Posts Tagged ‘JOE BIDEN’
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In Bureaucracy, History, Medical, Politics, Social commentary on April 7, 2020 at 12:14 am
On April 3, I received the following email from a longtime friend who has become a fanatical Stormtrumper:
Steffen, WE are worlds apart on our beliefs & knowledge when it comes to political differences. Although I am astonished that I have always referred to you as “an educated & intelligent individual”, I now feel that your opinions are simply based on total hatred because of your negative references.
In other words – you are nothing more than a typical deranged democrat with nothing good to offer this Country nor the American People other than “HATRED” for a duly elected President who will undoubtedly be re-elected in a landslide of the American People..
I felt it necessary to point out to my accuser that I was not “a typical deranged democrat”:
While I am liberal on some issues, I am CONSERVATIVE on others. Unlike you, I DON’T support a man who sides with the former head of the KGB against our own FBI and CIA. If you want an example of this, you need look no further than his dual press conference in Helsinki with Putin on July 16, 2018.
Vladimir Putin
Associated Press Reporter Jonathan Lemire said to Trump: “Just now President Putin denied having anything to do with the election interference in 2016. Every U.S. intelligence agency has concluded that Russia did. My first question for you, sir, is who do you believe?”
Trump responded by attacking Democrats and the FBI as partners in a conspiracy: “You have groups that are wondering why the FBI never took the server, why haven’t they taken the server? Why was the FBI told to leave the office of the Democratic National Committee?
“I have President Putin. He just said it’s not Russia. I will say this: I don’t see any reason why it would be, but I really do want to see the server.”
That, in my view, is treason.
If you choose to support such a man—and you clearly do—that, by extension, makes you an ACCESSORY to his treason.
I felt it necessary to point out that
Your “duly elected President” had the full support of Vladimir Putin and the Russian Intelligence establishment.
[On July 9, 2016, high-ranking members of Trump’s Presidential campaign met at Trump Tower with at least two lobbyists with ties to Russian dictator Vladimir Putin. The participants included:
- Trump’s son, Donald Trump Jr.;
- His son-in-law, Jared Kushner;
- His then-campaign manager, Paul Manafort;
- Natalia Veselnitskaya, a Russian lawyer with ties to Putin; and
- Rinat Akhmetshin, a former Soviet counterintelligence officer suspected of “having ongoing ties to Russian Intelligence.”
Donald Trump
The purpose of that meeting: To gain access to any “dirt” Russian Intelligence could supply on Democratic Presidential Nominee Hillary Clinton.]
But let’s not forget all those dedicated Russian bots who flooded the Internet with real “fake news.” And, as I said earlier in this email, Putin is the only world leader—in fact, the only person, period—Trump has never dared insult.
I had urged my friend to avoid Fox News Network and Donald Trump’s press conferences as sources of reliable information on Coronavirus. He, in turn,
asked me if we should get our updates from [Democratic Presidential candidate] Joe Biden. No—Biden is NOT a doctor. He’s a politician. And when you’re dealing with a deadly pandemic you want medically-sound advice, not political pablum….
Your most recent email follows the pattern used by Trump and his cheerleading chorus at Fox News: It’s filled with insults, but not one actual piece of evidence to back it up.
“Fake news” is the standard response for those who don’t want to provide a rebuttal—because they don’t have the evidence for one and THEY know it most of all.
Dismissing—with insults—any news that doesn’t jibe with how you want things to be is a guaranteed recipe for disaster.
The Original Nazis kept insisting that victory was just around the corner—all the way up to the moment when the Russians were knocking at the Fuhrerbunker.
It didn’t save the First Fuhrer and it won’t save the Second. Nor will it save you.
* * * * *
Many liberals believe that Donald Trump’s base simply doesn’t understand the sheer evil of the man they are following. And that—if only they can be educated on this point—they will desert him.
This is to deny that human beings have a choice—to do good or evil. Following that logic, every member of the Mafia is simply a helpless ignoramus, waiting to be educated out of a lifetime of extortion, drug-trafficking and murder.
The truth is that those who support Donald Trump know exactly why they do so: Because their hatred for millions of their fellow Americans overrides everything else.
So long as Trump feeds into their hatred—of blacks, Hispanics, “uppity” women, liberals, atheists, non-Christians, among others—they will enthusiastically support him.
One day, Donald Trump will be a despicable memory for most Americans—-as Adolf Hitler is for most Germans.
But the millions of hate-filled Right-wingers who elected him and fiercely support him will still be with us, searching for their next champion of hate.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Medical, Politics, Social commentary on April 6, 2020 at 12:15 am
Recently a longtime friend of mine sent me a furious and insulting email. I hadn’t insulted or harmed him in any way, so it came as a total surprise to me—-until I read it.
He and I had long disagreed about the virtues of the Trump administration. I had assumed that politics was one of those areas where we would agree to disagree and still remain on good terms. So you can imagine my surprise when I opened his email and found this waiting for me:
Steffen, WE are worlds apart on our beliefs & knowledge when it comes to political differences. Although I am astonished that I have always referred to you as “an educated & intelligent individual”, I now feel that your opinions are simply based on total hatred because of your negative references.
In other words – you are nothing more than a typical deranged democrat with nothing good to offer this Country nor the American People other than “HATRED” for a duly elected President who will undoubtedly be re-elected in a landslide of the American People..
At first I hesitated to reply. We had been friends for more than 20 years, and I didn’t want to risk ending such a long and otherwise enjoyable friendship. But I quickly decided that a strong reply was not simply in order, but demanded.
Too many people—especially Democrats—-allow such assaults to go unanswered—-and, even worse, unpunished. As a result, they find themselves the victims of even worse attacks.
Here, in part, is the email I sent him in return.
I find it amazing that so many Right-wingers who preach HATRED against millions of their fellow Americans are the first to scream HATRED when those THEY hate refuse to accept their lies or aggression.
For example: 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. That doesn’t sound like a love-filled man to me.
Donald Trump
The Original Nazis behaved the same way: They had no hesitation about invading other people’s countries and massacring their inhabitants. But if a country dared resist their aggression, the Original Fuhrer yelled “They’re attacking me!”
If you HONESTLY look at the way your Commie-kissing Fuhrer has handled the COVID-19 outbreak—-and NOT in the way Fox News is portraying it–then you must realize that he is responsible for its now infecting so many tens of thousands of Americans.
For starters: In 2018, he gutted the White House Pandemic Office which President Obama had set up in 2014 at the time of the Ebola outbreak in West Africa. The purpose of that office was to act as an early-warning system for the next epidemic.
But Trump, as a lifelong racist, has tried since taking office to destroy every vestige of Obama’s legacy. So, naturally, the White House Pandemic Office had to go.
To put this in military terms: It was like deliberately shutting off the radar system before an enemy launched a devastating airstrike.
COVID-19 virus
News of the COVID-19 outbreak emerged by the end of December, 2019. But your Fuhrer frittered away the first two months of the year.
He diminished its virulence. He claimed it was no more than a version of the common cold. He didn’t take action to see that the nation’s hospitals were supplied with medical equipment for combating a mass plague.
He has blamed governors for the virus that is now sweeping the nation—-instead of doing what a LEGITIMATE President does and taking it upon himself to organize an effective, well-coordinated response to the emergency.
Why? because he didn’t want to say or do anything that might cause the almighty stock market to fall. From Day One of his Fuhrership he has bragged that the stock market owed its success entirely to him. He feared that if it fell, so would his chances to be re-elected—-which is his ONE, OVER-ARCHING OBSESSION.
Responding to his charge that I was “nothing more than “a typical deranged democrat” I wrote:
I have plenty of criticisms to offer the Democrats—-most importantly, their general tendency toward cowardice every time a Republican yells “boo!” at them. The Democrats, for the most part, offer the country a party of Neville Chamberlains when what it desperately needs is a party of Winston Churchills.
I AM admittedly liberal on some things—-such as the right of a woman to decide for herself whether she wants to have children.
While I am liberal on some issues, I am CONSERVATIVE on others. Unlike you, I DON’T support a man who sides with the former head of the KGB against our own FBI and CIA. If you want an example of this, you need look no further than his dual press conference in Helsinki with Putin on July 16, 2018.
Associated Press Reporter Jonathan Lemire said to Trump: “Just now President Putin denied having anything to do with the election interference in 2016. Every U.S. intelligence agency has concluded that Russia did. My first question for you, sir, is who do you believe?”
Trump responded by attacking Democrats and the FBI as partners in a conspiracy.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Medical, Politics, Social commentary on April 1, 2020 at 12:21 am
On June 22, 1941, German Fuhrer Adolf Hitler sent three million soldiers smashing into the Soviet Union. During the first six months—June to December, 1941—German armies lured huge Soviet forces into gigantic “cauldron battles,” surrounding and exterminating them.
An estimated 5.7 million prisoners of war (POWs) fell into German hands. The Germans found themselves surprised and overwhelmed by the sheer numbers of them. But their mandate demanded that they keep marching forward—ever forward.
So they simply imprisoned their captives behind barbed wire and wasted no food or medical care on them. Between starvation, illness and the brutal Russian cold, at least 3.5 million POWs died in custody.
Soviet POW’s
Republicans have learned a serious lesson from this. If you simply deprive those you detest of food, clothing and shelter, you don’t need gas chambers or firing squads.
That has been their chief reason for opposing Social Security since President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed it into law in 1935.
That is why they opposed President Lyndon B. Johnson when he pushed Medicare through Congress in 1965.
And that is why they have fervently tried to overturn the Affordable Care Act—better known as Obamacare—since it went into effect in 2010.
Of course, Republicans will never admit this. Their mantra has always been they fear such programs will bankrupt the country.
That claim might have credibility—if they didn’t recklessly plunge into budget-busting wars like the 2003 Iraq war started by President George W. Bush. Not a single Republican opposed this needless, bloody conflict—which has cost the United States more than $1.1 trillion.
But the best evidence of Republicans’ desire to use illness as a weapon against those Americans they hate comes from President Donald J. Trump.
Donald Trump
On March 26, during an interview on Fox News, Trump blamed the failures of his administration’s response to Coronavirus on Democratic state governors like Andrew Cuomo (NY), Jay Inslee (WA), and Gretchen Whitmer (MI).
On March 27, during his press briefing, Trump said he told Vice President Mike Pence—who’s officially in charge of the White House’s response effort—to not call Inslee and Whitmer because they weren’t “appreciative” enough of his efforts.
Trump said this even as hospitals in each of their states were being overwhelmed with Coronavirus patients.
“I tell him—I mean I’m a different type of person— I say, ‘Mike, don’t call the governor in Washington, you’re wasting your time with him. Don’t call the woman in Michigan,’” Trump said. “If they don’t treat you right, I don’t call.”
Trump said that when people criticized him, they were criticizing the federal government: “When they’re not appreciative to me, they’re not appreciative to the Army Corps, they’re not appreciative to FEMA. It’s not right.”
Trump also attacked Whitmer on Right-wing Fox News’ “Sean Hannity Show”: “I don’t know if she knows what’s going on, but all she does is sit there and blame the federal government.”
That same day—March 27—Whitmer told a Michigan radio station: “What I’ve gotten back is that vendors with whom we’ve procured contracts—they’re being told not to send stuff to Michigan. It’s really concerning. I reached out to the White House last night and asked for a phone call with the president, ironically at the time this stuff was going on.”
Gretchen Whitmer
Julia Pickett / CC BY-SA (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)
A March 29 story in the Washington Monthly sheds light on what lay behind Whitmer’s inability to secure desperately-needed ventilators from her longtime vendors. Its headline ran: “What If Trump Decides to Save Republicans But Not Democrats?”
And it was followed by a sub-headline: “He’s providing vital resources to red states and ignoring blue states.”
Florida submitted a request to the Federal Emergency Management Agency on March 11 for 430,000 surgical masks, 180,000 N95 respirators, 82,000 face shields and 238,000 gloves—and received a shipment with everything three days later.
It received an identical shipment on March 23, and is awaiting a third.
In 2019, Trump demanded a “favor” from the embattled Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky—“dirt” on Democratic Presidential candidate Joe Biden—in return for releasing military aid Ukraine needed to combat an increasingly aggressive Russia.
Now he is apparently demanding Democratic governors praise him and blame themselves if they want their citizens to receive desperately-needed medical supplies.
On Fox News, Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s personal lawyer, bluntly told governors: “Take the blame when you have to. When you play with your boss, sometimes it’s better when you don’t win the golf game. He’s the boss, he’s got all the resources.”
This is precisely the dictatorial arrogance of which Republicans falsely accused President Barack Obama.
The Washington Monthly story concludes on an ominous note: “What if the White House simply gives all the masks and ventilators to red states and counties, leaving blue ones to struggle? What mechanisms of accountability are left?
“U.S. democracy wasn’t set up to deal with a president openly behaving like a James Bond villain while being protected by a political party behaving more like a mafia than a civic institution.”
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In Bureaucracy, Business, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on March 9, 2020 at 12:07 am
On August 23, 2018, President Donald Trump offered an unprecedented reason why he shouldn’t be impeached.
Appearing on “Fox and Friends,” he said:
- “I don’t know how you can impeach somebody who’s done a great job.”
- “I tell you what, if I ever got impeached, I think the market would crash, I think everybody would be very poor.”
- Pointing to his head, he said: “Because without this thinking, you would see numbers that you wouldn’t believe in reverse.”
He didn’t say: “I shouldn’t be impeached because I’m innocent. I didn’t collude with Russian Intelligence to subvert the 2016 Presidential election.”
Instead, he appealed to the greed and fear of his voting base—and no doubt hoped to reach beyond it: “Keep me in power or you’ll all suffer for it.”
Donald Trump
On February 5, the Republican-dominated Senate acquitted him of the two charges brought by the Democratic House of Representatives on December 18, 2019:
Article 1: Abuse of Power: For pressuring Ukraine to assist him in his re-election campaign by damaging former Vice President Joseph Biden, his possible 2020 Democratic rival; and
Article 2: Obstruction of Congress: For obstructing Congress by blocking testimony of subpoenaed witnesses and refusing to provide documents in response to House subpoenas in the impeachment inquiry.
So Trump escaped impeachment—and the country is now suffering for it. On February 27, the Dow Jones Industrial Average had its single worst one-day drop in history—falling 1,191 points.
The reason can be summed up in one word: Coronavirus. Simply put, investors hate uncertainty, because it makes it hard to plan. And nothing makes uncertainty like a new and frightening virus that’s easily passed on and for which there is no vaccine or cure.
Coronavirus
CDC/ Alissa Eckert, MS; Dan Higgins, MAM / Public domain
And that causes millions of people to change their everyday behavior in unprecedented ways–such as not attending basketball games, eating in restaurants, flying on airplanes, going on cruises—and simply going to work.
Of course, Trump didn’t create the Coronavirus. But he has made it even more of a threat to Americans than it had to be.
In 2017, nearly 700 positions remained vacant at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) because Trump imposed a hiring freeze. This affected programs supporting local and state public health emergency readiness, infectious disease control and chronic disease prevention.
Making the situation worse: The CDC’s director, Tom Friedman, stepped down in January, 2017, and it wasn’t until July that the agency got another one: Brenda Fitzgerald. But she served only until January, 2018. She was succeeded—two months later—by Robert Ray Redfield, Jr. He has been the director since then.
The post of director of the CDC is considered one of the most crucial public health positions in the government. The CDC is charged with tracking and preventing infectious disease outbreaks in the United States and worldwide.
CDC headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia
Another way Trump has sabotaged America’s ability to respond to the Coronavirus outbreak: Gutting the permanent epidemic monitoring and command groups set up inside the White House: The National Security Council (NSC) and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
The reason for this: Trump’s pathological jealousy of and hatred for former President Barack Obama.
Since taking office, Trump has made an all-out effort to destroy every vestige of Obama’s legacy as the first black President of the United States. And these disease-monitoring groups were set up by Obama following the Ebola outbreak in West Africa in 2014.
In the spring of 2018, Trump pushed Congress to cut $15 billion from national health spending—and cutting the global disease-fighting budgets of the CDC, National Security Council, Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Health and Human Services.
The Federal $30 million fund for Complex Crises was eliminated as well.
In April, 2018, National Security Adviser John Bolton forced Tom Bossert, director of the infectious disease unit at DHS, to resign—along with his entire team. In May, 2018, Trump ordered the NSC’s global health security unit shut down.
Rear Admiral Timothy Ziemer, who headed the unit, was reassigned.
Neither the NSC nor the DHS epidemic team has been replaced.
The global health section of the CDC was decimated, and had to reduce the number of countries it was monitoring from 49 to 10.
It’s popular to assume that Trump did all of this out of mere ignorance—and there’s plenty of proof of his ignorance in many areas (such as attributing windmills to causing cancer). But far more is at work here.
The vast majority of those who voted for Trump believe that the Federal Government is evil and its agencies that regulate business should be eliminated.
An example of this constituency is Grover Norquist, founder and president of Americans for Tax Reform, which opposes all tax increases and has forced most Republicans to publicly pledge they will as well, under any circumstances.
His most famous quote: “I’m not in favor of abolishing the government. I just want to shrink it down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub.”
Under Trump, the epidemic-fighting arm of the Federal Government has become so shrunk that America itself may be the one to drown—in an epidemic of Coronavirus.
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In Bureaucracy, Business, History, Law, Politics, Social commentary on February 21, 2020 at 12:07 am
The gap between rich and poor in the United States has never been greater.
A May 1, 2018 article in Forbes—which bills itself as “The Capitalist Tool”—vividly documents this truth.
“In the 1950s, a typical CEO made 20 times the salary of his or her average worker. Last year, [2017] CEO pay at an S&P 500 Index firm soared to an average of 361 times more than the average rank-and-file worker, or pay of $13,940,000 a year, according to an AFL-CIO’s Executive Paywatch news release today.”
The average CEO pay climbed six percent in 2017—while the average production worker earned just $38,613, according to Executive Paywatch.
The average wage—adjusted for inflation—has stagnated for more than 50 years. Meanwhile, CEOs’ average pay since the 1950s has risen by 1000%.
This would not have been news to Niccolo Machiavelli, the father of modern political science. In his masterwork, The Discourses, he observed the human condition as that of constant struggle:
Niccolo Machiavelli
“It was a saying of ancient writers, that men afflict themselves in evil, and become weary of the good, and that both these dispositions produce the same effects.
“For when men are no longer obliged to fight from necessity, they fight from ambition, which passion is so powerful in the hearts of men that it never leaves them, no matter to what height they may rise.
“The reason for this is that nature has created men so that they desire everything, but are unable to attain it. Desire being thus always greater than the faculty of acquiring, discontent with what they have and dissatisfaction with themselves result from it.
“This causes the changes in their fortunes—for as some men desire to have more, while others fear to lose what they have, enmities and war are the consequences. And this brings about the ruin of one province and the elevation of another.”
Author Walter Scheidel, Dickason Professor in the Humanities, Professor of Classics and History at Stanford University, has also given this subject a great deal of thought. And, like Machiavelli, he has reached some highly disturbing conclusions.
Walter Scheidel
World Economic Forum [CC BY-SA 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)%5D
Scheidel gave voice to these in his 2017 book, The Great Leveler: Violence and the History of Inequality from the Stone Age to the Twenty-First Century. His thesis: Only violence and catastrophes have consistently reduced inequality throughout history.
According to the book’s jacket blurb: “Are mass violence and catastrophes the only forces that can seriously decrease economic inequality? To judge by thousands of years of history, the answer is yes.
“Tracing the global history of inequality from the Stone Age to today, Walter Scheidel shows that inequality never dies peacefully. Inequality declines when carnage and disaster strike and increases when peace and stability return.
“The Great Leveler is the first book to chart the crucial role of violent shocks in reducing inequality over the full sweep of human history around the world.
“Ever since humans began to farm, herd livestock, and pass on their assets to future generations, economic inequality has been a defining feature of civilization. Over thousands of years, only violent events have significantly lessened inequality.
“The ‘Four Horsemen’ of leveling—mass-mobilization warfare, transformative revolutions, state collapse, and catastrophic plagues—have repeatedly destroyed the fortunes of the rich….
“Today, the violence that reduced inequality in the past seems to have diminished, and that is a good thing. But it casts serious doubt on the prospects for a more equal future.”
Revolutionaries have known the truth of Scheidel’s findings from the gladiators’ revolt of Spartacus (73 – 71 B.C.) to the French Revolution (1789 – 1799) to the overthrow of the Czarist Romanov dynasty (1917).
But American politicians serenely ignore that truth. They depend on the mega-rich for millions of dollars in “campaign contributions”—which pay for self-glorifying ads on TV.
Thus, in 2016, American voters had a “choice” between two “love-the-rich” Presidential candidates: Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. The result was that millions stayed home or voted in protest for third-party candidates who had no chance of winning.
In his 1975 book, The Corrupt Society: From Ancient Greece to Modern-day America, British historian Robert Payne warned that the predatory rich would not change their behavior: “Nor is there any likelihood that the rich will plow back their money into services to ensure the general good.
“They have rarely demonstrated social responsibility, and they are much more likely to hold on to their wealth at all costs than to renounce any part of it.
“Like the tyrant who lives in a world wholly remote from the world of the people, shielded and protected from all possible influences, the rich are usually the last to observe the social pressures rising from below, and when these social pressures reach flashpoint, it is too late to call in the police or the army.
“The tyrant dies; the police and the army go over to the revolutionaries; and the new government dispossesses the rich by decree. A single authoritative sentence suffices to expunge all private wealth and restore it to the service of the nation.”
For millions of struggling, impoverished Americans, that day cannot come soon enough.
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In Bureaucracy, Business, History, Politics, Social commentary on February 20, 2020 at 12:10 am
Americans are used to Presidential candidates telling lies (euphemistically known as “campaign promises”) to get elected.
But when a candidate actually (and usually accidentally) tells the truth, the results can be electrifying.
On June 18, 2019, Democratic Presidential candidate (and momentary front-runner) Joseph Biden addressed a roomful of donors in New York.
The former Vice President believed that his message would comfort his well-heeled audience of billionaires: Don’t worry, if I’m elected, your standard of living won’t change.
Addressing the 100 or so guests at a fundraiser at the Carlyle Hotel in New York City, Biden said that he had taken heat from “some of the people on my team, on the Democratic side” because he had said that rich people were “just as patriotic as poor people.
Joe Biden
“The truth of the matter is, you all, you all know, you all know in your gut what has to be done. We can disagree in the margins but the truth of the matter is it’s all within our wheelhouse and nobody has to be punished. No one’s standard of living will change, nothing would fundamentally change,” he said.
And he added: “I mean, we may not want to demonize anybody who has made money.
“When we have income inequality as large as we have in the United States today, it brews and ferments political discord and basic revolution. Not a joke. Not a joke … It allows demagogues to step in and say the reason where we are is because of the ‘other’….
“You’re not the other. I need you very badly. I hope if I win this nomination, I won’t let you down. I promise you. I have a bad reputation, I always say what I mean. The problem is I sometimes say all that I mean.”
Biden has talked about decreasing income inequality and promoting workers’ rights. But he’s taken a moderate stance when it comes to taxation.
United States Senator Bernie Sanders (D-VT), on the other hand, has attacked the ultra-rich as responsible for the ever-widening gap between themselves and the poor.
“I love Bernie, but I’m not Bernie Sanders. I don’t think 500 billionaires are the reason why we’re in trouble,” Biden said in March, 2019.
Instead, he proposes expanding tax credits for the poor and middle class, and making the tax code less friendly to rich investors.
Robert Payne, the distinguished British historian, took a different—and darker—view of the rich.
Payne authored more than 110 books. Among his subjects were Adolf Hitler, Ivan the Terrible, Winston Churchill, Joseph Stalin, Vladimir Lenin, William Shakespeare and Leon Trotsky.
In 1975, he published The Corrupt Society: From Ancient Greece to Present-Day America. It proved a summary of many of his previous works.
Among the epochs it covered: The civilizations of ancient Greece, Rome and China; Nazi Germany; the Soviet Union; and Watergate-era America. And the massive corruption each of those epochs had spawned.
In his chapter, “A View of the Uncorrupted Society,” Payne warned: Power and wealth are the main sources of corruption.
“The rich, simply by being rich, are infected with corruption. Their overwhelming desire is to grow richer, but they can do this only at the expense of those who are poorer than themselves.
”Their interests conflict with those of the overall society. They live sheltered from the constant anxieties of the poor, and thus cannot understand them. Nor do they try to.
They see the poor as alien from themselves, and thus come to fear and despise them. And their wealth and influence enables them to buy politicians—who, in turn, write legislation that protects the rich from the poor.
But Payne foresaw an even greater danger from the rich and powerful than their mere isolation from the rest of society: “The mere presence of the rich is corrupting. Their habits, their moral codes, their delight in conspicuous consumption are permanent affronts to the rest of humanity. Vast inequalities of wealth are intolerable in any decent society.”
Writing in 1975, Payne noted that a third of the private wealth was possessed by less than five percent of the population—while about a fifth of the populace lived at the poverty level. By 2000, he predicted, about five percent of the population would possess two-thirds of America’s wealth. And more than half the population would be near or below the starvation level.
The result could only be catastrophe. The only way to halt this this increasing concentration of wealth by fewer people would be through law or violent revolution.
Payne has proven to be an uncanny prophet.
On December 8, 2017, the Seattle Times noted that the wealthiest one percent of Americans owned 40% of the country’s wealth. They owned more wealth than the bottom 90% combined.
From 2013, the share of wealth owned by the one percent increased by nearly three percentage points. Wealth owned by the bottom 90%, meanwhile, fell over the same period.
But this situation need not remain permanent.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Military, Politics, Social commentary on February 3, 2020 at 12:06 am
On October 4, 1943, SS Reichsfuhrer Heinrich Himmler addressed SS officers stationed in Posen, Poland, about the ongoing campaign to exterminate the Jews of Europe.
He gave a similar speech two days later to an audience of Reichsleiters (national leaders) and Gauleiters (governors), as well as other government representatives.
Himmler intended to alert Reich officials of the extermination campaign the Schutzstaffel (“Protective Squads”)—otherwise known as the SS—and Wehrmacht (German army) had been waging since June, 1941.
The purpose: To make his listeners accessories to his monumental crimes—and to warn them there was no turning back.
Heinrich Himmler
Either Nazi Germany won the war that its Fuhrer, Adolf Hitler, had unintentionally unleashed on September 1, 1939—or its topmost officials would themselves face extinction as war criminals.
Said Himmler:
“I want to also mention a very difficult subject before you, with complete candor. It should be discussed amongst us, yet nevertheless, we will never speak about it in public. I am talking about the evacuation of the Jews, the extermination of the Jewish people.
“It is one of those things that is easily said: ‘The Jewish people is being exterminated.’…Most of you will know what it means when 100 bodies lie together, when 500 are there or when there are 1000. And to have seen this through and—with the exception of human weakness—to have remained decent, has made us hard and is a page of glory never mentioned and never to be mentioned….
“But altogether we can say: We have carried out this most difficult task for the love of our people. And we have suffered no defect within us, in our soul, in our character.”
Fast forward 76 years—to January, 2020.
On December 18, 2019, the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives approved two Articles of Impeachment against President Donald Trump:
Article 1: Abuse of Power: For pressuring Ukraine to assist him in his re-election campaign by damaging former Vice President Joseph Biden, his possible 2020 Democratic rival; and
Article 2: Obstruction of Congress: For obstructing Congress by blocking testimony of subpoenaed witnesses and refusing to provide documents in response to House subpoenas in the impeachment inquiry.
Donald Trump
Trump’s defense in the House had consisted of:
- Refusing to testify himself;
- Refusing to produce witnesses on his behalf;
- Refusing to turn over requested documents;
- Claiming that Democrats were preventing him from testifying or producing witnesses;
- Ordering administration officials to not testify before the six House impeachment committees investigating his behavior.
Those government employees who testified did so voluntarily—and at risk of retaliation. Among these were:
- Ukraine ambassador Bill Taylor;
- Laura Cooper, the top Pentagon official overseeing Ukraine-related U.S. policy;
- Former White House official Fiona Hill; and
- Former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch.
They offered damning testimony against Trump.
When the trial began in the United States Senate on January 16, 2020, Trump’s legal team:
- Did not call any witnesses;
- Did not deny that Trump had sought to coerce Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky into interfering with the 2020 election;
- Attacked Joseph and Hunter Biden as if they were on trial;
- Kentucky Republican Senator Rand Paul submitted a written question to presiding Chief Justice John Roberts that included the name of the alleged whistleblower to Trump’s coercion. Roberts refused to read it aloud;
- Paul raced outside the Senate and gave a press conference, where he named the alleged whistleblower—whose identity is protected by law.
Rand Paul
Perhaps even more frightening: One of Trump’s attorneys, Alan Dershowitz, offered Trump—and all future Presidents–a blanket of immunity worthy of a king:
“If a president does something which he believes will help him get elected in the public interest, that cannot be the kind of quid pro quo that results in impeachment. Every public official that I know believes that his election is of the public interest.”
Responding to that argument, House Manager Adam Schiff (D-CA) said: “It’s been a remarkable evolution of the presidential defense. It began with, ‘none of that stuff happened here.’ It began with ‘nothing to see here.’ It migrated to, ‘OK, they did seek investigations of the president’s political rival.’ And then it became OK.”
Meanwhile, the Senate majority of 53 Republicans vigorously supported Trump’s demand that no witnesses to his crimes be allowed to testify.
Among these: Former National Security Adviser John Bolton.
On December 29, 2019, The New York Times broke a sensational story:
In a forthcoming book, Bolton had written that Trump had told him, in August 2019, that he wanted to continue freezing aid to Ukraine until its officials began investigating the Bidens.
Despite—or because of—this bombshell report, Senate Republicans absolutely refused to admit the testimony of witnesses.
By following the same strategy as Heinrich Himmler, Trump has entangled Republicans in his own crimes.
His infamy is now theirs.
History has brutally condemned those Germans who, knowing the full extent of Adolf Hitler’s crimes, nevertheless signed on to perpetuate and conceal them.
History will render the same damning verdict against Senate Republicans who have provided similar cover for Donald Trump.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Politics, Social commentary on January 10, 2020 at 12:04 am
Presidential legacies live on in unexpected ways.
Right now, the legacies of Barack Obama and Donald Trump are vying for the attention of—fiction readers.
In Hope Never Dies: An Obama-Biden Mystery, author Andrew Shaffer has fashioned a novel that is half-mystery, half-bromance.
Vice President Joe Biden has just left the Obama White House and doesn’t know what he wants to do with the rest of his life. Then Finn Donnelly, his favorite railroad conductor, dies in a suspicious accident, leaving behind an ailing wife and a trail of clues.
To unravel the mystery, “Amtrak Joe” calls on the skills of his former boss: The 44th President of the United States. Together they scour biker bars, cheap motels and other memorable haunts throughout Delaware.![]()
Then Biden unearths a disturbing truth about his longtime—and now dead—friend. This, in turn, leads Biden and Obama to uncover the sinister forces behind America’s opioid epidemic.
The book is pure fantasy fun, as evidenced from this review by Alexandra Alter in The New York Times:
“[Hope Never Dies is] a roughly 300-page work of political fanfiction, an escapist fantasy that will likely appeal to liberals pining for the previous administration, longing for the Obama-Biden team to emerge from political retirement as action heroes. But it’s also at times a surprisingly earnest story about estranged friends who are reunited under strange circumstances.”
A reader named Casey, reviewing the novel for Goodreads, writes: “While Shaffer could have leaned into nostalgia alone, he’s written a solid mystery with the characters fleshed out as more than just cliches.
“The reader really feels Biden’s longing to be helpful and his anguish over seeing 44’s legacy undone so quickly by an individual who shall remain nameless. (The presidential zings in this book are incredible, truly.)
“The tension between the two rings as true as it did when they were in office….By all means, this book shouldn’t work as well as it does. For a few hours, I got to enjoy the company of politicians who behaved like adults (mostly). It sure was nice.”
Contrasting with the relatively lighthearted fictional image of Barack Obama is the immensely darker one of Donald Trump.
Don Winslow offers Trump an extended cameo appearance in The Border, his massive, 736-page novel about America’s war on drugs—and the horrific violence it has spawned in Mexico. It’s the third of a trilogy of novels vividly portraying the violent costs of an unwinnable conflict.
Art Keller is a dedicated agent of the Federal Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). For over 40 years, he has waged all-out war on Adán Barrera, the godfather of the powerful Sinaloa Cartel.
Appointed director of the DEA, Keller now faces a series of deadly enemies:
- A heroin epidemic surging across America;
- Hitmen who want to kill him;
- Politicians who want to sabotage his agenda; and
- An incoming administration that’s allied with the very drug traffickers he’s trying to destroy.
And heading this administration is John Dennison—Donald Trump in all but name—who:
- Gratuitously insults people on Twitter;
- Fires a Special Counsel;
- Gets blackmailed by a woman he once bedded; and
- Colludes with drug traffickers for a multi-million dollar loan to finance his Presidential campaign.
Whereas the reviews for Hope Never Dies were as upbeat as the book itself, those of The Border reflect the novel’s mercilessly grim take on a war that can’t be won.
Los Angeles Times: “The Border is intricate, mean and swift, a sprawling canvass of characters including narco kingpins, a Guatemalan stowaway, a Staten Island heroin addict, a kinky hit woman, a barely veiled Donald Trump and DEA agent Art Keller, who….has been noble and merciless, a conflicted wanderer who makes America face the transgressions committed in its name.”
Rolling Stone: “Clocking in at over 700 pages, it is his most overtly political installment yet. He takes on the Trump administration directly, creating a fictional candidate, then president, who stokes racist fears of Mexicans, campaigns on ‘building the wall’ and, along with his venal son-in-law, gets caught up in a shady real estate deal involving Cartel money.”
NPR: “The Border becomes a book for our times. Like Shakespeare, it makes a three-act drama of our modern moment. Like Shakespeare’s plays, it shows us a world that is our own, a history that is our own, a burden that is our own, rendered out into the rhythm of scenes and arcs, chapters and parts.”
The signature slogan of Obama’s 2008 Presidential campaign was: “Yes, We Can!” The slogan of Trump’s 2016 effort could have been: “No, You Can’t.”
Obama concentrated the full force of his attention on reforming American healthcare—by making it available to millions whose insurance refused to provide coverage.
Trump’s top priority is to separate the United States from Mexico with an impenetrable wall—and he has even diverted $3.6 billion from Pentagon funding to pay for it.
Like John F. Kennedy, Barack Obama will likely be positively remembered as much for what he tried to do as what he succeeded at doing.
Like Richard M. Nixon, Donald Trump will likely be remembered as a menacing stain on American history.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Military, Politics, Social commentary on January 8, 2020 at 12:35 am
For Donald Trump, becoming America’s “President-for-Life” is no joke—although he has often “joked” about doing just that. For example:
- In March 2018, he told Republican donors during a closed-door speech at Mar-a-Lago:[Chinese President Xi Jinping] “is now President for life. President for life. No, he’s great. And look, he was able to do that. I think it’s great. Maybe we’ll have to give that a shot someday.”
- In May, 2019, Trump retweeted Evangelical leader Jerry Falwell Jr.’s suggestion that he’s owed “2 yrs added to his 1st term” due to distractions caused by the Robert Mueller investigation.
The ancient historian, Plutarch, warned in his biography of Alexander the Great:
“And the most glorious exploits do not always furnish us with the clearest discoveries of virtue or vice in men; sometimes a matter of less moment, an expression or a jest, informs us better of their characters and inclinations, than the most famous sieges, the greatest armaments, or the bloodiest battles whatsoever.”
Plutarch
Odysses [CC BY-SA (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)%5D
And, in making these repeated statements, Trump has revealed his ultimate intention: To overthrow America’s constitutional government.
Conservative New York Times columnist David Brooks offered a disturbing analysis of Trump’s character on the March 25, 2016 edition of The PBS Newshour:
“And so you really are seeing someone who just has an odd psychology unleavened by kindness and charity, but where it’s all winners and losers, beating and being beat. And that’s part of the authoritarian personality, but it comes out in his attitude toward women.”
Brooks’ analysis has been proven brilliantly accurate during the two years of Trump’s Presidency. He has attacked one person or institution after another—including officials within his own administration.
For example:
- Repeatedly and viciously attacking the nation’s free press for daring to report his growing list of crimes and disasters, calling it “the enemy of the American people.”
- Publicly siding with Russian dictator Vladimir Putin against American Intelligence agencies (FBI, CIA, National Security Agency) which unanimously agreed that Russia had subverted the 2016 Presidential election.
- Firing FBI Director James Comey for investigating that subversion.
- Shutting down the Federal Government on December 22, 2018—because Democrats refused to fund his “border wall” between the United States and Mexico. An estimated 380,000 government employees were furloughed and another 420,000 were ordered to work without pay. This lasted until January 25, 2019, when Trump caved to public pressure.
* * * * *
Since childhood, Trump has had an overwhelming sense of entitlement and his own importance.
Donald Trump
As a businessman, he demanded that his employees sign Non-Disclosure Agreements to prevent the outside world from learning of his crimes and follies. He has tried to continue that practice in the White House, even though it is flagrantly illegal.
More ominously, he identifies himself with the State—and thus deems anyone who disagrees with or opposes him as guilty of treason. And the penalty for treason has traditionally been death.
Furious that Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) mocked him during a session of the House Intelligence Committee, Trump tweeted:
“His lies were made in perhaps the most blatant and sinister manner ever seen in the great Chamber. He wrote down and read terrible things, then said it was from the mouth of the President of the United States. I want Schiff questioned at the highest level for Fraud & Treason…..”
He judged House Speaker Nancy Pelosi “every bit as guilty as Liddle’ Adam Schiff for High Crimes and Misdemeanors, and even Treason.”
But now Trump faces a far greater threat than mere disagreement or criticism.
On December 18, 2019, the House of Representatives voted for two Articles of Impeachment to remove Trump from office: Abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. The case has not yet been sent to the Senate, but that there will be a trial is a certainty.
Whenever Trump has been unable to buy or intimidate his way out of trouble, he has lashed out. And in Nancy Pelosi he faces an implacable foe and a master legislative tactician.
Desperate to avoid impeachment and the cascade of damning news as more of his crimes are revealed almost daily, he has hit upon the most powerful “remedy” of all: War.
What can be even more attention-grabbing than an expected trial of the President of the United States? A fullscale war between the United States and Iran, a country America has been at odds with since 1979.
Moreover, by going this route, he can take revenge, Matt Bevin-style, on those Americans who dared elect Democratic members of Congress to oppose him.
An all-out war between nuclear-armed America and an Iran now coming into its own as a nuclear power will last for years and leave untold numbers of hated “liberals” as incinerated or blasted corpses.
And just as he dodged the draft during the Vietnam war, Trump expects to dodge the calamity he is trying to unleash.
Surrounded by Secret Service agents, able to be whisked into heavily-fortified bunkers or onto a high-tech Air Force One, he stands an excellent chance of doing so.
With enough national carnage and confusion, he might live out his dream to become “President-for-Life”—simply because there won’t be any opposition capable of challenging him.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Military, Politics, Social commentary on January 7, 2020 at 12:04 am
On November 5, Kentucky voters refused to re-elect Republican Governor Matt Bevin. To get revenge, he issued more than 650 pardons to hardened criminals before he left office on December 9.
He claimed these were people he would not hesitate to welcome as neighbors, co-workers or members of his church.
Among those pardoned:
- Convicted killer Patrick Baker, who had served two years of a 19-year sentence for reckless homicide and robbery in the slaying of a Knox County man in front of his family. Baker’s brother held a campaign fundraiser for Bevin in July 2018 that raised $21,500.
- Micah Schoettle, a convicted child rapist. In 2018, a judge sentenced Schoettle to 23 years in prison. But Bevin said he made his decision partly because the hymen of the nine-year-old victim was still intact.
“This is perhaps more specific than people would want,” Bevin said in a radio interview. “But trust me. If you have been repeatedly sexually violated as a small child by an adult, there are going to be repercussions of that physically and medically.”
Studies show that most child victims do not show evidence of physical damage and that examination of the tissue is not a reliable test of sexual activity.
Matt Bevin
- Leif Halvorsen, who confessed to a triple murder in 1983. Bevin removed Halvorson from death row and commuted his sentence to life in prison.
- Dayton Jones was serving a 15-year sentence after he and three other men pleaded guilty to sodomizing an unconscious teenage boy at a party and videotaping the incident. Then they posted the video on social media.
Bevin said there was “no evidence” showing that Jones was present at the assault because he did not appear in the video.
Under Kentucky state law, people can directly apply to the govern’s office for clemency. While most states require a board review to decide who gets their sentences reduced or pardoned, Kentucky does not.
“You have police, FBI, judges, prosecutors, defense lawyers, hours and hours of work undone on the whim of one person,” Leland Hulbert, who prosecuted a case for an individual pardoned by the governor, told The New York Times. “It’s almost like a godlike power.”
Defending his pardons, Bevin told The Washington Post: “I’m a big believer in second chances. I think this is a nation that was founded on the concept of redemption and second chances and new pages in life.”
These hardened criminals whom Bevin has given “a second chance” will be preying on Kentuckians for decades to come.
Apparently, President Donald Trump has learned something from Bevin’s departing act.
Donald Trump
On September 9, 2019, the House Foreign Affairs, Intelligence and Oversight and Reform committees began investigating his attempted extortion of Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky.
On July 25, 2019, Trump had “asked” Zelensky to do him a “favor”: Find embarrassing “dirt” on former Vice President Joseph Biden and his son, Hunter.
Hunter had had business dealings in Ukraine. And Joe Biden might be Trump’s Democratic opponent for the White House in 2020.
To underline the seriousness of his “request,” Trump had withheld $400 million in military aid Congress had approved for Ukraine, which is facing an increasingly aggressive Russia.
But then a CIA whistleblower filed a complaint about the extortion attempt—and the media and Congress soon learned of it.
The ensuing Congressional investigation triggered nonstop Trump abuse of Democrats generally and especially of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and House Intelligence Committee chairman Adam Schiff.
Nancy Pelosi
On December 18, 2019, the House of Representatives impeached Donald Trump along party lines.
On December 24—a day when most Americans were celebrating the alleged birthday of Jesus Christ—Trump threw a tantrum at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Fla.:
“She [Pelosi] hates the Republican Party. She hates all of the people that voted for me and the Republican Party and she’s desperate. She’s doing a tremendous disservice to the country, and she’s not doing a great job. And some people think she doesn’t know what she’s doing.”
And on Christmas Day, Trump tweeted: “Why should Crazy Nancy Pelosi, just because she has a slight majority in the House, be allowed to Impeach the President of the United States? Got ZERO Republican votes, there was no crime, the call with Ukraine was perfect, with ‘“no pressure.’ She said it must be ‘bipartisan…
“‘…& overwhelming,’ but this Scam Impeachment was neither. Also, very unfair with no Due Process, proper representation, or witnesses. Now Pelosi is demanding everything the Republicans weren’t allowed to have in the House. Dems want to run majority Republican Senate. Hypocrites!”
Even before the Democratic House took its first steps toward impeaching him, Trump was enraged that they might even want to do so.
On May 30, 2019, he raged at reporters: “I don’t see how they can because they’re possibly allowed, although I can’t imagine the courts allowing it. I’ve never gone into it. I never thought that would even be possible to be using that word. To me, it’s a dirty word—the word impeach. It’s a dirty, filthy, disgusting word.”
Seven months later—on December 18—“impeachment” would become more than a word. It would become reality.
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THE MIND OF A STORMTRUMPER: PART TWO (END)
In Bureaucracy, History, Medical, Politics, Social commentary on April 7, 2020 at 12:14 amOn April 3, I received the following email from a longtime friend who has become a fanatical Stormtrumper:
Steffen, WE are worlds apart on our beliefs & knowledge when it comes to political differences. Although I am astonished that I have always referred to you as “an educated & intelligent individual”, I now feel that your opinions are simply based on total hatred because of your negative references.
In other words – you are nothing more than a typical deranged democrat with nothing good to offer this Country nor the American People other than “HATRED” for a duly elected President who will undoubtedly be re-elected in a landslide of the American People..
I felt it necessary to point out to my accuser that I was not “a typical deranged democrat”:
While I am liberal on some issues, I am CONSERVATIVE on others. Unlike you, I DON’T support a man who sides with the former head of the KGB against our own FBI and CIA. If you want an example of this, you need look no further than his dual press conference in Helsinki with Putin on July 16, 2018.
Vladimir Putin
Associated Press Reporter Jonathan Lemire said to Trump: “Just now President Putin denied having anything to do with the election interference in 2016. Every U.S. intelligence agency has concluded that Russia did. My first question for you, sir, is who do you believe?”
Trump responded by attacking Democrats and the FBI as partners in a conspiracy: “You have groups that are wondering why the FBI never took the server, why haven’t they taken the server? Why was the FBI told to leave the office of the Democratic National Committee?
“I have President Putin. He just said it’s not Russia. I will say this: I don’t see any reason why it would be, but I really do want to see the server.”
That, in my view, is treason.
If you choose to support such a man—and you clearly do—that, by extension, makes you an ACCESSORY to his treason.
I felt it necessary to point out that
Your “duly elected President” had the full support of Vladimir Putin and the Russian Intelligence establishment.
[On July 9, 2016, high-ranking members of Trump’s Presidential campaign met at Trump Tower with at least two lobbyists with ties to Russian dictator Vladimir Putin. The participants included:
Donald Trump
The purpose of that meeting: To gain access to any “dirt” Russian Intelligence could supply on Democratic Presidential Nominee Hillary Clinton.]
But let’s not forget all those dedicated Russian bots who flooded the Internet with real “fake news.” And, as I said earlier in this email, Putin is the only world leader—in fact, the only person, period—Trump has never dared insult.
I had urged my friend to avoid Fox News Network and Donald Trump’s press conferences as sources of reliable information on Coronavirus. He, in turn,
asked me if we should get our updates from [Democratic Presidential candidate] Joe Biden. No—Biden is NOT a doctor. He’s a politician. And when you’re dealing with a deadly pandemic you want medically-sound advice, not political pablum….
Your most recent email follows the pattern used by Trump and his cheerleading chorus at Fox News: It’s filled with insults, but not one actual piece of evidence to back it up.
“Fake news” is the standard response for those who don’t want to provide a rebuttal—because they don’t have the evidence for one and THEY know it most of all.
Dismissing—with insults—any news that doesn’t jibe with how you want things to be is a guaranteed recipe for disaster.
The Original Nazis kept insisting that victory was just around the corner—all the way up to the moment when the Russians were knocking at the Fuhrerbunker.
It didn’t save the First Fuhrer and it won’t save the Second. Nor will it save you.
* * * * *
Many liberals believe that Donald Trump’s base simply doesn’t understand the sheer evil of the man they are following. And that—if only they can be educated on this point—they will desert him.
This is to deny that human beings have a choice—to do good or evil. Following that logic, every member of the Mafia is simply a helpless ignoramus, waiting to be educated out of a lifetime of extortion, drug-trafficking and murder.
The truth is that those who support Donald Trump know exactly why they do so: Because their hatred for millions of their fellow Americans overrides everything else.
So long as Trump feeds into their hatred—of blacks, Hispanics, “uppity” women, liberals, atheists, non-Christians, among others—they will enthusiastically support him.
One day, Donald Trump will be a despicable memory for most Americans—-as Adolf Hitler is for most Germans.
But the millions of hate-filled Right-wingers who elected him and fiercely support him will still be with us, searching for their next champion of hate.
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