Posts Tagged ‘REPUBLICANS’
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In Bureaucracy, Business, History, Politics, Social commentary on May 23, 2025 at 12:13 am
Republicans have long tried to prevent or eliminate programs that aid the poor and middle-class, including:
- Social Security (since it began in 1935)
- Medicare (started 1965)
- Medicaid (started 1985)
- Food stamps (started 1939)
- WIC (Women, Infants, Children–started 1972).
So why are so many poor Americans flocking to this party’s banner?
Two reasons: Racism and greed. There are historical parallels for both.
First, race:
In 1999, historian Victor Davis Hanson noted the huge gap in wealth between the aristocratic, slave-owning minority of the pre-Civil War South and the vast majority of poor white Southerners.
Victor Davis Hanson
“Before the war in the counties [Union General William Tecumseh] Sherman would later ruin, the top 10% of the landowners controlled 40% of the assessed wealth.”
In contrast, “more than half of those who were lucky enough to own any property at all still possessed less than 15% of the area’s valuation.”
So Hanson asked: “Why did the millions of poor whites of the Confederacy fight at all?”
He supplied the answer in his brilliant work on military history, The Soul of Battle: From Ancient Times to the Present Day, How Three Great Liberators Vanquished Tyranny.
One of those liberators was General William Tecumseh Sherman, who led 62,000 Union troops in a victorious “March to the Sea” through the Confederacy in 1864.
So why did so many poor Southern whites literally lay down their lives for the wealthy planter class, which despised them?
According to Hanson: “Behind the entire social fabric of the South lay slavery.
“If slavery eroded the economic position of the poor free citizens, if slavery encouraged a society of haves and have-nots…then it alone offered one promise to the free white man—poor, ignorant and dispirited—that he was at least not black and not a slave.”
And the planter class and its allies in government easily fobbed off their poor white countrymen with cheap flattery. Said Georgia Governor Joseph Brown:
“Among us the poor white laborer is respected as an equal. His family is treated with kindness, consideration, and respect. He does not belong to the menial class. The negro is in no sense his equal. He belongs to the only true aristocracy, the race of white men.”
Arlington House and plantation, former home of Robert E. Lee
Similarly, poor whites now flock to the Republican Party—which holds them in equal contempt—in large part to protest the 2008 election of the first black President of the United States.
According to a Pew Research Center study released on July 22, 2011: “Notably, the GOP gains have occurred only among white voters; a 2-point Republican edge among whites in 2008 (46% to 44%) has widened to a 13-point lead today (52% to 39%).”
Since the 1960s, Republicans have pursued a campaign policy of “divide and rule”—divide the nation along racial lines and reap the benefits at election time.
- Republicans opposed the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
- Republicans opposed the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
- Republicans, with Richard Nixon as their Presidential candidate in 1968 and 1972, pursued what they called a “Southern strategy”: Use “code language” to stoke fear and hatred of blacks among whites.
- Republicans have falsely identified welfare programs exclusively with nonwhites. (Of the six million Americans receiving food stamps, about 42% are white, 32% are black, and 22% are Latino—with the growth fastest among whites during the recession.)
Thus, in voting Republican, many of these poor whites believe they are “striking a blow for the white race.”
And they can do so in a more socially acceptable way than joining a certified hate group such as the American Nazi Party or Ku Klux Klan.
Since 2015, openly racist groups such as the Klan and the American Nazi Party have flocked to the banner of Presidential candidate and President Donald Trump. By enthusiastically courting their support, the real estate mogul has made it possible for Republican candidates to openly display their own racism.
Now greed:
In the hit play, 1776, on the creation and signing of the Declaration of Independence, there is a telling exchange between John Dickinson and John Hancock. It comes during the song, “Cool, Cool, Considerate Men.”
Dickinson, the delegate from Pennsylvania, urges Hancock, president of the Second Continental Congress, “to join us in our minuet.” By “us” he means his fellow conservatives who fear losing their property and exalted status by supporting American independence from Great Britain.
John Dickinson
Hancock declines, saying: “Fortunately, there are not enough men of property in America to dictate policy.”
To which Dickinson replies: “Perhaps not. But don’t forget that most men with nothing would rather protect the possibility of becoming rich than face the reality of being poor. And that is why they will follow us.”
Today, poor whites generally identify with the CEOs of powerful corporations. They believe the Republican gospel that they can attain such wealth—if only the government will “get out of my way.”
They forget—or ignore—the truth that government, for all its imperfections, is sometimes all that stands between them and a wide range of predators.
In return, the CEOs despise them as the privileged have always despised their social and economic “inferiors.”
Unless the Democratic Party can find ways to directly address these bitter, Politically Incorrect truths, it will continue its decline into insignificance.
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In Bureaucracy, Business, History, Politics, Social commentary on May 22, 2025 at 12:20 am
On July 22, 2011, ABC News carried the following story:
The Pew Foundation, analyzing voter identification, found “the electorate’s partisan affiliations have shifted significantly” since Barack Obama won office in 2008.
The GOP had gained strength among white voters, most specifically “the young and poor.”
A seven-point Democratic advantage among whites under age 30 three years earlier had turned into an 11-point GOP advantage. And a 15-point Democratic advantage among whites earning less than $30,000 annually had swung to a slim four-point Republican edge by 2011.
In addition:
- The GOP gains had occurred only among white voters.
- Republicans had made sizable gains among white voters since 2008. Fifty-two percent of white voters called themselves Republicans or leaned to the GOP, compared with 39% who affiliated with the Democratic Party or leaned Democratic.
- Democrats had lost their edge among lower income white voters.
- In 2008, Democrats had a 15 point lead among white voters with family incomes less than $30,000. By 2011, Republicans had a four-point edge among this group.
- The GOP’s lead among middle income white voters had grown since 2008, and Republicans held a substantial advantage with higher income white voters.
- Republicans made gains among whites with a high school education or less. The GOP’s advantage over Democrats had grown from one point in 2008 to 17 points in 2011 among less educated whites.
- Republicans had made smaller gains among white voters who had college degrees.
Five years later, in 2016, these masses of disaffected white men would overwhelmingly vote for Donald Trump, a real estate mogul-turned-celebrity-TV-host of “The Apprentice.”
Trump had been born into a life of luxury. He began his real estate career at his father’s real estate and construction company. He rose to wealth and fame after his father, Fred, gave him control of the business in 1971.
Similarly, soon after acquiring the family business, Trump set out to build his own empire—hotels, golf courses, casinos and skyscrapers across North and South America, Europe and Asia. Of the 515 entities he owns, 268 of them—52%—bear his last name. He often refers to his properties as “the swankiest,” “the most beautiful.”
During the Vietnam war, his father reportedly paid a doctor to claim that Trump suffered from “bone spurs” in his foot—thus enabling him to escape the draft.
Donald Trump
In short, Trump has literally nothing in common with the masses of poor whites who worship him.
Howard Stern, the notorious radio host, has known Trump many years. Commenting on the appeal Trump has for his followers, Stern says: “The oddity of all this is the people Trump despises most, love him the most.
“The people who are voting for Trump for the most part …he wouldn’t even let them in his fucking hotel. He’d be disgusted by them. Go to Mar-a-Lago. See if there’s any people who look like you. I’m talking to you in the audience.”
Yet, while the poor worship Trump and Republicans generally, there is a disconnect between them: Since 1980, Republicans have pursued a policy of gutting programs aimed at helping the poor—while repeatedly creating tax-breaks for the wealthiest 1% of the population.
For Republicans, the patron saint of this “love-the-rich-screw-the-poor” ideology remains Ronald Reagan—two-time governor of California and twice-elected President of the United States (1981-1989)
Ronald Reagan, who taught Americans to worship the wealthy
Among those charting Reagan’s legacy as President was former CBS Correspondent David Shoenbrum.
In his bestselling autobiography, America Inside Out: At Home and Abroad from Roosevelt to Reagan, he noted:
- On January 28, 1981, keeping a pledge to his financial backers in the oil industry, Reagan abolished Federal controls on the price of oil.
- Within a week, Exxon, Texaco and Shell raised gasoline prices and prices of home heating oil.
- Reagan saw it as his duty to put a floor under prices, not a ceiling above them.
- Reagan believed that when government helped business it wasn’t interfering. Loaning money to bail out a financially incompetent Chrysler was “supporting the free enterprise system.”
- But putting a high-profits tax on price-gouging corporations or filing anti-trust suits against them was “Communistic” and therefore intolerable.
- Tax-breaks for wealthy businesses meant helping America become stronger.
- But welfare for the poor or the victims of a predatory marketplace economy weakened America by sapping its morale.
“In short, welfare for the rich is good for America. But welfare for the poor is bad for America, even for the poor themselves, for it encourages them to be shiftless and lazy.
“Somehow, loans to the inefficient management of American corporations would not similarly encourage them in their inefficient methods,” wrote Shoenbrun.
Republicans have sought to dismantle Social Security ever since that program began in 1935. And Republicans have furiously opposed other programs aiding the poor and middle-class—such as Medicare, food stamps and WIC (Women, Infants, Children).
In short, this is not a political party with a history of rushing to the defense of those most in need.
So the question remains: Why are so many poor Americans flocking to its banner?
The answer lies in the history of the American South—and slavery.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Medical, Politics, Social commentary on May 13, 2025 at 12:11 am
“I’ve chosen this life. I know what it is. There are things about it that sometimes are disturbing. But you just focus on the job you have to do. And just put all that other stuff aside.”
The speaker wasn’t a longtime Mafia enforcer turned-State’s-witness. He was Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
And he was speaking with an NBC News reporter about death threats he had received.
At 83, Fauci was getting the sort of protection reserved for organized crime witnesses through the Justice Department’s Witness Security Program.
Dr. Anthony Fauci
Cmichel67, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
In 2020, the U.S. Marshals Service deputized nine officers from the Department of Health and Human Services as bodyguards for Fauci.
After leaving government service as Chief Medical Advisor to the President in 2022, he continued to receive protection from the U.S. Marshals Service—until January 16, 2025.
That was when re-elected President Donald Trump revoked his security detail.
Speaking to reporters in North Carolina, Trump said that he wouldn’t feel any responsibility if Fauci were harmed.
“You can’t have a security detail for the rest of your life because you worked for government,” Trump said—ignoring the truth that he has had one since he ran for President in 2015.
On August 28, 2024, Trump had shared a picture of Fauci in an orange jumpsuit, during a hate-filled rant on his website, Truth Social.
In that same post he called for the death or imprisonment of his enemies—former President Barack Obama, Bill Gates, Vice President Kamala Harris and Hillary Clinton.
Fauci’s “crime”: Speaking the hard medical truth about Coronavirus—and thus contradicting then-President Donald Trump’s ignorance- and lie-riddled statements.
For example: Trump loudly touted hydroxychloroquine, used for treating malaria, as a miracle cure for the Coronavirus.
Yet Fauci dared to point out there had been no scientific trials of the drug for its effectiveness against Coronavirus. Moreover, given the medical condition of some patients, it could even prove fatal.
Nor is Fauci the only former government official Trump has marked for vengeance. He stripped the security detail assigned to former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley.
Milley’s “crime”: Rightly criticizing Trump as a wannabe dictator:
“We don’t take an oath to a king, or a queen, or to a tyrant or dictator, and we don’t take an oath to a wannabe dictator. We don’t take an oath to an individual. We take an oath to the Constitution, and we take an oath to the idea that is America, and we’re willing to die to protect it.”
Such statements have infuriated Trump’s base of—at best—half-educated followers.
During the 2016 Presidential race, after winning the Nevada primary, Trump infamously celebrated his victory: “We won the evangelicals. We won with young. We won with old. We won with highly educated. We won with poorly educated. I love the poorly educated.”
A February 24, 2016 USA Today story covering this event carried the headline: “Donald Trump loves the poorly educated—and they love him.”
An August 20, 2019 story in Forbes noted that a Pew Research survey, conducted in July, had found that “67% of Democrats and Democrat-leaning respondents say higher education is having a positive effect on the country compared to only 33% of Republicans and Republican-leaning participants.”
Furthermore, “The percentage of Republicans attributing a positive effect to higher education has steadily eroded from 58% (2010), 53% (2012), 54% (2015), 43% (2016), and 36% (2017). Among Republicans, 59% now say higher education has a negative effect on the U.S., compared to just 18% of Democrats.”
In March, 2020, 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 Rush Limbaugh.
Rush Limbaugh
On his March 27, 2020 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.”
This is the same Rush Limbaugh who said, in 2015: “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.”
In February, 2020, Limbaugh—a longtime and heavy cigar smoker—announced that he had Stage Four lung cancer. He died on February 17, 2021.
And then there is President Trump—and his chorus of cheerleaders.
Among these: Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA). At a House subcommittee hearing about the country’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic, Greene screeched at Fauci: “You know what this committee should be doing? We should be recommending you to be prosecuted.
“We should be writing a criminal referral because you should be prosecuted for crimes against humanity. You belong in prison, Dr. Fauci!”
Later, on X, she posted: “No one should get death threats and I get them ALL THE TIME.”
By daring to contradict such blatant ignorance—if not outright lies—Dr. Anthony Fauci has made himself a target for Right-wing hatred and death threats.
By the time Trump left office—on January 20, 2021—more than 400,000 Americans had died of COVID-19.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Military, Politics, Social commentary on May 7, 2025 at 12:11 am
“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.”
—The Washington Monthly, March 9, 2020
During his 12-year reign, Adolf Hitler was the target of at least 42 assassination plots. The most famous of these was the one of July 20, 1944.
From 2017 to 2021, Donald Trump was not the target of even one.
In Hitler’s case, the plotters were officers of the German general staff—who believed the Fuhrer was leading Germany into a war it could not hope to win.
Adolf Hitler
In the case of President Donald Trump:
- A non-violent method for removal existed in the Twenty-Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution. This allows the Vice President and a majority of the Cabinet to recommend the removal of the President when he is “unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office.” The Vice President then becomes President.
- No Cabinet members had the courage to invoke this.
- Within the Senate and House of Representatives, Republicans acted as a rubber stamp for his every infamy.
- When he praised North Korea’s dictator Kim Jong-Un or attacked Vietnam POW John McCain, they stayed silent.
- When he falsely charged massive voter fraud, Republicans stayed silent or loudly parroted his lies.
- Their most notorious example of ambition-fueled cowardice occurred on February 5, 2020. That was when the Republican-dominated Senate—ignoring the overwhelming evidence against him—acquitted Trump on both impeachment articles: Obstruction of Congress and abuse of power.
- At the Pentagon, American generals stood mute as Trump repeatedly sided with Russian dictator Vladimir Putin against the FBI, CIA and National Security Agency—and even gave classified CIA Intelligence to Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Ambassador Sergey Kislyak.
- And just as high-ranking field marshals in Hitler’s Wehrmacht held their tongues when he insulted them, so, too, did American generals when Trump belittled their intelligence and even patriotism.
- When Trump arbitrarily decided to remove American forces from Syria and Afghanistan, Secretary of Defense James Mattis resigned in protest in 2018. But then he was simply replaced by Mark Esper.
- Despite the fact that many of these men regularly came into contact with Trump, not one of them apparently plotted his removal.
- Similarly, Trump repeatedly attacked the integrity of the men and women of the FBI—even firing its director, James Comey, for daring to investigate Russia’s subversion of the 2016 election.
- If its agents—steeped in Federal criminal law—built a case for Trump’s indictment and prosecution, it has never come to light.
- Neither did any of his Secret Service agents register the slightest protest, despite his arrogant behavior toward them. He forced them to work without pay during his 35-day government shutdown in 2018.
- And he forced them to accompany him to COVID-infected states—both during the Presidential campaign and afterward. Many of them became stricken with this often fatal disease as a result.
Donald Trump
* * * * *
On November 3, 2020, 81,255,933 Democratic voters elected former Vice President Joseph Biden the 46th President of the United States. Trump, running for a second term, got 74,196,153 votes.
Yet almost two months after the election, Trump refused to concede, insisting that he won—and repeatedly claiming falsely that he was the victim of massive vote fraud.
This toxic lie was feverishly embraced by millions of Right-wingers, and cast a shadow of illegitimacy over the Biden administration.
This refusal to acknowledge the outcome initially denied Biden access to the money, information-sharing and machinery traditionally accorded the President-elect. Trump himself was the beneficiary of such assistance in 2016, after his win over Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.
Only on November 23, 2020 was Biden acknowledged as the winner by the General Services Administration, as the Trump administration finally began the formal transition process.
Meanwhile, the COVID-19 pandemic raged across the country. More than 400,000 Americans died by the time Trump left office. Hospitals were filled to capacity, and millions faced starvation and/or eviction.
Yet Trump remained obsessed with his loss, and did nothing to coordinate the Federal response to the pandemic.
Trump’s refusal to accept reality posed an unprecedented danger to democracy: No presidential candidate had ever refused to concede defeat once all the votes were counted and legal challenges resolved.
By refusing to commit to a peaceful transfer of power, Trump took on the classic mantle of a dictator.
Right-wing Virginia State Senator Amanda Chase urged Trump to declare martial law and allow the military to “oversee” another election. So did disgraced ex-National Security Advisor Michael Flynn, whom Trump pardoned for lying to the FBI about private talks he had with a Russian official.
Reports have surfaced that Trump considered doing so.
History has recorded an active German resistance movement against Adolf Hitler. And posterity has honored its members, many of whom died heroically for standing firm against a brutal tyrant.
To its eternal shame, the same cannot be said of America during the reign of Donald Trump.
Even more shameful: On November 5, 2024, having lived through four years of Trump’s lies, egomania and lawbreaking, 77 million Americans re-elected him as President.
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In History, Law, Law Enforcement, Military, Politics, Social commentary on May 6, 2025 at 12:05 am
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 unleashed 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.
That instinct had repeatedly saved his life.
A series of 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 exploded.
Stauffenberg intended to carry his bomb—hidden in a briefcase—into a “Hitler conference” room packed with military officers. Rigged with a time-fuse, it would be left there while he found an excuse to leave.
After the explosion, he would phone one of his fellow conspirators with the news.
Stauffenberg intended to direct the new government that would replace that of the Nazis—and open peace talks with the British and Americans.
With Hitler dead, 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 still alive. And he swore to flush out the “traitorous swine” who had tried to kill him.
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. Of these, 4,980 were executed.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Military, Politics, Social commentary on May 5, 2025 at 12:09 am
“When Fascism comes to America, it will be called anti-Fascism.”
–Huey Long, Louisiana Governor/Senator
In the Twilight Zone episode, “No Time Like the Past,” Paul Driscoll (Dana Andrews), a scientist in early 1960s America, uses a time machine to visit Nazi Germany on the eve of World War II.
He’s rented a motel room overlooking the balcony from where the Fuhrer, Adolf Hitler will soon make a speech. And he’s eager to watch that speech—through the lens of a telescopic-sighted rifle.
Just as he’s about to pull the trigger, there’s a knock at his door—by the maid. Driscoll hustles her out as soon as possible, then once again picks up his rifle. He—and viewers—can once again see Hitler through the cross-hairs of his weapon.
Paul Driscoll prepares to shoot Adolf Hitler
But instead of the anticipated shot, there’s another knock at his door—his time by the black-uniformed secret police, the SS. Driscoll knows the game is up, and disappears into the present just as the thugs break down his door.
And the audience is left to ponder how different the world would have been if Driscoll—or someone in Nazi Germany—had succeeded in assassinating the man whose wars would wipe out the lives of 50 million men, women and children around the globe.
One 2016 Republican candidate for President dared to invoke the menace of Nazi Germany in warning of the dangers of a Donald Trump Presidency. And to argue that Americans could prevent that past from returning.
In November, 2015, John Kasich, the governor of Ohio, was peddling a message of creating jobs, balancing the Federal budget and disdain for Washington, D.C.
John Kasich
But he remained far behind in the polls, dropping 50% in support in just one month—from September to October. Meanwhile, Trump, the New York billionaire developer, was being backed by 25% of Republican primary voters.
So, with nothing to lose, Kasich decided to take off the gloves. He invoked the “N” word for Republicans: Nazi.
He authorized the creation of a TV ad that opened with ominous music—and the face of a snarling Donald Trump.
“I would like anyone who is listening to consider some thoughts that I’ve paraphrased from the words of German pastor Martin Niemoeller.”
The voice belonged to Tom Moe, a retired colonel in the U.S. Air Force—and a former Vietnam prisoner-of-war.
“You might not care if Donald Trump says Muslims must register with the government, because you’re not one,” continued Moe.
“And you might not care if Donald Trump says he’s going to round up all the Hispanic immigrants, because you’re not one.
Donald Trump
“And you might not care if Donald Trump says it’s OK to rough up black protesters, because you’re not one.
“And you might not care if Donald Trump wants to suppress journalists, because you’re not one.
“But think about this:
“If he keeps going, and he actually becomes President, he might just get around to you. And you’d better hope that there’s someone left to help you.”
Martin Niemoeller (1892–1984) was a prominent Protestant pastor who had commanded a U-boat during World War 1. He became a bitter public foe of Adolf Hitler.
A staunch anti-Communist, he had initially supported the Nazis as Germany’s only hope of salvation against the Soviet Union.
But when the Nazis made the church subordinate to State authority, Niemoeller created the Pastors’ Emergency League to defend religious freedom.
For his opposition to the Third Reich, Niemoeller spent seven years in concentration camps.
With the collapse of the Reich in 1945, he was freed—and elected President of the Protestant church in Hesse and Nassau in 1947. During the 1960s, he was president of the World Council of Churches.
He is best remembered for his powerful condemnation of the failure of Germans to protest the increasing oppression of the Nazis:
First they came for the Communists, but I was not a Communist, so I did not speak out.
Then they came for the Socialists, but I was not a Socialist, so I did not speak out.
Then they came for the trade unionists, but I was not a trade unionist, so I did not speak out.
Then they came for the Jews, but I was not a Jew, so I did not speak out.
And when they came for me, there was no one left to speak out for me.
Neither “Adolf Hitler” nor “Nazi Party” was mentioned during the one-minute Kasich video. But a furious Trump threatened to sue Kasich if he could find anything “not truthful” within the ad.
Apparently he couldn’t find anything “not truthful,” because he never sued.
So threatened the man who had called Mexican immigrants “rapists” and accused President Barack Obama of being a Muslim and an illegal alien.
The Kasich ad was the darkest attack made against Trump by any candidate–-Republican or Democrat. And it raised a disturbing question:
If Donald Trump proved to be America’s Adolf Hitler, would there be an American Claus von Stauffenberg?
Colonel Claus Schenk von Stuaffenberg was the German army officer who, on July 20, 1944, tried to assassinate Adolf Hitler.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on April 16, 2025 at 12:10 am
On April 9, 2025, the White House (i.e., President Donald J. Trump) issued a MEMORANDUM FOR THE HEADS OF EXECUTIVE DEPARTMENTS AND AGENCIES.
Its purpose: To target Christopher Krebs, the former director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) run by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) for potential arrest and prosecution.
Krebs’ “crime”: Ensuring that the 2020 Presidential election was free of lies spread by Russians—and Americans—on social media platforms.
Deprived of his expected support from Russian trolls and hackers, Trump lost.
Now he wants “revenge.”
Chris Krebs
Among the “charges” outlined in Trump’s memorandum:
“Krebs skewed the bona fide debate about COVID-19 by attempting to discredit widely shared views that ran contrary to CISA’s favored perspective.”
During 2020—Trump’s last year in office as President—COVID-19 ravaged the United States. At least 400,000 Americans died—many of them because they believed Trump’s claims that:
- His administration had it under control; and
- There was no need to protect oneself from it—such as by social distancing and wearing masks in public.
Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin, in a moment of rare candor, once revealed his satanic ruthlessness to a group of fellow Bolsheviks: “To choose one’s victims, to prepare one’s plans minutely, to slake an implacable vengeance, and then to go to bed – there is nothing sweeter in the world.“
Joseph Stalin
On April 9, 2025, Trump revealed his intention to live by that belief. In his memorandum, he outlined his plans for revenge on Chris Krebs.
“I hereby direct the heads of executive department and agencies (agencies) to immediately take steps consistent with existing law to revoke any active security clearance held by Christopher Krebs.
“I further direct the Attorney General, the Director of National Intelligence, and all other relevant agencies to immediately take all action as necessary and consistent with existing law to suspend any active security clearances held by individuals at entities associated with Krebs, including SentinelOne, pending a review of whether such clearances are consistent with the national interest.”
Donald Trump
SentinelOne is an American cybersecurity company in Mountain View, California, where Krebs serves as Chief Intelligence and Public Policy Officer.
“I further direct the Attorney General and the Secretary of Homeland Security, in consultation with any other agency head, to take all appropriate action to review Krebs’ activities as a Government employee, including his leadership of CISA [Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency].“
“This review should identify any instances where Krebs’ conduct appears to have been contrary to suitability standards for Federal employees, involved the unauthorized dissemination of classified information, or contrary to the purposes and policies identified in Executive Order 14149 of January 20, 2025 (Restoring Freedom of Speech and Ending Federal Censorship).”
Trump is speaking about the censorship of Right-wing speech, which is virtually non-existent. But he has no qualms about suppressing freedom of speech for his critics.
He blocked access by the Associated Press to White House events because it refused to bow to his demand that it refer to the Gulf of Mexico as the “Gulf of America.”
On April 9, District Judge Trevor McFadden ruled the administration’s restriction on AP journalists was “contrary to the First Amendment,” which guarantees freedom of speech.
The administration has appealed the verdict to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.
According to Trump’s memorandum:
“As part of that review, I direct a comprehensive evaluation of all of CISA’s activities over the last 6 years, focusing specifically on any instances where CISA’s conduct appears to have been contrary to the purposes and policies identified in Executive Order 14149.
“Upon completing these reviews, the Attorney General and the Secretary of Homeland Security shall prepare a joint report to be submitted to the President, through the Counsel to the President, with recommendations for appropriate remedial or preventative actions to be taken to fulfill the purposes and policies of Executive Order 14149.”
Clearly, Trump seeks to find any plausibly legal excuse to destroy the man who dared come between him and his Russian backers in 2020—and who contradicted his lies about COVID and the election.
Donald Trump’s ambition to become absolute dictator fits brilliantly into the goals of Project 2025, also known as the Presidential Transition Project.
This is a collection of policy proposals to fundamentally reshape the U.S. federal government in the event of a Republican victory in the 2024 Presidential election.
During the 2024 Presidential campaign, Trump repeatedly denied knowing anything about it—thus adding to the cascade of lies he spins almost every time he opens his mouth.
Established in 2022 by the Right-wing Heritage Foundation, the project aims to recruit tens of thousands of radical Right-wingers to the District of Columbia to replace existing federal civil servants.
Among Project 2025’s priorities:
- Replace tenured civil servants with thousands of political hacks to establish an absolute dictatorship under a Republican President.
- “Reform” the Department of Justice by making it the President’s personal law firm.
- Make the director of the FBI personally accountable to the President—as the head of the KGB is personally accountable to Vladimir Putin.
History-ignorant Americans are about to discover what it meant to live in the Soviet Union of Joseph Stalin—where truth and integrity were punished and lies and treachery were rewarded.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on April 15, 2025 at 12:08 am
On April 9, 2025, the White House (i.e., President Donald J. Trump) issued a MEMORANDUM FOR THE HEADS OF EXECUTIVE DEPARTMENTS AND AGENCIES.
Its purpose was to target Christopher Krebs, the former director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) run by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) for potential arrest and prosecution.
Krebs’ “crime”: Ensuring that the 2020 Presidential election was free of lies spread by Russians—and Americans—on social media platforms.
Krebs did his job so effectively that Americans elected former Vice President Joseph R. Biden instead of re-electing then-President Trump.
And for Trump-–newly reinstalled as President in 2025—this was the equivalent of treason.
Donald Trump
Among the “charges” outlined in Trump’s memorandum:
“These disgraceful actions have taken the form of coercive threats against the private sector — including major social media platforms — to suppress conservative or dissenting voices and distort public opinion.”
The two biggest and most influential social media platforms—Twitter (now X) and Facebook—are owned by avowedly Right-wing billionaires: Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg. They gave Trump a huge megaphone of support during the 2016 and 2020 Presidential elections.
After he incited a treasonous riot against Congress on January 6, 2021, both platforms briefly banned him from posting. But then both—fearing “retribution” if he became President again—once again gave him access to their audiences.
Trump’s memorandum then moves from his general hates to his specific one: Chris Krebs.
“Christopher Krebs, the former head of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), is a significant bad-faith actor who weaponized and abused his Government authority. Krebs’ misconduct involved the censorship of disfavored speech implicating the 2020 election and COVID-19 pandemic.”
And how did Krebs do this? By guaranteeing that the 2020 Presidential election was free of Russian trolls and hackers. Specifically:
Krebs’ to-do list included paper ballots:
“Paper ballots give you the ability to audit, to go back and check the tape and make sure that you got the count right. And that’s really one of the keys to success for a secure 2020 election. Ninety-five percent of the ballots cast in the 2020 election had a paper record associated with it. Compared to 2016, about 82%.
“That gives you the ability to prove that there was no malicious algorithm or hacked software that adjusted the tally of the vote, and just look at what happened in Georgia. Georgia has machines that tabulate the vote. They then held a hand recount and the outcome was consistent with the machine vote.”
“CISA, under Krebs’ leadership, suppressed conservative viewpoints under the guise of combatting supposed disinformation, and recruited and coerced major social media platforms to further its partisan mission….”
There is absolutely no evidence to support this lie.
“Krebs, through CISA, promoted the censorship of election information, including known risks associated with certain voting practices.”
Krebs’ election-security duties included:
- Sharing intelligence from agencies such as the CIA and National Security Agency with local officials about foreign efforts at election interference.
- Ensuring that domestic voting equipment was secure.
- Attacking domestic misinformation head-on.
Chris Krebs
At his command lay the resources of a series of powerful Federal investigative agencies:
“We had the Department of Defense Cyber Command. We had the National Security Agency. We had the FBI. We had the Secret Service. We also had representatives from the Election Assistance Commission, which is the federal independent agency that supports the actual administration of elections.”
As a result, Krebs was widely praised for revamping the department’s cybersecurity efforts and increasing coordination with state and local governments.
By all accounts—except Trump’s—the November 3, 2020 election went very smoothly.
On November 12, to counter the growing chorus of lies from Trump and his Right-wing allies that the election had been stolen, Krebs put out the following statement:
“The November 3rd election was the most secure in American history. There is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised.”
On November 17, Trump fired Chris Krebs.
Too cowardly to confront Krebs, Trump fired him by tweet—and accompanied the outrage with yet more lies:
“The recent statement by Chris Krebs on the security of the 2020 election was highly inaccurate, in that there were massive improprieties and fraud, including dead people voting, poll watchers not allowed into polling locations, glitches in the voting machines which changed votes from Trump to Biden, late voting, and many more.
Back to Trump’s memorandum/”indictment”:
“Similarly, Krebs, through CISA, falsely and baselessly denied that the 2020 election was rigged and stolen, including by inappropriately and categorically dismissing widespread election malfeasance and serious vulnerabilities with voting machines.”
Immediately after losing the 2020 Presidential election, Trump began spreading “The Big Lie”: That he had been defeated by massive voter fraud. And that this had been made possible through Dominion Voting Systems.
And soon Trump had the help of a major Right-wing propagandist to carry his lie nationwide: The Fox News Network.
On April 18, 2023, Fox News agreed to pay Dominion Voting Systems $797 million to avert a wrongful defamation trial. Dominion’s lawsuit would have exposed how the network promoted lies about the 2020 presidential election—all the while knowing they were lies.
So much for Trump’s claims of “widespread election malfeasance and serious vulnerabilities with voting machines.”
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on April 14, 2025 at 12:10 am
In the United States of Donald Trump, protecting the right to legitimate elections can get you investigated—if not indicted.
Case in point: Christopher Krebs, who prevented Russian trolls and hackers from sabotaging the 2020 Presidential election.
During the 2016 Presidential race, Russian propaganda played a major role in convincing millions of Americans to vote for Donald Trump. Social media platforms—especially Facebook and Twitter—were flooded with genuinely fake news to sow discord among Americans and create a pathway for Trump’s election.
And where Internet trolls left off, Russian computer hackers took over.
Hillary Clinton won the popular vote—65,853,514 to 62,984,828 for Trump. But in the United States, what counts in Presidential elections is the Electoral College vote.
And there Trump won: 304 to 227.
What put him over the top in the Electoral College was the help he got from Russian dictator Vladimir Putin.
Vladimir Putin
Putin had good reason to assist Trump: Putin wanted the United States to ditch the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) alliance, which has preserved Western Europe from Russian aggression since World War II. And Trump had often attacked America’s funding of NATO as a drain on the American economy.
As for Trump, he wanted something from Putin: He wanted to be President. For this, Putin could supply monies, Internet trolls to confuse voters with falsified news, and even the hacking of key voting centers.
So notorious was the role played by Russian trolls and hackers in winning Trump the 2016 election that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) was determined to prevent a repetition in 2020.
And the point man for this was Chris Krebs, the director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) run by DHS.
Born in Atlanta, Georgia, in 1977, Krebs had received a B.A. in environmental sciences from the University of Virginia in 1999, and a J.D. from the George Mason University School of Law in 2007.
Chris Krebs
Krebs had served as Senior Advisor to the Assistant Secretary of Homeland Security for Infrastructure Protection, and later worked in the private sector as Director for Cybersecurity Policy for Microsoft.
In preparation for the 2020 Presidential election, Krebs launched a massive effort to counter lies spread by Russians—and Americans—on social media platforms. As he explained to Scott Pelley during a “60 Minutes” interview aired on November 29, 2020:
“So we spent something on the order of three and a half years of gaming out every possible scenario for how a foreign actor could interfere with an election. Countless, countless scenarios.”
What Krebs could not know was that, less than five years later, his dedication to ensuring a free democratic election would put him in the crosshairs of the Justice Department.
A Justice Department under the control of the man defeated for the Presidency in 2020: Donald J. Trump.
On April 9, 2025, the White House (i.e., Trump) issued MEMORANDUM FOR THE HEADS OF EXECUTIVE DEPARTMENTS AND AGENCIES.
According to Wikipedia: “Donald Trump has made tens of thousands of false or misleading claims, including during his first and second terms as President of the United States. Fact-checkers at The Washington Post documented 30,573 false or misleading claims during his first presidential term, an average of 21 per day.”
So it was fitting that Trump’s memorandum opened with an outright series of lies disguised as an indictment:
“The Federal Government has a constitutional duty and a moral responsibility to respect and promote the free speech rights of Americans.
“Yet in recent years, elitist leaders in Government have unlawfully censored speech and weaponized their undeserved influence to silence perceived political opponents and advance their preferred, and often erroneous, narrative about significant matters of public debate.
“These disgraceful actions have taken the form of coercive threats against the private sector — including major social media platforms — to suppress conservative or dissenting voices and distort public opinion.
“Much of this censorship took place during a Presidential election with the apparent purpose of undermining the free exchange of ideas and debate.”
When Donald Trump makes an accusation, it is nearly always a confession of a crime he has committed or plans to commit. Thus, the above statements reflect exactly the agenda and practices of both the first Trump administration and the present one.
For example: “Elitist leaders in Government have unlawfully censored speech and weaponized their undeserved influence to silence perceived political opponents and advance their preferred, and often erroneous, narrative about significant matters of public debate.“
Trump ordered Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth to purge the U.S. Naval Academy Library of books that focus on race, gender, and sexuality, and historical books on racism and white supremacy. These include books on the Holocaust, histories of feminism, civil rights and racism.
Thus, two copies of Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf are available for checkout, while Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings is not.
Memorializing the Holocaust, Janet Jacob’s book on how female victims of the Holocaust have been portrayed, is gone. But The Camp of the Saints by Jean Raspail is still on the shelves. A 1973 novel which envisions a takeover of the Western world by immigrants from Third World countries, it has been embraced by white supremacists.
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In Bureaucracy, Business, History, Law, Politics, Social commentary on April 11, 2025 at 12:16 am
Greed—among evil men—will always find a way.
It did in 1939.
Germany’s Fuhrer, Adolf Hitler, had spent most of the year threatening Poland with invasion. He had even set a secret timetable—September 1—for his attack.
Yet he faced a dangerous obstacle on his road to war: The Soviet Union.
Since the early 1920s Hitler had railed against the Soviet Union as Germany’s greatest threat. He intended, in fact, to destroy it at the first opportunity.
But his still-untested army, the Wehrmacht, wasn’t ready for that yet.
Adolf Hitler
And if he attacked Poland, there was a real danger that the Soviet Union might declare war on Germany.
Hitler wanted a nonaggression treaty with England, with which he had a love/hate relationship. But the British government didn’t trust him.
The Soviet government—headed by Premier Joseph Stalin—also wanted a pact with Great Britain. But the British didn’t trust him, either.
In mid-August, 1939, with the September 1 deadline quickly approaching, Hitler made an unprecedented decision: He humbled himself before his arch-enemy, Stalin, and requested the signing of a Russia-German nonaggression pact.
To sweeten the deal, Hitler offered something that he knew the British would never give Stalin: The eastern half of Poland.
On August 23, the Treaty of Non-Aggression between Nazi Germany and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was signed in Moscow by German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbontrop and Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov.
Joseph Stalin
Nine days later, World War II erupted.
In 2020, greed—among evil men—again found a way.
On November 3, 81,255,933 Democratic voters elected former Vice President Joseph Biden the 46th President of the United States. Donald Trump, running for a second term as President, got 74,196,153 votes.
But having repeatedly “joked” about how wonderful it would be if the United States—like China—had a “President-for-Life,” Trump wasn’t ready to concede office.
He immediately began spreading “The Big Lie”: That he had been defeated by massive voter fraud. And that this had been made possible through Dominion Voting Systems.
Donald Trump
Dominion—charged Trump and his attorneys—had rigged its vote-tabulating machines to replace votes for Trump with votes for Biden.
And soon Trump had the help of a major propaganda megaphone to carry his lie nationwide: The Fox News Network.
Just as Hitler and Stalin each had something to gain from their nonaggression pact, so did Trump and Fox.
Trump wanted at least another four unearned years in the White House. And Fox wanted to retain—if not expand—its viewing audience.
In 2022, for its seventh consecutive year, Fox News stood as the top-rated cable news network in the United States. Fox averaged 1.4 million total day viewers.
By contrast, 733,000 watched MSNBC and 568,000 watched CNN.
In prime time, Fox came in first with an average of 2.3 million viewers in 2022.
MSNBC came in second with 1.2 million and CNN ranked third with an average of 730,000.
As for profits: Fox’s net income for the twelve months ending December 31, 2022 was $1.507B, a 4.94% increase year-over-year.
Yet just as Trump couldn’t bear losing the intoxicating power of the Presidency, Rupert Murdoch, the CEO of Fox, couldn’t bear losing any part of his audience.
In a March 1, 2023 opinion piece, Jack Shafer, Politico’s senior media writer, vividly describes the dilemma Murdoch faced after the 2020 election:
“In Murdoch’s own words, delivered in Dominion suit depositions, he describes himself as frightened by the power Donald Trump holds over the Fox audience….Far from being a media superpower, as his foes would describe him, Murdoch comes off as trapped by the craven choices he made to serve as Trump’s supplicant and protector.
“…The Trump-Fox feedback loop benefited both parties as Fox ran interference for Trump throughout his presidency and Trump filled Fox’s schedule with the strong meat of his persona. By July 2019, Trump had given 61 interviews to Fox channels compared to 17 for ABC, CBS, CNN, and NBC/CNBC combined.”
But after Trump incited a deadly riot against the United States Capitol Building on January 6, 2021, Murdoch feared the next Trump explosion would be aimed at Fox.
The reason: On Election Night, Chris Stirewalt, the political editor of Fox News Channel, was the first to project Biden’s victory in Arizona. This turned out to be right—and brought a furious attack upon Stirewalt by Fox host Tucker Carlson.
Putting the truth bluntly, Murdoch said in a deposition: “Nobody wants Trump as an enemy. We all know that Trump has a big following. If he says, ‘Don’t watch Fox News, maybe some don’t.’”
Twenty days after Trump’s attempted coup—on January 26—Murdoch allowed Mike “My Pillow” Lindell to appear on the network’s Tucker Carlson Tonight Show.
Lindell was a longtime Fox advertiser—and a vocal purveyor of the lie that Dominion had enabled the Democrats to steal the 2020 election.
Two months later, in March, 2021, Dominion filed a $1.6 billion defamation suit against Fox News.
The Hitler-Stalin pact ultimately ravaged the Soviet Union through German invasion and left Germany conquered and divided by Russia for 44 years.
The Trump–Fox pact ultimately left Trump enraged at Fox and left Fox facing financial ruin for its lies on Trump’s behalf.
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THE WHITE POOR: LOVING THOSE WHO DESPISE THEM: PART TWO (END)
In Bureaucracy, Business, History, Politics, Social commentary on May 23, 2025 at 12:13 amRepublicans have long tried to prevent or eliminate programs that aid the poor and middle-class, including:
So why are so many poor Americans flocking to this party’s banner?
Two reasons: Racism and greed. There are historical parallels for both.
First, race:
In 1999, historian Victor Davis Hanson noted the huge gap in wealth between the aristocratic, slave-owning minority of the pre-Civil War South and the vast majority of poor white Southerners.
Victor Davis Hanson
“Before the war in the counties [Union General William Tecumseh] Sherman would later ruin, the top 10% of the landowners controlled 40% of the assessed wealth.”
In contrast, “more than half of those who were lucky enough to own any property at all still possessed less than 15% of the area’s valuation.”
So Hanson asked: “Why did the millions of poor whites of the Confederacy fight at all?”
He supplied the answer in his brilliant work on military history, The Soul of Battle: From Ancient Times to the Present Day, How Three Great Liberators Vanquished Tyranny.
One of those liberators was General William Tecumseh Sherman, who led 62,000 Union troops in a victorious “March to the Sea” through the Confederacy in 1864.
So why did so many poor Southern whites literally lay down their lives for the wealthy planter class, which despised them?
According to Hanson: “Behind the entire social fabric of the South lay slavery.
“If slavery eroded the economic position of the poor free citizens, if slavery encouraged a society of haves and have-nots…then it alone offered one promise to the free white man—poor, ignorant and dispirited—that he was at least not black and not a slave.”
And the planter class and its allies in government easily fobbed off their poor white countrymen with cheap flattery. Said Georgia Governor Joseph Brown:
“Among us the poor white laborer is respected as an equal. His family is treated with kindness, consideration, and respect. He does not belong to the menial class. The negro is in no sense his equal. He belongs to the only true aristocracy, the race of white men.”
Arlington House and plantation, former home of Robert E. Lee
Similarly, poor whites now flock to the Republican Party—which holds them in equal contempt—in large part to protest the 2008 election of the first black President of the United States.
According to a Pew Research Center study released on July 22, 2011: “Notably, the GOP gains have occurred only among white voters; a 2-point Republican edge among whites in 2008 (46% to 44%) has widened to a 13-point lead today (52% to 39%).”
Since the 1960s, Republicans have pursued a campaign policy of “divide and rule”—divide the nation along racial lines and reap the benefits at election time.
Thus, in voting Republican, many of these poor whites believe they are “striking a blow for the white race.”
And they can do so in a more socially acceptable way than joining a certified hate group such as the American Nazi Party or Ku Klux Klan.
Since 2015, openly racist groups such as the Klan and the American Nazi Party have flocked to the banner of Presidential candidate and President Donald Trump. By enthusiastically courting their support, the real estate mogul has made it possible for Republican candidates to openly display their own racism.
Now greed:
In the hit play, 1776, on the creation and signing of the Declaration of Independence, there is a telling exchange between John Dickinson and John Hancock. It comes during the song, “Cool, Cool, Considerate Men.”
Dickinson, the delegate from Pennsylvania, urges Hancock, president of the Second Continental Congress, “to join us in our minuet.” By “us” he means his fellow conservatives who fear losing their property and exalted status by supporting American independence from Great Britain.
John Dickinson
Hancock declines, saying: “Fortunately, there are not enough men of property in America to dictate policy.”
To which Dickinson replies: “Perhaps not. But don’t forget that most men with nothing would rather protect the possibility of becoming rich than face the reality of being poor. And that is why they will follow us.”
Today, poor whites generally identify with the CEOs of powerful corporations. They believe the Republican gospel that they can attain such wealth—if only the government will “get out of my way.”
They forget—or ignore—the truth that government, for all its imperfections, is sometimes all that stands between them and a wide range of predators.
In return, the CEOs despise them as the privileged have always despised their social and economic “inferiors.”
Unless the Democratic Party can find ways to directly address these bitter, Politically Incorrect truths, it will continue its decline into insignificance.
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