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In Bureaucracy, Business, History, Military, Politics on April 10, 2025 at 12:13 am
At one time, Americans believed that the wholesale rewriting of history happened only in the Soviet Union.
“The problem with writing about history in the Soviet Union,” went a popular joke among Russians, “is that you never know what’s going to happen yesterday.”
A classic example of this occurred in the Great Soviet Encyclopedia.
Lavrentiy Beria had been head of the NKVD, the dreaded predecessor to the KGB, from 1938 to 1953. On June 26, 1953, three months after the death of Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin, Beria was arrested on orders of his fellow Communist Party leaders, who feared he intended to purge them.
Beria was executed on December 23.
Lavrentiy Beria
But the Great Soviet Encyclopedia had just gone to press with a long article singing Beria’s praises.
What to do?
The editors of the Encyclopedia wrote an equally long article about “the Bering Straits,” which was to be pasted over the article about Beria, and sent this off to its subscribers. An unknown number of them decided it was safer to paste accordingly.
Similarly, Joseph Stalin was depicted in Soviet “history” texts as the architect of Russia’s victory over Nazi Germany during World War II.
No “historian” dared mention that Stalin’s wholesale purges of the Red Army in the 1930s had made the country vulnerable to the German attack in 1941. As had Stalin’s “nonaggression” pact with Germany in 1939, where he and Adolf Hitler secretly divided Poland between them.
Joseph Stalin
But Russians no longer have a monopoly on rewriting history.
During the 2016 Presidential election, the Republican party furiously rewrote history in a desperate attempt to win the White House.
Specifically, its members tried to convince Americans that:
- President George W. Bush “kept us safe” (excluding, of course, the terror attacks of September 11, 2001, which slaughtered 3,000 Americans); and/or
- President Bush wasn’t to blame for 9/11—it was his predecessor, Bill Clinton (who left office on January 20, eight months earlier).
on J
World Trade Center – September 11, 2001
In 2015, Jeb Bush entered the “Rewriting History for Americans” sweepstakes.
On October 16, 2015, during an interview on Bloomberg TV, Donald Trump, the leading Republican candidate for President in 2016, dared speak (for Republicans) the unspeakable:
“When you talk about George Bush, I mean, say what you want, the World Trade Center came down during his time. He was President, OK? Blame him, or don’t blame him, but he was President. The World Trade Center came down during his reign.”
Bush was quick to respond on Twitter: “How pathetic for @realdonaldtrump to criticize the president for 9/11. We were attacked & my brother kept us safe.”
Jeb Bush
Trump replied:
“At the debate you said your brother kept us safe—I wanted to be nice & did not mention the WTC came down during his watch, 9/11.”
And: “No @JebBush, you’re pathetic for saying nothing happened during your brother’s term when the World Trade Center was attacked and came down.”
Suddenly, on February 13, another Republican Presidential candidate rushed to rewrite 9/11: Florida United States Senator Marco Rubio.
According to Rubio: “The World Trade Center came down because Bill Clinton didn’t kill Osama bin Laden when he had the chance to kill him.”
And on the following day, on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” he again made the charge: “If you’re going to ascribe blame, don’t blame George W. Bush, blame a decision that was made years earlier, not to take out bin Laden when the opportunity presented itself.”
All of which ignored such embarrassing truths as:
- During the first eight months of the Bush Presidency, Richard Clarke, the counter-terrorism adviser on the National Security Council, was not permitted to brief President Bush, despite mounting evidence of plans for a new Al-Qaeda outrage.
- From January 20 to September 11, 2001, Bush was on vacation, according to the Washington Post, 42% of the time.
- National Security Adviser Condoleeza Rice initially refused to hold a cabinet-level meeting on the subject of terrorism. Then she insisted that the matter be handled only by a more junior Deputy Principals meeting.
- Paul Wolfowitz, the number-two man at the Department of Defense, said: “I don’t understand why we are beginning by talking about this one man, bin Laden.”
- Even after Clarke outlined the threat posed by Al-Qaeda, Wolfowitz-–whose real target was Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein—said: “You give bin Laden too much credit.”
- Finally, at a meeting with Rice on September 4, 2001, Clarke challenged her to “picture yourself at a moment when in the very near future Al-Qaeda has killed hundreds of Americans, and imagine asking yourself what you wish then that you had already done.”
- Seven days later, Al-Qaeda struck, and 3,000 Americans died horrifically—and needlessly.
- Neither Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Rice, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld nor Wolfowitz ever admitted their negligence. Nor has any of them been brought to account.
People who say the Republicans are “batshit crazy” for denying responsibility for 9/11 clearly haven’t read—or understood—George Orwell’s novel, 1984.
The unnamed Party’s slogan is: “He who controls the past controls the future. He who controls the present controls the past.”
The same holds true for Republicans: They hope to rewrite the past, as Joseph Stalin did, to wash away their crimes and errors–and pin these on their self-declared enemies.
And thus gain—and retain—absolute power over 300 million Americans.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law Enforcement, Military, Politics, Social commentary on April 9, 2025 at 12:11 am
There are literally no limits to which Donald Trump’s fanatical supporters will go to convince others he’s a heroic champion worthy of their reverence.
On Facebook and Twitter, his disciples post images of him that are not only false but laughably so.
One such image posted by “Nick Adams (Alpha Male)” showed the jowly, grotesquely overweight, 77-year-old ex-President as a muscular bodybuilder. And it came with the caption: “President Trump is a TITAN!”
Ironically, the tweet came on the same day—June 18, 2023—when news broke of the implosion of the Titan mini-sub and the loss of its five-man crew. The tragedy occurred during a dive to view the wreckage of the Titanic, which sank in 1912.
Other memes have depicted Trump—a notorious draft-dodger who received no fewer than five deferments to escape the Vietnam war—as a military hero, clad in full military gear.
One even claimed he had killed Osama bin Laden—an act that occurred when Barack Obama was President and Trump was safely presiding over the TV show, “The Apprentice.”
Other propagandists for Trump have depicted him as beloved by Jesus. This despite the fact that Trump is a notorious liar, egomaniac, adulterer, thief and materialist.
Still others have tried to compare Trump to historical titans—like Winston Churchill.
On May 25, 2020, mass protests erupted across the country following the murder of George Floyd, a black unemployed restaurant security guard, by Derek Chauvin, a white Minneapolis police officer.
Cities such as Los Angeles, San Francisco and New York City saw stores looted, vandalized and/or burned. In response, President Trump called for harsh policing, telling governors in a nationwide conference call that they must “dominate” protesters or be seen as “weak.”
Death of George Floyd
To drive home his point, on June 1, Trump ordered police, Secret Service agents and National Guard troops to violently remove peaceful protesters from Lafayette Square, which borders St. John’s Church near the White House.
The purpose of the removal: So Trump—holding a Bible upside down—could have a photo-op in front of the church.
On June 3, White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany compared Trump’s photo-op in front of St. John’s Episcopal Church to former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill’s visits to bombed British cities during World War II:
“Through all of time, we have seen presidents and leaders across the world who have had leadership moments and very powerful symbols that were important for a nation to see at any given time to show a message of resilience and determination.
“Like Churchill, we saw him inspecting the bombing damage. It sent a powerful message of leadership to the British people.”
Kayleigh McEnany
Comparing Trump to Churchill proved a triumph of imagination on McEnany’s part:
- Churchill was an avowed and relentless opponent of Fascism—and especially its most infamous exponent, German Chancellor Adolf Hitler.
- During the 1930s, as Europe’s democracies ignored or quailed before Nazi threats, Churchill demanded that England arm for the coming war against Nazi Germany.
- Trump, a Fascistic dictator by nature, tried to rule by fiat and identified with dictators—most notably Communist ones, such as Russia’s Vladimir Putin and North Korea’s Kim Jong-Un.
- Throughout World War II, Churchill had only one bodyguard—Inspector Walter Thompson, of Scotland Yard’s Special Branch.
Winston Churchill (testing a submachinegun); Walter Thompson (in black fedora)
- Trump was constantly protected by hundreds of Secret Service agents who were supplemented by platoons of local police.
- During bombing raids, Churchill often climbed atop London buildings to watch the bombardment—or raced to cities he had just learned were under attack.
- During the George Floyd protests, Trump ducked into the White House’s bombproof bunker.
- Trump turned the normally well-protected White House into an armed fortress. Block after block of tall, black reinforced fencing had been erected in recent days. Tan military vehicles rolled along Pennsylvania Avenue and camo-clad troops patrolled the corner where tourists once bought red, white and blue USA sweatshirts.
- As a young man, Churchill had served as a second lieutenant in the Fourth Queen’s Own Hussars regiment of the British Army. He volunteered to campaign against Islamic rebels in the Swat Valley of northwest India. In Egypt, he joined the 21st Lancers and saw action in the Battle of Omdurman.
- Trump had used his father’s influence to win five draft deferments during the Vietnam war—four allowing him to complete college and one for “bone spurs.”
Donald Trump is by no means the first tyrant to be hailed as a hero.
Nazi Germany’s Adolf Hitler—who almost certainly never rode a horse—was depicted as an armor-clad knight holding a swastika banner while astride a spirited steed.
And the Soviet Union’s Joseph Stalin—whose pockmarked face, short stature and widening girth were visible to all who met him—was depicted in posters as handsome, gigantic and trim.
Tyrants pay close attention to how they are depicted. They want to be seen as forever modest, humble, wise and courageous—the embodiment of virtue and patriotism.
To depict them as they usually are—vain, arrogant, stupid, cowardly—they consider a personal affront and a challenge to their absolute rule.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Medical, Politics, Social commentary on April 4, 2025 at 12:09 am
Southern treason, racism and ignorance have given the United States five periods of infamy.
Infamy 4: 2000 – COVID-19 pandemic.
Donald Trump’s four-year Presidency produced a legacy of unprecedented racism, criminality, abuse of power and treason.
But the crime which brought him down was his unwillingness to protect Americans from the deadly COVID-19 pandemic.
The COVID-19 catastrophe slammed into the United States in January, 2020. It was the inevitable result of a natural disaster colliding with an evil and incompetent administration.
Trump’s “cures” for COVID-19 included denial, lies, Republican subservience, chaos, extortion, propaganda as news, quackery as medicine, demands to “re-open the country,” Ignoring the danger and—finally—resignation (“Learn to live with the virus”).
Trump quickly made the virus a referendum on himself. If you supported him, you didn’t wear a mask in public—even though no vaccine was available and hospitals were rapidly overwhelmed by debilitated and dying casualties of the virus.
On the July 21, 2021, edition of the PBS Newshour, Washington Post Columnist Jonathan Capehart outlined the catastrophic results of Trump’s behavior: “If we had had a president of the United States who took this seriously when this first came on the scene, if we had a Republican party that took this seriously enough to warn everyone, their constituents, saying, ‘Wash your hands, then put on a mask, then go get the vaccine,’ we wouldn’t be where we are right now.”
Jonathan Capehart
But neither Trump nor the Republican party urged Americans to “wash your hands, put on a mask, then go get the vaccine.”
It took the election of Joseph R. Biden to fashion a comprehensive attack on COVID-19.
By March, 2021, three vaccines—by Pfizer, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson—became available. A total of 90.4 million doses of these vaccines had been given. And 30.7 million Americans had been fully vaccinated against the virus.
But after a triumphant beginning, the pace of vaccinations slowed, then halted. By late July, 2021, only 49.6% of Americans had been fully vaccinated.
COVID-19 vaccination map – July 21, 2021
George Karabassis, CC BY 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
Many of those who had gotten one shot of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines refused to get the necessary second one.
What had happened?
“The people I know personally who are not getting the vaccine, for them, it was like, ‘They rushed this thing,'” theorized conservative New York Times columnist David Brooks on the PBS Newshour on July 23, 2021.
David Brooks
And leading the way to this catastrophe of self-destruction were the states of the South and Midwest: Mississippi (47.1%,), Alabama (50.5%), Arkansas (53.2%), and Tennessee (52.9%) with the lowest rates of residents who have gotten at least one shot.
By late July, 2021, three states—Florida, Texas and Missouri-–with lower vaccination rates accounted for 40% of all cases nationwide.
And colliding head-on with the refusals of millions to get vaccinated was the newer—and deadlier—Delta variant of COVID-19.
Just as the South unleashed the Civil War on America, it had ignited a new wave of COVID-19 on America.
Infamy 5: 2024 – Backing Trump again
Donald Trump is the only American President to be impeached twice—once for trying to extort “a favor” from Ukraine and again for inciting a violent attack on Congress.
On January 6, 2021, having failed to win re-election, he incited a deadly attack on Congressional members who were counting Electoral College votes. His goal: To intimidate them into throwing out the results and allowing him to become “President-for-Life.”
As a Presidential candidate in 2024, he has constantly repeated the lie that he won in 2020 but was cheated by massive vote fraud.
He has viciously attacked immigrants—both legal and illegal. During his September 11 debate with Vice President Kamala Harris, he falsely charged that legal Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, were “eating the dogs. They’re eating the cats. They’re eating the pets of the people that live there.”
The results: In Springfield, a string of bomb threats have shut down city and school buildings. Public events have been canceled. And state troopers have been sent in to guard students going to school.
Most ominously, Trump intends to implement Project 2025, the Right-wing Heritage Foundation’s blueprint for a Fascistic dictatorship. Under this:
- Career civil servants will be fired en masse and replaced by fanatical Right-wingers whose only loyalty is to Trump.
- The FBI director will be personally accountable to Trump—just as the KGB director is accountable to Vladimir Putin.
- The Department of Homeland Security will be abolished.
- Fossil fuels—the leading cause of global warming—will be favored and environmental regulations to combat climate change abolished.
- Abortion will be outlawed.
And, once again, it’s the South that threatens to end American democracy.
His attacks on nonwhites speak directly to Southerners’ longstanding racism. His attacks on the federal government feed into their resentment over losing the Civil War 159 years ago.
Most Southerners have abandoned democracy and lustily embraced the creation of a Right-wing dictatorship. Where they were once fiercely anti-Communist, they are now fiercely anti-liberal.
In 1776, Southerners’ fervent embrace of slavery almost aborted the Declaration of Independence and the birth of the American Republic.
In 2024, Southerners’ fervent embrace of racism, hatred and treason may signal its demise.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Medical, Politics, Social commentary on April 3, 2025 at 12:05 am
Throughout its history the South has been a hotbed of treason, racism and ignorance.
Today, it proudly continues holding fast to these traditions—as it threatens the entire country with a Fascistic dictatorship under Donald Trump.
Infamy 1: 1860 – 1865 – The Confederate States of America.
Union (blue) and Confederate (red) states: 1860 – 1865
Júlio Reis, CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
From 1860 to 1865, the South—Texas, Arkansas, Louisiana, Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Florida, South Carolina, North Carolina and Virginia—produced the greatest case of mass treason in America’s history.
According to The Destructive War, by Charles Royster, it wasn’t the cause of “states’ rights” that led 13 Southern states to withdraw from the Union in 1860-61. It was their demand for “respect,” which, in reality, translates into “e-g-o.”
“The respect Southerners demanded did not consist simply of the states’ sovereignty or of the equal rights of Northern and Southern citizens, including slaveholders’ right to take their chattels into Northern territory.
“It entailed, too, respect for their assertion of the moral superiority of slaveholding society over free society,” writes Royster.
It was not enough for Southerners to claim equal standing with Northerners; Northerners must acknowledge it. But this was something that the North was increasingly unwilling to do.
Finally, its citizens dared to elect Abraham Lincoln as President in 1860.
Lincoln and his new Republican party damned slavery—and slaveholders—as morally evil, obsolete and ultimately doomed. And they were determined to prevent slavery from spreading any further throughout the country.
Southerners found all of this intolerable.
Lincoln—during his First Inaugural Address—bluntly said that he did not intend to “directly or indirectly…interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so.”
Abraham Lincoln
But that was not enough for Southerners.
Only 10% of Southerners owned slaves. The other 90% of the population “had no dog in this fight,” as Southerners liked to say.
Yet they so admired and aspired to be like their “gentleman betters” that they threw in their lot with them.
On April 12, 1861—just over a month since Lincoln’s inauguration on March 4—Southern batteries opened fire on Union Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor, South Carolina.
This ignited the American Civil War, costing the lives of 750,000 Americans—at a time when the population of the United States stood at 31,443,321.
Four years later, Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia to Union General Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Courthouse.
Huge sections of the South had been laid waste by Union troops and more than 258,000 Southerners had been killed.
And slavery, the mainstay of Southern plantation life, had been ended forever.
The South had paid a high price for its investment in treason.
Infamy 2: 1964 – 2024 – Racism breeds Southern Republicans.
In 1964, Democratic President Lyndon B. Johnson pushed the Civil Rights Act through Congress, ending more than a century of blatant discrimination against blacks.
The South—which before the Civil War had been solidly Democratic—suddenly went solidly Republican.
To understand this mammoth shift, it’s vital to realize: In Lincoln’s time, the Republicans were the party of progressives.
The party was founded on an anti-slavery platform. Its members were thus reviled as “Black Republicans.” And until the 1960s, the South was solidly Democratic.
Democrats were the ones defending the status quo—slavery—and opposing the rights of freed blacks in the South of Reconstruction and long afterward.
When, in the early 1960s, Democrats championed the rights of blacks, Southerners bolted for the Republican party—which held to the same values that slavery/discrimination-supporting Democrats once did.
After signing the Civil Rights Act of 1964 into law, President Lyndon B. Johnson told an aide: “We have just lost the South for a generation.”
Johnson was wrong: A generation lasts 20 to 30 years. It’s been 60 years since the signing of the Act, and the South is still solidly within the Republican camp.
To compete successfully in this region, Democrats would need to demand the reinstatement of segregation—if not slavery.
1968 election
Infamy 3: 2016 – Fascist racism elects Donald Trump as President.
Repeatedly, when asked why they supported Trump, his followers said: “He says what I’ve been thinking!”
And what Trump appealed to, above all else, was racist hatred.
From June 15, 2015, when he launched his Presidential campaign, until October 24, 2016, Trump fired almost 4,000 angry, insulting tweets at 281 people and institutions that had somehow offended him.
Donald Trump
The New York Times needed two full pages of its print edition to showcase them.
Among his targets:
- Women
- Blacks
- Hispanics
- Asians
- Muslims
- The disabled
- Prisoners-of-war
Red States voted for Donald Trump – 2016
BobWyatt07, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
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.”
And the vast majority of the white votes Trump got were in the South.
The 2008 election of Barack Obama as the first black President had shocked whites. His 2012 re-election had deprived them of the hope that 2008 had been an accident.
In 2016 macho, largely uneducated, anti-black Southern males couldn’t accept a woman—Hillary Clinton—occupying the White House.
They ignored reputable reports—later confirmed—that Trump’s campaign was backed by Russian oligarchs linked to Russian dictator Vladimir Putin, the former head of the KGB.
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In Entertainment, History, Military, Politics, Social commentary on April 2, 2025 at 12:08 am
Future historians—if there are any—may well view the administration of President Donald Trump the same way that historian Richard J. Evans analyzes the Third Reich.
To place the infamy of the Trump administration in the same context as that of the Third Reich, consider the opening paragraph from his latest bestseller: Hitler’s People: The Faces of the Third Reich.
Substitute “Republicans” for “Nazis,” “Donald Trump” for “Adolf Hitler,” and “Americans” for “Germans.”
As in the following:
“Who were the Republicans? What motivated the leaders and functionaries of the Republican movement and those who put their project into action? What had happened to their moral compass?
“Were they in some sense deviant, or deranged, or degenerate? Were they gangsters acting with criminal intent? Or were they ‘ordinary men’ (and a few women), or perhaps, more precisely, ‘ordinary Americans’? Did they come from the margins of society, were they outsiders, or were they in some sense part of American society’s mainstream?
“And how do they explain Trump’s drive to achieve dictatorial power? Was he a kind of empty shell, devoid of personal qualities and without a personal life, into which Americans poured their deepest political ambitions and desires?
“What made otherwise normal people carry out, or approve, terrible and murderous atrocities against Republicans’ real and supposed enemies? Or were they perhaps not normal at all? Beyond this, why did so many leading Americans in responsible positions, in the key institutions of society, go along with the dictatorship….?
“And what did those of them who survived….think of about their conduct during the Trump administration? Did they gain a moral perspective on it, did they repent, did they come to an understanding of what they had done?”
Americans have always considered themselves separate from—and superior to—those in other nations. Germans and Russians might fall prey to evil dictators, but Americans? Never!
Evangelical Americans believe that the United States is divinely inspired—and protected.
Thus, American TV networks have filled the airwaves with movies and doc-u-dramas about Nazi Germany such as: “Hitler: The Rise of Evil,” “The Bunker,” “Nuremberg,” “Holocaust,” “Inside the Third Reich,” “Conspiracy,” “Hitler’s SS: Portrait of Evil,” “The Plot to Kill Hitler.”
Yet American networks have been unwilling to produce films about the evil of America’s own Right-wing leaders. It’s extremely unlikely that future network executives will OK a miniseries on “Trump: The Rise of Evil.”
To date, only one film—“Tail Gunner Joe”—has been made about the rise and fall of Senator Joseph McCarthy.
For four years (1950-1954) McCarthy terrorized Americans with false charges of a massive Communist conspiracy, leaving broken lives and national mistrust in his wake.
And “Tail Gunner Joe” was made in 1974.
The fall of President Richard Nixon in 1974 led networks to produce such movies as “Blind Ambition” (1979) and “The Final Days” (1989). But those appeared decades ago. And no new ones have appeared since.
In 1989, CBS found the courage to run “Guts and Glory: The Rise and Fall of Oliver North.” What made this unusual was that it appeared only three years after the story of the infamous “Iran-Contra” arms-for-hostages story broke.
But the role of former President Ronald Reagan in waging unjustified terror-war against Nicaragua was totally ignored. And no other movie has since been made on this disgraceful period in United States history.
Ronald Reagan
Americans have always been convinced of their own purity as a people—especially when compared to those supposedly corrupt, undemocratic European nations. And so, according to popular mythology, the United States is constantly losing its innocence.
Such as:
I861 – 1865: Civil War—When brother supporting slavery fought brother supporting freedom.
1898: Spanish-American War––The United States freed Cuba from the Spanish.
1917 – 1918: World War 1––When innocent American “doughboys” rushed to Europe to save immoral France and England from the Hunnish Germans.
1942 – 1945: World War II––Once again, Americans rushed to Europe to (again) save impure France and England from (again) the Hunnish Germans and end the Holocaust.
1954 – 1975: Vietnam War––The United States rushed to fight Communism on behalf of a people struggling to be free.
Lost in all these “innocent” scenarios are such unpleasant realities as:
- After the Civil War, millions of former slaves were left to fend for themselves. Although freed, blacks were left poor, despised and subject to violence at any time by the Ku Klux Klan.
- After the Spanish-American war, America seized the Philippines for itself—and relinquished them only in 1946.
- Before World War II, the United States turned away thousands of would-be Jewish immigrants, dooming them to the Holocaust. And it entered the war only after it was attacked at Pearl Harbor.
- During the Vietnam war, the United States defended an unpopular dictatorship in the South against a popular Communist one in the North.
During the 1950s, Baby Boom schoolers were spoon-fed a Disney version of American history. When they grew old enough to witness the struggles for black civil rights and against the Vietnam war, they felt they had been lied to—and reacted with anger and protest.
Generations that have been “protected” against the ugly realities of the past are ill-equipped to cope with those in their own lives.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Humor, Politics, Social commentary on March 25, 2025 at 12:37 am
Words are weapons—or can be, if used properly.
Republicans learned this truth after World War II.
- Richard Nixon became a United States Senator in 1950 by attacking Helen Gahagen Douglas as “The Pink Lady.”
- From 1950 onward, Senator Joseph R. McCarthy and other Red-baiting Republicans essentially paralyzed the Democratic party through such slanderous terms as “Comsymps,” “fellow-travelers” and “Fifth Amendment Communists.”
Pulitzer-Prize winning author David Halberstam summed up the effectiveness of such tactics in his monumental study of the origins of the Vietnam War, The Best and the Brightest:
“But if they did not actually stick, and they did not, [Joseph McCarthy’s] charges had an equally damaging effect: They poisoned. Where there was smoke, there must be fire. He wouldn’t be saying these things [voters reasoned] unless there was something to it.”
Joseph McCarthy
Democrats have generally proven ignorant of or indifferent to the power of effective language.
Donald Trump solicited Russian Communist aid to win the Presidency in 2016. He solicited aid from Chinese Communists to retain it in 2020.
He attacked countless Americans and world leaders—including those presiding over America’s NATO alliance. But he never even criticized Russian dictator Vladimir Putin.
Yet even with such clear-cut evidence, Democrats refused to directly accuse him of treason, as in:
- “TrumPutin”
- “Commissar-in-Chief”
- “El Dunce”
- “Predator of the United States”
- “Carrot Caligula”
- “Red Donald”
- “DJTraitor”
The Kremlin
Similarly, Trump got a free pass on treason from the news media. None dared suggest the obvious: That he moved boxes of classified documents to his Mar-a-Lago estate to sell them to America’s enemies in exchange for huge sums to pay his upcoming legal bills.
While Trump branded the news media “the enemy of the people,” no media outlet had the courage to hurl the same charge at him.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Trump repeatedly lied about its lethality and opposed the use of masks and social distancing to combat it. As a result, 400,000 Americans had died by the time he left office.
Yet no Democrat dared label him “Coronavirus-in-Chief.”
Nor has the news media directly held him accountable for those deaths.
Tyrants are conspicuously vulnerable to ridicule. Yet here, too, Democrats proved unable or unwilling to make use of this powerful weapon.
In this YouTube-obsessed age, Democrats could effectively assail Trump with a series of ridiculing videos. For example, Trump’s well-established “bromance” with Putin could be turned into a parody of the famous song, “Johnny B. Good”:
Way back inside the Kremlin where the lights glow red
There ruled a man named Putin who would poison you dead.
He came up with a plan to make his Russia great
And all it took was bribes and Republican hate.
And Trumpy was a man who couldn’t read or spell
But he could sell out his land just like he’s ringing a bell.
Many of Trump’s fiercest defenders in the House and Senate have taken “campaign contributions” (i.e., bribes) from Russian oligarchs linked to Putin. They could be pointedly attacked by turning the Muppet song, “The Rainbow Connection,” into “The Russian Connection.”
Why are there so many tales about Russians
And Right-wingers taking bribes?
Russians are Commies and have lots of rubles
For traitors with something to hide.
So I’ve been told and some choose to believe it
It’s clear as the old KGB.
Someday we’ll find it
The Russian Connection—
The bribers, the traitors—you’ll see.
A continuing theme among Republican politicians is that they are paragons of religious virtue, while Democrats are champions of Satan.
Yet Democrats have done nothing to publicize such truths as:
- Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich is a serial adulterer.
- Former House Speaker Dennis Hastert is a convicted sodomizer of teenage boys.
- Josh Duggar, a Right-wing star of the high-rated “reality” series, 19 Kids and Counting, has been sentenced to 12 years’ imprisonment for possessing child pornography.
- Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene has boasted: “Marriage is a wonderful thing and I’m a firm believer in it.” Yet she engaged in open affairs with at least two members of her local gym—for which Perry Greene divorced her.
Most Americans don’t follow political news closely—and know nothing of such revelations.
Thus, Democrats must repeatedly advertise such facts—to counter Republicans’ constant claims of being the moral arbiters of America. And this needs to be done through major advertising campaigns on TV—where most Americans get their news about politics.
Throughout 2016, liberals celebrated on Facebook and Twitter the “certain” Presidency of former First Lady Hillary Clinton. They were cheered on by First Lady Michelle Obama’s naive advice on political tactics: “When they go low, we go high.”
Meanwhile, Donald Trump planned to subvert the 2016 election by Russian Intelligence agents and millions of Russian trolls flooding the Internet with legitimately fake news.
History has proven which tactics proved superior.
Many Democrats echo former President Dwight D. Eisenhower on Joseph McCarthy: “I’m not going to get into the gutter with that man.”
The result: A series of lost elections.
Democrats need to accept that they—and the country’s democratic traditions—are engaged in a death-match with their Republican enemies.
Only certain defeat is guaranteed by adhering to Marquis of Queensbury when your enemy is using brass knuckles.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Politics, Social commentary on March 24, 2025 at 1:00 am
In 1996, Newt Gingrich, then Republican Speaker of the House of Representatives, wrote a memo that encouraged Republicans to “speak like Newt.”
Entitled “Language: A Key Mechanism of Control,” it urged Republicans to attack Democrats with such words as “corrupt,” “selfish,” “destructive,” “hypocrisy,” “liberal,” “sick,” and “traitors.”
Even worse, Gingrich encouraged the news media to disseminate such accusations. Among his suggestions:
- “Fights make news.”
- Create a “shield issue” to deflect criticism: “A shield issue is, just, you know, your opponent is going to attack you as lacking compassion. You better…show up in the local paper holding a baby in the neonatal center.”
Newt Gingrich
This is in line with the advice of Florentine statesman Niccolo Machiavelli: “For men in general judge more by the eyes than by the hands; for everyone can see, but very few have to feel. Everyone sees what you appear to be, few feel what you are….”
In the memo, Gingrich advised:
“….In the video “We are a Majority,” Language is listed as a key mechanism of control used by a majority party, along with Agenda, Rules, Attitude and Learning.
“…We believe that you could have a significant impact on your campaign and the way you communicate if we help a little. That is why we have created this list of words and phrases….
“This list is prepared so that you might have a directory of words to use in writing literature and mail, in preparing speeches, and in producing electronic media.
“The words and phrases are powerful. Read them. Memorize as many as possible. And remember that like any tool, these words will not help if they are not used.”
Here is the list of words Gingrich urged his followers to use in attacking “the opponent, their record, proposals and their party”:
- abuse of power
- anti- (issue): flag, family, child, jobs
- betray
- bizarre
- bosses
- bureaucracy
- cheat
- coercion
- “compassion” is not enough
- collapse(ing)
- consequences
- corrupt
- corruption
- criminal rights
- crisis
- cynicism
- decay
- deeper
- destroy
- destructive
- devour
- disgrace
- endanger
- excuses
- failure (fail)
- greed
- hypocrisy
- ideological
- impose
- incompetent
- insecure
- insensitive
|
- intolerant
- liberal
- lie
- limit(s)
- machine
- mandate(s)
- obsolete
- pathetic
- patronage
- permissive attitude
- pessimistic
- punish (poor …)
- radical
- red tape
- self-serving
- selfish
- sensationalists
- shallow
- shame
- sick
- spend(ing)
- stagnation
- status quo
- steal
- taxes
- they/them
- threaten
- traitors
- unionized
- urgent (cy)
- waste
- welfare
|
And to the dismay of both Republicans and Democrats, Donald Trump has learned his lessons well.
On May 27, 2016, conservative New York Times columnist David Brooks analyzed the use of insults by Republican Presidential front-runner Donald Trump. He did so with his counterpart, liberal syndicated columnist, Mark Shields, on The PBS Newshour.
DAVID BROOKS: “Trump, for all his moral flaws, is a marketing genius. And you look at what he does. He just picks a word and he attaches it to a person. Little Marco [Rubio], Lyin’ Ted [Cruz], Crooked Hillary [Clinton].
“And that’s a word. And that’s how marketing works. It’s a simple, blunt message, but it gets under.
“It sticks, and it diminishes. And so it has been super effective for him, because he knows how to do that. And she [Hillary Clinton] just comes with, ‘Oh, he’s divisive.’
“These are words that are not exciting people. And her campaign style has gotten, if anything…a little more stagnant and more flat.”
Donald Trump
MARK SHIELDS: “Donald Trump gratuitously slandered Ted Cruz’s wife. He libeled Ted Cruz’s father for being potentially part of Lee Harvey Oswald’s assassination of the president of the United States, suggesting that he was somehow a fellow traveler in that.
“This is a libel. You don’t get over it….”
Hillary Clinton wasn’t the only Presidential candidate who proved unable to cope with Trump’s gift for insult. His targets—and insults—included:
- Former Texas Governor Rick Perry: “Wears glasses to seem smart.”
- Former Florida Governor Jeb Bush: “Low Energy Jeb.”
- Vermont U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders: “Crazy Bernie.”
- Ohio Governor John Kasich: “Mathematically dead and totally desperate.”
His victims, in turn, struggled to respond. Florida U.S. Senator Marco Rubio tried to out-insult Trump at the Republican Presidential candidates’ debate on March 3, 2016.
“I call him Little Marco. Little Marco. Hello, Marco,” said Trump.
Rubio retaliated with “Big Donald.” Since Americans generally believe that “bigger is better,” this was a poor choice of insult.
A better choice, given Trump’s “bromance” with Russian dictator Vladimir Putin: “Red Donald.”
Trump has reserved his most insulting words for women. For example:
- Carly Fiorina, his Republican primary competitor: “Look at that face. Would anyone vote for that?”
- Megyn Kelly, Fox News reporter: “You could see there was blood coming out of her eyes. Blood coming out of her wherever.”
- California Rep. Maxine Waters: “An extremely low IQ person.”
- Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi: “MS-13 Lover Nancy Pelosi.”
Only one candidate has shown the ability to rattle Trump: Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren.
As Mark Shields noted on The PBS Newshour.
“Elizabeth Warren gets under Donald Trump’s skin. And I think she’s been the most effective adversary.”
And David Brooks offered: “And so the tactics…is either you do what Elizabeth Warren has done, like full-bore negativity, that kind of [get] under the skin, or try to ridicule him and use humor.”
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on March 20, 2025 at 12:14 am
There were numerous instances where intervention by Federal legislators or law enforcement authorities could have utterly changed the outcome of the 2024 Presidential election.
Case #12: Democrats expected to receive support from their traditional allies—such as blacks and Hispanics. But that didn’t happen.
Despite Donald Trump’s overt racism, blacks deserted Vice President Kamala Harris in droves. About three in 10 back men under age 45 went for Trump, roughly double the share he got in 2020.
A clear majority of young black voters described the economy as “not so good” or “poor,” compared with about half of older black voters.
Similarly, in 2024, Trump made “mass deportations” the signature issue of his campaign. The vast majority of those slated for such removal were Hispanics.
But numerous Hispanics, when interviewed, said they didn’t feel threatened. They felt certain that Trump would deport “only the bad people.”
Young Latinos, particularly young Latino men, were more supportive to Trump than in 2020. Roughly half of young Latino men voted for Harris, compared with about six in 10 who went for Trump.
Majorities of Latino voters, regardless of age, said the economy was in bad shape. They wanted a bigger paycheck. And they were willing to re-elect a man who despised them in hopes of getting it.
Case #13: Muslims—especially those living in Dearborn, Michigan—played a losing blackmail game with the Biden administration
On October 7, 2023, under the cover of thousands of rockets fired from Gaza, Hamas terrorists slaughtered an estimated 1,139 men, women and children in Israeli streets, houses, kibbutz communities and at a rave music festival.
About 250 others were kidnapped and taken into Gaza.
Israel responded by declaring a state of war—pounding Gaza with bombs, missiles. tanks and soldiers. Palestinian health authorities claim that Israel’s ground and air campaign has killed more than 46,600 people,
Palestinians celebrating the attack on Israel
Terrorism-sympathizing Islamics—especially in Michigan—demanded that the Biden administration stop sending military equipment to Israel—and force Israelis to stop their military campaign to free the hostages. They threatened: “If you don’t do what we want, we won’t vote for Kamala Harris.”
Biden and Harris rejected their demands—and Islamics voted for Trump or didn’t vote at all.
The end result: Harris lost—and was replaced with a Right-wing administration so pro-Israel that it made the Biden one seem pro-Palestinian by comparison.
Case 14: Ignorance of and/or contempt for history.
“Low information voters” is a euphemism for people dangerously ignorant of the issues affecting their lives.
After World War II ended in 1945, the United States proved a force for worldwide stability. Its “nuclear umbrella” prevented a Russian takeover of Europe and a Chinese takeover of Asia.
But voters ignored Trump’s “bromance” with Communist dictators Vladimir Putin (Russia), Xi Jinping (China) and Kim Jong-Un (North Korea). They also ignored his proven disdain for the leaders of democratic nations—such as Canada and Great Britain.
As a result, Canada and Mexico, America’s biggest trading partners, are now treated—by Trump—as enemies. Meanwhile, he cozies up to Putin against Ukraine’s legally-elected President, Vododmyr Zelensky.
* * * * *
Countless historians have tried to answer the question: “Was the rise of Adolf Hitler—and the catastrophe he unleashed—inevitable?”
Future historians will ask the same question about Donald Trump—and the almost certain disaster of a second Trump Presidency.
Competent historians will conclude that no one factor was responsible, but a combination of otherwise unrelated ones. Among these:
- Republicans: Who feared that Trump’s Fascistic supporters would deprive them of political office if they didn’t abase themselves to a lifelong criminal and would-be dictator.
- Republican judges: Who bent and/or broke the law to enable Trump to escape justice.
- Justice Department prosecutors: Whose awe of the Presidency allowed Trump to slander and threaten federal prosecutors and judges.
- Attorney General Merrick Garland: Whose cowardice prevented him from appointing Jack Smith Special Counsel until November 18, 2022—giving Trump time to delay justice and again win the Presidency.
- Democrats: Whose cowardice toward Trump encouraged Republicans to ever more extreme measures.
- Hispanics: Like the Jews in Hitler’s Germany, who couldn’t believe that Trump would carry out his threats to imprison and/or deport them.
- The Biden administration: Which refused to stem the tide of illegal aliens invading America—and thus enraged millions of law-abiding Americans into supporting Trump.
- American voters: Whose misogynistic attitudes toward women led them to reject a former local and state prosecutor for a 34-times convicted felon.
- American voters: Whose hatred of Hispanic illegal aliens and inflationary grocery prices led them to ignore overwhelming evidence of Trump’s intent to overturn the democratic process and make himself absolute dictator.
As John Adams, second President of the United States, observed:
Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide. It is in vain to say that democracy is less vain, less proud, less selfish, less ambitious, or less avaricious than aristocracy or monarchy. It is not true, and nowhere appears in history. Those passions are the same in all men, under all forms of simple government, and when unchecked, produce the same effects of fraud, violence and cruelty.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Medical, Social commentary on March 19, 2025 at 12:08 am
There were numerous instances where intervention by Federal legislators or law enforcement authorities could have utterly changed the outcome of the 2024 Presidential election.
Case #9: Americans had become increasingly worried and angry about surging numbers of illegal aliens pouring into the country. But the Biden administration refused—until its closing months—to dramatically address this issue.
A Vox story, dated July 12, 2024, warned: “According to Gallup, 2024 is the first time since 2005 that most of the public have wanted less immigration, and this year marks the largest share of Americans feeling resistant to immigration since 58 percent said so in 2001….”
Illegal alien climbing over the border fence in Brownsville, Texas
Six months later, on January 17, 2025, another Vox story offered: “What Democrats must learn from Biden’s disastrous immigration record.”
It opened: “One of the main reasons Vice President Kamala Harris lost the election is the Biden administration’s record on immigration and the border — polls show it ranks up close with inflation among the top issues that drove swing voters to Trump….
“During Biden’s first three years in office, the number of arriving migrants skyrocketed, leading to a backlash as even blue states and cities complained they were overwhelmed. The peak came in December 2023, a month when officials reported about 250,000 encounters with migrants at the border, a record.”
Then, starting early in 2024, and continuing throughout the year, border arrivals plummeted—by more than 80%.
The reasons:
- The Biden administration got the Mexican government to launch an extensive crackdown on migrants passing through its territory to the United States.
- Biden decreed that new unauthorized migrants would be ineligible for asylum if too many people were coming to the border. Essentially, this meant shutting down the asylum process.
Unfortunately for Harris, the downturn in illegal immigration came too late.
Donald Trump
In times of economic uncertainty, hostility rises toward immigrants—especially those who are alien to a host country’s language and culture. This has proven true in Europe as well as the United States.
Case #10: Americans blamed President Biden for inflationary price increases—especially for groceries such as eggs.
According to a December 20, 2024 article—“Why are groceries so expensive? What you need to know”—by the Center for Science in the Public Interest:
“Since January 2019, food prices have risen nearly 30 percent in the US, leaving many households struggling to afford groceries.”
Among the issues responsible for this:
- COVID-19: Caused worldwide disruptions in supply chains.
- Transportation costs and fuel prices: Fuel costs are directly tied to how much retailers charge for groceries and other goods.
- Animal diseases, weather events, crop failures: When bird flu (H5N1) first struck the U.S. in 2022, eggs were priced at around $2 per dozen. They peaked at $4.82/dozen in January 2023, and in December 2024—following the infection of over 123 million chickens—prices fell to about $4.15/dozen.
- Global conflict: In February, 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine, which exports wheat, corn and agricultural fertilizer, among other products. Russia has tried to strangle Ukraine’s exports by attacking the nation’s agricultural centers.
No President—including Biden and Trump—can control such events. Unfortunately, every Presidential candidate virtually promises to be Superman. And voters repeatedly fall victim to this absurdity.
So when elected Presidents fail to perform miracles, those voters turn on them—and turn them out of office.
Case #11: Americans don’t want a woman President.
American voters proved that in 2016 when former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton ran for President—and lost to Trump in the Electoral College by a count of 227 to 304.
And Hillary had an advantage that Vice President Kamala Harris lacked: Hillary was white.
England has elected a female Prime Minister: Margaret Thatcher. And Mexico—notorious for the machismo of its men—has elected a woman President: Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo. But in the United States, electing a woman chief executive is unthinkable to most American men.
According to Daniel Cassino, Professor of Government and Politics at Fairleigh Dickinson University, men who support Trump hold to a traditionally masculine identity.
“So, among that group, Trump is up over Harris by about 35 points. Huge gap, Among other men, the half of men who don’t put themselves at the extremes of masculinity, Harris is up by 20. In fact, Harris is also up by 20 among most groups of women. So, really the gap is not between men and women, it’s between this one group of traditional masculine men and everybody else.”
Machismo played a major role in Trump’s popularity among Hispanics. Roughly six in 10 men described Trump as a strong leader, compared with 43% who said that in 2020. About half of Hispanic women said Trump was a strong leader, up from 37%.
Case #12: Democrats expected to receive support from their traditional allies—such as blacks and Hispanics. But that didn’t happen.
During the eight-year tenure of America’s first black President, Donald Trump attacked Barack Obama as a foreign-born citizen who was thus ineligible for that office. He also had a history of supporting—and being supported by—racist white groups like the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers.
Nevertheless, blacks deserted Vice President Kamala Harris in droves. About three in 10 back men under age 45 went for Trump, roughly double the share he got in 2020.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Medical, Politics, Social commentary on March 18, 2025 at 12:05 am
There were numerous instances where intervention by Federal legislators or law enforcement authorities could have utterly changed the outcome of the 2024 Presidential election.
Case #5: Even after Donald Trump left office, the Justice Department treated him with a deference not shown any other criminal defendant.
He was allowed, for example, to hurl insults and threats at Special Counsel Jack Smith and even Smith’s family.
One such post, published on Trump’s website, Truth Social, went: “Deranged Jack Smith, who is a sick puppet for A.G. Garland & Crooked Joe Biden, should be DEFUNDED & put out to rest. Republicans must get tough or the Dems will steal another Election. MAGA!”
By “A.G. Garland” Trump meant Attorney General Merrick Garland. By “put out to rest,” he meant that his followers should assassinate Smith.
Not even Mafia bosses like Charles “Lucky” Luciano and Albert “The Executioner” Anastasia dared issue such a threat.
Jack Smith
By contrast: Jimmy Hoffa was president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. But that didn’t prevent Robert F. Kennedy’s Justice Department from indicting him for jury tampering—and convicting him on March 4, 1964. He was sentenced to eight years in prison and a $10,000 fine.
No one in the Kennedy Justice Department said: “He’s the elected president of the Teamsters Union—so we can’t touch him.” Yet that is precisely how the Biden Justice Department repeatedly acted—simply because, in 2016, he won a Presidential election.
Case #6: Throughout his struggles to stay out of prison, Trump was aided by the unrelenting support of the Republican party.
Republicans loudly and repeatedly claimed that Donald Trump was the legitimate winner of the 2020 Presidential election—despite overwhelming evidence that he wasn’t.
They also claimed that, by appointing Special Counsel Jack Smith to investigate Trump, the Democrats had weaponized Federal law enforcement.
They also fully supported Trump’s demand for the release of those who attacked the Capitol Building on January 6, 2021.
For example: Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) has depicted these coup supporters as persecuted martyrs.
On March 24, 2022, members of the Republicans’ House Oversight Committee toured a Washington, D.C. jail where some of these defendants were held. “Their due process rights are being violated. And they have been mistreated and treated as political prisoners,” Greene told reporters after the tour.
Adolf Hitler similarly portrayed as martyrs the Nazis who tried to violently overthrow the government of Bavaria on November 9, 1923.
A March 2, 2020 Washington Monthly story concluded ominously: “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.”
Case #7: While Congressional Republicans have relentlessly investigated President Joe Biden and his family, Democrats have refused to similarly investigate Trump’s family.
The United States House Oversight Committee opened its investigation into the Biden family on January 11, 2023. The investigation included the foreign business activities of Biden’s son, Hunter, and brother, James.
By November 2023, the investigation had not found any evidence of wrongdoing by President Biden.
Democrats, by contrast, have not probed why Jared Kushner, Donald Trump’s son-in-law and former White House adviser, received $2 billion from Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. The money came to Kushner’s private equity firm after Kushner left the White House in 2021.
Jared Kushner
Salman has been implicated by U.S. Intelligence reports in the 2018 torture and dismemberment of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi. When asked if he believed the reports, Kushner said: “Are we really still doing this?”
Democrats have also refused to investigate the Trump administration’s illegally seizing vitally-needed medical supplies in at least seven states during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) did not publicly report the thefts, despite the outlay of millions of dollars of taxpayer money. Nor did the administration explain how it decided which supplies to seize and where to reroute them.
The Federal Government did not inform states whose supplies it seized if they would receive the materials they ordered and paid for.
Case #8: On July 13, 2024, Trump was allegedly wounded in his right ear by a gunman while speaking at an open-air Presidential campaign rally near Butler, Pennsylvania.
The would-be assassin, Thomas Matthew Crooks, fired eight rounds from an AR-15 style rifle from the roof of a nearby building. Trump dived for cover behind his lectern, as the shooter killed one audience member and critically injured two others.
Crooks was shot and killed seconds later by the Secret Service’s Counter Sniper Team.
Had Trump not slightly turned his head at the moment Crooks fired, Republicans would have been forced to choose another nominee.
In addition, Trump would not have been alive to win the 2024 Presidential election and openly threaten to imprison the Justice Department prosecutors who sought to hold him accountable for his litany of crimes.
The assassination attempt calls to mind that by Colonel Claus Schenk von Stauffenberg on July 20, 1944, to kill Adolf Hitler with a briefcase bomb. Had he succeeded, the war in Europe would no doubt have ended far earlier, with countless lives being saved.
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TYRANTS AS HEROES: IT’S ALL IN THE ARTWORK
In Bureaucracy, History, Law Enforcement, Military, Politics, Social commentary on April 9, 2025 at 12:11 amThere are literally no limits to which Donald Trump’s fanatical supporters will go to convince others he’s a heroic champion worthy of their reverence.
On Facebook and Twitter, his disciples post images of him that are not only false but laughably so.
One such image posted by “Nick Adams (Alpha Male)” showed the jowly, grotesquely overweight, 77-year-old ex-President as a muscular bodybuilder. And it came with the caption: “President Trump is a TITAN!”
Ironically, the tweet came on the same day—June 18, 2023—when news broke of the implosion of the Titan mini-sub and the loss of its five-man crew. The tragedy occurred during a dive to view the wreckage of the Titanic, which sank in 1912.
Other memes have depicted Trump—a notorious draft-dodger who received no fewer than five deferments to escape the Vietnam war—as a military hero, clad in full military gear.
One even claimed he had killed Osama bin Laden—an act that occurred when Barack Obama was President and Trump was safely presiding over the TV show, “The Apprentice.”
Other propagandists for Trump have depicted him as beloved by Jesus. This despite the fact that Trump is a notorious liar, egomaniac, adulterer, thief and materialist.
Still others have tried to compare Trump to historical titans—like Winston Churchill.
On May 25, 2020, mass protests erupted across the country following the murder of George Floyd, a black unemployed restaurant security guard, by Derek Chauvin, a white Minneapolis police officer.
Cities such as Los Angeles, San Francisco and New York City saw stores looted, vandalized and/or burned. In response, President Trump called for harsh policing, telling governors in a nationwide conference call that they must “dominate” protesters or be seen as “weak.”
Death of George Floyd
To drive home his point, on June 1, Trump ordered police, Secret Service agents and National Guard troops to violently remove peaceful protesters from Lafayette Square, which borders St. John’s Church near the White House.
The purpose of the removal: So Trump—holding a Bible upside down—could have a photo-op in front of the church.
On June 3, White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany compared Trump’s photo-op in front of St. John’s Episcopal Church to former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill’s visits to bombed British cities during World War II:
“Through all of time, we have seen presidents and leaders across the world who have had leadership moments and very powerful symbols that were important for a nation to see at any given time to show a message of resilience and determination.
“Like Churchill, we saw him inspecting the bombing damage. It sent a powerful message of leadership to the British people.”
Kayleigh McEnany
Comparing Trump to Churchill proved a triumph of imagination on McEnany’s part:
Winston Churchill (testing a submachinegun); Walter Thompson (in black fedora)
Donald Trump is by no means the first tyrant to be hailed as a hero.
Nazi Germany’s Adolf Hitler—who almost certainly never rode a horse—was depicted as an armor-clad knight holding a swastika banner while astride a spirited steed.
And the Soviet Union’s Joseph Stalin—whose pockmarked face, short stature and widening girth were visible to all who met him—was depicted in posters as handsome, gigantic and trim.
Tyrants pay close attention to how they are depicted. They want to be seen as forever modest, humble, wise and courageous—the embodiment of virtue and patriotism.
To depict them as they usually are—vain, arrogant, stupid, cowardly—they consider a personal affront and a challenge to their absolute rule.
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