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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Politics, Social commentary on February 13, 2020 at 12:12 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.
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.
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 15 years to do so.
In 2015, Donald Trump 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, no such scandals plagued 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.”
Birthrates among non-whites 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.
Since Trump became President, he has:
- Fired an FBI director for investigating Russia’s subversion of the 2016 Presidential election.
- Attacked Federal judges whose rulings displeased him.
- So tyrannized his staffers that 43% of them have abandoned him. Nearly 2,000 government positions remain vacant.
- Repeatedly and enthusiastically defended Vladimir Putin, the dictator of Russia, America’s mortal enemy.
- Attacked and alienated America’s oldest allies, such as Canada and Great Britain.
- Shut down the United States Government for over a month, 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.”
- Used his position as President to further enrich himself, in violation of the Emoluments Clause of the Constitution.
- Been impeached (but not convicted) for trying to extort Ukraine’s president into smearing former Vice President Joseph Biden, a possible rival for President in 2020.
All of this should be remembered the next time an American blames Germans for their embrace of Adolf Hitler.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Military, Politics, Social commentary on January 27, 2020 at 12:04 am
January 26, 2020, marked the 135th anniversary of the fall of Khartoum, the Sudanese city that sits on the banks of the White and Blue Nile Rivers.
The siege and fall of Khartoum is one of the truly epic stories of military history.
From March 18, 1884, to January 26, 1885, the charisma and military genius of one man—British General Charles George Gordon—held at bay an army of thousands of fanatical Islamics intent on slaughtering everyone in the city. 
Khartoum in 1888—four years after the siege
At stake were the lives of Khartoum’s 30,000 residents.
By comparison: The defenders of the Alamo—a far better-known battle, in 1836—numbered no more than 250. And the siege of the San Antonio mission lasted only 13 days against an army of about 2,000 Mexicans.
The Alamo
Gordon’s story may seem antiquated. But it resembles the efforts Republicans made to pressure the Obama administration to commit ground forces to “freeing” Syria of its longtime dictator, “President” Bashir al-Assad.
The neocons of the George W. Bush Administration plunged the United States into an unprovoked war against Iraq in 2003. After Baghdad quickly fell, Americans cheered, thinking the war was over and the troops would soon return home.
Suddenly, American soldiers found themselves waging a two-front war in the same country: Fighting an Iraqi insurgency to throw them out, while trying to suppress growing sectarian warfare between Sunni and Shia Muslims.
And then, with Syria, Americans were being urged to plunge headfirst into a conflict they knew nothing about—and in which they had absolutely no stake.
On one side was the Ba’ath regime of Bashir al-Assad, supported by Russia, Iran, Hizbollah and elements in the Iraqi government. Hizbollah is comprised of Shiite Muslims, who form a minority of Islamics.
A sworn enemy of Israel, it has kidnapped scores of Americans suicidal enough to visit Lebanon and truck-bombed the Marine barracks in Beirut in 1983, killing 299 Americans.
Flag of Hizbollah
Al-Qaeda, on the other hand, is made up of Sunni Muslims, who form the majority of that religion.
It is intolerant of non-Sunni Muslims and has instigated violence against them. It denounces them as “takfirs”–heretics—and thus worthy of extermination.
Flag of Al-Qaeda
In short, it’s a Muslim-vs.Muslim “holy war.
It’s all very reminiscent of events in the 1966 epic film, Khartoum, starring Charlton Heston as British General Charles George Gordon.
In 1884, the British government sends Gordon, a real-life hero of the Victorian era, to evacuate the Sudanese city of Khartoum.
Mohammed Achmed, a previously anonymous Sudanese, has proclaimed himself “The Madhi” (“The Expected One”) and raised the cry of jihad.
The Madhi (played by Lawrence Olivier) intends to drive all foreigners (of which the English are the largest group) out of Sudan and exterminate all those Muslims who do not practice his “pure” version of Islam.
Charlton Heston as Gordon (left); Laurence Oliver as the Madhi (right)
Gordon arrives in Khartoum to find he’s not fighting a rag-tag army of peasants. Instead, the Madhi is a highly intelligent military strategist.
And Gordon, an evangelical Christian, also finds he has underestimated the Madhi’s religious fanaticism: “I seem to have suffered from the delusion that I had a monopoly on God.”
A surprised Gordon finds himself and 30,000 Sudanese trapped in Khartoum when the Madhi’s forces suddenly appear. He sends off messengers and telegrams to the British Government, begging for a military relief force.
But the British Government wants nothing to do with the Sudan. It has sent Gordon there as a sop to British public opinion that “something” had to be done to quell the Madhist uprising.
The siege continues and tightens.
In Britain, the public hails Gordon as a Christian hero and demands that the Government send a relief expedition to save him.
Prime Minister William Gladstone finally sends a token force—which arrives in Khartoum two days after the city has fallen to the Madhi’s forces.
Gordon, standing at the top of a staircase and coolly facing down his dervish enemies, is speared to death.
George W. Joy’s famous—and romanticized—painting of “The Death of Gordon”
(Actually, the best historical evidence indicates that Gordon fought to the last with pistol and sword before being overwhelmed by his dervish enemies.)
When the news reaches England, Britons mourn—and then demand vengeance for the death of their hero.
The Government, which had sought to wash its hands of the poor, military unimportant Sudan, suddenly has to send an army to avenge Gordon.
As the narrator of Khartoum intones at the close of the film: “For 15 years the British paid the price with shame and war.”
There is a blunt lesson for Americans to learn from this episode—and from the 1966 movie Khartoum itself.
Americans have been fighting in the Middle East since 2001—first in Afghanistan to destroy Al-Qaeda, and then in Iraq, to pursue George W. Bush’s vendetta against Saddam Hussein.
The United States faces a crumbling infrastructure, millions living in poverty and trillions of dollars in debt.
It’s time for Americans to clean up their own house before worrying about the messes in other nations—especially those wholly alien to American values.
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In Bureaucracy, Business, History, Military, Politics, Social commentary on January 14, 2020 at 12:05 am
Since the end of the Cold War, the American military and Intelligence communities have grown increasingly dependent on private contractors.
In his 2007 bestseller, Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA, Tim Weiner writes:
“Patriotism for profit became a $50-billion-a-year business….The [CIA] began contracting out thousands of jobs to fill the perceived void by the budget cuts that began in 1992.
“A CIA officer could file his retirement papers, turn in his blue identification badge, go to work for a much better salary at a military contractor such as Lockheed Martin or Booz Allen Hamilton, then return to the CIA the next day, wearing a green badge….”
Much of the CIA became totally dependent on mercenaries. They appeared to work for the agency, but their loyalty was actually to their private—and higher-paying—companies.
Writes Weiner: “Legions of CIA veterans quit their posts to sell their services to the agency by writing analyses, creating cover for overseas officers, setting up communications networks, and running clandestine operations.”
One such company was Total Intelligence Solutions, founded in 2007 by Cofer Black, who had been the chief of the CIA’s counter-terrorism center on 9/11. His partners were Robert Richer, formerly the associate deputy director of operations at the CIA, and Enrique Prado, who had been Black’s chief of counter-terror operations at the agency.
Future CIA hires followed suit: Serve for five years, win that prized CIA “credential” and sign up with a private security company to enrich themselves.
This situation met with full support from Right-wing “pro-business” members of Congress and President George W. Bush.
They had long championed the private sector as inherently superior to the public one. And they saw no danger that a man dedicated to enriching himself might put greed ahead of safeguarding his country.
Now President Donald Trump is carrying the employment of mercenaries to an entirely different level.
A January 11 headline in Rolling Stone sums it up thus: “Trump Brags About Serving Up American Troops to Saudi Arabia for Nothing More Than Cash.”
On January 10, Trump, interviewed by Fox News commentator Laura Ingraham, bragged about his positive relationship with Saudi Arabia—and how the Saudi royal family is paying to use American troops:
“Saudi Arabia is paying us for [our troops]. We have a very good relationship with Saudi Arabia. I said, ‘Listen, you’re a very rich country. You want more troops? I’m going to send them to you, but you’ve got to pay us.’
“They’re paying us. They’ve already deposited $1 billion in the bank.
“We are going to help them, but these rich countries have to pay for it. South Korea gave us $500 million… I said, ‘You gotta help us along. We have 32,000 soldiers in South Korea protecting you from North Korea. You’ve gotta pay.’”
Republicans have been silent on Trump’s plan to turn American soldiers into foreign-paid mercenaries. But at least one former Republican has dared to speak out.
Rep. Justin Amash (I-Michigan) recently tweeted: “He sells troops.”
In October, 2019, on “Meet the Press,” Amash accused Trump of breaking his campaign promise to bring troops home.
“There are people who support the president, who believe things he says, but it’s pretty clear he’s not bringing home the troops. He’s just moving them to other parts of the Middle East.”
But there are dangers to relying on mercenaries. Recent examples include:
- Edward Snowden deliberately joined Booz Allen Hamilton to secure a job as a computer systems administrator at the National Security Agency (NSA). This gave him access to thousands of highly classified documents—which, in 2013, he began publicly leaking to a wide range of news organizations.
- His motive, he has claimed, was to warn Americans of the privacy-invading dangers posed by their own Intelligence agencies.
- On March 7, 2017, WikiLeaks published a “data dump” of 8,761 documents code-named “Vault 7.”
- The documents exposed that the CIA had found security flaws in software operating systems such as Microsoft Windows, Android and Apple iOS. These allowed an intruder—such as the CIA—to seize control of a computer or smartphone. The owner could then be photographed through his iPhone camera and have his text messages intercepted.
- According to anonymous U.S. Intelligence and law enforcement sources, the culprits were CIA contract employees.
More ancient sources have also warned against the use of mercenaries. One of these was Niccolo Machiavelli, the Florentine statesman of the Renaissance.
Niccolo Machiavelli
In The Prince, Machiavelli writes:
“Mercenaries…are useless and dangerous. And if a prince holds on to his state by means of mercenary armies, he will never be stable or secure. For they are disunited, ambitious, without discipline, disloyal. They are brave among friends; among enemies they are cowards.
“They have neither the fear of God nor fidelity to man, and destruction is deferred only as the attack is. For in peace one is robbed by them, and in war by the enemy.
“The cause of this is that they have no love or other motive to keep them in the field beyond a trifling wage, which is not enough to make them ready to die for you.”
Centuries after Machiavelli’s warning, Americans are realizing the bitter truth of it firsthand.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Politics, Social commentary on January 9, 2020 at 12:10 am
There can be peace—at least for the United States—in the Middle East.
But to achieve this, Western Europe and the United States will have to make radical changes in their approach to that part of the world.
First, the United States must embark on a crash program to develop alternatives to oil.
The Islamic world offers only one reason for American concern: oil.
Yet its consumption threatens the future of the world through global warming. And it keeps America tethered to regimes that are fundamentally unstable and hostile to the West.
Second, once the United States weans itself from its dependency on fossil fuels, it can safely end its relationship with such regimes.
That means putting an end to spending billions of dollars every year to prop up dictatorial regimes like those in Iraq and Egypt. And it also means stopping the supply of big-ticket military hardware (like fighter planes and missiles) to Islamic regimes.
When the Shah of Iran was overthrown in 1979, he was probably the best-armed Islamic leader in the Middle East. His army and air force bristled with sophisticated American weaponry he had bought with billions of dollars in oil revenues.
Shah of Iran
But he had thoroughly alienated his people. Liberals thought him a tyrant, and conservatives thought him a traitor to Islam. So when Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini flew to Iran from his self-exile in Paris, no one in the Shah’s army and air force raised a hand in his defense.
And all that sophisticated American weaponry fell into Khoemeini’s waiting hands.
Third, the United States should end its “Permanent Bodyguard” relationship with Israel.
Every nation—-including Israel—has the absolute right to defend itself from aggression.
But no nation—including Israel—has the right to expect another nation to act as its permanent bodyguard.
Millions of Americans believe they are morally obligated to defend Israel owing to the barbarism of the Holocaust. But America was never a party to this, and has nothing to atone for.
But there is another reason many Americans feel committed to Israel. And it has nothing to do with concern for the fates of Israelis.
It lies in the mythology of the Christian Right. Millions of fundamentalist Christians believe that before Jesus Christ can awaken from his 2,000-year slumber, Israel must first re-conquer every inch of territory it supposedly held during the reign of Kings David and Solomon.
Right-wing Christian fantasy: Dead man hovering
After Christ returns, they believe, the Jews will face a choice: Become Christians or go to hell. For evangelical Christians, Jews remain the eternal “Christ killers.”
And if Jews must assume temporary control of the Middle East to bring about the return of a man who died 2,000 years ago, so be it.
Many Right-wing members of the House of Representatives and Senate share this utterly irrational belief—thus proving their unfitness for public office.
Fourth, the United States and its Western European allies should erect a “Sand Curtain” around the Middle East.
For 44 years—1947 to 1991—the United States and the Soviet Union were locked in a Cold War. Essentially, the United States drew a ring around the Soviet Union—including those nations its armies had seized following the defeat of Nazi Germany in 1945.
The United States said, in effect: “We can’t liberate the countries you’re now occupying”—because that would have triggered a nuclear World War III. “But we won’t allow you to occupy and enslave any other countries. And if you try to do so, it will mean total war.”
That’s why America did nothing to aid Hungarians when they overthrew their Soviet occupiers in 1956. That rebellion was quickly and brutally crushed.
And the United States stood by when Soviet tanks rolled into Prague in 1968 after Czechoslovakia dared to relax controls over its citizens.
Fifth, a “Sand Curtain” around the Middle East would work as follows:
America would withdraw all of its forces from the Middle East—but keep a good portion stationed in Europe.
The President would then publicly announce: “From now on, you are the masters of your own destinies—so long as what you do affects only those of you living in the Middle East.
“We recognize that barbarism and violence have always been a part of life in the Middle East. And we don’t expect this to change.
“So go ahead and destroy as many of your own citizens as you wish—either because they’re Jewish or Christians, or because Sunni Muslims hate Shiite Muslims and Shiite Muslims hate Sunni Muslims.
“Just don’t do anything that poses a threat to those living outside your barbaric lands. In short: Western Europe and the United States are strictly off-limits to you.
“If you aim your aggression at either, we will consider this an act of war and use all the weapons at our disposal—including nuclear ones—to wipe you from the face of the Earth.“
The United States cannot enforce peace between Islamics and Israelis. Nor between Christians and Islamics. Nor between Islamics and Islamics.
But it can impose an embargo to confine such barbarism to only the Middle East.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Politics, Social commentary on January 3, 2020 at 12:03 am
“I have news for everybody: Get over it. There’s going to be political influence in foreign policy.”
The speaker was White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney. And in an October 17 press conference, he was trying to put the best possible spin on President Donald Trump’s latest outrage: An attempt to extort a “favor” from the president of Ukraine.
In July, 2019, Trump told Mulvaney to withhold almost $400 million in promised military aid for Ukraine, which faces increasing aggression from Russia.
On July 25, Trump telephoned Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to “request” a “favor”: Investigate Democratic Presidential Candidate Joe Biden and his son, Hunter, who had had business dealings in Ukraine.The reason for such an investigation: To find embarrassing “dirt” on Biden.
Donald Trump
But then a CIA whistleblower filed a complaint about the extortion attempt—and the media and Congress soon learned of it.
Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., tweeted: “The transcript of the call reads like a classic mob shakedown: — We do a lot for Ukraine — There’s not much reciprocity — I have a favor to ask — Investigate my opponent — My people will be in touch — Nice country you got there. It would be a shame if something happened to her.”
On September 24, 2019, Nancy Pelosi, speaker to the House of Representatives, announced a formal impeachment inquiry into Trump.
As far as known, this marked a first in American foreign policy: Trying to extort a patently illegal favor from an ally.
During World War II, President Franklin D. Roosevelt didn’t hesitate to leverage the great economic and military power of the United States to gain concessions from Winston Churchill, the prime minister of Great Britain.
At Roosevelt’s insistence, for example, it was an American—General Dwight D. Eisenhower—who was appointed Supreme Allied Commander in Europe. Had the British gotten their way, the post would have almost certainly gone to British Field Marshal Bernard Law Montgomery.
Roosevelt’s insistence, however, had nothing to do with personally benefiting himself.
But the unpleasant truth remains that subverting the governments of other countries is a right that Americans have long reserved for themselves. For example:
- Between 1898 and 1934, the United States repeatedly intervened with military force in Central America and the Caribbean.
- Americans staged invasions of Honduras in 1903, 1907, 1911, 1912, 1919, 1924 and 1925 to defend U.S. interests. These were defined as Standard Oil and the United Fruit Company.
- The United States occupied Nicaragua almost continuously from 1912 to 1933. Its legacy was the imposition of the tyrannical Somoza family, which ruled from 1936 to 1979.
- The United States occupied Haiti from 1915 to 1934. American banks had lent money to Haiti and requested American government intervention.
- In 1918, 13,000 American soldiers joined armies from Europe and Japan to overthrow the new Soviet government and restore the previous Tsarist regime. By 1920, the invading forces proved unsuccessful and withdrew.
Allied troops parading in Vladivostok, 1918
- In 1953, the Eisenhower administration ordered the CIA to overthrew the democratically-elected government of of Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh. His crime: Nationalizing the Iranian oil industry, which had been under British control since 1913.
- He was succeeded by Mohammad-Reza Shah Phlavi. Whereas Mossadeddgh had ruled as a constitutional monarch, Phlavi was a dictator who depended on United States government support to retain power until he was overthrown in 1979 by the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.
- In 1954, the CIA overthrew the democratically-elected government of Guatemalan President Jacobo Arbenz. His crime: Installing a series of reforms that expanded the right to vote, allowed workers to organize, legitimized political parties and allowed public debate. Most infuriating to American Right-wingers: His agrarian reform law, which expropriated parts of large land-holdings and redistributed them to agricultural laborers.
- From 1959 until 1963, the United States government was obsessed with overthrowing the revolutionary Cuban government of Fidel Castro. Although not democratically elected, Castro was wildly popular in Cuba for overthrowing the dictatorial Fulgencio Batista.
- On April 17, 1961, over 1,400 CIA-trained Cuban exiles invaded Cuba at the Bay of Pigs. Cuban military forces crushed the invasion in three days.
- Infuriated with the failure of the Bay of Pigs invasion, President John F. Kennedy authorized “Operation Mongoose” to remove Castro through sabotage and assassination. The CIA, wanting to please Kennedy, teamed up with the Mafia, which wanted to resurrect its casinos on the island.
Ernesto “Che” Guevera and Fidel Castro
- In 1970, President Richard M. Nixon ordered the CIA to prevent Marxist Salvador Allende from being democratically elected as president of Chile. When that failed, he ordered the CIA to overthrow Allende.
- Allende’s crime: A series of liberal reforms, including nationalizing large-scale industries (notably copper mining and banking). In 1973, he was overthrown by Chilean army units and national police. He was followed by Right-wing dictator Augusto Pinochet, who slaughtered 3,200 political dissidents, imprisoned 30,000 and forced another 200,000 Chileans into exile.
Americans reacted to all these attempts—successful and unsuccessful—with indifference or outright support.
The popular 1960s TV series, “Mission: Impossible,” regularly depicted a CIA-type agency supporting regimes “we” liked or toppling those “we” didn’t.
Americans generally assume their Presidents and Congress know best who is a “friend” and who is an “enemy.” America’s friends often turn out, for the most part, to be Right-wing dictators like Fulgencio Batista, Augusto Pinochet and Mohammad-Reza Shah Phlavi.
And its enemies often turn out to be liberal reformers like Augusto Sandino, Jacobo Arbenz, Mohammad Mosaddegh and Salvador Allende.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law Enforcement, Military, Politics, Social commentary on December 2, 2019 at 12:13 am
Americans are suckers for children. Even if many of them might come wrapped in suicide vests.
On September 2, 2015, the body of a three-year old Syrian boy named Alan Kurdi washed ashore on a beach in Bodrum, Turkey.
He and his family had boarded a small rubber boat to reach Europe amid the carnage of the Syrian civil war. The boat capsized.
The resulting photo flashed around the world and triggered international demands by humanitarian organizations that the West “do something.”
Drowned Alan Kurdi lies on a Turkish beach
Only eight days later, on September 10, 2015, the administration of President Barack Obama announced that it would take in at least 10,000 displaced Syrian refugees over the next year. That was in addition to the 2,000 Islamic refugees the United States had already accepted.
Almost one year later—on August 17, 2016—another photo captured the world’s attention.
It depicted a five-year-old Syrian boy named Omran Daqneesh sitting in an ambulance. Covered head to toe in dust, his face bloodied, he seemed dazed. He had been pulled out of a building hit by an airstrike in Aleppo, Syria.
Once again, demands arose among liberal interventionists, especially in the United States: “We must do something.”
All of which overlooks the increasing threat posed to the United States by Islamic terrorism.
According to U.S. Census data, America legally welcomes about 100,000 Muslim immigrants each year. This represents the fastest growing segment of immigrants coming to the United States.
The Pew Research Center estimates there are 2.5 million Islamics in the United States. The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) puts the figure at seven million.
The Troubling Math of Muslim Migration | National Review Online
Meanwhile, the FBI is being overwhelmed by the demands of countering Islamic terrorism against the United States.
On July 8, 2015, then-FBI director James Comey testified before Congress about the increasing burdens his agency faced in combating terrorism.
“We are stopping these things [Islamic terror plots] so far through tremendous hard work, the use of sources, the use of online undercovers. But it is incredibly difficult. I cannot see [the FBI’s] stopping these [plots] indefinitely.”
The FBI has only 35,000 agents and analysts—against seven million potential suspects. And only a portion of those agents and analysts are charged with investigating terrorism.
And even children, for all their supposed innocence, are not to be ignored as potential weapons of Islamic terrorist organizations.
On August 20, 2016, a suicide bomber aged between 12 and 14 attacked a Kurdish wedding party in Gaziantep, Turkey, killing at least 51 people. Preliminary evidence indicated that the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) was behind the attack.
Palestinian child suicide bomber
America may well become a similar target for child suicide bombers.
How did all of this come to be?
On March 15, 2011, protests broke out in Syria, with demonstrators demanding political reforms and the ouster of dictator Bashar al-Assad.
These protests, met with government repression, continued to grow into a wholesale civil war. By April 23, 2016, the United Nations estimated that 400,000 Syrians had so far died in the conflict.
Put in a positive way:
- More than 400,000 potential or actual Islamic terrorists will never again pose a threat to the United States or Western Europe.
- Additional thousands are certain to follow their example.
- And the United States cannot be held in any way responsible for it.
But Americans and Europeans have chosen to see these positives as negatives.
The United Nations refugee Agency, UNHCR, estimated that 366,402 refugees and migrants crossed the Mediterranean Sea to Europe in 2015. And while the West has thrown open its doors to fleeing Syrians, the reaction of neighboring Islamic nations has been entirely different.
This was brutally but accurately depicted in a cartoon of wealthy Arab rulers looking on indifferently at the body of Alan Kurdi.
While European nations are being swamped by hundreds of thousands of these uninvited “guests,” the Arab world’s wealthiest nations are doing almost nothing for Syria’s refugees.
According to Amnesty International, the “six Gulf countries—Qatar, United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Oman and Bahrain—have offered zero resettlement places to Syrian refugees.”
These nations are far closer to Syria than are Europe and the United States. And they contain some of the Arab world’s largest military budgets and its highest standards of living.
Note the contradiction: Democratic, non-Islamic countries are exposing themselves to increasing numbers of potential—if not actual—Islamic terrorists.
Meanwhile, the Arab world—awash in petrodollars and land—is closing its own doors to Syrian refugees.
The Arab world’s wealthiest nations are doing next to nothing for Syria’s refugees – The Washington Post
* * * * *
During the 1980s, the United States saw the terroristic acts of Islamic nations as mere crimes, and not acts of war.
The September 11, 2001 terror attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center changed that.
For the last 18 years, the United States military has actively fought Islamics in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya. And now Syria.
To be admitting huge numbers of a population with which the United States is now waging all-out war is worse than stupid. It is a guarantee of national suicide.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Military, Politics, Social commentary on October 2, 2019 at 12:28 am
On June 12, 2019, during an interview with ABC News correspondent George Stephanopoulos, President Donald Trump said he would accept derogatory information on his 2020 opponents from hostile nations like Russia and China:
“It’s not an interference, they have information. I think I’d take it. If I thought there was something wrong, I’d go maybe to the FBI. If I thought there was something wrong. But when somebody comes up with oppo research, right, they come up with oppo research.
“The FBI doesn’t have enough agents to take care of it, but you go and talk honestly to congressmen, they all do it, they always have. And that’s the way it is. It’s called oppo research.”
But Trump didn’t say he planned to extort derogatory information about his opponents from Ukraine.
In July, 2019, he told his acting chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, to withhold almost $400 million in promised military aid for Ukraine, which faces increasing aggression from Russia.
On July 25, Trump telephoned Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to “request” a “favor”: Investigate Democratic Presidential Candidate Joe Biden and his son, Hunter, who had had business dealings in Ukraine.
The reason for such an investigation: To find embarrassing “dirt” on Biden.
Donald Trump
But then a CIA whistleblower filed a complaint about the extortion attempt—and the media and Congress soon learned of it.
Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., tweeted: “The transcript of the call reads like a classic mob shakedown: — We do a lot for Ukraine — There’s not much reciprocity — I have a favor to ask — Investigate my opponent — My people will be in touch — Nice country you got there. It would be a shame if something happened to her.”
On September 24, 2019, Nancy Pelosi, speaker to the House of Representatives, announced a formal impeachment inquiry into Trump.
In truth, however, subverting the governments of other countries is a right that Americans have long reserved for themselves. For example:
- Between 1898 and 1934, the United States repeatedly intervened with military force in Central America and the Caribbean.
- Americans staged invasions of Honduras in 1903, 1907, 1911, 1912, 1919, 1924 and 1925 to defend U.S. interests. These were defined as Standard Oil and the United Fruit Company.
- The United States occupied Nicaragua almost continuously from 1912 to 1933. Its legacy was the imposition of the tyrannical Somoza family, which ruled from 1936 to 1979.
- The United States occupied Haiti from 1915 to 1934. American banks had lent money to Haiti and requested American government intervention.
- In 1918, 13,000 American soldiers joined armies from Europe and Japan to overthrow the new Soviet government and restore the previous Tsarist regime. By 1920, the invading forces proved unsuccessful and withdrew.
Allied troops parading in Vladivostok, 1918
- In 1953, the Eisenhower administration ordered the CIA to overthrew the democratically-elected government of of Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh. His crime: Nationalizing the Iranian oil industry, which had been under British control since 1913.
- He was succeeded by Mohammad-Reza Shah Phlavi. Whereas Mossadeddgh had ruled as a constitutional monarch, Phlavi was a dictator who depended on United States government support to retain power until he was overthrown in 1979 by the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.
- In 1954, the CIA overthrew the democratically-elected government of Guatemalan President Jacobo Arbenz. His crime: Installing a series of reforms that expanded the right to vote, allowed workers to organize, legitimized political parties and allowed public debate. Most infuriating to American Right-wingers: His agrarian reform law, which expropriated parts of large land-holdings and redistributed them to agricultural laborers.
- From 1959 until 1963, the United States government was obsessed with overthrowing the revolutionary Cuban government of Fidel Castro. Although not democratically elected, Castro was wildly popular in Cuba for overthrowing the dictatorial Fulgencio Batista.
- On April 17, 1961, over 1,400 CIA-trained Cuban exiles invaded Cuba at the Bay of Pigs. Cuban military forces crushed the invasion in three days.
- Infuriated with the failure of the Bay of Pigs invasion, President John F. Kennedy authorized “Operation Mongoose” to remove Castro through sabotage and assassination. The CIA, wanting to please Kennedy, teamed up with the Mafia, which wanted to resurrect its casinos on the island.
Ernesto “Che” Guevera and Fidel Castro
- In 1970, President Richard M. Nixon ordered the CIA to prevent Marxist Salvador Allende from being democratically elected as president of Chile. When that failed, he ordered the CIA to overthrow Allende.
- Allende’s crime: A series of liberal reforms, including nationalizing large-scale industries (notably copper mining and banking). In 1973, he was overthrown by Chilean army units and national police. He was followed by Right-wing dictator Augusto Pinochet, who slaughtered 3,200 political dissidents, imprisoned 30,000 and forced another 200,000 Chileans into exile.
Americans reacted to all these attempts—successful and unsuccessful—with indifference or outright support.
The popular 1960s TV series, “Mission: Impossible,” regularly depicted a CIA-type agency supporting regimes “we” liked or toppling those “we” didn’t.
Americans generally assume their Presidents and Congress know best who is a “friend” and who is an “enemy.” America’s friends often turn out, for the most part, to be Right-wing dictators like Fulgencio Batista, Augusto Pinochet and Mohammad-Reza Shah Phlavi.
And its enemies often turn out to be liberal reformers like Augusto Sandino, Jacobo Arbenz, Mohammad Mosaddegh and Salvador Allende.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Politics, Social commentary on September 24, 2019 at 12:10 am
Seven years after Congress passed the Affordable Care Act (ACA) Republicans remained determined to deny giving all Americans access to healthcare.
A July 29, 2017 Newsweek article, “GOP Aims to Kill Obamacare Yet Again After Failing 70 Times,” states: “Newsweek has found at least 70 Republican-led attempts to repeal, modify or otherwise curb the Affordable Care Act [ACA] since its inception as law on March 23, 2010.”
Barack Obama
The previous President, George W. Bush, had lied the nation into a needless and destructive war with Iraq by repeatedly claiming that:
- Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden had teamed up to bring on 9/11;
- Saddam was going to get a nuclear weapon; or
- Saddam already had a nuclear weapon and intended to use it against the United States.
That war cost the lives of 4,486 Americans and well over $1 trillion.
And Republicans had fully supported those expenditures—of lives and money.
And Bush—taking a “hands-off-business” attitude—had presided over the 2008 Wall Street “meltdown.” By the time Obama took office in 2009, the unchecked greed and stupidity of wealthy businessmen threatened to bankrupt the country.
George W. Bush
But for the American Right, these weren’t crimes. They were simply incidents to be ignored or arrogantly explained away.
And there was always the predictable rants about the dangers of “socialized medicine.” (The fact that countries like France and Britain have had “socialized medicine” for decades and are still solvent and powerful has no meaning for these ideologues.)
But then President Obama sought to provide full medical coverage for all Americans, regardless of wealth.
And that—for the American Right—was a crime beyond forgiveness.
As President Obama’s best-known achievement, its destruction by the Supreme Court would discredit the reputation of its creator. And this would arm Republicans with a potent election-time weapon for making Obama a one-term President.
On June 28, 2012, the United States Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the Act, otherwise known as Obamacare.
Republicans expected this to be their day. The day when the Court struck down the ACA. It would be a day to celebrate—and to revel in the sheer ecstasy of their hatred for the country’s first black President.
Among those Right-wingers poised to celebrate on the morning of June 28 was Ohio Congresswoman Jean Schmidt.
Jean Schmidt
Wearing a white dress, she stood in front of the Supreme Court waiting to hear about the healthcare ruling—when the joyful news came: The Court had ruled the Act was not enforceable under the interstate commerce clause of the Constitution!
This was in fact true—and reported on CNN and Fox News. But it was not the whole story.
“Yes! Yes!” Schmidt screamed. “Oh, what else? Thank God! No, they struck down the individual mandate! They took it away! Yes!”
Her fascistic joy manifested itself in ear-splitting screeches and air punches. Her entire body rocked up and down, shuddering with the ecstasy of passion. She resembled, more than anything else, a woman caught up in the frenzy of an orgasm.
In this case, an orgasm of pure, undisguised hatred—
- for the Affordable Healthcare Act;
- for those millions of uninsured Americans needing healthcare coverage; and,
- above all, for the President himself.
It was a lust so demonic, so characteristic of the all-out, lethal hatred that Republicans aimed at Obama, that it had to be seen for its full, revolting quality to be felt.
Click here: Rep “Mean Jean” Schmidt Wigs Out Thinking Supreme Court Struck Down Health Care Reform – YouTube
But then came the bad news.
The Court had ruled that the Act was Constitutional under the power of the Congress to levy taxes. Thus, the hated individual mandate—requiring the wealthy to buy insurance—was legal after all.
There are three major reasons for Republicans’ vicious opposition to the Affordable Care Act:
- It was backed by and implemented under a black President;
- Republicans want to placate their “campaign contributors” (i.e., bribers) in the insurance and medical industries; and
- By making healthcare unavailable to poor and middle-class Americans, they expect to kill off, by illness and disability, millions of people they despise and consider disposable.
This last goal dovetails nicely with Republicans’ all-out assault on Social Security, Medicare and social services programs. By eliminating these social safety nets, Republicans intend to deprive their recipients of access to food, clothing and shelter.
If this seems outrageous, consider this:
When Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union in 1941, the Wehrmacht slaughtered at least 2.6 million captured Russians without firing a shot. They were deliberately fenced out in the cold without medical care or food.
And while Republicans attack their critics as Nazis, they have reached into the depths of Nazi history for many of their goals.
What Ronald Reagan once said about the leadership of the Soviet Union now applies to the leadership of his own party: “The only morality they recognize is what will further their cause, meaning they reserve unto themselves the right to commit any crime, to lie, to cheat.”
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on August 26, 2019 at 12:19 am
In 2018, Brian Ellison was a Libertarian candidate for United States Senator from Michigan. And unlike other political candidates, he had a unique position on homelessness.
Some politicians want to outlaw homeless encampments. Others want to spend billions on low-cost housing for this population.
Ellison, instead, wanted to arm bums with guns. Specifically, with pump-action shotguns.
“Get us a group of 20 homeless people that we could train, help them understand how the shotgun works, how to maintain it, how to fire it,” Ellison told Newsweek. “And equip them with a shotgun, a sling and some shells so they can protect themselves.”
Brian Ellison
Actually, the shotgun was not Ellison’s first choice of weaponry for his intended beneficiaries.
“Frankly I think the ideal weapon would be a pistol,” he told The Guardian, “but due to the licensing requirements in the state we’re going to have a hard enough time getting homeless people shotguns as it is.
“Getting them pistols is probably next to impossible. The pistols need to be registered, people have to have addresses.”
But “open-carrying a long gun is completely legal. So we thought that pump-action shotguns were a suitable alternative to a pistol.”
Winchester Model 1912-gauge pump-action shotgun
Ellison is a former Army soldier who served in Iraq.
Apparently that experience didn’t teach him that when too many people have guns, no one is safe.
Ellison also wanted to abolish the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Transportation Security Administration, and localize the Department of Education.
“I’m basically entirely opposed to any government program,” said Ellison.
Unless it’s a government program to arm bums with guns.
This population can be roughly divided into four categories:
- Druggies
- Drunks
- Mental cases and
- Bums.
The homeless are “constantly victims of violent crime,” said Ellison, who believes that giving them firearms would provide a deterrent.
It would also provide a real incentive for tax-paying citizens to hand over their money the moment a shotgun-carrying DDMB confronts them on the street.
But Ellison had an answer for this: “Pre-qualify” DDMBs as suitable candidates to own firearms:
“The first thing that we’re gonna do is ask them if they think this is something that would benefit them. We’re certainly not trying to force anything on anybody.”
Except, of course, on those citizens being hit on daily—sometimes hourly—by DDMBs for money.
Naturally, ammunition would be provided—at state expense—for the shotguns. This would come in five- or six-shell magazines.
Ellison said that more shells would be provided if the owners legitimately used their guns to defend themselves.
But if they used their ammo for “shooting cans in somebody’s private property” then they would not be given more shells.
A potential beneficiary of Ellison’s “guns for bums” program
Ellison wasn’t worried that his intended beneficiaries might use the guns for murder or robbery: “Well, are you worried about the police being armed with military weapons? I am.
“The world we live in is a scary world, where the police who used to dress in short-sleeved shirts and carry a revolver now have long rifles with scopes and bulletproof vests and armored vehicles.
“And quite frankly that scares me much more than a homeless person trying to defend themselves with a shotgun.”
This, of course, ignores the fact that police are pre-qualified with firearms—and every shooting by officers in a big-city police department is thoroughly investigated.
Their firearms are turned in for investigation. And the officers who used them can be disciplined and even prosecuted if a police chief and/or prosecutor believes the shooting was improper or illegal.
And who would make such lethal weaponry available to street people?
“There are a lot of charities out there that help to provide the homeless with food, housing, job training, all kinds of stuff,” said Ellison. “There’s not a charity out there that helps them learn how to protect themselves. What’s going to drive this is popular support.”
Just how many DDMBs could receive Ellison’s special gift? In Michigan, there are more than 56,000 of them.
Ellison remarked that the population is “constantly victims of violent crime” in his state.
His website page opened with: “LIBERTARIANISM MEANS ALL OF YOUR FREEDOMS ALL OF THE TIME.” And it outlined his core beliefs:
“We as a people must admit that the many laws, regulations, and policies established over the years in an effort to ‘promote social welfare’ have failed in their stated purpose. These laws and regulations now represent the greatest threat to our natural rights, and must be repealed.
“Abroad, we must change how we engage the rest of the world, leading by example, not force of arms….Imperialism was not the intent of our founders nor is it the desire of the majority of Americans.”
“In order to move forward in these beliefs,” said his website, “we must remember that while our ideology is our core, we must also be practical and reasonable in their implementation.”
Apparently, many voters decided that arming bums with guns wasn’t “practical and reasonable.” Ellison’s opponent, Democratic incumbent Debbie Stabenow, defeated him in the general election on November 6, 2018.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Military, Politics, Social commentary on June 14, 2019 at 12:09 am
On June 12, during an interview with ABC News correspondent George Stephanopoulos, President Donald Trump said he would accept information on his 2020 opponents from hostile nations like Russia and China:
“It’s not an interference, they have information. I think I’d take it. If I thought there was something wrong, I’d go maybe to the FBI. If I thought there was something wrong. But when somebody comes up with oppo research, right, they come up with oppo research.
“The FBI doesn’t have enough agents to take care of it, but you go and talk honestly to congressmen, they all do it, they always have. And that’s the way it is. It’s called oppo research.”
The reaction was nationwide outrage.
Donald Trump
Apparently, most Americans don’t like having their elections subverted by enemy nations.
Subverting the governments of other countries is a right that Americans have long reserved for themselves. For example:
- Between 1898 and 1934, the United States repeatedly intervened with military force in Central America and the Caribbean.
- Americans staged invasions of Honduras in 1903, 1907, 1911, 1912, 1919, 1924 and 1925 to defend U.S. interests. These were defined as Standard Oil and the United Fruit Company.
- The United States occupied Nicaragua almost continuously from 1912 to 1933. Its legacy was the imposition of the tyrannical Somoza family, which ruled from 1936 to 1979.
- The United States occupied Haiti from 1915 to 1934. American banks had lent money to Haiti and requested American government intervention.
- In 1918, 13,000 American soldiers joined armies from Europe and Japan to overthrow the new Soviet government and restore the previous Tsarist regime. By 1920, the invading forces proved unsuccessful and withdrew.
Allied troops parading in Vladivostok, 1918
- From 1946 to 1949, the United States provided military, logistical and other aid to the Right-wing Chinese Nationalist Party of Chiang Kai-shek. Its opponent were Communist forces led by Mao Tse-Tung, who ultimately proved victorious.
- In 1953, the Eisenhower administration ordered the CIA to overthrew the democratically-elected government of of Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh. His crime: Nationalizing the Iranian oil industry, which had been under British control since 1913.
- He was succeeded by Mohammad-Reza Shah Phlavi. Whereas Mossadeddgh had ruled as a constitutional monarch, Phlavi was a dictator who depended on United States government support to retain power until he was overthrown in 1979 by the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.
- In 1954, the CIA overthrew the democratically-elected government of Guatemalan President Jacobo Arbenz. His crime: Installing a series of reforms that expanded the right to vote, allowed workers to organize, legitimized political parties and allowed public debate. Most infuriating to American Right-wingers: His agrarian reform law, which expropriated parts of large land-holdings and redistributed them to agricultural laborers.
- The United Fruit Company lobbied the United States government to overthrow him—and the CIA went into action. Arbenz was replaced by the first of a series of brutal Right-wing dictators.
- From 1959 until 1963, the United States government was obsessed with overthrowing the revolutionary Cuban government of Fidel Castro. Although not democratically elected, Castro was wildly popular in Cuba for overthrowing the dictatorial Fulgencio Batista.
- On April 17, 1961, over 1,400 CIA-trained Cuban exiles invaded Cuba at the Bay of Pigs. Cuban military forces crushed the invasion in three days.
- Infuriated with the failure of the Bay of Pigs invasion, President John F. Kennedy authorized “Operation Mongoose” to remove Castro through sabotage and assassination. The CIA, wanting to please Kennedy, teamed up with the Mafia, which wanted to resurrect its casinos on the island.
- Among the tactics used: Hiring Cuban gangsters to murder police officials and Soviet technicians; sabotaging mines; using biological and chemical warfare against the Cuban sugar industry. None of these proved successful in assassinating Castro nor overturning his regime.
Ernesto “Che” Guevera and Fidel Castro
- In 1970, President Richard M. Nixon ordered the CIA to prevent Marxist Salvador Allende from being democratically elected as president of Chile. When that failed, he ordered the CIA to overthrow Allende.
- Allende’s crime: A series of liberal reforms, including nationalizing large-scale industries (notably copper mining and banking. In 1973, he was overthrown by Chilean army units and national police. He was followed by Right-wing dictator Augusto Pinochet, who slaughtered 3,200 political dissidents, imprisoned 30,000 and forced another 200,000 Chileans into exile.
Americans reacted to all these attempts—successful and unsuccessful—with indifference or outright support.
The popular 1960s TV series, “Mission: Impossible,” regularly depicted a CIA-type agency supporting regimes “we” liked or toppling those “we” didn’t.
Americans generally assume their Presidents and Congress know best who is a “friend” and who is an “enemy.” America’s friends often turn out, for the most part, to be Right-wing dictators like Chiang Kai-Shek, Fulgencio Batista, Augusto Pinochet and Mohammad-Reza Shah Phlavi.
And its enemies often turn out to be liberal reformers like Augusto Sandino, Mohammad Mosaddegh and Salvador Allende.
Americans favor intervention for the flimsiest of reasons. In 2003, President George W. Bush claimed Iraq’s dictator, Saddam Hussein, had plotted 9/11 with Osama bin Laden. There was absolutely no proof to substantiate this, yet Americans overwhelmingly supported Bush’s unprovoked invasion of Iraq.
But now the shoe is on the other foot.
Americans are now tasting the medicine they have dished out to so many other countries. And they find it as repugnant as those countries have found the American brand.
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FASCISM RISING: 1933 GERMANY, 2016 AMERICA
In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Politics, Social commentary on February 13, 2020 at 12:12 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.
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.
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 15 years to do so.
In 2015, Donald Trump 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.”
Birthrates among non-whites 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.
Since Trump became President, he has:
All of this should be remembered the next time an American blames Germans for their embrace of Adolf Hitler.
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