s polling, all of its analysts?

CUOMO: Because he’s making a disgusting gesture on video talking about Serge.

CONWAY: Not about that reporter and that’s just a fact. That is what he’s said. You should give him—

CUOMO: But how is it not about the reporter?

CONWAY: —the deference and respect if he says that it was—he was not mocking, he was mocking the groveling. He said it again this morning. He has three tweets out about it.

CUOMO: But he’s doing a gesture that goes right to the guy’s vulnerability.

CONWAY: You’re saying you don’t believe him. You’re calling him a liar and you shouldn’t.

CUOMO: Look, Kellyanne, to me that’s like you’re trying to scare me off the point and we both know it’s a waste of time.

CONWAY: I’m not going to scare you off anything.

CUOMO: He’s making a gesture that is so keenly tuned to what Serge’s vulnerability is. 

CONWAY: And now you’re giving oxygen to what Meryl Streep said.

CUOMO: Forget about Meryl Streep. This happened before her. If our kids did that, could you imagine what we would say to them?  

Conway said she would not bring her children into the discussion.

CUOMO: I will. If my kid did something like that, it’d be a really tough day.

CONWAY: You have to listen to what the president has said about that. Why don’t you believe him? 

Conway tried to change the subject to Hillary Clinton: “She was given the benefit of the doubt here constantly.”  

When Cuomo asked for specifics, she refused to give them. Then she returned to claiming that Trump had never mocked Kovaleski:

CONWAY: You can’t give him the benefit of the doubt on this, when he’s telling you what was in his heart? You always want to go by what’s come out of his mouth, rather than look at what’s in his heart.  

* * * * *

Previously, politicians had defended themselves with arguments like: “You can see right here on the tape, I did (or, I didn’t)….”  

Trump has cast aside that logic—and the taped evidence—by demanding: “Believe what I’m telling you, not what you’ve just seen.”

By that rationale, if a security camera shows Trump robbing a bank at gunpoint, we’re supposed to believe him if he says: “No, I didn’t rob that bank. I was simply checking my bank balance.”

Such “logic” holds appeal for paid shills like Kelleyanne Conway. But most people will continue to judge by the evidence.

“AMBUSHED AT CREDIBILITY GAP”: PART THREE (OF FOUR)

In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Military, Politics, Social commentary on October 18, 2024 at 12:22 am

For five years, Donald Trump, more than anyone else, popularized the slander that Barack Obama was born in Kenya—and was therefore an illegitimate President.      

For more than a year during his 2016 Presidential campaign, Trump continued doing so. 

As his popularity fell to less than 1% among blacks, the managers of his campaign urged: Put the “birther” issue behind you.

So, on September 16, 2016—10 days before his scheduled first debate with Democratic Presidential nominee Hillary Clinton—Trump made his version of a reversal.  

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Donald Trump: “President Barack Obama was born in the United States.”

He did so in about seven seconds and 40 words—after spending a half hour paying tribute to the military and promoting his new upscale hotel in Washington, D.C.:

“Now, not to mention her in the same breath, but Hillary Clinton and her campaign of 2008 started the birther controversy.

“I finished it.  I finished it.  You know what I mean.

“President Barack Obama was born in the United States, period. Now we all want to get back to making America strong and great again.”  

His tone made it clear that he felt uneasy making that statement–and wanted to get it over with as fast as possible.

He refused to take questions from reporters covering the event. Nor did he apologize for his five-year campaign of slander.  

On the evening of September 16, Hillary Clinton strongly responded to Trump’s comments: 

“For five years, he has led the birther movement to de-legitimize our first black president. His campaign was founded on this outrageous lie. There is no erasing it in history.”  

And First Lady Michelle Obama slammed Trump for his “birther” claims: 

“Then, of course, there were those who questioned, and who continue to question for the past eight years, and up to this very day, whether my husband was even born in this country.

“Well, during his time in office, I think Barack has answered those questions with the examples he set, by going high when they go low. And he’s answered these questions with the progress we’ve achieved together.” 

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Michelle Obama

But perhaps the best perspective on this event was provided by syndicated columnist Mark Shields and New York Times columnist David Brooks. Each Friday they appear on the PBS Newshour to review the week’s major political events. 

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David Brooks and Mark Shields

On September 16, 2016, Shields (a liberal) and Brooks (a conservative) addressed Trump’s about-face on birtherism.    

MARK SHIELDS: “I think it’s important to establish right at the outset that [Trump] wasn’t only the loudest and the highest-profile and the most persistent and the most well-publicized birther, he, Donald Trump. He lied. He lied consistently and persistently.

“And, today, without explanation or excuse, he just changed his position and tried to absolutely falsely shift the blame onto Hillary Clinton.

“And this was an appeal to—he debased democracy. He debased the national debate. He appealed to that which is most ignoble or least noble in all of us.”

DAVID BROOKS: “Usually, there’s some tangential relationship to the truth, but a corroding relationship to the truth, frankly, as politics has gone on over the years.

“But now we’re in a reverse, Orwellian inversion of the truth with this. And so we have a team of staffers and then the candidate himself who have taken the normal spin and smashed all the rules.

“And so we are really in Orwell land. We are in 1984. And it’s interesting that an authoritarian personality type comes in at the same time with a complete disrespect for even tangential relationship to the truth that words are unmoored.

“And so I do think this statement sort of shocked me with the purification of a lot of terrible trends that have been happening. And so what’s white is black, and what is up is down, what is down is up. And that really is something new in politics.

“And the fact that there is no penalty for it, apparently—he’s doing fantastic in the last two weeks in the polls–is just somehow where we have gotten.”  

Less than two months later, Trump won the Presidency.  

Since then, Trump has continued to inhabit what David Brooks called “Orwell land.”

The most recent example of this occurred on January 9, 2017.  

The night before, Meryl Streep had enraged Trump and his mouthpiece, Kelleyanne Conway, at the Golden Globes Awards ceremony.

While being presented with the Cecil B. DeMille Lifetime Achievement Award, she had criticized Trump’s mocking, on November 25, 2015, of disabled New York Times reporter Serve Kovaleski:  

“There was one performance this year that stunned me. It sank its hooks in my heart. Not because it was good. There was nothing good about it. But it was effective, and it did its job. It made its intended audience laugh and show their teeth. 

“It was that moment when the person asking to sit in the most respected seat in our country imitated a disabled reporter. Someone he outranked in privilege, power and the capacity to fight back. It kind of broke my heart when I saw it. I still can’t get it out of my head because it wasn’t in a movie. It was real life.”