Posts Tagged ‘HISPANICS’
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In Bureaucracy, History, Politics, Social commentary on August 4, 2023 at 12:10 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.
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.
He repeatedly ran for the highest office in Germany—President—but never got a clear majority in a free election.
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.
Germany seemed on the verge of collapsing.
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.
Paul von Hindenburg
Hindenburg was reluctant to do so. He considered Hitler a dangerous radical. But he allowed himself to be convinced that, by putting Hitler in the Cabinet, he could be “boxed in” and thus controlled.
So, on January 30, 1933, he appointed Adolf Hitler Chancellor (the equivalent of Attorney General) of Germany.
On August 2, 1934, Hindenburg died, and Hitler immediately assumed the titles—and duties—of the offices of Chancellor and President. His rise to dictator was now complete.
It had taken 14 years for Hitler to obtain absolute power.
In 2015, Donald Trump—a real estate mogul and “celebrity” TV entertainer with no experience in politics—declared his candidacy for President.
Now, consider this:
- The country was technically at war in the Middle East—but the fate of the United States was not truly threatened, as it had been during the Civil War.
- There was no draft; if you didn’t know someone in the military, you didn’t care about the casualties taking place.
- Nor were these conflicts—in Iraq and Afghanistan–imposing domestic shortages on Americans, as World War II had.
- Thanks to government loans from President Barack Obama, American capitalism had been saved from its own excesses during the George W. Bush administration.
- Employment was up. CEOs were doing extremely well.
- In contrast to the corruption that had plagued the administration of Ronald Reagan, whom Republicans idolize, there had been no such scandals during the Obama Presidency.
- Nor had there been any large-scale terrorist attacks on American soil—as there had on 9/11 under President 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.
.jpg/220px-Donald_Trump_August_19,_2015_(cropped).jpg)
Donald Trump
The message of Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign had been one of hope—“Yes, We Can!”
That of Donald Trump’s campaign was one of hatred toward everyone who was not an avid Trump supporter: “No, You Can’t!”
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.”
They knew that demographics were steadily working against them. Birthrates among were falling; among nonwhites they 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 many 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.
And the idea of a woman dictating to men was strictly too much to bear.
Upon Trump’s election, educators reported a surge in bullying among students of all ages, from elementary- to high-school. Those doing the bullying were mostly whites, and the victims were mostly blacks, Muslims, Jews, Hispanics, Asians.
It even had a name: “The Trump Effect.”
And this is where matters stood more than two months before Trump took the oath as President. Far worse would come during his next four years.
All of this should be remembered the next time Americans blame Germans for their embrace of Adolf Hitler.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Medical, Politics, Social commentary, Uncategorized on April 27, 2023 at 12:10 am
Whites comprised the overwhelming majority of the audiences at Donald Trump’s 2016 Presidential campaign rallies. Not all were racists, but many of those who were advertised it on T-shirts: “MAKE AMERICA WHITE AGAIN.”
And the vast majority of the white votes Trump got were in the South.
The 2008 election of Barack Obama as 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: Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
And for macho, largely uneducated, anti-black Southern males, the idea of a woman dictating to men was simply too much to bear.
The third map of Southern infamy: The election of Donald Trump
When Trump declared his candidacy:
- The country was essentially at peace.
- Thanks to government loans from President Obama, American capitalism had been saved from its own excesses during the George W. Bush administration.
- Employment was up.
- Unlike the administration of Ronald Reagan, there had been no corruption scandals during the Obama Presidency.
- Unlike the administration of George W. Bush, there not been any large-scale terrorist attacks on American soil—like 9/11.
Above all, the news was filled with reputable reports—later confirmed—that Trump’s campaign was backed by Russian oligarchs linked to Vladimir Putin, the former head of the KGB and now President of Russia.
In short: Southerners-–who had long portrayed themselves as America’s most dedicated patriots—flocked to the banner of a man who publicly called on “Russia” to interfere in an American Presidential election.
Red States voted for Donald Trump – 2016
BobWyatt07, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
The fourth map of Southern infamy: COVID-19
Donald Trump’s four-year Presidency produced a legacy of unprecedented racism, criminality, abuse of power and treason.
But the crime for which he will be longest-remembered—and which finally brought him down—was his unwillingness to protect Americans from the deadly COVID-19 pandemic.
The COVID-19 catastrophe slammed into the United States in January, 2020. It was the inevitable result of a natural disaster colliding with an evil and incompetent administration.
Trump’s “cures” for COVID-19 included denial, lies, Republican subservience, chaos, extortion, propaganda as news, quackery as medicine, demands to “re-open the country,” Ignoring the danger and—finally—resignation (“Learn to live with the virus”).
Early on, Trump made the virus a referendum on himself. If you supported him, you didn’t wear a mask in public. Even though, throughout 2020, no vaccine was available and hospitals were rapidly overwhelmed by debilitated and dying casualties of the virus.
“I think, once Donald Trump and other Republicans made it a manhood issue, or a freedom issue, or whatever kind of issue they made it, it’s hard to walk back that culture war signal,” said conservative New York Times columnist David Brooks on the PBS Newshour on July 23, 2021.
Washington Post Columnist Jonathan Capehart echoed him: “I think, if we had had a president of the United States who took this seriously when this first came on the scene, if we had a Republican party that took this seriously enough to warn everyone, their constituents saying, wash your hands, then put on a mask, then go get the vaccine, we wouldn’t be where we are right now.”
Jonathan Capehart
But neither Trump nor the Republican party urged Americans to “wash your hands, put on a mask, then go get the vaccine.”
By March, 2021, three vaccines—by Pfizer, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson—became available. A total of 90.4 million doses of these vaccines had been given. And 30.7 million Americans had been fully vaccinated against the virus.
But after a triumphant beginning, the pace of vaccinations slowed, then halted. By late July, 2021, only 49.6% of Americans had been fully vaccinated.
COVID-19 vaccination map – July 21, 2021
George Karabassis, CC BY 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
Many of those who had gotten one shot of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines refused to get the necessary second one. These must be given almost a month apart.
(The Johnson & Johnson vaccine requires only one shot.)
What had happened?
“The people I know personally who are not getting the vaccine, for them, it was like, ‘They rushed this thing,'” theorized David Brooks. “‘Who knows what’s going to happen to all these people who get the shots in 10 years or 20 years?’ So, why should I take the risk?’
“And that’s not completely crazy, but it’s not—it’s based on some sense of general distrust for the establishment, including the medical establishment. And that establishment—that distrust is the core of this thing.”
David Brooks
And leading the way to this catastrophe of self-destruction were the states of the South and Midwest: Mississippi (47.1%,), Alabama (50.5%), Arkansas (53.2%), and Tennessee (52.9%) with the lowest rates of residents who have gotten at least one shot.
By late July, 2021, three states—Florida, Texas and Missouri-–with lower vaccination rates accounted for 40 percent of all cases nationwide.
And colliding head-on with the refusals of millions to get vaccinated was the newer—and deadlier—Delta variant of COVID-19.
Just as the South unleashed the Civil War on America, it had ignited a new wave of COVID-19 on America.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Medical, Politics, Social commentary on April 26, 2023 at 12:10 am
Throughout its history the South has been a hotbed of treason, racism and ignorance.
Today, it proudly continues holding fast to these traditions—even as it places the entire country in danger of contagion and dictatorship.
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.
Southern infamy’s first map was called the Confederate States of America.
Union (blue) and Confederate (red) states: 1860 – 1865
Júlio Reis, CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
According to The Destructive War, by Charles Royster, it wasn’t the cause of “states’ rights” that led 13 Southern states to withdraw from the Union in 1860-61. It was their demand for “respect,” which, in reality, translates into “e-g-o.”
“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 was less and less willing to do.
Finally, its citizens dared to elect Abraham Lincoln in 1860.
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.
Lincoln—during his First Inaugural Address—bluntly said that he did not intend to “directly or indirectly…interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so.”
Abraham Lincoln
But that was not enough for Southerners.
Only 10% of Southerners owned slaves. The other 90% of the population “had no dog in this fight,” as Southerners liked to say.
Yet they so admired and aspired to be like their “gentleman betters” that they threw in their lot with them.
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.
This ignited the American Civil War, costing the lives of 750,000 Americans—at a time when the population of the United States stood at 31,443,321.
Four years later, Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia to Union General Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Courthouse.
Huge sections of the South had been laid waste by Union troops and more than 258,000 Southerners had been killed.
And slavery, the mainstay of Southern plantation life, had been ended forever.
The South had paid a high price for its investment in treason.
Southern infamy’s second map dates from 1964 to 2016.
In 1964, Democratic President Lyndon B. Johnson pushed the Civil Rights Act through Congress, ending more than a century of blatant discrimination against blacks.
The South—which before the Civil War had been solidly Democratic—suddenly went solidly Republican.
To understand this mammoth shift, it’s vital to realize: In Lincoln’s time, the Republicans were the party of progressives.
The party was founded on an anti-slavery platform. Its members were thus reviled as “Black Republicans.” And until the 1960s, the South was solidly Democratic.
Democrats were the ones defending the status quo—slavery—and opposing the rights of freed blacks in the South of Reconstruction and long afterward.
When, in the early 1960s, Democrats championed the rights of blacks, Southerners bolted for the Republican party—which held to the same values that slavery/discrimination-supporting Democrats once did.
After signing the Civil Rights Act of 1964 into law, President Lyndon B. Johnson told an aide: “We have just lost the South for a generation.”
Johnson was wrong: A generation lasts 20 to 30 years. It’s been almost 59 years since the signing of the Act, and the South is still solidly within the Republican camp.
1968 election
The South’s third map of infamy culminated with the election of Donald Trump as President in 2016.
Repeatedly, when asked why they supported Trump, his followers said: “He says what I’ve been thinking!”
And what Trump appealed to, above all else, was hatred.
From June 15, 2015, when he launched his Presidential campaign, until October 24, 2016, Trump fired almost 4,000 angry, insulting tweets at 281 people and institutions that had somehow offended him.
Donald Trump
The New York Times needed two full pages of its print edition to showcase them.
Among his targets:
- Democratic Presidential Nominee Hillary Clinton
- President Barack Obama
- Actress Meryl Streep
- Singer Neil Young
- Actor Arnold Schwarzenegger
- Comedian John Oliver
- News organizations
- The State of New Jersey
- Beauty pageant contestants
Others he clearly delighted in insulting during the campaign included:
- Women
- Blacks
- Hispanics
- Asians
- Muslims
- The disabled
- Prisoners-of-war
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.”
And the vast majority of the white votes Trump got were in the South.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on April 25, 2023 at 12:10 am
On October 12, 2016, The Palm Beach Post, The New York Times and People all published stories of women claiming they had been sexually assaulted by Donald Trump.
Trump’s reaction: “Every woman lied when they came forward to hurt my campaign. Total fabrication. The events never happened. Never.”
For “proof,” he attacked their physical appearance.
Of one accuser, Natasha Stoynoff, he said: “Take a look. You take a look. Look at her. Look at her words. You tell me what you think. I don’t think so. I don’t think so.”
Of another accuser, Jessica Leeds, Trump said: “Believe me, she would not be my first choice, that I can tell you. Whoever she is, wherever she comes from, the stories are total fiction. They’re 100% made up. They never happened.”
In short: They were too ugly for Trump to consider them worth sexually harassing.
And he threatened: “All of these liars will be sued after the election is over.”
To date, Trump has not filed a single lawsuit for defamation.
By October 14, 2016, at least 12 women had publicly accused Trump of sexually inappropriate behavior. By 2020, the number had grown to 26.
Trump—who’s been married three times and often boasted of his sexual prowess—asked why President Barack Obama hadn’t had similar claims leveled against him.
The answer: Because there has never been the slightest hint of scandal about Obama as a faithful husband.
Donald Trump
Many Right-wingers defended Trump’s misogynist comments as mere “frat boy” talk.
Said Corey Lewandowski, a former Trump campaign manager and commentator for CNN and Fox News: “We are electing a leader to the free world. We’re not electing a Sunday school teacher.”
And Fox News host Sean Hannity went Biblical to excuse Trump: “King David had 500 concubines for crying out loud!”
But Washington Post Columnist Micheal Gerson took a darker—and more accurate—view of Trump’s comments.
Appearing on the PBS Newshour on October 7, 2016, Gerson said: “Well, I think the problem here is not just bad language, but predatory language, abusive language, demeaning language. That indicates something about someone’s character that is disturbing, frankly, disturbing in a case like this.”
In June, 2019, yet another woman came forward to accuse Trump—now President—of sexual assault: E. Jean Carroll, an advice columnist for Elle magazine.
E. Jean Carroll
Carroll alleges that Trump attacked her in the fall of 1995 or the spring of 1996 at the Bergdorf Goodman department store in New York.
She claims that, while gift shopping, Trump pressured her to try on lingerie and grabbed her arm to pull her toward the dressing room.
“The moment the dressing-room door is closed, he lunges at me, pushes me against the wall, hitting my head quite badly, and puts his mouth against my lips.
“I am so shocked I shove him back and start laughing again. He seizes both my arms and pushes me up against the wall a second time, and, as I become aware of how large he is, he holds me against the wall with his shoulder and jams his hand under my coat dress and pulls down my tights.
“The next moment, still wearing correct business attire, shirt, tie, suit jacket, overcoat, he opens the overcoat, unzips his pants, and, forcing his fingers around my private area, thrusts his penis halfway —or completely, I’m not certain—inside me.”
True to form, Trump responded by exonerating himself on the basis of the woman’s appearance: “I’ll say it with great respect: Number one, she’s not my type.”
Then he accused the accuser: “Shame on those who make up false stories of assault to try to get publicity for themselves, or sell a book, or carry out a political agenda….
“It’s just as bad for people to believe it, particularly when there is zero evidence. Worse still for a dying publication to try to prop itself up by peddling fake news—it’s an epidemic.”
Also, predictably, he portrayed himself as the innocent victim of yet another vast conspiracy: “If anyone has information that the Democratic Party is working with Ms. Carroll or New York Magazine, please notify us as soon as possible.”
And, just as predictably, Republicans rallied around the President.
“Quite honestly, as somebody who had a front-row seat to the Kavanaugh hearings, we’ve seen allegations that were false,” said Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.). “We’ll let the facts go where they are, but I take [Trump’s] statement at face value.”
“Yes, I believe the president.” said House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy when pressed on whether he believed Trump.
Trump’s latest trial—for allegedly raping E. Jean Carroll—is scheduled to begin during the last week of April, 2023. Carroll is suing him in civil court for rape and defamation.
Trump has publicly said he will not attend, claiming he wants to spare New York City the costs of providing police protection for an ex-President.
So far, not one Republican has come forward to condemn Trump for this latest allegation of sexual misconduct.
If convicted, Trump—who’s running for President in 2024—will become the first Presidential candidate to carry the official stigma of rapist.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on April 24, 2023 at 12:13 am
Once again, a woman is accusing Donald Trump of making improper sexual advances—specifically, rape.
The woman is E. Jean Carroll, a journalist, author and advice columnist.
In 2019, she accused Trump—who was still President—of raping her in 1995 or 1996 in the Bergdorf Goodman department store in New York City.
Trump denied the accusation.
In November, 2022, Carroll sued Trump under the Adult Survivors Act, a New York law that allows sexual-assault victims to file civil suits beyond expired statute of limitations.
The case is scheduled to go to trial during the last week of April, 2023.
Trump has said he will not attend, claiming his status as an ex-President would put a strain on New York City police who would be assigned to protect him.
Trump has been married three times—and divorced twice:
- 1977: Trump married Czech model Ivana Winklmayr. They divorced in 1992.
- 1993: Trump married actress Marla Maples—and divorced her in 1999.
- 2005: Trump married Slovenian model Melania Knauss.
Ivana Trump and Marla Maples Trump
Donald and Melania Trump
And Trump has never been known for marital fidelity:
- He was married to Ivana when he carried on a highly publicized extramarital affair with Marla Maples.
- Trump was married to Maples when he entered into an affair with Melania Knauss.
- And only four months after Melania gave birth to their son, Barron, Trump had his now-infamous tryst with porn “actress” Stormy Daniels.
He has often boasted about his sexual prowess:
- When his 2016 Republican rival, Marco Rubio, joked that Trump’s hands were small, Trump said: “Look at those hands, are they small hands? And, [Rubio] referred to my hands—‘if they’re small, something else must be small.’ I guarantee you there’s no problem. I guarantee.”
- Trump equated avoiding STDs during the late 1990s with serving in Vietnam: “I’ve been so lucky in terms of that whole world, it is a dangerous world out there. It’s like Vietnam, sort of. It is my personal Vietnam. I feel like a great and very brave solider,”
Trump’s most infamous “take” on women appeared during the 2016 Presidential race. The remarks happened during a 2005 exchange with Billy Bush, then the host of Access Hollywood.
The two were traveling in an Access Hollywood bus to the set of the soap opera Days of Our Lives, where Trump was to make a cameo appearance. A “hot” microphone caught Trump’s boast of trying to pick up a married woman:
I moved on her actually. You know she was down on Palm Beach. I moved on her and I failed. I’ll admit it. I did try and fuck her. She was married….
I took her out furniture [shopping]. I moved on her like a bitch, but I couldn’t get there, and she was married. Then all of a sudden I see her, she’s now got the big phony tits and everything. She’s totally changed her look….
You know I’m automatically attracted to beautiful—I just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star they let you do it. You can do anything. Grab them by the pussy. You can do anything.
When the Washington Post broke the story on October 7, 2016, the reaction was immediate—and explosive.
Trump quickly released a statement: “This was locker room banter, a private conversation that took place many years ago. Bill Clinton has said far worse to me on the golf course—not even close. I apologize if anyone was offended.”
On October 12, 2016, The Palm Beach Post, The New York Times and People all published stories of women claiming to have been sexually assaulted by Trump.
Among his victims:
- MINDY MCGILLLIVRAY: Told the Post that Trump groped her buttocks when she, then 34, visited Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida, in 2013.
Within a week of accusing Trump, she told the Palm Beach Post that she and her family were leaving the United States, fearing for their safety: “We feel the backlash of the Trump supporters. It scares us. It intimidates us. We are in fear of our lives.’’
- NATASHA STOYNOFF: A People magazine writer, in December, 2005, she went to Mar-a-Lago to interview Donald and Melania Trump for a first-wedding-anniversary feature story.
During a break in the interview, Trump said he wanted to show Stoynoff a “tremendous” room in the mansion.
Recalled Stoynoff: “We walked into that room alone, and Trump shut the door behind us. I turned around, and within seconds he was pushing me against the wall and forcing his tongue down my throat.”
Natasha Stoynoff
Fortunately, Trump’s butler soon entered the room, and Trump acted as though nothing had happened. But as soon as he and Stoynoff were alone again, Trump said: “You know we’re going to have an affair, don’t you?”
Stoynoff asked her editors—and received permission—to be removed from writing any further Trump features.
- JESSICA LEEDS: More than 30 years earlier, Trump had made equally unwelcome advances toward businesswoman Leeds, then 38.
Jessica Leeds
She said she was sitting next to Trump in the first-class cabin of a New York-bound flight when Trump lifted the armrest, grabbed her breasts and tried to put his hand up her skirt. She fled to the back of the plane.
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In Bureaucracy, Entertainment, History, Politics, Social commentary on March 13, 2023 at 12:10 am
As a Presidential candidate, President and ex-President, Donald Trump repeatedly attacked hundreds of real and imagined enemies in politics, journalism, TV and films.
From June 15, 2015, when he launched his Presidential campaign, until October 24, 2016, Trump fired almost 4,000 angry, insulting tweets at 281 people and institutions that had somehow offended him.
Donald Trump
The New York Times needed two full pages of its print edition to showcase them.
Among his targets:
- Hillary Clinton
- President Barack Obama
- Actress Meryl Streep
- Singer Neil Young
- Actor Arnold Schwarzenegger
- Comedian John Oliver
- News organizations
- The State of New Jersey
- Beauty pageant contestants
Others he clearly delighted in insulting during the campaign included:
- Women
- Blacks
- Hispanics
- Asians
- Muslims
- The disabled
- Prisoners-of-war
As a Presidential candidate and President, he showed outright hatred for President Barack Obama. For five years, he slandered Obama as a Kenyan-born alien who had no right to hold the Presidency.
Barack Obama
Trump’s all-out effort to destroy the Affordable Care Act—nicknamed “Obamacare”–was driven by his mania to erase every vestige of the Obama Presidency.
As President, he bullied and insulted even his own handpicked Cabinet officers and White House officials.
- His press secretary, Sean Spicer, quit on July 21, 2017. The reason: He believed—correctly—that his loyalty to Trump had become a one-way street. Trump kept him in the dark about events Spicer needed to know—such as an interview that Trump arranged with the New York Times—and which ended disastrously for Trump.
- Trump waged a Twitter-laced feud against Jeff Sessions, his Attorney General. Sessions’ “crime”? Recusing himself from any decisions involving investigations into well-established ties between Russian Intelligence agents and members of Trump’s Presidential campaign.
- Trump publicly said that if he had known Sessions would recuse himself—because of his past contacts with Russian officials—he would have picked someone else for Attorney General.
- Trump repeatedly humiliated his chief of staff, Reince Priebus—at one point ordering him to kill a fly that was buzzing about. On July 28, 2017, Priebus resigned.
Trump’s is now attacking Fox News Network—which throughout his four-year Presidency gave him unstinting praise and put a favorable spin on everything he did.
But that changed on Election Night, 2020. Chris Stirewalt, Fox’s political editor, was the first newscaster to accurately project Joe Biden’s victory in Arizona.
Trump was furious. After the election, he attacked Fox and encouraged his followers to switch to Newsmax.
Which many of them did, costing Fox a big chunk of its audience.
“Many will disagree, but @FoxNews is doing nothing to help Republicans, and me, get re-elected on November 3rd,” Trump tweeted.
“They repeat the worst of the Democrat speaking points, and lies. All of the good is totally nullified, and more. Net Result = BAD! CNN & MSDNC are all in for the Do Nothing Democrats! Fox WAS Great!”
And he’s attacked the top executives of Fox with—for him—the worst insult of all: RINOS [Republicans in Name Only].
* * * * *
As Americans have watched Trump’s behavior with morbid fascination, many of them have asked: “What makes him do the things he does?”
It’s a question asked—and answered—in the 1993 Western, Tombstone. And the answer given in that movie may be the answer to that question.
Tombstone recounts the legendary blood feud between the Ike Clanton outlaw gang and the Earp brothers—Wyatt, Morgan and Virgil—in the famous gold-mining town in 1880s Arizona.
Wyatt Earp has been challenged to a gunfight by quick-trigger gunman Johnny Ringo. Although he impulsively accepted the challenge, Wyatt now realizes he’s certain to be killed. Ths follows this exchange with his longtime friend, the pistol-packing dentist, John H. “Doc” Holliday:
WYATT EARP: What makes a man like Ringo, Doc? What makes him do the things he does?
JOHN H. “DOC” HOLLIDAY: A man like Ringo….got a great empty hole right through the middle of him. He can never kill enough or steal enough….or inflict enough pain to ever fill it.
EARP: What does he need?
HOLLIDAY: Revenge.
EARP: For what?
HOLLIDAY: Bein’ born.
Donald Trump was born into a world of wealth and privilege. His father gave him $200 million, which he channeled into a real estate empire. He has claimed to be worth a billion dollars.
He has been linked—often by his own boasts—to some of the most beautiful women in the world. He has been a major force on TV through his “reality show,” The Apprentice. He has literally stamped his name on hundreds of buildings.
For four years he held the Presidency of the United States, the most powerful office in the Western world.
Yet he remains filled with a poisonous hatred that encompasses almost everyone. Upon taking office, he offered nothing positive in his agenda.
Instead, before, during and after his Presidency, he has focused his efforts on what he can take from others. At the top of his list: The Affordable Health Act, which provides access to medical care for millions who previously could not obtain it.
As first-mate Starbuck says of Captain Ahab in Herman Melville’s classic novel, Moby Dick: “He is a champion of darkness.”
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In Bureaucracy, Law, Law Enforcement, Medical, Politics, Social commentary on March 1, 2023 at 12:12 am
Given the all-out Republican assault on their liberties, gays could become convinced that they are becoming the targets of state-sponsored terrorism—as were Jews in Nazi Germany.
In such a case, they may turn to a more drastic means than elections and the courts to protect themselves: Violence.
Political violence has a long and deadly history in the United States.
Before the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861, violence was commonplace along the Kansas-Missouri border as pro- and anti-slavery elements slaughtered one another.
After the Civil War ended in 1865, Ku Klux Klansmen across the South terrorized blacks into submission even though slavery was now illegal.
With the advent of the civil rights movement in 1960, blacks and their supporters once again became targets for violence.
A minority of black leaders like Malcom X and H. Rapp Brown told blacks they should violently defend themselves. But the vast majority of blacks—including bloodied civil rights workers—adhered to Martin Luther King’s call for non-violence.
Martin Luther King (left), Malcom X (right)
Still, there is no guarantee that those who suffer persecution and violence will remain non-violent. Their motive could be revenge—or to send a message to ward off future attacks.
Such was the fate of SS-Obergruppenfuhrer Reinhard Heydrich..
A tall, blond-haired formal naval officer, he was both a champion fencer and talented violinist. Heydrich joined the Schutzstaffel, or Protective Squads, better known as the SS, in 1931, and quickly became head of its counterintelligence service.
Reinhard Heydrich
In September, 1941, Heydrich was appointed “Reich Protector” of Czechoslovakia, which had fallen prey to Germany in 1938 but whose citizens were growing restless under Nazi rule.
Heydrich immediately ordered a purge, executing 92 people within the first three days of his arrival in Prague. By February, 1942, 4,000-5,000 people had been arrested.
In January, 1942, Heydrich convened a meeting of high-ranking political and military leaders in Wannsee, Germany, to streamline “the Final Solution to the Jewish Question.”
An estimated six million Jews were thus slaughtered.
On May 27, 1942, two British-trained Czech commandos—Jan Kubis and Joseph Gabcik—waited in Prague at a hairpin turn in the road always taken by Heydrich. When Heydrich’s Mercedes slowed down, Gabcik raised his machinegun—which jammed.
Heydrich ordered his driver to halt so he could take aim at his would-be assassins. It proved a fatal mistake.
Rising in his seat, he aimed his revolver at Gabcik—as Kubis lobbed a hand grenade at the car. The explosion drove steel and leather fragments of the car’s upholstery into Heydrich’s diaphragm, spleen and lung.
Hitler dispatched doctors from Berlin to save the Reich Protector. But infection set in, and on June 4, Heydrich died at age 38.
Heydrich’s wrecked Mercedes
The assassination sent shockwaves through the upper echelons of the Third Reich. No one had dared assault—much less assassinate—a high-ranking Nazi official.
The Nazis had slaughtered tens of thousands without hesitation—or fear that the same might happen to them.
Suddenly they realized that the fury they had aroused could be turned against themselves.
Which brings us to the leaders of America’s own Right-wing.
The names of infamous Nazis were widely known:
- Reichsmarshall Hermann Goering;
- Propaganda Minister Paul Joseph Goebbels;
- SS-Reichsfuhrer Heinrich Himmler;
- Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop;
- SS Obergruppenfuhrer Reinhard Heydrich;
- Adolf Hitler.
And so are the names of infamous leaders of the American Right:
- Texas Senator Ted Cruz;
- Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas;
- Commentator Tucker Carlson;
- Evangelist Franklin Graham;
- Florida Governor Ron DeSantis;
- Former President Donald Trump.
The differences between these two infamous groups are these:
In Nazi Germany, ordinary Germans could not learn about the personal lives of their dictators—including their home addresses—and conspire against them.
In the United States, ordinary citizens can learn about the personal lives of their would-be dictators by newspapers, Internet and TV—even on the Right’s own propaganda network, Fox News. “People finder” websites, for a modest price, provide names and addresses of potential targets—and their relatives.
In Nazi Germany, firearms were tightly controlled.
In the United States, the Right-wing National Rifle Association has successfully lobbied to put lethal firepower into the hands of virtually anyone who wants it.
Since their reversal of abortion rights in Roe v. Wade on June 24, 2022, at least six Right-wing Supreme Court Justices have lived under heavy guard by the U.S. Marshals Service. They may well be forced to do so for the rest of their lives.
But radical evangelists like Franklin Graham and Right-wing propagandists like Tucker Carlson cannot expect lifelong government protection. They would have to provide their own security—or take their chances.
So many Republicans are calling for an all-out war on gays that any number of them could become the targets—and victims—of retaliation.
Republicans boast that they want to “get the government off the backs of the people.” Yet they are waging war against people for the most intimate of reasons: Their choice of sex partners.
Reinhard Heydrich believed he was invulnerable to the hatred of the enemies he had raised against himself. That arrogance cost him his life.
The day may soon come when America’s own Right-wingers start learning the same lesson.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Medical, Politics, Social commentary on February 28, 2023 at 12:13 am
The politics of “smear and fear” have been good to Republicans—and their Right-wing allies.
Meanwhile, the Republican “base” refuses to learn that those who portray themselves as morally superior are usually:
- Hypocrites, who are in effect saying: “Do as I say, not as I do,” or
- Fanatics, who intend to force their version of morality on others.
So long as millions of hate-filled Right-wingers support the endless succession of “two minute hates,” Republicans will continue to target an endless series of victims.
And Right-wingers who are stirred up by Republicans’ anti-gay rhetoric often target gays, lesbians and transgenders in violent attacks.
- According to the Southern Poverty Law Center: “In the first six months of 2022, the Proud Boys counterprotested or harassed people on at least 28 separate occasions at LGBTQ and reproductive justice events around the country – together acting as a coordinated attack on gender equity and bodily autonomy….
- “On June 26, library patrons attending a drag queen story hour at a public library in Sparks, Nevada, encountered what has now become an increasingly regular sight: a group of men clad in the Proud Boys’ black-and-yellow uniform.
- “They held signs that accused participants of ‘grooming’ children and yelled at parents that they were ‘sick.’ One of those Proud Boys allegedly approached the building with a gun, causing patrons – including a number of children – to flee inside to safety. ‘We had some people who were visibly shaken and sobbing,’ a librarian told a local reporter.”
Proud Boys Flag
Anthony Crider, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
According to a December 10, 2022 story in Business Insider:
- “By the end of November, far-right activists took part in at least 55 public actions targeting members of the LGBT+ community — up from 16 the year before, an increase of some 340% — with a corresponding rise in violent attacks on people perceived to be gay or transgender, according to a report released this week by the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project, or ACLED….
- “While racism remains the primary driver of the far right, anti-LGBTQ actions have ‘fueled the largest increase in far-right protest activity,’ [according to an FBI annual risk assessment for 2022] with the rise in such activity ‘strongly’ correlating with a rise in violent attacks, of which there have been no fewer than 20, including the murder….of five people at a gay nightclub in Colorado Springs. Though we don’t have a specific motive the suspect has a history of online and offline bigotry.”
So what’s the reason for the GOP’s constantly dialing up fear and hatred of gays?
“They have an interest in keeping the base riled up about one thing or another, and when one issue fades, as with same-sex relationships and same-sex marriage, they’ve got to find something else. It’s almost frantic,” said Randall Balmer, a Dartmouth professor who authored Bad Faith: Race and the Rise of the Religious Right.
According to Balmer, the rise of the Religious Right was now driving Republican support for anti-trans legislation.
White Right-wing evangelicals backed Ronald Reagan against Jimmy Carter in 1980 and catapulted him to the White House.
Any Republican who wanted to gain the Presidency had to pay homage to the evangelical base, Balmer says.
In 2015, Donald Trump initially campaigned on welcoming gays and lesbians into the Republican platform. But he soon dropped this stance to win support from Right-wing evangelicals.
Donald Trump
That support proved crucial to his gaining the White House—just as it had proved crucial to Reagan in 1980 and 1984.
Gays have fought back on political and legal fronts, with mixed success.
According to move.org, among the best states for gays are: California, Oregon, Colorado and New York.
It’s no coincidence that these states have a majority Democratic population and legislature.
Among the worst states for gays are: Arizona, Idaho, Texas, Oklahoma, Wyoming, Arkansas and South Carolina.
Gays increasingly fear that the Supreme Court’s reversal of Roe v. Wade could lead to a reversal of its previous legalizing of same-sex marriage.
And this could very well happen. For decades, abortion rights advocates believed the Court wouldn’t dare strike down a right it had recognized as far back as 1973.
Immediately following the Court’s decision on Roe, Justice Clarence Thomas said that the landmark high court rulings that legalized same-sex marriage and contraception rights should be reconsidered.
Clarence Thomas
Thomas’ remark has been widely interpreted as an invitation to Right-wing states to bring challenges to those rulings.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton hopes the state legislature enacts a law that criminalizes sodomy so he can defend it at the Supreme Court.
And Stuart Adams, the Republican president of the State Senate, would support Utah’s joining other states to press the Supreme Court’s ending the right to same-sex marriage.
Given the all-out Republican assault on their liberties, gays could become convinced that they are becoming the targets of state-sponsored terrorism—as were Jews in Nazi Germany.
In such a case, they may turn to a more drastic means than elections and the courts to protect themselves: Violence.
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable,” said President John F. Kennedy in a 1962 address on the first anniversary of the Alliance for Progress.
His warning remains as valid today as it did 61 years ago.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Medical, Politics, Social commentary on February 27, 2023 at 12:12 am
In a June 19, 2015 editorial, Rolling Stone magazine writer Jeb Lund noted:
“The Republican Party has weaponized its supporters, made violence a virtue and, with almost every pronouncement for 50 years, given them an enemy politicized, racialized and indivisible.
“Movement conservatives have fetishized a tendentious and ahistorical reading of the Second Amendment to the point that the Constitution itself somehow paradoxically ‘legitimizes’ an armed insurrection against the government created by it.
“Those leading said insurrection are swaddled by the blanket exculpation of patriotism. At the same time, they have synonymized the Democratic Party with illegitimacy and abuse of the American order.
“This is no longer an argument about whether one party’s beliefs are beneficial or harmful, but an attitude that labels leftism so antithetical to the American idea that empowering it on any level is an act of usurpation.”
Not content with this, Republicans have aimed slander and hatred at those who dare to vote Democratic. In the past, this has included:
- Blacks
- Women
- The disabled
- Environmentalists
- Liberals
More recently, the groups Republicans most delight in vilifying are:
- Hispanics
- Gays
- Lesbians
- Transgenders
George Orwell’s classic 1949 novel, 1984, serves as a better guide to Republican electioneering strategy than any official statement of the GOP.
1984 is set in a futuristic dictatorship called Oceania, whose constantly alternating mortal enemies are Eurasia and Eastasia.
A daily fixture of life in Oceania is the “Two Minutes Hate.” During this, Party members must watch a film depicting the Party’s enemies and express their hatred for them in exactly two minutes.
Chief among these is Emmanuel Goldstein, who is obviously based on Leon Trotsky, the longtime antagonist of Joseph Stalin, dictator of the Soviet Union for almost 30 years.
The “Two Minutes Hate” serves as a form of brainwashing, whose purpose is to whip ordinary citizens into a frenzy of hatred and loathing for whoever the Party designates as its—and their—-mortal enemies.
It fully describes the motivations—and effects—of Republicans’ attacks on their self-proclaimed enemies.
Without a speck of evidence to back up such defamatory claims, Republicans—both politicians and their followers—attack Democratic candidates as “groomers” and “pedophiles.”
This has led to deadly attacks on gays, lesbians and transgenders.
In December, 2014, Republicans in the Michigan House of Representatives passed “The Religious Freedom Restoration Act.”
The bill allows public agencies and private businesses to refuse service to anyone under the claim that their “religious beliefs” had been affronted.
And the State government is legally prevented from intervening if a person claimed that his/her “deeply-held religious beliefs” was the reason for acting—or not acting—in a certain way.
Thus:
- An emergency room doctor can refuse service to a gay or lesbian needing medical care.
- A pharmacist can refuse to fill a doctor’s prescription for birth control or HIV medication.
- A DMV clerk can refuse to give a driver’s license to someone who’s divorced.
- An employer can deny equal pay to women.
Republicans have introduced similar “right-to-discriminate” legislation in other states as well:
- On March 28, 2022, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed into law the “Parental Rights in Education” bill. This bans public school teachers from holding classroom instruction about sexual orientation or gender identity in kindergarten through grade three.
- In October, 33 Congressional Republicans introduced a similar “Don’t Say Gay” bill that would prohibit, on a nationwide basis, the use of federal funds “to develop, implement, facilitate, or fund any sexually-oriented program, event, or literature for children under the age of 10, and for other purposes.”
- On June 24, 2022, the Supreme Court’s reversed Roe v. Wade, guaranteeing a woman’s legal right to abortion. Soon afterward, Texas, Attorney General Ken Paxton said that he would willingly defend at the Supreme Court any law the Legislature enacted that criminalized sodomy.
- In Utah, Stuart Adams, the Republican president of the State Senate, said he would support Utah’s joining with other states to press the Supreme Court to end the right to same-sex marriage.
Republicans have defended such legislation by equating gays with child predators.
In fact, the Child Molestation Research & Prevention Institute states that 90% of child molesters target children in their network of family and friends, and the majority are men married to women.
Yet Republicans and their Rightist allies have refused to condemn such heterosexual—and Right-wing—child molesters as Dennis Hastert and Josh Duggar.
Josh Duggar, the “all-American” child molester
On May 21, 2015, responding to press leaks, Duggar resigned as director of the Family Research Council, a Right-wing organization dedicated to fighting sexually-oriented issues such as same-sex marriage, abortion and pornography.
In 2002-3, as a 14-15 year-old, Duggar had fondled the breasts and vaginas of five underage girls—four of whom were his own sisters.
And on October 28, 2015, Hastert—Speaker of the House of Representatives from 1999 to 2007–pleaded guilty to structuring money transactions in a way to avoid requirements to report where the money was going.
The reason: One of his victims had started blackmailing him.
Dennis Hastert
The reason: To conceal the truth about his past as a child molester. Hastert had abused four young boys when he was their high school wrestling coach. One was only 14 years old.
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In Bureaucracy, Business, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Medical, Military, Politics, Social commentary on February 16, 2023 at 12:10 am
Next to the American flag, Republicans have loudly pledged their loyalty to the nuclear family.
And Florida United States Senator Rick Scott, in his “11 Point Plan to Rescue America,” is no exception.
Point 8: We will protect, defend, and promote the American Family at all costs. The nuclear family is crucial to civilization, it is God’s design for humanity, and it must be protected and celebrated. To say otherwise is to deny science.
Scott claims that the nuclear family is “God’s design for humanity”—and that to disagree is to “deny science.”
Here are the facts:
First of all, there is no scientific proof for the existence of God. It is simply a belief.
Second, the nuclear family—a married couple and their dependent children under the age of 18—is a fast-disappearing species.
Nuclear family – 1955
Seattle Municipal Archives from Seattle, WA, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
There are currently just 23.1 million American homes with “nuclear families,’ which is the fewest since 1959. So much for “God’s design for humanity.”
Point 9: Men are men, women are women, and unborn babies are babies.
“Men are men, women are women”: Republicans seek to frighten voters into voting for them by appealing to the fear that “Gays and transgenders are coming for your children.”
Without offering proof, they slander their opponents as “groomers”—pedophiles who befriend children and build their trust, leading to their sexual abuse.
Actually, gays don’t prey on heterosexuals but seek out others of their own sexual persuasion. The same is true for transgenders.
Meanwhile, the Republican party has had its own share of closeted pedophiles.
Among them:
- Josh (“18 Kids and Counting”) Duggar, recently sentenced to 12 years’ imprisonment for possession of child pornography;
- Dennis Hastert, former Speaker of the House of Representatives, who sexually molested four young boys when he was their high school wrestling coach.
Josh Duggar
As for “Unborn babies are babies”: Those who have not yet been born are fetuses.
While Republicans have waged an almost 50-year war against legalized abortion, they have waged an equally aggressive war against Social Security, Medicare, the Affordable Care Act, food stamps, affordable housing, and aid to the blind and disabled.
In short: They oppose all those programs intended to help those who have already been born.
Point 10: Americans will be free to welcome God into all aspects of our lives, and we will stop all government efforts to deny our religious freedom and freedom of speech.
The Democratic party is not trying to “deny our religious freedom and freedom of speech.”
On the contrary: It’s Republicans who have crafted laws to turn claimed religious beliefs into a weapon of discrimination.
A classic example: On March 26, 2015, Indiana’s then-Governor Mike Pence signed into law the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.
Mike Pence
This allows any individual or corporation to cite its religious beliefs as a defense when sued by a private party.
Thus, a bakery that doesn’t want to make a cake to be used at a gay wedding or a restaurant that doesn’t want to serve lesbian patrons can legally refuse to do so.
Republicans have introduced similar “right-to-discriminate” legislation in other states as well—such as Kansas, Arizona and South Dakota. So far, all have failed to win passage.
Republicans claim they want to “get the government off the backs of the people.” But their fixation on regulating the sexual lives of Americans ensures government intrusions of the most intimate kind.
Point 11: We are Americans, not globalists. America will be dependent on NO other country. We will conduct no trade that takes away jobs or displaces American workers.
This would be laughable except for the bitter truth: Countless numbers of Americans have lost their jobs because their companies deserted the United States for Third World nations like China, Vietnam or Mexico.
Employers have done this for three reasons:
- To pay their employees far less than they would be paid in the United States;
- To avoid American health and safety restrictions on how employees can be treated; and
- To avoid enforcement of quality control regulations which ensure that products are safe and effective for use.
During Donald Trump’s Presidency, the Chinese government granted 18 trademarks to companies linked to him and his daughter, Ivanka, within two months.
In addition, Trump won approval to register three dozen trademarks in China covering everything from bars and hotels to child-care and massage services, raising further concerns over potential conflicts of interest.
From 2005 to 2017, Trump filed for 126 trademarks in China for his business empire.
As for Scott’s claim, “America will be dependent on NO other country”:
Despite Right-wing rhetoric, the United States can no longer separate itself from the rest of the world.
The ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine has badly affected American imports of grain products from Ukraine. And America’s continued reliance on fossil fuels forces it to depend on despotic Middle East oil kingdoms.
Finally, the Coronavirus pandemic has led to crucial shortages in goods America has long imported: Medicines, electronics, auto parts, solar panels, toys, air conditioners.
Thus, this provision—like the rest of Scott’s plan—runs head-on into the ugliness of sheer reality.
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HOW TRUMP’S AMERICA ENTERED THE DOCK WITH NAZI GERMANY
In Bureaucracy, History, Politics, Social commentary on August 4, 2023 at 12:10 amIn 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.
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.
He repeatedly ran for the highest office in Germany—President—but never got a clear majority in a free election.
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.
Germany seemed on the verge of collapsing.
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.
Paul von Hindenburg
Hindenburg was reluctant to do so. He considered Hitler a dangerous radical. But he allowed himself to be convinced that, by putting Hitler in the Cabinet, he could be “boxed in” and thus controlled.
So, on January 30, 1933, he appointed Adolf Hitler Chancellor (the equivalent of Attorney General) of Germany.
On August 2, 1934, Hindenburg died, and Hitler immediately assumed the titles—and duties—of the offices of Chancellor and President. His rise to dictator was now complete.
It had taken 14 years for Hitler to obtain absolute power.
In 2015, Donald Trump—a real estate mogul and “celebrity” TV entertainer with no experience in politics—declared his candidacy for President.
Now, consider this:
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.
Donald Trump
The message of Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign had been one of hope—“Yes, We Can!”
That of Donald Trump’s campaign was one of hatred toward everyone who was not an avid Trump supporter: “No, You Can’t!”
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.”
They knew that demographics were steadily working against them. Birthrates among were falling; among nonwhites they 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 many 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.
And the idea of a woman dictating to men was strictly too much to bear.
Upon Trump’s election, educators reported a surge in bullying among students of all ages, from elementary- to high-school. Those doing the bullying were mostly whites, and the victims were mostly blacks, Muslims, Jews, Hispanics, Asians.
It even had a name: “The Trump Effect.”
And this is where matters stood more than two months before Trump took the oath as President. Far worse would come during his next four years.
All of this should be remembered the next time Americans blame Germans for their embrace of Adolf Hitler.
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