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In Bureaucracy, History, Military, Politics, Social commentary on August 24, 2020 at 12:17 am
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 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
It took him 14 years to win appointment to Chancellor (the equivalent of Attorney General) of Germany in 1933.
In 1923, he staged a coup attempt in Bavaria—which was quickly and brutally put down by police. He was arrested and sentenced to less than a year in prison.
After that, Hitler decided that winning power through violence was no longer an option. He must win it through election—or appointment.
He repeatedly ran for the highest office in Germany—President—but never got a clear majority in a free election.
When the 1929 Depression struck Germany, the fortunes of Hitler’s Nazi party rose as the life savings of ordinary Germans fell. Streets echoed with bloody clashes between members of Hitler’s Nazi Stormtroopers and those of the German Communist Party.
Germany seemed on the verge of collapsing.
Germans desperately looked for a leader—a Fuhrer–who could somehow deliver them from the threat of financial ruin and Communist takeover.
In early 1933, members of his own cabinet persuaded aging German president, Paul von Hindenburg, that only Hitler’s appointment as Chancellor could do this.
Paul von Hindenburg
Hindenburg was reluctant to do so. He considered Hitler a dangerous radical. But he allowed himself to be convinced that, by putting Hitler in the Cabinet, he could be “boxed in” and thus controlled.
So, on January 30, 1933, he appointed Adolf Hitler Chancellor of Germany.
On August 2, 1934, Hindenburg died, and Hitler immediately assumed the titles–and duties—of the offices of Chancellor and President. His rise to total power was now complete.
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, there had been no such scandals during the Obama Presidency.
- Nor had there been any large-scale terrorist attacks on American soil—as there had on 9/11 under President George W. Bush.
Yet—not 17 months after announcing his candidacy for President—enough Americans fervently embraced Donald Trump to give him the most powerful position in the country and the world.
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Donald Trump
The message of Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign had been one of hope—“Yes, We Can!”
That of Donald Trump’s campaign was one of hatred toward everyone who was not an avid Trump supporter: “No, You Can’t!”
Whites comprised the overwhelming majority of the audiences at Trump rallies. Not all were racists, but many of those who were advertised it on T-shirts: “MAKE AMERICA WHITE AGAIN.”
They knew that demographics were steadily working against them. Birthrates among 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 these whites. His 2012 re-election had deprived them of the hope that 2008 had been an accident.
Then came 2016—and the possibility that a black President might actually be followed by a woman: Hillary Clinton. And the thought of a woman dictating to men was simply too much to bear.
On August 17, 2020, former First Lady Michelle Obama, speaking at the Democratic National Convention, summed up the legacies of the Obama and Trump administrations:
“When my husband left office with Joe Biden at his side, we had a record-breaking stretch of job creation. We’d secured the right to health care for 20,000,000 people. We were respected around the world, rallying our allies to confront climate change. And our leaders had worked hand-in-hand with scientists to help prevent an Ebola outbreak from becoming a global pandemic.
“Four years later, the state of this nation is very different. More than [170,000] people have died, and our economy is in shambles because of a virus that this president downplayed for too long. It has left millions of people jobless. Too many have lost their health care; too many are struggling to take care of basic necessities like food and rent
“Too many communities have been left in the lurch to grapple with whether and how to open our schools safely. Internationally, we’ve turned our back, not just on agreements forged by my husband, but on alliances championed by presidents like Reagan and Eisenhower.”
All of this should be remembered the next time an American blames Germans for their lethal embrace of Adolf Hitler.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Politics, Social commentary on August 20, 2020 at 1:53 am
David Gergen has been a White House adviser to four presidents—Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton. A graduate of Harvard Law School, he is a professor of public service at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government.
On August 18, he co-authored an Op-Ed with Caroline Cohen on the CNN website. Its subject: The efforts of President Donald J. Trump to disable or even destroy the United States Postal Service.
From that commentary:
“By opposing funding and stalling delivery, Trump — and his new Postmaster General Louis DeJoy — are interfering with an election in which some 180 million Americans are eligible to vote by mail.”
Democrats know that the Postal Service employs about 500,000 people, making it the second largest employer in the country, just behind Walmart.
Donald Trump
“The political surprise is why and how Republicans have allowed President Trump to once again trap them into such a boneheaded position. Their base constituencies, which tend to skew older and rural, disproportionately rely on USPS.
“Some 34% of seniors do not use the internet, meaning they must pay their bills by mail and often rely on the Postal Service for correspondence with loved ones. More than half of Americans over the age of 65 receive their medications by mail. In 2019, no less than 1.2 billion total prescriptions were delivered through the Postal Service.
“For rural Americans….the Postal Service provides access to medical, banking, and retail services that are quickly diminishing in their communities. Some 630 rural communities have lost its sole pharmacy since 2003, causing rural Americans to turn to mail to deliver medication….
“Companies like Amazon rely on the USPS to deliver to customers in rural areas. And just as is the case with seniors, the 14.5 million rural Americans without broadband service still need the Postal Service to bank, pay bills and much more.”
Why are Republicans allowing this?
Republicans don’t fear that Trump will destroy the institutions that Americans have long cherished—such as:
- An independent judiciary;
- A free press;
- An incorruptible Justice Department;
- Intelligence agencies (such as the FBI and CIA) charged with protecting the country against subversion.
Trump has furiously attacked all of these—and Republicans have either said nothing or rushed to his defense.
An August 30, 2017 article in Salon reveals why: “Most Americans Strongly Dislike Trump, But the Angry Minority That Adores Him Controls Our Politics.”
These voters represent about one-third of the Republican party.
“These are older and more conservative white people, for the most part, who believe he should not listen to other Republicans and should follow his own instincts….
“They like Trump’s coarse personality, and approve of the fact that he treats women like his personal playthings. They enjoy it when he expresses sympathy for neo-Nazis and neo-Confederate white supremacists.
Supporters giving the Nazi “Sieg Heil” salute to Trump
“They cheer when he declares his love for torture, tells the police to rough up suspects and vows to mandate the death penalty for certain crimes. (Which of course the president cannot do.)
“…This cohort of the Republican party didn’t vote for Trump because of his supposed policies on trade or his threat to withdraw from NATO. They voted for him because he said out loud what they were thinking. A petty, sophomoric, crude bully is apparently what they want as a leader.”
It’s precisely these hard-core Fascists who come out in mid-term elections—and they’re scaring the remaining 65% who make up the GOP establishment.
The vast majority of Republicans fear that he will turn his hate-filled base on them.
Republicans also remember that while the Nazi Party ruled Germany from 1933 to 1945, its influence over all aspects of Germans’ lives was suffocating.
“Censorship prevailed, education was undermined, family life was idealized, but children were encouraged to turn in disloyal parents,” reads the back cover of Richard Grunberger’s classic 1971 book, The 12-Year Reich.
But after the Third Reich surrendered unconditionally to the Allies on May 8, 1945, virtually no German admitted to having been a Nazi—or having even known one.
In short: Adolf Hitler had lost the war he started—making him a loser nobody wanted to be identified with.
In the decades since, the “loser” tag has stuck with those who once served the Third Reich. Mel Brooks has repeatedly turned German soldiers—once the pride of the battlefield—into idiotic comic foils.
Even the fearsome Gestapo was spoofed for laughs on the long-running TV comedy, “Hogan’s Heroes.”
“Hogan’s Heroes”
Republicans vividly remember what happened after Richard Nixon was forced to resign in disgrace on August 9, 1974: Democrats, riding a wave of reform fever, swept Republicans out of the House and Senate—and Jimmy Carter into the White House.
Republicans fear that if Trump is defeated, he will similarly become a non-person no one any longer fears. He will be a figure held up to ridicule and condemnation.
Like Adolf Hitler. Like Richard M. Nixon.
And his Congressional supporters will be branded as losers along with him.
If Republicans are conflicted about supporting Trump, their dilemma boils down to this:
- Can I hold onto my power—and all the privileges that go with it—by supporting Trump? Or:
- Can I hold onto my power—and privileges—by deserting him?
This is how Republicans define morality today.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Military, Politics, Social commentary on August 6, 2020 at 12:39 am
In the 1993 movie, Stalingrad, a platoon of young German Army soldiers leaves behind the beaches and beauties of Italy and find themselves fighting desperately to stay alive in Russia.
Early in the film, there is an exchange that has its real-life counterpart almost 75 years later.
A young, idealistic German lieutenant, newly transferred to the Russian front, is horrified when he sees a fellow soldier from another unit sadistically beat a Russian prisoner to death.
He seeks out the man’s superior, a captain, and says: “Captain, I must protest about the behavior of your men.”
“You want to protest?” asks the captain, grinning sardonically. “Tell the Fuhrer.”
Fast forward to January 28, 2017, the day after President Donald J. Trump signed into law an executive order which:
- Suspended entry of all refugees to the United States for 120 days;
- Barred Syrian refugees indefinitely;, and
- Blocked entry into the United States for 90 days for citizens from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen.
The new rules—and the efforts of security personnel at major international airports to enforce them—triggered a tsunami of chaos and fear among travelers.
“We’ve gotten reports of people being detained all over the country,” said Becca Heller, the director of the International Refugee Assistance Project. “They’re literally pouring in by the minute.”
Refugees on flights when the order was signed on January 27 were detained upon arrival.
Many students attending American universities were blocked from returning to the United States from visits abroad.
Donald Trump
According to Homeland Security officials:
- 109 people who were already in transit to the United States when the order was signed were denied access;
- 173 were stopped before boarding planes heading to America;
- 81 who were stopped were eventually given waivers to enter the United States.
Internationally, travelers were seized by panic when they were not allowed to board flights to the United States. In Dubai and Istanbul, airport and immigration officials turned passengers away at boarding gates. At least one family was removed from a flight it had boarded.
Earlier on January 28, Trump, isolated in the White House from all the chaos he had unleashed in airports across the nation and throughout the world, said:
“It’s not a Muslim ban, but we were totally prepared. It’s working out very nicely. You see it at the airports, you see it all over.”
Then the American Civil Liberties Union intervened.
Two Iraqi immigrants, defended by the ACLU, accused Trump of legal and constitutional overreach.
The Iraqis had been detained at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York City. One had served as an interpreter for American forces in Iraq for a decade. The other was en route to reunite with his wife and son in Texas.
The interpreter, Hameed Khalid Darweesh, was released after nearly 19 hours of detention. So was the other traveler, Haider Sameer Abdulkhaleq Alshawi.
Before the two men were released, one of their lawyers, Mark Doss, a supervising attorney at the International Refugee Assistance Project, asked an official, “Who is the person we need to talk to?”
“Call Mr. Trump,” said the official, who refused to identify himself.
He might just as well have said: “You want to protest? Tell the Fuhrer.”
The ACLU action secured at least a temporary blocking of part of Trump’s order. A Brooklyn judge barred the government from deporting some arrivals who found themselves ensnared by the Presidential order.
Judge Ann M. Donnelly, of the Federal District Court in Brooklyn, ruled that sending the travelers home could cause them “irreparable harm.” She said the government was “enjoined and restrained from, in any manner and by any means, removing individuals” who had arrived in the United States with valid visas or refugee status.
But she didn’t force the administration to let in people otherwise blocked by the executive order who had not yet traveled to the United States. Nor did she issue a broader ruling on the constitutionality of the order.
* * * * *
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.
Summing up Trump’s character in a March 25, 2016 broadcast of The PBS Newshour, conservative political columnist David Brooks warned: “The odd thing about [Trump’s] whole career and his whole language, his whole world view is there is no room for love in it. You get a sense of a man who received no love, can give no love….
“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.”
There were countless warning signs available for Trump’s supporters to see—if they had wanted to see them:
- His threats of violence and/or imprisonment against his political opponents;
- His rampant egomania;
- His attacks on everyone who dared to disagree with him;
- His refusal to release his tax returns;
- His history of bankruptcies and lawsuits filed against him;
- His bragging about sexually abusing women (“Grab them by the pussy”).
Those who voted against Trump are now learning the meaning of the Nazi slogan: “The Fuhrer proposes and disposes for all.”
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on August 4, 2020 at 12:10 am
In September, 1938, as Adolf Hitler threatened to go to war against France and England over Czechoslovakia, most Germans feared he would. They knew that Germany was not ready for war, despite all of their Fuhrer’s boasts about how invincible the Third Reich was.
A group of high-ranking German army officers was prepared to overthrow Hitler—provided that England and France held firm and handed him a major diplomatic reverse.
But then England and France—though more powerful than Germany—surrendered to Hitler’s demands for the “Sudetenland”—the northern, southwest and western regions of Czechoslovakia, inhabited mostly by ethnic Germans.
Hitler’s popularity among Germans soared.
The plotters in the German high command, realizing that public opinion stood overwhelmingly against them, abandoned their plans for a coup. They decided to wait for a more favorable time.
It never came.
Adolf Hitler and his generals
Less than one year after the infamous “Munich conference,” World War II erupted.
Most Germans blindly followed their Fuhrer right to the end—believing his lies (or at least wanting to believe them), serving in his legions, defending his rampant criminality.
Germans paid the price for their loyalty to a murderous dictator—not just on the battlefield, but through countless rapes, murders and the wholesale destruction of their cities. And from 1945 to 1989, Germans living in the eastern part of their country paid the price as slaves to the Soviet Union.
Americans have learned nothing from this warning from history about subservience to a madman.
In 2016, almost 63 million Americans elected Donald Trump—a racist, serial adulterer and longtime fraudster—as President.
Upon taking office in January, 2017, Trump began undermining one public or private institution after another. Among his outrages:
- Repeatedly and viciously attacked 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 sided 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,
- Fired FBI Director James Comey for investigating that subversion.
- Gave Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak highly classified CIA Intelligence about an Islamic State plot to turn laptops into concealable bombs.
- Allowed predatory corporations to subvert Federal regulatory protections for consumers and the environment.
- Shut down the Federal Government for more than a month 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.
- Threatened members of Congress with treason charges for daring to challenge him.
- Since being acquitted of impeachable offenses by the Senate, fired the Inspectors General (IG) of five cabinet departments in six weeks.
Donald Trump
Through all those outrages, House and Senate Republican majorities remained silent or vigorously supported him.
Democrats seemed unable to cope with Trump’s legislative agenda and his personal attacks on Twitter and in press conferences.
Even when the press unearthed his latest corruptions, the public didn’t care.
And now, with the 2020 Presidential election fast approaching, Trump has unleashed his latest outrage—while Americans who could stand against it do nothing: Trump now is laying the groundwork to discredit the outcome if he loses.
And it’s increasingly looking as if he will.
His tactics: Make it difficult to vote, guarantee voting is slow and complicated and raise questions about the outcome.
He wants to claim that if former Vice President Joe Biden wins, he was elected through a fraudulent mail-in vote.
Republicans have not protested any of this. Nor would they likely protest if Trump illegally occupied the White House in the face of massive vote fraud—on his part.
(His Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton, won the popular vote in 2016—but lost in the Electoral College. But that didn’t prevent Trump from claiming that he would have won the popular vote except for massive fraud—which never happened.)
Whatever happens, Trump will claim he won.
In 2012, after President Barack Obama defeated his endorsed candidate, Mitt Romney, Trump tweeted:
- Lets fight like hell and stop this great and disgusting injustice!
- The world is laughing at us. We can’t let this happen. We should march on Washington and stop this travesty.
- Our nation is totally divided!
- The loser one! [Trump’s spelling]
- He lost the popular vote by a lot and won the election. We should have a revolution in this country!
And even if he’s forced to leave office, he will undercut the ability of his successor to govern.
During World War II, scores of high-ranking German army officers risked their lives to plot the overthrow—and even assassination—of Adolf Hitler. Their efforts culminated in the ill-fated July 20, 1944 bomb plot that left Hitler badly injured but still in total command of Germany.
It would take only Vice President Mike Pence and eight Cabinet officers to courageously invoke the 25th Amendment and find Donald Trump “unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office,”
Yet even that small a number of honorable men cannot be found within the Trump administration.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on July 24, 2020 at 12:11 am
There are five reasons why millions of Americans refuse to wear masks during a deadly pandemic:
- A feeling of solidarity against authority.
- “If liberals do it, it’s fascistic.”
- Rejection of the death-toll caused by COVID-19.
- Disdain for education in general—and science in particular.
- Religious fanaticism.
To these must be added:
Sixth: Hypocrisy. Since the Supreme Court legalized abortion in 1973, the Right has demanded that even women who are pregnant due to rape or incest carry the fetus to term.
Yet now that Right-wingers are being asked to wear masks in public—to protect themselves and others from a deadly plague—they’ve suddenly discovered the mantra: “It’s my body!”
Seventh: Identifying with Donald Trump. The President has made it clear that his followers don’t wear masks. And they have fallen into line, refusing to mask up even in crowded, indoor arenas where infection is most likely.
The following states require their citizens to wear masks when in public: Alabama, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, District of Columbia, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Massachusetts, Maryland, Michigan, Mississippi, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Texas, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia.
The following states still refuse to order their citizens to wear masks when in public: Arizona, Alaska, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Indiana, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah, Vermont, Wisconsin, Wyoming.
Yet even in states where wearing a mask is mandatory when venturing out in public, many people refuse to do so. Fights have erupted before mask-less and mask-wearing customers—and sometimes store employees—who asked them to put on a mask before entering.
- Two men were arrested for felony battery after starting a fight with employees at a Los Angeles Target store over wearing masks inside the store.
- A woman entered Curbside Eatery in La Mesa, California, without a mask, pulling her T-shirt over her face. When the owner told her to mask up or leave, the woman yelled: “This is ridiculous! You’re discriminating against me!’ and threatened a lawsuit.
- In a Costco in Fort Myers, Florida, a masked man asked an unmasked customer to wear a mask. The unmasked man screamed that he was being harassed: “I feel threatened!”
So: How should those who refuse to wear a mask—and thus present a clear and present danger to others—be dealt with?
Ideally, President Donald Trump should issue a mandatory emergency order requiring everyone to wear a mask when out in public. But Trump cannot admit to error—let alone one that could cost him votes among his most fanatical followers. So that’s not going to happen.
Governors, mayors and business owners need to fill the leadership void. They should issue emergency orders mandating the wearing of masks in public. And these orders should be forcibly backed up by the following:
- Stop mollycoddling Right-wing thugs.
- Stop stressing that wearing a mask will protect others from “you.” Most people don’t care about strangers. Emphasize that wearing a mask will protect “you and your family” from others.
- Don’t hand out tickets to mask-evaders. They will simply ignore them—or write them off as a cheap price for going without a mask.
- Major retailers should hire professional guards to handle mask-evaders—who should be turned over to police.
- Police should arrest everyone not wearing a mask in public and jail them—without bond—until the plague is over or a vaccine is found.
- These inmates should be lodged together—and away from those who are not infected with COVID-19.
- Police should create tip hotlines for reporting mask-evaders.
- Police should offer rewards for tips that lead to arrests.
- The media should publicize these arrests and jailings—to warn other potential mask-evaders.
- Many Right-wingers openly threaten unarmed civilians with assault rifles. They must be forcibly taught the penalties for endangering the lives of others—via firearms or as potential carriers of a deadly virus.
It was the failure of German police and courts to abort Right-wing violence during the Weimar Republic that led to even greater violence through the rise of Adolf Hitler and his Nazi party.
This is how United States authorities dealt with “Typhoid Mary” Mallon (September 23, 1869 – November 11, 1938).
Mary Mallon
An Irish-born cook, she was an asymptomatic carrier of typhoid fever and is believed to have infected 53 people, three of whom died. Because she persisted in working as a cook, she exposed others to the disease.
As a result, she was twice forcibly quarantined by authorities, and died after a total of nearly 30 years in isolation at Riverside Hospital on North Brother Island, in New York City.
Laws are useless if citizens believe they are unfairly or unpredictably enforced. As Niccolo Machiavelli warns in his classic work, The Discourses:
All those who have written upon civil institutions demonstrate…that whoever desires to found a state and give it laws, must start with assuming that all men are bad and ever ready to display their vicious nature, whenever they may find occasion for it.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Medical, Politics, Social commentary on July 23, 2020 at 12:22 am
Not only does President Donald Trump refuse to wear a mask, but he suspects the loyalty of his staffers and Republican allies who don’t follow his mask-less example.
On April 28, Vice President Mike Pence toured the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. Pence, who leads the White House task force on the virus, refused to wear a mask, even though all the officials and medical personnel clustered around him did. Pence even visited with a patient who had survived the Coronavirus and was going to give blood.
Mike Pence at the May Clinic
Few White House aides wear masks, although they claim that Trump hasn’t told them not to wear them. Some Republican allies have asked Trump’s campaign how they would be seen by Trump if he saw them wearing a mask.
“It’s a vanity thing, I guess, with him,” Nancy Pelosi, speaker of the House of Representatives, said. “You’d think, as the President of the United States, you would have the confidence to honor the guidance he’s giving the country.”
By refusing to wear a mask, Trump has convinced untold numbers of Americans—mostly males—that ignoring the dangers of Coronavirus is the manly thing to do.
(On July 20, he tweeted an image of himself wearing a mask and called it “patriotic” to wear one. Hours later, however, he appeared without a mask at a fundraiser at the Trump International Hotel in Washington.)
Meanwhile, former Vice President Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee for President, has often appeared in public wearing a mask. During a June 26 television interview he said that, if he were elected President, he would require wearing face masks in public to prevent the spread of the Coronavirus.
“The one thing we do know—these masks make a gigantic difference,” Biden said. “I would insist that everybody out in public be wearing that mask.”
Yet even in states such as California and New York, where this is required, many people still refuse to do so.
From May 5 to May 12, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) surveyed 4,042 adults throughout the country on wearing masks. The agency found that 60.3% of respondents said they always wore a mask when out in public. Another 13.8% said they often wore a mask in public.
But 17.1% said they either rarely or never wore a mask in public.
The CDC found that women were more likely than men to say they always wore a mask in public.
CDC headquarters in Atlanta
There are several reasons why people refuse to wear masks.
First: A feeling of solidarity. According to David Abrams, a professor of social and behavioral sciences at NYU School of Global Public Health: People who don’t wear masks may see it as a sign of solidarity, as if they are taking a stand against authority.
Second: If liberals do it, it’s fascistic. Many mask protesters accuse those who wear masks of being fascists. This is a hallmark of Right-wing politics—accusing their opponents of being what they are themselves.
Third: They have utterly rejected the rising death-toll caused by the virus. They claim stories of such deaths are mere “fake news”—the term Trump uses to dismiss any news stories that highlight his mistakes and criminality.
Fourth: Republicans disdain education in general—and science in particular. In March, an NBC News poll found that only 30% of Republicans said that they would actually listen to the advice of doctors to stay away from large, crowded areas to avoid Coronavirus.
These are the same people who get their version of reality from Right-wing sources like Fox News Network and radio broadcaster Rush Limbaugh.
Rush Limbaugh
On his March 27 show, Limbaugh dismissed Coronavirus as “the common cold,” then added: “We didn’t elect a president to defer to a bunch of health experts that we don’t know.
“And how do we know they’re even health experts? Well, they wear white lab coats, and they’ve been in the job for a while, and they’re at the CDC [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] and they’re at the NIH [National Institutes of Health] and they’re up, well—yeah, they’ve been there, and they are there.
“But has there been any job assessment for them? They’re just assumed to be the best because they’re in government. But, these are all kinds of things that I’ve been questioning.”
In 2015, Limbaugh said: “Firsthand smoke takes 50 years to kill people, if it does. Not everybody that smokes gets cancer. Now, it’s true that everybody who smokes dies, but so does everyone who eats carrots.”
Five years later, Limbaugh—a longtime and heavy cigar smoker—announced that he had Stage Four lung cancer.
Fifth: Religious Fanaticism: Many fundamentalist Christians believe that their faith in Jesus will protect them against COVID-19. They continue to attend services indoors in defiance of CDC warnings by meeting in large numbers indoors.
A female member of the Solid Red Rock Church in Monroe, Ohio, told CNN: “I wouldn’t be anywhere else. I’m covered in Jesus’ blood. I’m covered in Jesus’ blood.”
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In History, Law, Law Enforcement, Medical, Politics, Social commentary on July 22, 2020 at 12:24 am
The United States is now into the seventh month of a deadly plague. More than 3.9 million Americans have become infected with COVID-19 and at least 142,028 have died.
Wearing a mask and “social distancing”—keeping at least six feet between yourself and others while in public—have been the Golden Rules urged by public health officials for months.
And yet vast numbers of Americans still refuse to do either.
Surgical mask
In the early weeks and months of the pandemic, cloth face masks weren’t universally endorsed, even by public health experts.
“One, we didn’t know whether they were actually helpful, and two, there was a lot of concern that if people were using medical masks then people like myself, were not going to have access to them,” said Dr. Craig Spencer, director of global health in emergency medicine at Columbia University Medical Center.
No less an authority than Dr. Anthony Fauci, the country’s leading infectious disease expert, said in March that “people should not be walking around with masks.”
Only in early June did the World Health Organization (WHO) urge non-healthcare workers to mask up. The WHO advised people to don masks when social distancing was not possible, such as when visiting stores and using public transportation.
According to Dr. Jeremy Faust, the change in attitudes toward masks should be seen as the nature of science, and not as a flaw.
“That is what experts, in fact, do. They don’t just have an opinion and stick to it,” said Faust, an emergency physician at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, in Boston, Massachusetts. “They actually let their opinions develop and evolve as better information becomes available.”
Scientists have learned, for example, that COVID-19 can be spread by those who show no symptom of the disease. And mounting evidence has proven that masks are essential for protecting people from the virus.
Coronavirus is spread by respiratory droplets when an infected person coughs, sneezes or talks—especially if large numbers of people are packed indoors. The danger goes up if the talker is shouting or singing loudly.
If not blocked by a face covering, the droplets can travel six to 13 feet.
Researchers at Florida Atlantic University found that some masks were more effective than others. One study showed that well-fitted homemade masks with multiple layers of fabric, as well as off-the-shelf cone style masks, were the most effective in reducing droplet dispersal.
Bandannas turned out to be the least effective in reducing transmission.
Coronavirus
In cases involving SARS, MERS and COVID, the chance of transmission of an infection was significantly reduced when a mask was worn.
So why do so many Americans refuse to wear a mask?
Start at the top: With Donald Trump, 45th President of the United States.
From the outset, Trump refused to wear a mask in public.
A colossal egotist, Trump is orange-skinned, morbidly obese and lacking a neck. (His head seems to pop right out of his shoulders.) Yet he still thinks of himself as dangerously handsome. And he fears that covering his face would diminish his power and appeal.
“Appearing to play it safe contradicts a core principle of masculinity: show no weakness,” wrote social sciences professor Peter Glick at Scientific American magazine. “Defying experts’ warnings about personal danger signals ‘I’m a tough guy, bring it on.’”
On May 21, Trump refused to wear a face mask as he toured a Ford facility in Michigan that’s manufacturing ventilators and personal protective equipment. This violated the policies of the facility, the governor’s executive order and warnings from the state’s attorney general.
Once states across the country began “reopening,” Trump scheduled his first 2020 re-election rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
It was held on June 20 at the BOK Center. Scientists had learned that Coronavirus is more likely to be transmitted indoors than outdoors, when masses of people are packed together, and when people are loudly talking—or, worse, shouting.
Masks were available for those who wanted them, but Trump made it clear that his supporters shouldn’t wear masks, as a sign of support for him. Photos of the rally show men and women densely packed together, with none of them wearing masks.
A Trump rally
The Tulsa event was followed by another indoor rally in Phoenix on June 23. “Students for Trump” featured a packed crowd, with almost no one wearing masks.
After staging COVID-spreading rallies at Tulsa, Oklahoma, and Phoenix, Arizona, Trump scheduled another one for July 3 at Mount Rushmore, in Keystone, South Dakota.
Such rallies had been put on hold since March, due to the issuing of stay-at-home orders across the country by states’ mayors and governors.
Although health experts expressed fears about a large gathering during the Coronavirus pandemic, South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem said people would “not be social distancing” during the celebration:
“In South Dakota, we’ve told people to focus on personal responsibility….Those who want to come and join us, we’ll be giving out free face masks, if they choose to wear one. But we won’t be social distancing.”
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In Bureaucracy, History, Medical, Politics, Social commentary on July 13, 2020 at 1:26 am
Well, come on all of you Right-wing men
Donald Trump needs your help again.
He’s got himself in a terrible jam
He’s spread a virus throughout the land.
So throw off those masks, give a big cheer
Your Coronavirus-in-Chief is here!
“I think I made a mistake. I thought this was a hoax, but it’s not.”
So spoke a 30-year-old patient who died at Methodist Hospital in San Antonio, Texas. His last words came after attending a so-called “COVID party,” according to the hospital.
Methodist Hospital in San Antoioo
According to Dr. Jane Appleby, chief medical officer for Methodist Hospital and Methodist Children’s Hospital: “Someone will be diagnosed with the disease, and they’ll have a party to invite their friends over to see if they can beat the disease.
“One of the things that was heart-wrenching that he said to his nurse was, ‘You know, I think I made a mistake.’ And this young man went to a COVID party.. He didn’t really believe. He thought the disease was a hoax. He thought he was young and invincible and wouldn’t get affected by the disease.”
And it’s one-two-three
What are they dyin’ for?
Don’t ask em’, they don’t give a damn
Right here in COVID-land.
And it’s five-six-seven
Open up those graveyard gates
Well, there ain’t no time to wonder why
Whoopee! They’re all going to die.
It’s understandable that this patient believed COVID-19 was a hoax. He was, after all, from Texas, which overwhelmingly gave its votes to Donald J. Trump in 2016.
And it was President Trump who infamously said, on February 28: “Now the Democrats are politicizing the Coronavirus….We did one of the great jobs….One of my people came up to me and said, ‘Mr. President, they tried to beat you on Russia, Russia, Russia’….They couldn’t do it. They tried the impeachment hoax….It’s all turning, they lost….And this is their new hoax.”
“Hoax” is one of Trump’s favorite words.
He called the well-documented ties between Russian Intelligence agents and his 2016 Presidential campaign “a hoax.”
Ditto for the efforts of the House of Representatives to remove him for trying to extort Ukraine into smearing former Vice President Joe Biden: “The impeachment hoax.”
Climate change, for Trump, is “an expensive hoax.”
Donald Trump
“Trump is trying to undermine the trustworthiness of any source but himself,” said Margaret Levi, professor of political science at Stanford University. “The point is to make himself the only credible authority, to be fully trusted as a ‘war-time’ president.”
And in the case of the anonymous San Antonio patient—and untold numbers of his other supporters—he has succeeded brilliantly. To their misfortune.
Well, grifters and traitors throughout the land
Pack yourselves off to COVID-land.
Don’t be shy, don’t hesitate
Satan is ready, so don’t make ‘em wait.
Just be glad that Donald Trump’s your man
As you’re dyin’ off as fast as you can.
By July 11, there were 8,332 new confirmed Coronavirus cases in Texas, according to a New York Times database. More than 258,000 cases and more than 3,200 deaths have been recorded in Texas so far.
Yet for those attending the Coronavirus party, such facts meant nothing compared to the assurances of Donald Trump—a proven serial liar—that there was nothing to fear.
“People will come into the hospital] initially, and they don’t look so bad,” said Appleby. “They don’t look really sick. But when you check their oxygen levels and their lab tests, they’re really sicker than they appear on the surface.”
Among the COVID-19 danger signs to look for, advised Appleby: If you’re not feeling well, have a high fever, cough and severe muscle aches.
Well, come on Republicans, let’s move fast,
Your big chance is here at last.
It doesn’t matter that Trump is Red
As he walks on the bodies of Americans dead.
Just be sure Vlad Putin knows your name
Treason’s just a part of your game.
Meanwhile, Trump is trying to discredit Dr. Anthony Fauci, the country’s leading infectious disease expert.
The reason: Fauci has not hesitated to warn about the dangers of COVID-19—and the failures of the Federal Government to effectively control it.
Anthony Fauci
Cmichel67, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
Trump sees the virus not as a danger to Americans but to his chances for re-election. Among his “efforts” to “deal” with it:
- Denying the dangers of the virus
- Lying about the extent of its spread
- Pitting states against each other for scarce medical supplies
- Seizing medical supplies ordered by states
- Demanding an end to governors’ “stay-at-home” orders so the country can “reopen”—before proper safeguards can be installed.
For tyrants, truth is always the most dangerous enemy.
As World War II went increasingly against Nazi Germany, those who dared to say “The war is lost” were strung up with piano wire—often on lamp posts, as a warning to others.
Trump would clearly like to employ the same “solution” to those who dare to disagree with him.
And it’s one-two-three
What are they dyin’ for?
Don’t ask em’, they don’t give a damn
Right here in COVID-land.
And it’s five-six-seven
Open up those graveyard gates
Well, there ain’t no time to wonder why
Whoopee! They’re all going to die.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Military, Politics, Social commentary on June 29, 2020 at 1:19 am
On July 20, 1944, members of the Wehrmacht high command failed to assassinate Adolf Hitler with a bomb hidden in a briefcase.
Adolf Hitler
Mass arrests quickly followed.
Among the first victims discovered and executed was the conspiracy’s leader, Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg. Standing before a makeshift firing squad at midnight, he cried: “Long live our sacred Germany!”
At least 7,000 persons were arrested by the Gestapo. According to records of the Fuehrer Conferences on Naval Affairs, 4,980 were executed.
Had the conspiracy succeeded, history would have turned out differently:
Thus, history can be altered by the appearance—or disappearance—of a single individual.
Which brings us back to Donald Trump.
Donald Trump
Since becoming President on January 20, 2017, Trump has attacked or undermined one public or private institution after another, including:
- The Justice Department: Repeatedly attacked his Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, for not “protecting” him from the FBI’s investigating ties between the Trump 2016 Presidential campaign and Russian Intelligence agents. In 2018, Trump fired him.
- Ordered 46 Obama-era prosecutors to resign and fired the Inspectors General of five cabinet departments.
- Appointed William Barr as Attorney General in 2019 to protect him against investigations of his rampant criminality—both before and after he became President.
- The CIA: Refused to accept its findings—and those of the FBI and National Security Agency—that Russian Intelligence agents had intervened in the 2016 election to ensure his victory. Repeatedly defended Russian dictator Vladimir Putin’s denials of this.
- The FBI: Fired FBI Director James B. Comey for refusing to serve as Trump’s private secret police chief.
- Repeatedly violated the Emoluments Clause of the Constitution by using his position as President to further enrich himself.
- The military: Threatened to order the U.S. Armed Forces to violate the rights of Americans protesting police brutality and the killing of George Floyd.
- The press: Tweeted: “The FAKE NEWS media (failing @nytimes, @NBCNews, @ABC, @CBS, @CNN) is not my enemy, it is the enemy of the American People!” (“Enemy of the people” was a favorite charge made by Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin.)
- The judiciary: Repeatedly attacked Seattle U.S. District Judge James Robart, who halted Trump’s first Muslim travel ban.
On February 5, 2020, the Republican-dominated Senate—ignoring the overwhelming evidence against him—acquitted Donald Trump on two impeachment articles:
- Article 1: Abuse of Power: For pressuring Ukraine to assist him in his re-election campaign by smearing former Vice President Joseph Biden, his possible Democratic rival; and
- Article 2: Obstruction of Congress: For blocking testimony of subpoenaed witnesses and refusing to provide documents in response to House subpoenas in the impeachment inquiry.
With Republicans solidly backing Trump, that left only two other institutions capable of ending his reign of criminality and treason: The military and the Intelligence community.
Both have access to vast amounts of secret—and highly embarrassing—-information. And both are expert in leaking choice bits of this to favored members of the media.
If the military refused to carry out Trump’s orders, that would prove a genuine Constitutional crisis. But there would be a historical precedent for this.
In 1974, Secretary of Defense James Schlesinger feared that a Watergate-embattled President Richard M. Nixon might order the military to prevent his removal by impeachment. Schlesinger ordered all Armed Services branches to not accept any order from the White House unless countersigned by Schlesinger himself.
As for the CIA: This agency has been overthrowing heads of state for decades.
In 1953, its coup removed Mohammad Mosaddegh, the prime minister of Iran. In 1954, another coup did the same for Guatemalan president Jacobo Árbenz.
In 1970, Chile’s president, Salvador Allende, fell victim to a CIA-instigated plot.
Millions of Americans believe the CIA engineered the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy. James W. Douglass’ 2008 book, JFK and the Unspeakable, charges that the CIA murdered Kennedy because he wanted to end the Cold War after the Cuban Missile Crisis.
* * * * *
Had Senate Republicans chosen patriotism over partisanship and convicted President Donald J. Trump for high crimes and misdemeanors—or had the military and/or the Intelligence community forced him out of office—history would have turned out differently:
- Trump’s vicious attacks on the press, judiciary and Intelligence community would have ended immediately.
- His efforts to subvert the Justice Department and Armed Services would have stopped.
- He would have faced vigorous prosecution for his litany of crimes—before and during his Presidency.
- Vladimir Putin would have lost his strongest ally in the United States.
- Vice President Mike Pence would have become President—but, burdened by his reputation as Trump’s #1 sycophant, might have been unable to win election in November, 2020; and
- Tarnished by their subservience to a discredited Trump, Republicans would have almost certainly lost the White House and the Senate.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Medical, Military, Politics, Social commentary on June 26, 2020 at 1:23 pm
On July 20, 1944, Colonel Claus Schenk von Stuaffenberg tried to assassinate Adolf Hitler.
He had served with the Wehrmacht in Poland (1939), France (1940) and the Soviet Union (1941).
While serving in Tunisa, he was seriously wounded on April 7, 1943, when Allied fighters strafed his vehicle. He lost his left eye, right hand and two fingers of his left hand after surgery.
Colonel Claus Schenk von Stuaffenberg
Nevertheless, he now acted as the prime mover for the conspiracy among a growing number of German high command officers to arrest or assassinate Germany’s Fuehrer.
For most of these officers, the motive was craven: The “happy time’ of German victories was over. Germany was losing the war it had launched on the world in 1939–and now they feared the worst.
This was especially true now that the numerically superior forces of the Soviet Union had gone onto the offensive.
For Stauffenberg, there was another reason: His disgust at the horrors he had seen committed by his fellow Wehrmacht soldiers upon defenseless POW’s and civilians in Russia.
Thus, Stauffenberg—more than many Germans–knew firsthand the vengeance his country could expect if the “Thousand-Year Reich” fell.
Something must be done, he believed, to prove to the world that not all Germans—even members of the Wehrmacht—were criminals.
Most of the conspirators wanted to arrest Hitler and surrender to British and American forces—well before the much-feared Russians gained a toehold in Germany.
Stauffenberg didn’t want to arrest Hitler; he wanted to kill him. A live Hitler might eventually be rescued by his Nazi colleagues.
But Hitler was a closely-guarded target. He was surrounded by fanatical bodyguards who were expert marksmen. He often wore a bulletproof vest and a cap lined with three pounds of laminated steel.
Adolf Hitler
Bundesarchiv, Bild 146-1990-048-29A / CC-BY-SA 3.0 [CC BY-SA 3.0 de (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/de/deed.en)%5D
But his single greatest protection–he claimed—was an instinct for danger. He would suddenly change his schedule—to drop in where he was least expected. Or suddenly depart an event where he was expected to stay a long time.
On November 9, 1939, this instinct saved his life. He was expected to give a long speech at a Munich beer hall before the “old Fighters” of his brown-shirted storm troopers.
Instead, he suddenly cut short his speech and left the beer hall. Forty-five minutes later, a bomb exploded inside a pillar—before which Hitler had been speaking.
Since then, a series of other assassination attempts had been made against Hitler. All of them involved time-bombs. And all of the would-be assassins were members of the German General Staff.
In one case, a bomb secretly stashed aboard Hitler’s plane failed to explode. In another, an officer who had a bomb strapped to himself unexpectedly found his scheduled meeting with Hitler called off. He had to rush into a bathroom to defuse the bomb before it went off.
So now it was the turn of von Stauffenberg. He would carry his bomb—hidden in a briefcase—into a “Hitler conference” packed with military officers.
But Stauffenberg didn’t intend to be a suicide bomber. He meant to direct the government that would replace that of the Nazis.
His bomb—also rigged with a time-fuse—would be left in the conference room while he found an excuse to leave. After the explosion, he would phone one of his fellow conspirators with the news.
Then, the coup—“Operation Valkyrie”—would be on.
Anti-Nazi conspirators would seize control of key posts of the government. The British and Americans would then be informed of Germany’s willingness to surrender. Provided, of course, that the vengeance-seeking Russians did not have a say in its postwar future.
The Wehrmacht and Schutzstaffel (SS) had killed millions of Russians. Many had died in combat. Others had been murdered as captives. Still more had been allowed to die by starvation and exposure to the notorious Russian winter.
So the Germans—both Nazi and anti-Nazi—knew what they could expect if soldiers of the Soviet Union reached German soil.
On July 20, 1944, Stauffenberg appeared at Hitler’s well-guarded military headquarters in East Prussia. Like all his other outposts, Hitler had named it—appropriately enough—“Wolf’s Lair.”
“Wolf’s Lair”
Stauffenberg entered the large, concrete building while the conference was in session. He placed his yellow briefcase next to Hitler—who was standing with his generals at a heavy oaken table. Then he excused himself to take an “urgent” phone call.
After Stauffenberg left the room, Colonel Heinz Brandt, standing next to Hitler, found the briefcase blocking his legs. So he moved it—to the other side of the heavy oaken support, partially shielding Hitler from the blast..
At 12:42 p.m. on July 20, 1944, Stauffenberg’s briefcase bomb erupted.
Brandt died, as did two other officers and a stenographer.
Hitler not only survived, but the plotters failed to seize the key broadcast facilities of the Reich.
This allowed Hitler to make a late-night speech to the nation, revealing the failed plot and assuring Germans that he was alive. And he swore to flush out the “traitorous swine” who had tried to kill him.
He soon proved as bad as his word.
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AMERICA: TRYING OUT “THE GERMAN EXPERIMENT”
In Bureaucracy, History, Military, Politics, Social commentary on August 24, 2020 at 12:17 amOn 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 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
It took him 14 years to win appointment to Chancellor (the equivalent of Attorney General) of Germany in 1933.
In 1923, he staged a coup attempt in Bavaria—which was quickly and brutally put down by police. He was arrested and sentenced to less than a year in prison.
After that, Hitler decided that winning power through violence was no longer an option. He must win it through election—or appointment.
He repeatedly ran for the highest office in Germany—President—but never got a clear majority in a free election.
When the 1929 Depression struck Germany, the fortunes of Hitler’s Nazi party rose as the life savings of ordinary Germans fell. Streets echoed with bloody clashes between members of Hitler’s Nazi Stormtroopers and those of the German Communist Party.
Germany seemed on the verge of collapsing.
Germans desperately looked for a leader—a Fuhrer–who could somehow deliver them from the threat of financial ruin and Communist takeover.
In early 1933, members of his own cabinet persuaded aging German president, Paul von Hindenburg, that only Hitler’s appointment as Chancellor could do this.
Paul von Hindenburg
Hindenburg was reluctant to do so. He considered Hitler a dangerous radical. But he allowed himself to be convinced that, by putting Hitler in the Cabinet, he could be “boxed in” and thus controlled.
So, on January 30, 1933, he appointed Adolf Hitler Chancellor of Germany.
On August 2, 1934, Hindenburg died, and Hitler immediately assumed the titles–and duties—of the offices of Chancellor and President. His rise to total power was now complete.
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.”
They knew that demographics were steadily working against them. 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 these whites. His 2012 re-election had deprived them of the hope that 2008 had been an accident.
Then came 2016—and the possibility that a black President might actually be followed by a woman: Hillary Clinton. And the thought of a woman dictating to men was simply too much to bear.
On August 17, 2020, former First Lady Michelle Obama, speaking at the Democratic National Convention, summed up the legacies of the Obama and Trump administrations:
“When my husband left office with Joe Biden at his side, we had a record-breaking stretch of job creation. We’d secured the right to health care for 20,000,000 people. We were respected around the world, rallying our allies to confront climate change. And our leaders had worked hand-in-hand with scientists to help prevent an Ebola outbreak from becoming a global pandemic.
“Four years later, the state of this nation is very different. More than [170,000] people have died, and our economy is in shambles because of a virus that this president downplayed for too long. It has left millions of people jobless. Too many have lost their health care; too many are struggling to take care of basic necessities like food and rent
“Too many communities have been left in the lurch to grapple with whether and how to open our schools safely. Internationally, we’ve turned our back, not just on agreements forged by my husband, but on alliances championed by presidents like Reagan and Eisenhower.”
All of this should be remembered the next time an American blames Germans for their lethal embrace of Adolf Hitler.
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