After holding office little more than a year, President Joseph Biden finds himself under unrelenting assault by Republicans for his domestic and foreign policies.
Although he no doubt believes otherwise, many of his current problems are self-inflicted. But they can be resolved—and he can still be re-elected in 2024—if he breaks with his longtime attitude of: “Can’t we all just get along?”
In Part One of this series, three such remedies were listed. Here are the remaining two.
WEAPON #4: REASSURE VOTERS THAT HE IS ATTACKING INFLATION IN A WAY THEY CAN UNDERSTAND
When people are frightened and angry, they look for simple answers and solutions—and scapegoats. That is how Republicans deal with crises.
Republicans learned long ago that most voters aren’t moved by appeals to their rationality. Instead, what counts with them is emotions.
And Republicans have become experts at appealing to these—especially the baser ones. For Republicans, the Big Three are: Hatred, Greed, Fear.
President Biden should do the same in combating rising food prices, which are frightening and angering millions.
Instead of accepting the conventional explanation of “supply chain difficulties,” he should blame rising prices on the entrenched greed of corporations. In many cases, it no doubt happens to be true.
This will be widely accepted and divert criticism of the President.
More importantly, Biden should propose a bill to make price gouging a national crime, punishable by a lengthy prison term. It can be modeled on the anti-extortion provisions in the Racketeer Influenced Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act.
No matter what happens on the bill, the President faces a win/win situation.
If it passes, he can rightly take credit for it and reap the popularity certain to result. And if Republicans block its passage, he can rightly blame them, thus ensuring that he and Democrats are seen as “the people’s champions.”
WEAPON #5: ACCUSE REPUBLICANS OF SUPPORTING DICTATORSHIP
Republicans have enthusiastically embraced Donald Trump’s Big Lie that the 2020 election was stolen from him—despite overwhelming evidence that it wasn’t.
Legislators in Republican-controlled states are now working furiously to corrupt election machinery at state and local levels so they can nullify the votes of millions of Democrats in the 2022 and 2024 elections.
Their ultimate goal: Restore a lifelong criminal and Russia-appeasing traitor to absolute power as “President-for-Life.”
Donald Trump
In 1968, Richard Nixon ran for President on the slogan: “This time, vote like your whole world depends on it.”
Democrats should make this their slogan for 2022—and 2024: “This time, vote like your whole democracy depends on it.”
* * * * *
Millions of Americans believe that only liberals can be Communist sympathizers and traitors. This is the direct result of decades of Republican propaganda dating back to 1946.
Republicans, having lost the White House from 1932 to 1948, furiously sought a return to power. And they found their remedy in attacking the patriotism of their fellow Americans—ushering in the infamous era of Joseph McCarthy, Richard Nixon and the Hollywood Blacklist.
Democrats need to similarly damn Republicans with the charge of “Traitor.” The difference: There is plenty of evidence—much of it on video—to document its truth.
For example:
- On Right-wing Fox News Network, its popular broadcaster, Tucker Carlson, asked: “Why is it disloyal to side with Russia but loyal to side with Ukraine?”
- Arkansas’ Republican United States Senator Tom Cotton has blamed Putin’s aggression against Ukraine on Biden: “It is a result of a year of Joe Biden’s impotence and incompetence towards Russia in particular and in foreign policy more generally.”
- More than 60% of Democrats view Putin very unfavorably, but only 30 to 40% of Republicans do.
As a whole, Democrats have shown themselves indifferent to or ignorant of the power of effective language. They have also refused to see most of their fellow Americans for what they are.
Historically, the United States has always been a highly conservative nation. Going from “conservative” to “Fascist” is a relatively easy step—as millions of Donald Trump’s supporters have proven.
On April 27, 2020, Joe Scarborough offered an important insight about why most Americans ignored Trump’s crimes and outrages for so long: “I’ve said from the very beginning: You can lie about independent counsels, people won’t listen. You can lie about former FBI directors—“
MIKA BRZEZINSKI: “It doesn’t impact their lives.”
JOE SCARBOROUGH: “They’re still going to work, the kids are doing fine, they’ve got enough money to pay their rent, to pay their mortgage, You can even lie about the Ukraine call—they don’t really care.”
But COVID-19 changed all that. Suddenly, millions of Americans found themselves stuck at home with their children. Many of them couldn’t go to work—because they were sick or their jobs had disappeared. Their 401Ks suddenly became worthless.
Suddenly, “the happy time” for Americans was over—just as it had ended for Nazi Germany after Adolf Hitler invaded the Soviet Union in 1941.Had COVID-19 not intervened, Trump would still be President.
And he wouldn’t have had to call on aid from Vladimir Putin. Millions of Right-wing, “I’ve-got-mine-so-screw-you” Americans would have happily returned him to office as “President-for-Life.”
Democrats have powerful weapons to use against their sworn Republican enemies. But first they must recognize Republicans as their enemies.
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REWRITING HISTORY: FIRST SOVIET COMMUNISTS, NOW AMERICAN FASCISTS
In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Military, Politics, Social commentary on February 7, 2022 at 12:11 amSixty-nine years ago, Joseph Stalin, absolute dictator of the Soviet Union, died on March 5, 1953.
And, 69 years later, Russians are still trying to come to terms with his almost 30-year legacy of mass imprisonment, wholesale executions, man-made famine and forced labor.
Of the eight leaders who succeeded Stalin, only Mikhail Gorbachev dared to confront the horrors of the Stalinist past. He recognized that the Soviet Union had reached a point of economic and political stagnation.
And he believed the only way to revitalize Communist society was to face the brutal truths of the Soviet past so new generations of Russians could reach beyond them to create the ideal “workers paradise.”
That experiment, known as glasnost, or “openness,” lasted through the reigns of Mikhail Gorbachev (1985-1991) and Boris Yeltsin (1991-1999) and ended with the arrival of Vladimir Putin (2000).
The price for this unwillingness to face brutalities of the past—and, worse, to deny that they occurred—has been devastating.
It has been vividly described by David Satter, a former Moscow correspondent and longtime writer on Russia and the Soviet Union for the Financial Times and the Wall Street Journal.
As the dust jacket of his 2012 history, It Was a Long Time Ago and It Neve Happened Anyway, sums up:
“Russia today is haunted by deeds that have not been examined and words that have been left unsaid.
“A serious attempt to understand the meaning of the Communist experience has not been undertaken, and millions of victims of Soviet Communism are all but forgotten.
“In this book David Satter….presents a striking new interpretation of Russia’s great historical tragedy, locating its source in Russia’s failure fully to appreciate the value of the individual in comparison with the objectives of the state.
“Satter explores the moral and spiritual crisis of Russian society. He shows how it is possible for a government to deny the inherent value of its citizens and for the population to agree, and why so many Russians actually mourn the passing of the Soviet regime that denied them fundamental rights.”
Today, Stalin’s estimated 20 million victims—the vast majority of them Russians—are being consigned to oblivion. In their place is the image of Joseph Stalin as the victor of “The Great Patriotic War” against Nazi Germany.
Joseph Stalin
World War II—now over for almost 75 years—remains a pivotal event for Russians. It marks the time when—after horrifically suffering 22 million casualties—the Soviet Union pushed the German armies all the way back to Berlin.
Left out in this history: The Soviet Union received massive amounts of American military equipment from its 1941 invasion to its ultimate triumph in 1945.
Also removed from this history:
It was the German invasion of Poland, on September 1, 1939, that ignited World War II.
But Russian Communists no longer have a monopoly on rewriting the past. Today they have been joined by American Republicans.
Just hours after the January 6, 2021 attempted coup at the United States Capitol Building, 147 Republican lawmakers voted to overturn then-president Donald Trump’s election loss. This followed two months of his lies that the November 3 Presidential election had been stolen.
For more than a year since that election, most Republicans have refused to say whether Joseph Biden was legitimately elected President of the United States.
Reuters asked the office of every lawmaker who voted against certifying Biden’s victory through the Electoral College: “Do you believe that Donald Trump lost the election because of voter fraud?”
Fully 133 lawmakers, or 90%, refused to answer or respond to multiple inquiries.
Among them: Senators Rafael Eduardo “Ted” Cruz and Josh Hawley—who led the coalition of objectors—and Representative Mo Brooks of Alabama, who also tried to overturn the election.
Rafael Eduardo “Ted” Cruz
Hawley claimed in a December 30 statement that some states, particularly Pennsylvania, failed to follow their own state election laws.
That was an argument multiple courts had already rejected.
But he later told CNN: “I was very clear from the beginning that I was never attempting to overturn the election.”
Josh Hawley
On the contrary: His actions had made it abundantly clear that he was attempting to do exactly that.
Hawley refused to respond to Reuters’ multiple inquiries on whether he believed Trump lost because of voter fraud,
Cruz also tried to stretch the truth in two different directions.
In a January 2, 2021 joint statement with 10 other Senators and Senators-elect, he said: “By any measure, the allegations of fraud and irregularities in the 2020 election exceed any in our lifetimes.”
But on January 6—the day of the Capitol attack—Cruz said: “Let me be clear. I am not arguing for setting aside the result of this election.”
In fact, he had been doing exactly that.
And the lies spun by Republicans that Donald Trump had been cheated of victory by fraud directly triggered the treasonous attempt by Trump’s followers to brutally overturn the results of that election.
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