Posts Tagged ‘RICHARD NIXON’
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In Bureaucracy, History, Politics, Social commentary on August 24, 2017 at 12:09 am
With the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, the Republican Party went into a tailspin of dismay.
For almost 50 years, Republicans had conjured up The Red Bogeyman to scare voters into sending them to Congress and the White House.
But now that the “workers’ paradise” had disappeared, Americans seemed to lose interest in the Communist Menace.
True, the People’s Republic of China remained, and its increasing economic clout would challenge the United States well into the 21st century. But Americans didn’t seem to fear the Red Chinese as they had the Red Russians.
What was the Republican Party to do to lure voters?
On September 11, 2001, the answer arrived—in two highjacked jetliners that slammed into the World Trade Center in New York and one that struck the Pentagon in Washington, D.C.
Exit The Red Bogeyman. Enter The Maniacal Muslim.
Consider:
- Mike Huckabee – “If the purpose of a church is to push forward the gospel of Jesus Christ, and then you have a Muslim group that says that Jesus Christ and all the people that follow him are a bunch of infidels who should be essentially obliterated, I have a hard time understanding that.”
- Herman Cain – ”I would not” appoint a Muslim in his administration.
- Newt Gingrich – “I am convinced that if we do not decisively win the struggle over the nature of America, by the time they [his grandchildren] are my age they will be in a secular atheist country, potentially one dominated by radical Islamists. …”
- Rick Santorum – On supporting the racial profiling of Muslims: “Obviously, Muslims would be someone you look at, absolutely.”
- Mitt Romney – “Based on the numbers of American Muslims in our population, I cannot see that a Cabinet position [for a Muslim] would be justified.”
And on July 13, 2012, Rep. Michelle Bachmann (R-Minn.) sent letters to the Inspectors General of the Departments of
- Defense;
- State;
- Justice; and
- Homeland Security.
“The purpose of these letters,” wrote Bachmann, was to “request a multi-department investigation into potential Muslim Brotherhood infiltration into the United States Government.”
Michelle Bachmann
Bachmann further asserted in her letter to the State Department that Huma Abedin, deputy chief of staff to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, had ties to the Muslim Brotherhood.
In response, Arizona’s United State Senator John McCain said: “These attacks have no logic, no basis, and no merit and they need to stop. They need to stop now.”
“I don’t know Huma,” said House Speaker John Boehner, “but from everything that I do know of her she has a sterling character.”
And the evidence for these attacks?
The Center for Security Policy’s claim that Abedin’s father (who died when she was a teenager), mother and brother are “connected” to the organization.
And what is the Center of Security Policy? A private organization subsidized by donors to Right-wing causes.
In a separate letter, Bachmann demanded to know how Abedin received her security clearance.
Among the co-signers of Bachmann’s letter to the Inspectors General were:
- Rep. Trent Franks of Arizona, who has said abortion has done more harm to blacks than slavery;
- Rep. Lynn Westmoreland of Georgia, who called presidential candidate Barack Obama and his wife, Michelle, ”uppity”; and
- Rep. Louie Gohmert of Texas, who claims that terrorist organizations send pregnant women into the U.S. so that their children will be American citizens–who can enter and leave the country at will as they are trained to be terrorists abroad.
When pressed for their evidence of “a vast Muslim conspiracy,” right-wing accusers usually refuse to provide any.
An example of this occurred during an August 13, 2010 interview between Gohmert and CNN’s Anderson Cooper:
COOPER: What research? Can you tell us about the research?
GOHMERT: You are attacking the messenger, Anderson, you are better than this. You used to be good. You used to find that there was a problem and you would go after it.
COOPER: Sir, I am asking you for evidence of something that you said on the floor of the House.
GOHMERT: I did, and you listen, this is a problem. If you would spend as much time looking into the problem as you would have been trying to come after me and belittle me this week –
COOPER: Sir, do you want to offer any evidence? I’m giving you an opportunity to say what research and evidence you have. You’ve offered none, other than yelling.
Nor did Gohmert offer any evidence that evening.
Of course, the ultimate Republican Muslim slander is that President Barack Obama—a longtime Christian—is himself a Muslim.
No doubt Republicans feel totally safe in making these attacks, since Muslims comprise only 1% of the American population.
This has long been a hallmark of right-wing attacks—to go after a minority that cannot effectively defend itself.
Thus, Adolf Hitler attacked the Jews of Germany.
And Republicans have successively attacked blacks, Hispanics and gays—until each group became politically influential enough to defeat Republican candidates.
Today, most right-wing politicians at least grudgingly court all of these groups.
When Muslims become a significant political force in their own right, the Right will court them, too. And then move on to yet another helpless scapegoat to blame for America’s troubles.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Politics, Social commentary on August 23, 2017 at 12:06 am
“Judge not, that you not be judged. For with what judgment you judged, you shall be judged, and with what measure you mete, it shall be measured to you again.”
So warns the Gospel of St. Matthew, 7:1-2. It’s advice that Right-wingers Joseph McCarthy, Robert Welch and George H.W. Bush would have done well to heed.
Joseph McCarthy, Wisconsin’s gift to the United States Senate, became infamous as the demagogue whose Red-baiting accusations terrified America from 1950 to 1954.
Joseph McCarthy
Elected to the Senate in 1946, he rose to national prominence on February 9, 1950, after giving a fiery speech in Wheeling, West Virginia:
“The State Department is infested with communists. I have here in my hand a list of 205—a list of names that were made known to the Secretary of State as being members of the Communist Party and who nevertheless are still working and shaping policy in the State Department.”
Americans were already growing increasingly fearful of Communism:
- Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin had not withdrawn the Red Army from the countries it had occupied in Eastern Europe during World War II.
- In 1948, the Soviet Union developed–and demonstrated–its own atomic bomb, an achievement U.S. scientists had claimed would not happen for at least a decade.
- In 1949, China fell to the triumphant armies of Mao Tse Tung.
But anti-communism as a lever to political advancement sharply accelerated following McCarthy’s speech. Republicans–resentful at being denied the White House since 1932–seized upon anti-communism as their passport to power.
No American–no matter how prominent–was safe from the accusation of being a Communist or a Communist sympathizer–”a Comsymp” or “fellow traveler” in the style of the era.
Among those accused:
- Secretary of State George C. Marshall, who had overseen America’s strategy for defeating Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan
- President Harry S. Truman
- Playwright Lillian Hellman and Arthur Miller
- Actors Charlie Chaplin, Zero Mostel, Lloyd Bridges, Howard Da Silva, Edward G. Robinson and John Garfield
- Composers Arron Copland and Elmer Bernstein
- Physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, who presided over the creation of America’s atomic bomb
- Actressses Lee Grant, Delores del Rio, Ruth Gordon and Lucille Ball
- Journalists Edward R. Murrow and William L. Shirer, who had chronicled the rise of Nazi Germany
- Folksinger Pete Seeger
- Writers Irwin Shaw, Howard Fast, John Steinbeck and Dashiell Hammett
Even “untouchable” Republicans became targets for such slander.
The most prominent of these was President Dwight D. Eisenhower–labeled ”a conscious, dedicated agent of the Communist Conspiracy” by Robert Welch, who founded the John Birth Society in 1958.
Robert Welch
Welch, an independently wealthy businessman, used his money to publicize the Society and its views. Welch saw even hardline anti-Communists like Vice President Richard Nixon and actor Ronald Reagan as dangerously liberal.
Meanwhile, McCarthy finally overstepped himself. In 1953, he attacked the leadership of the United States Army as “a hotbed of traitors” and convened an inquiry through the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations.
But the hearings backfired, exposing McCarthy as the bullying demagogue he was. A Senate committee voted to condemn his behavior, charging that he had “acted contrary to senatorial ethics and tended to bring the Senate into dishonor and disrepute.”
Although McCarthy remained in the Senate another two and a half years, his political influence had ended.
Journalists who had raced to cover his latest slander now avoided him. So did his Republican colleagues–many of whom had once sought his help at election time.
Yet even without McCarthy, Republicans rode the issue of anti-Communism to victory from 1948 to 1960.
After holding the White House for eight years under Eisenhower, they lost it in 1960 to John F. Kennedy and again in 1964 to Lyndon Johnson.
By 1968, with the nation mired in Vietnam and convulsed by antiwar demonstrations, Americans turned once more to those who preyed upon their fears and hates. They elected Richard Nison–and re-elected him in 1972.
After Jimmy Carter won the Presidency in 1976 and lost it in 1980, Republicans held the White House until 1992. Throughout that time, they continued to accuse their opponents of being devious agents–or at least unwitting pawns–of “the Communist conspiracy.”
Even as late as 1992, President George H.W. Bush and the Republican establishment charged that Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton might be a KGB plant.
George H.W. Bush
Their evidence: During his tenure at Oxford University in 1969-70, Clinton had briefly visited Moscow.
Thus, the Republican charged that he might have been “programmed” as a real-life “Manchrian candidate” to become, first, Governor of Arkansas–one of America’s poorest states–and then President.
What made this charge all the more absurd: The Soviet Union had officially dissolved in December, 1991.
Although Republicans continued to hurl “Communist!” and “treason!” at their opponents, these charges no longer carried the weight they had while the Soviet Union existed.
Right-wingers had to settle for attacking their opponents as “liberals” and “soft on crime.”
Then, on September 11, 2001, Republicans–and their right-wing supporters–at last found a suitable replacement for the Red Menace.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Politics, Social commentary on August 22, 2017 at 12:02 am
“All revolutions,” said Ernst Rohem, leader of Adolf Hitler’s brown-shirted thugs, the S.A., “devour their own children.”
Ernst Rohem
Fittingly, he said this as he sat inside a prison cell awaiting his own execution.
On June 30, 1934, Hitler had ordered a massive purge of his private army, the S.A., or Stormtroopers. The purge was carried out by Hitler’s elite army-within-an-army, the black-uniformed Schutzstaffel, or Protective Squads, better known as the SS.
The S.A. Brownshirts had been instrumental in securing Hitler’s rise to Chancellor of Germany on January 30, 1933. They had intimidated political opponents and organized mass rallies for the Nazi Party.
But after Hitler reached the pinnacle of power, they became a liability.
Ernst Rohem, their commander, urged Hitler to disband the regular German army, the Reichswehr, and replace it with his own legions as the nation’s defense force.
Frightened by Rohem’s ambitions, the generals of the Reichswehr gave Hitler an ultimatum: Get rid of Rohem–-or they would get rid of the Fuhrer.
So Rohem died in a hail of SS bullets-–as did several hundred of his longtime S.A. cronies.
SS firing squad
Among the SS commanders supervising those executions was Reinhard Heydrich—a tall, blond-haired formal naval officer who was both a champion fencer and talented violinist.
Ultimately, he would become the personification of the Nazi ideal—”the man with the iron heart,” as Hitler eulogized at Heydrich’s funeral just eight years later.
Reinhard Heydrich
Even so, Heydrich had a problem: He could never escape vicious rumors that his family tree held a Jewish ancestor.
His paternal grandmother had married Reinhold Heydrich, and then Gustav Robert Suss. For unknown reasons, she decided to call herself Suss-Heydrich.
Since “Suss” was widely believed in Germany to indicate Jewish origin, the “stigma” of Jewish heritage attached itself to the Heydrich family.
Heydrich joined the SS in 1931 and quickly became head of its counterintelligence service. But his arrogance and overweening ambition created a great many enemies.
Only a year later, he became the target of an urgent investigation by the SS itself. The charge: That he was part-Jewish, the ultimate sin in Hitler’s “racially pure” Nazi Germany.
The investigation cleared Heydrich, but the rumor of his “tainted” origins persisted, clearly tormenting the second most powerful man in the SS. Even his superior, Heinrich Himmler, the Reichsfuhrer-SS, believed it.
When Heydrich was assassinated in 1942 by Czech assassins in Prague, Himmler attended his funeral. He paid tribute to his former subordinate at the service: ”You, Reinhard Heydrich, were a truly good SS-man.”
But he could not resist saying in private: “He was an unhappy man, completely divided against himself, as often happened with those of mixed race.”
Those who dare to harshly judge others usually find themselves assailed just as harshly.
A modern-day example is Liz Cheney, daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney and a 2014 candidate for U.S. Senator from Wyoming.
Liz tried to position herself as far more right-wing than her opponent, Republican U.S. Senator Michael Bradley “Mike” Enzi.
She found her work cut out for her: In March, 2007, Enzi was ranked by National Journal as the sixth-most conservative U.S. Senator. Among his legislative priorities:
- Supporting partial privatization of Social Security
- Consistently voting against expanding Medicare.
- Voting against enrolling more children or the poor in public healthcare.
Mike Enzi
And Liz had a problem Enzi did not: Her sister, Mary, was not only a lesbian but legally married to another woman: Heather Poe. This led many Wyoming voters to wonder if Liz Cheney was far-Right enough to merit their support.
So Liz went all-out to assure them that even though her sister led a degenerate lifestyle, she, Liz, stood foursquare against legalizing gay marriage: “I do believe it’s an issue that’s got to be left up to states. I do believe in the traditional definition of marriage.”
Liz Cheney
And, in another statement: “I am strongly pro-life and I am not pro-gay marriage.
“I believe the issue of marriage must be decided by the states, and by the people in the states, not by judges and not even by legislators, but by the people themselves.”
This stance led to a heated rift between her and Mary. “For the record, I love my sister, but she is dead wrong on the issue of marriage,” Mary Cheney wrote in a Facebook post in September, 2013.
“Freedom means freedom for everyone,” she continued. “That means that all families—regardless of how they look or how they are made—all families are entitled to the same rights, privileges and protections as every other.”
Adding to the complications: Their father, Dick Cheney—often ridiculed as “Darth Vader” for his own extreme Right-wing views—endorsed same-sex marriage in 2009.
(After a brief run, Cheney, on January 6, 2014, Cheney withdrew from the race.)
But, as was true for officials in Nazi Germany, so is it true for Right-wing Republicans: It’s impossible to be too radical a Right-winger.
In the 1930s and 40s, it was politically—and personally—dangerous to be labeled “pro-Jewish” or “pro-Communist” in Hitler’s Germany.
And today it is equally dangerous—at least politically—to be labeled “pro-liberal” or “pro-gay” in the Republican Party.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on July 3, 2017 at 12:10 am
J. Edgar Hoover, the legendary FBI director, was notorious in his own lifetime as a blackmailer.
“Boy, the dirt he has on those Senators,” President John F. Kennedy told his friend, Benjamin C. Bradlee, who was then head of Newsweek’s Washington bureau.
As President, Kennedy could call on Hoover to give him limited access to the private files the FBI director kept on real and potential enemies. But Kennedy had known about Hoover’s incriminating dossiers long before he reached the White House.
J. Edgar Hoover
During 1941-42, he had enjoyed a delicious affair with Inga Arvad, a Danish journalist and notorious fan of Germany’s Fuhrer, Adolf Hitler.
Suspected of being a Nazi spy, “Inga Binga,” as JFK jokingly referred to her, came under heavy FBI surveillance—including phone taps and room bugs. These picked up Kennedy’s trysts with her.
When the Kennedy patriarch, Joseph P., learned of the affair, he demanded that his son break it off. He had political ambitious for all his sons, and he didn’t want them spoiled by Jack’s owing to an uncontrollable libido.
Richard Nixon—Kennedy’s future rival for the White House—felt the same way about Hoover: “He’s got files on everybody.”
And this was virtually true—even if those files didn’t hold secretly-obtained information. Nixon learned this as President when he wanted “dirt” on Senator Edward M. Kennedy. In this case, the “file” turned out to be nothing more than newspaper clippings.
As William C. Sullivan, the onetime director of the FBI’s Domestic Intelligence Division, revealed after Hoover’s death in 1972:
“The moment [Hoover] would get something on a senator, he’d send one of the errand boys up and advise the senator that ‘we’re in the course of an investigation, and we by chance happened to come up with this data on your daughter.
“‘But we wanted you to know this. We realize you’d want to know it.’ Well, Jesus, what does that tell the senator? From that time on, the senator’s right in his pocket.”
There is a lesson to be learned here: Giving in to blackmail only empowers the blackmailer even more.
The only effective way to handle blackmail was demonstrated by Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski, hosts of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” a weekday news and talk show.
Mika Brzezinski
Both have been highly critical of President Donald Trump since he took office on January 20. And Trump—through his friendship with David Pecker, the publisher of the tabloid, The National Enquirer—thought he had the ideal way of shutting them up.
Joe Scarborough
On the June 30 edition of “Morning Joe,” Scarborough and Brezezinski offered their version of events.
Scarborough: “We got a call: ‘Hey, the National Enquirer is going to run a negative story against you guys, and Donald is friends with …the president is friends with the guy that runs National Enquirer.’ And they said: ‘If you call the president up and you apologize for your coverage, then he will pick up the phone and basically spike the story.’
“I had, I will just say, three people at the very top of the administration calling me. The calls kept coming, and kept coming, and they were like: ‘Come on, Joe, just pick up the phone and call him.’”
Donald Trump
One of the callers was reportedly Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law.
In short: Grovel before the dictator and he will bestow clemency on you.
Trump denied being a party to blackmail, but he confirmed that there had been calls between the TV journalists and members of his staff. In a June 30 tweet, Trump wrote: “He called me to stop a National Enquirer article. I said no! Bad show”.
Scarborough and Brzezinski provided further details in a June 30 Washington Post column: “This year, top White House staff members warned that the National Enquirer was planning to publish a negative article about us unless we begged the president to have the story spiked. We ignored their desperate pleas.”
The story, which appeared on June 5, alleged that the two, previously married, had cheated on their former spouses. The story was entitled: “Joe & Mika: TV Couple’s Sleazy Cheating Scandal: ‘Morning’ lovebirds vow to make it legal. THE ENQUIRER asks questions!”
By rejecting Trump’s blackmail threat, Scarborough and Brzezinski accomplished what they could not have by groveling:
First, they put Trump on notice that they can’t be cowed. This can only encourage future targets of such blackmail to stand up against abuse.
Second, they deprived him of a potent weapon. Had they caved in to his demand for an unearned apology, they would have made themselves targets for future blackmail.
Third, they turned the tables by making Trump the target of ugly publicity. Blackmailers are universally reviled, and branding Trump as one detracts from his dignity and influence as President.
Fourth, they forced Trump and the Enquirer on the defensive—with both denying that they ever tried to blackmail Scarborough and Brzezinski.
Considering Trump’s well-earned reputation for lying and vindictiveness, Scarborough and Brzezinski are certain to be more widely believed than the President.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Politics, Social commentary on June 23, 2017 at 12:26 am
On June 20, a friend of mine named Dave wrote Kamala Harris, his United State Senator from California.
A longtime Democrat, he was concerned that the party had declined to the point of political insignificance.
In 2010, Democrats had lost the House; in 2014, they lost the Senate. Then, in 2016, after Barack Obama had held the White House for eight years, they lost it again to Donald J. Trump.
In 1996, Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich had written a memo 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.”
Newt Gingrich
Democrats, for the most part, have failed to craft effective counterattacks on their integrity and ability.
As a veteran writer, Dave wanted to pass on to Harris some specific ways that Democrats could do this.
“Above all,” wrote Dave, “Democrats should not simply borrow but co-opt a page from the Republican playbook and CONSTANTLY brand Republicans as TRAITORS.
“America’s foremost Intelligence agencies have proven, categorically, that Russian Intelligence agents played a major role in securing Trump’s election.
“And Trump’s firing [FBI Director] James Comey to short-circuit the Russia investigation—as he himself admitted in an interview with NBC’s Lester Holt—only proves how much he wants to hide his guilt.”
On June 21, Harris’ office responded as follows:
Dear Mr. —–,
Thank you for reaching out to voice your concerns about the workings of our government and the state of our nation. The importance of civic involvement cannot be overstated, and it is an honor to serve as your United States Senator. I have heard your concerns, and my legislative work will continue to be guided by the needs of constituents like you.
I believe that each and every American has the right to education, public safety, and health care. I have dedicated my time in the Senate to fighting for the most vulnerable among us and defending the inalienable rights guaranteed by our Constitution.
It is for this reason that I introduced the Access to Counsel Act, which guarantees legal counsel for those detained while entering the United States, passed a bipartisan resolution condemning ethnic and religious hate crimes, and introduced the Empowering Federal Employment for Veterans Act, a bipartisan bill to boost federal employment opportunities for the veterans who gave so much to defend our nation.
I am proud of the progress we have made during our time in the Senate. And still, I know our work has just begun.
As a career prosecutor and the former Attorney General of California, I understand that our constitutionally-guaranteed rights must be diligently protected. I will fight to protect these rights, and make sure that our voices not silenced or forgotten.
As your senator, I will spend my time in Congress advocating for every Californian and every American.
Thank you again for reaching out. If you have additional questions or concerns, please do not hesitate to visit my website at —.——.——-.— or call my Washington, D.C. office at (—) — —-.
Sincerely,
Kamala D. Harris
United States Senator
Dave wasted no time in replying to what he considered a thoroughly unresponsive reply:
On June 20 I sent you an email outlining ways that Democrats can successfully mount attacks on Republicans generally and Donald Trump in particular.
Your email says better than anything I can why so many people have given up on the Democratic party.
NOTHING in this email even REMOTELY addresses the issue I raised in mine. It’s boilerplate that could have been sent out to ANY constituent of ANY member of Congress. No doubt I could have told you I was suffering from a poison ivy rash and you would have sent me the same “reply.”
And yours is NOT unique in its “outreach” to constituents. I have seen letters and emails from other Congressional members whom people I know contacted. And those “replies” had NOTHING to do with the subjects those constituents had written about.
Since Trump’s election, Democrats have had FOUR opportunities to upset his agenda via four special elections. The most recent of these occurred on June 20—and, for the fourth time, the Democratic nominee got flushed down the toilet.
So I would think that if someone directly addressed some of the reasons WHY Democrats keep blowing elections, YOU would have had the decency to directly respond to the subject. But of course you did not.
At the end of your email, you (or, more likely, your staffer) wrote: “If you have additional questions or concerns, please do not hesitate to visit my website at ——.——-.— or call my Washington, D.C. office at (—) — —-.”
After getting the completely UNresponsive “response” cited above, I do not see any reason to expect that any further emails or letters to you will garner a direct reply to whatever issue I have addressed.
Prepare yourself for a Trump re-election in 2020. The cowardly, Politically Correct approach Democrats habitually take to campaigning will guarantee it.
The tragedy is that, while your party DESERVES to go into the trashcan of history, those who depend on its members for protection against Republican greed and cruelty deserve far better.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Politics, Social commentary on June 22, 2017 at 11:15 am
David Gergen has served as a White House advisor to four Presidents–three Republican, one Democrat: Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton.
He is now a senior political analyst for CNN.
In addition, he is a U.S. Navy veteran, a member of the D.C. Bar and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. And as if that wasn’t enough, he graduated with honors from Yale and Harvard Law School.
In short, he is a serious man who intimately understands politics from both the Republican and Democratic perspective.
David Gergen
So when he says the Democrats are in trouble, they should listen closely.
In a June 22 analysis for CNN, Gergen warned that President Donald Trump “could be on his way to re-election in 2020.”
To back up his assertion he cites two defeats Republicans handed Democrats in just one week. At stake: Two vacant seats in the Republican-dominated House of Representatives.
On June 20, Ralph Norman defeated Archie Parnell in a special election for South Carolina’s 5th congressional district. The seat had been occupied by Republican Mick Mulvaney, who was chosen by President Trump to become the new director of the Office of Management and Budget.
Ralph Norman
And, on the same day, Karen Handel defeated Jon Ossoff in another special election for the 6th District of Atlanta, Georgia. The seat became vacant in January, when its Republican holder, Tom Price, became Secretary of Health and Human Services.
Karen Handel
Since Trump took office on January 20, there have been four special elections to fill vacant Congressional seats. And Republicans have won all of them.
“What’s really important is that Donald Trump has seized the narrative back,” said Gergan during a June 22 appearance on CNN’s Erin Burnett Outfront, “that he’s doing better with the voters than Democrats think he is.
“It should be a wake-up call for Democrats. It is possible that he could actually get re-elected if Democrats aren’t careful.”
Recently, a Democratic friend of mine, whom I’ll call Dave, came to the same conclusion. Admittedly, he has never served any President, let alone four of them.
But an email exchange with Kamala Harris, his own United States Senator from California, left him angry and despairing.
Kamala Harris
First, his email to her—sent on June 20:
Democrats are fatally neglecting a key weapon against the Trump abomination: Effective language.
In 1996, Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich 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.”
Such terms have proven highly effective in making Republicans masters of Congress and the White House.
Unfortunately, Democrats have shown themselves indifferent to or incapable of making language work for them.
Consider what conservative New York Times columnist David Brooks said last year about how Donald Trump used language to demolish his political opponents:
“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.”
But there ARE exciting words that Democrats CAN use to quickly destroy Trump’s credibility. It only takes imagination and courage—imagination to create them, and courage to use them.
Let me offer some examples:
Everybody knows that Vladimir Putin is the ONLY politician Trump has refused to attack. In fact, he has formed a Mutual Admiration Society with Putin. Yet Democrats have failed to effectively capitalize on this by fusing the two together.
No longer: “TrumPutin” should be CONSTANTLY on the lips of every Democrat when referring to Trump. It’s easy to remember and say–and it says “traitor” and “dictator” without having to actually use those words.
Republicans should be CONSTANTLY referred to as “RepublicaNazis,” or “Nazi Republicans.” Given Trump’s use of Nuremberg-like rallies, his Nazi-like salutes and demands for personal loyalty from his followers, creating TV ads that drive home this message will be easy.
If you want a more modern term to liken Republicans to dictators, you can use “Republican Guard,” as in: “We are facing a Republican Guard of opposition in the Senate.”
This would establish a subliminal link in the minds of voters between Saddam Hussein’s Republican Guard and Republicans holding sway in Congress….
Above all, Democrats should not simply borrow but co-opt a page from the Republican playbook and CONSTANTLY brand Republicans as TRAITORS.
America’s foremost Intelligence agencies have proven, categorically, that Russian Intelligence agents played a major role in securing the Trump’s election.
And Trump’s firing James Comey to short-circuit the Russia investigation—as he himself admitted in an interview with NBC’s Lester Holt—only proves how much he wants to hide his guilt.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Military, Politics, Social commentary on June 20, 2017 at 12:05 am
While the Nazi Party ruled Germany from 1933 to 1945, its influence over all aspects of Germans’ lives was suffocating.
“The persuasive influence of the Nazi regime reached into every corner of everyday life in Germany,” reads the back cover of Richard Grunberger’s classic 1971 book, The 12-Year Reich.
“Censorship prevailed, education was undermined, family life was idealized, but children were encouraged to turn in disloyal parents.
“‘Volk’ festivals, party rallies, awards, uniforms, pageantry all played a part in the massive effort to shape the mind of a nation.”
And yet, after the Reich surrendered unconditionally to the Allies on May 8, 1945, a strange thing happened: Virtually no one in Germany admitted to having been a Nazi—or having even known one.
American and British soldiers couldn’t find any German veterans willing to admit they had ever fought against Western, democratic nations. All the once-proud legionaries of the Wehrmacht and Waffen-SS swore they had been fighting “the real enemy”—the Russians—on the Eastern front.
And then there were all the stories of Germans who, at great risk to themselves, had hidden Jews in their attics. Which left unanswered the question: If so many “good Germans” had saved so many Jews, how had six million Jews died horrifically before the Reich fell?
In short: Adolf Hitler had lost the war he started—making him a loser nobody wanted to be identified with.
In the decades since, the “loser” tag has continued to stick with those who once served the Third Reich. Mel Brooks has repeatedly turned German soldiers—once the pride of the battlefield—into idiotic comic foils.
Even the fearsome Gestapo was spoofed for laughs on the long-running TV comedy, “Hogan’s Heroes.”
“Hogan’s Heroes”
“Americans love a winner,” George C. Scott as George S. Patton says at the outset of the classic 1970 movie. “And will not tolerate a loser.”
And that is why Republicans have stuck so closely with President Donald J. Trump.
A typical example of this occurred on June 8 after former FBI director James Comey testified before the United States Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.
Comey revealed that, on February 14, Trump had ordered everyone but Comey to leave a crowded meeting in the Oval Office.
“I want to talk about Mike Flynn,” said Trump.
Flynn had resigned the previous day from his position as National Security Adviser. The FBI was investigating him for his previously undisclosed ties to Russia.
“I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, to letting Flynn go,” said Trump. “He is a good guy. I hope you can let this go.”
This was clearly an attempt by Trump to obstruct the FBI’s investigation.
Yet Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan rushed to excuse his clearly illegal behavior: “He’s new at government, so therefore I think he’s learning as he goes.”
Paul Ryan
David Brooks, the conservative New York Times columnist, offered a more accurate explanation of Trump’s motives. Speaking on The PBS Newshour, Brooks said:
“We are a nation of laws. Donald Trump lives in an entirely different cultural universe. He is more clannist, believing in clan, believing in family, believing in loyalty, not recognizing objective law, not recognizing the procedures that is really how modern government operates….
“It’s not only that he doesn’t know the rules, but at all along and throughout his presidency, he has sort of trampled on the rules almost as a matter of policy, as a matter of character, because he doesn’t believe in that kind of relationships. It’s all personal loyalty, not about laws and norms and standards.”
Republicans don’t fear that Trump will trash the institutions that Americans have cherished for more than 200 years. Institutions like an independent judiciary, a free press, and an incorruptible Justice Department.
He has already attacked all of these—and Republicans have either said nothing or rushed to his defense.
What Republicans truly fear about Donald Trump is that he will finally cross one line too many—like firing Special Counsel Robert Meuller. And that the national outrage following this will force them to launch impeachment proceedings against him.
But it isn’t even Trump they fear will be destroyed.
What they most fear losing is their own hold on nearly absolute power in Congress and the White House.
If Trump is impeached and possibly indicted, he will become a man no one any longer fears. He will be a figure held up to ridicule and condemnation.
Like Adolf Hitler. Like Richard Nixon.
And his Congressional supporters will be branded as losers along with him.
Republicans vividly remember what happened after Nixon was forced to resign on August 9, 1974: Democrats, riding a wave of reform fever, swept Republicans out of the House and Senate—and Jimmy Carter into the White House.
What Ronald Reagan once said about the leadership of the Soviet Union now literally applies to that of the Republican Party:
“They…have openly and publicly declared that the only morality they recognize is what will further their cause, meaning they reserve unto themselves the right to commit any crime, to lie, to cheat, in order to attain that.”
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Military, Politics, Social commentary on June 5, 2017 at 12:01 am
Long before Donald Trump was accused of being sexually compromised by the Russians, Americans knew enough about him to decide: “You are unfit for the Oval Office.”
Almost immediately after entering the Presidential race on June 16, 2015, he began attacking one group of Americans after another:
- Mexicans: “They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists.” He’s also promised to “build a great, great wall on our southern border and I will have Mexico pay for that wall.”
- Blacks: Trump retweeted an image of a masked, dark-skinned man with a handgun and a series of alleged crime statistics, including: “Blacks killed by whites – 2%”; “Whites killed by blacks – 81%.” The image cites the “Crime Statistics Bureau – San Francisco”–an agency that doesn’t exist.
- POWs: Speaking of Arizona U.S. Senator and Vietnam veteran John McCain: He’s not a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren’t captured.”
Donald Trump
The number of people, places and things Trump has insulted is so extensive The New York Times compiled a list of 273 of them.
- One of those persons was Tarla Makaeff, who spent more than $60,000 on Trump University classes. In 2010, she filed a fraud lawsuit against (now-defunct) Trump University.
- Trump retaliated by filing a defamation suit against her. The case was dismissed by a judge.
- But Trump continued to attack her during his Presidential candidacy. During a campaign rally he assailed her as a “horrible, horrible witness,” and then posted on Twitter that she was “Disgraceful!”
- Makaeff ultimately persuaded the judge presiding over the Trump University case to let her remove her name as a plaintiff.
As an authoritarian who demands the right to craft his own image. Trump furiously denies others the right to dissent from it via:
- Counter-suits, threats and personal insults against outsiders; and
- Stringent confidentiality agreements against employees, business partners, his former spouses and now his campaign staffers.
- In February, 2016, Trump said that he was “gonna open up our libel laws so when they write purposely negative and horrible and false articles, we can sue them and win lots of money.”
Two of Trump’s most vicious threats were aimed at Democratic Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.
- The first occurred on October 9, 2016, during their second Presidential debate: “If I win, I am going to instruct my attorney general to get a special prosecutor to look into your situation–there has never been so many lies and so much deception.”
- The second occurred on October 10, three days after The Washington Post leaked a video of Donald Trump making sexually predatory comments about women (“I don’t even wait. Grab them by the pussy. You can do anything”).
- Rather than accept responsibility for his actions, Trump blamed the Clintons–who had nothing to do with the release. Speaking before a rally in Pennsylvania on October 10, Trump threatened: “If they wanna release more tapes saying inappropriate things, we’ll continue to talk about Bill and Hillary Clinton doing inappropriate things. There are so many of them, folks.”
Hillary Clinton
Trump’s rampant egomania is literally stamped on his properties. 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.”
Among the references he’s made to himself:
- “My fingers are long and beautiful, as, it has been well documented, are various other parts of my body.”
- “I think the only difference between me and the other candidates is that I’m more honest and my women are more beautiful.”
- “My Twitter has become so powerful that I can actually make my enemies tell the truth.”
- “My IQ is one of the highest–and you all know it.”
Trump publicly admitted that his egomania would play a major role in his approach to consulting advisers:
- Asked on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” who he consults about foreign policy, he replied: “I’m speaking with myself, number one, because I have a very good brain and I’ve said a lot of things.”
Trump has never been charged with incest, but he’s repeatedly made disturbing, sexually inappropriate comments about his daughter, Ivanka:
- When asked how he would react if Ivanka, a former teen model, poised for Playboy, Trump replied: “I don’t think Ivanka would do that, although she does have a very nice figure. I’ve said if Ivanka weren’t my daughter, perhaps I’d be dating her.”
On October 7, The Washington Post leaked a video of Donald Trump making sexually predatory comments about women (“You can grab them by the pussy”).
- Within a week, no fewer than 12 had come forward to accuse him of sexually inappropriate behavior.
- Although he threatened to sue the New York Times if it reported the women’s claims, he has so far refused to do so.
* * * * *
Those Americans who voted for Donald Trump knew the character of the man they were electing. They cannot claim ignorance of who he was and what he intended to do.
They enthusiastically supported him because he gave voice to their hatreds and prejudices. And because they believed he would humiliate and destroy those they wanted to see humiliated and destroyed.
They are as deserving of the contempt of their fellow Americans as Trump is.
The next four years will unveil how many of their wishes are fulfilled.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on June 2, 2017 at 12:39 am
“What did the President know and when did he know it?”
It was the famous question asked by Tennessee U.S. Senator Howard Baker during the 1973 Watergate hearings.
Howard Baker
The question cut to the core of President Richard Nixon’s litany of crimes. And the fact that it was posed by a Republican gave it added power.
More than a year later, Americans learned its answers:
- Nixon had learned that his own White House “Plumbers” had carried out a burglary of the Democratic National Committee at the Watergate Hotel; and
- Only days afterward, he ordered a cover-up.
With those revelations, his Presidency was finished.
America has endured four months of the Donald J. Trump Presidency. And his poll ratings have steadily fallen since he took office. As of May 22-28, it stands at 41%.
And, once again, Howard Baker’s slightly altered question resonates with force: “What did the American people know, and when did they know it?”
And the subject of that question is not Richard Nixon but Donald Trump.
Since taking office, Trump has been besieged by reports that members of his 2016 campaign staff collaborated with Russian Intelligence agents to secure his election.
One of these was retired general Mike Flynn–Trump’s choice for National Security Adviser. He was forced to resign after only 23 days in office when news broke of his collusion.
And numerous members of his Cabinet–such as Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and even Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner–have close ties to Russian dictator Vladimir Putin or those who act in his name.
Trump has attacked these charges as “fake news”–while supplying no evidence to refute them.
But long before the election, Americans had more than enough knowledge about Trump to judge him unfit for the Oval Office.
- He unknowingly admitted to being a sexual predator of women: “You know I’m automatically attracted to beautiful–I just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star they let you do it. You can do anything. Grab them by the pussy. You can do anything.”
Donald Trump
- He refused to release his tax returns–unlike every other Presidential candidate since Ronald Reagan in 1980.
- He said he was prepared to withdraw from NATO, the American-European alliance that held the Soviet Union at bay for a half-century.
- He often and publicly praised Russian President Vladimir Putin, the absolute dictator of a foreign power hostile to the United States.
- He publicly invited “Russia”–i.e., Putin–to interfere directly in an American Presidential election: “I will tell you this, Russia: If you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 [Hillary Clinton] emails that are missing. I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press.”
Vladimir Putin
- He surrounded himself with men who have close ties to Putin. One of these was Paul Manafort, his former campaign manager. His longstanding ties to pro-Russian politicians in Ukraine lead directly to Putin.
- Another was Roger Stone, self-confessed political dirty trickster and former business partner of Paul Manafort. Stone had extensive contacts with hacker Guccifer 2.0, whom the CIA, NSA and FBI believe was actually a front for GRU, Russian military intelligence.
- Yet another Trump advisor, Roger Ailes, was a known sexual predator. Hired to prepare Trump for the fall debates with Clinton, he was fired in July as CEO of Fox News on multiple charges of sexual harassment.
- During the 2016 campaign, Trump received the enthusiastic support of the Ku Klux Klan and the American Nazi Party.
Ku Klux Klan emblem
- Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi personally solicited a political contribution from Donald Trump around the same time her office deliberated joining an investigation of alleged fraud at Trump University and its affiliates.
- After Bondi dropped the Trump University case against Trump, he wrote her a $25,000 check for her re-election campaign. The money came from the Donald J. Trump Foundation.
- On November 18, Trump–rather than face trial–settled the case out of court for $25 million. “Today’s $25 million settlement agreement is a stunning reversal by Donald Trump,” said New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, “and a major victory for the over 6,000 victims of his fraudulent university.
- Throughout the 2016 Presidential campaign, Trump repeatedly used threats of violence to intimidate his Republican and Democratic opponents.
- On March 16, he warned Republicans that if he didn’t win the GOP nomination in July, his supporters would literally riot: “I think you’d have riots. I think you would see problems like you’ve never seen before. I think bad things would happen. I really do. I wouldn’t lead it, but I think bad things would happen.
- On August 9, Trump issued a veiled solicitation for the assassination of Democratic Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton: “Hillary wants to abolish, essentially abolish, the Second Amendment. If she gets to pick her [Supreme Court] judges, nothing you can do folks. Although the Second Amendment people, maybe there is, I don’t know.”
- After slandering President Barack Obama for five years as “the President from Kenya,” he blatantly lied: “Hillary Clinton and her campaign of 2008 started the birther controversy. I finished it.”
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on May 19, 2017 at 12:05 am
When the Senate Watergate Committee learned that President Richard M. Nixon had installed a secret taping system in the White House, they immediately subpoenaed all of his tapes.
So did Watergate Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox.
Nixon fired Cox in the infamous “Saturday Night Massacre” on October 20, 1973. But Cox was succeeded by another Special Prosecutor, Leon Jaworski–who also pursued the tapes.
The case went to the U.S. Supreme Court–which ruled, 8-0, that Nixon must give up the tapes.
One of the tapes revealed that Nixon had ordered the FBI to abandon its investigation of the Watergate break-in. When news leaked of this, Nixon resigned to avoid the disgrace of impeachment in the House and certain conviction in the Senate.
Richard M. Nixon
Now it appears that history is about to repeat itself–in the case of President Donald J. Trump.
And it has been touched off by his repeated use of Twitter as both a Presidential candidate and President.
When it was launched on July 16, 2006, Twitter was intended to be, according to Wikipedia, “an online news and social networking service where users post and interact with messages, ‘tweets,’ restricted to 140 characters.”
It was never intended as a weapon of slander and intimidation. Yet, as both a Presidential candidate and President, Trump has repeatedly used Twitter to attack hundreds of real and imagined enemies in politics, journalism, TV and films.
Even before taking office as President, Trump was haunted by charges that members of his 2016 Presidential campaign colluded with Russian Intelligence agents to secure his election.
Trump has furiously and repeatedly denied this.
Yet, on May 11, no fewer than six top American intelligence officials testified before Congress that Russia acted to influence last year’s election.
These officials were:
- Dan Coats, director of National Intelligence;
- Michael Pompeo, CIA director;
- Michael S. Rogers, director of the National Security Agency;
- Lieutenant-General Vincent Stewart (USMC), director of the Defense Intelligence Agency;
- Robert Cardillo, director of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency; and
- Andrew McCabe, acting FBI director, installed after Trump fired the agency’s appointed director, James Comey.
Comey had been spearheading the FBI’s investigation into Trump’s “Russian connection.” In early May, 2017, he had asked the Justice Department to provide increased resources for the FBI’s investigation.
FBI Headquarters
During a private White House dinner in January, Trump asked Comey to pledge his personal loyalty to him. Comey refused to do so.
On May 9, Trump fired him.
Instead of doing so quietly and with dignity, Trump dispatched his longtime personal bodyguard, Keith Schiller, to FBI headquarters with the message: “You’re fired.” Comey was in the FBI’s Los Angeles field office speaking with agents when he learned of his dismissal in a TV news broadcast.
Not content with humiliating and dismissing Comey, Trump then threatened him in a May 12 tweet: “James Comey better hope that there are no “tapes” of our conversations before he starts leaking to the press!”
Having implied that he had secretly taped his conversation with Comey, Trump found himself besieged with the question: “Did you install a White House taping system similar to the one installed by President Richard Nixon?”
Trump has refused to answer–and so have his spokesmen and women.
Ironically, his latest use of a weaponized Twitter account may have doomed his Presidency. His threat to Comey has boxed him in with a series of dead-end scenarios.
Dead-end #1: If Trump taped the conversation without Comey’s consent, he broke the law. (This has been explored in Part One of this series.)
Dead-end #2: If Trump admits he taped Comey, he provides Democrats–and even some Republicans–with reason to subpoena all existing White House tapes.
The House and Senate have competing investigative committees probing “the Russian connection.” And no doubt they will soon issue subpoenas for any secret tapes Trump may have made.
And so will newly-appointed Special Counsel Robert Meuller, III, who served for 12 years as FBI director under Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama.
Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein made the appointment on May 17, citing “the unique circumstances [of] the public interest.”
(Attorney General Jeff Sessions has supposedly recused himself from involvement in the Russian investigation–because he lied to Congress about his past contacts with Russian Ambassador Sergei Kislyak during 2016.)
If he refuses to release them, Trump will touch off another Watergate-style conflict between the White House and Congress.
Dead-end #3: If he claims that he didn’t tape Comey, many people will believe he’s lying.
Dead-end #4: If he claims that he didn’t tape Comey, many people will believe he is a punk–for trying to intimidate the former FBI director with a baseless threat.
Dead-end #5: It’s impossible to prove a negative. So if Trump doesn’t have secret tapes to turn over, it will be impossible for him to prove he isn’t stonewalling in defiance of the law.
Dead-end #6: Trump’s brutal and unwarranted firing of James Comey on May 9 has infuriated the FBI’s 35,664 employees, of which 13,778 are Special Agents.
By earning the hatred of the most powerful investigative agency in the Federal Government, Trump has all-but-guaranteed his removal from office.
What began for the Bureau as a professional investigation into Russian sabotage has become a personal vendetta.
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FASCISTIC HATRED THEN–AND NOW: PART THREE (END)
In Bureaucracy, History, Politics, Social commentary on August 24, 2017 at 12:09 amWith the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, the Republican Party went into a tailspin of dismay.
For almost 50 years, Republicans had conjured up The Red Bogeyman to scare voters into sending them to Congress and the White House.
But now that the “workers’ paradise” had disappeared, Americans seemed to lose interest in the Communist Menace.
True, the People’s Republic of China remained, and its increasing economic clout would challenge the United States well into the 21st century. But Americans didn’t seem to fear the Red Chinese as they had the Red Russians.
What was the Republican Party to do to lure voters?
On September 11, 2001, the answer arrived—in two highjacked jetliners that slammed into the World Trade Center in New York and one that struck the Pentagon in Washington, D.C.
Exit The Red Bogeyman. Enter The Maniacal Muslim.
Consider:
And on July 13, 2012, Rep. Michelle Bachmann (R-Minn.) sent letters to the Inspectors General of the Departments of
“The purpose of these letters,” wrote Bachmann, was to “request a multi-department investigation into potential Muslim Brotherhood infiltration into the United States Government.”
Michelle Bachmann
Bachmann further asserted in her letter to the State Department that Huma Abedin, deputy chief of staff to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, had ties to the Muslim Brotherhood.
In response, Arizona’s United State Senator John McCain said: “These attacks have no logic, no basis, and no merit and they need to stop. They need to stop now.”
“I don’t know Huma,” said House Speaker John Boehner, “but from everything that I do know of her she has a sterling character.”
And the evidence for these attacks?
The Center for Security Policy’s claim that Abedin’s father (who died when she was a teenager), mother and brother are “connected” to the organization.
And what is the Center of Security Policy? A private organization subsidized by donors to Right-wing causes.
In a separate letter, Bachmann demanded to know how Abedin received her security clearance.
Among the co-signers of Bachmann’s letter to the Inspectors General were:
When pressed for their evidence of “a vast Muslim conspiracy,” right-wing accusers usually refuse to provide any.
An example of this occurred during an August 13, 2010 interview between Gohmert and CNN’s Anderson Cooper:
COOPER: What research? Can you tell us about the research?
GOHMERT: You are attacking the messenger, Anderson, you are better than this. You used to be good. You used to find that there was a problem and you would go after it.
COOPER: Sir, I am asking you for evidence of something that you said on the floor of the House.
GOHMERT: I did, and you listen, this is a problem. If you would spend as much time looking into the problem as you would have been trying to come after me and belittle me this week –
COOPER: Sir, do you want to offer any evidence? I’m giving you an opportunity to say what research and evidence you have. You’ve offered none, other than yelling.
Nor did Gohmert offer any evidence that evening.
Of course, the ultimate Republican Muslim slander is that President Barack Obama—a longtime Christian—is himself a Muslim.
No doubt Republicans feel totally safe in making these attacks, since Muslims comprise only 1% of the American population.
This has long been a hallmark of right-wing attacks—to go after a minority that cannot effectively defend itself.
Thus, Adolf Hitler attacked the Jews of Germany.
And Republicans have successively attacked blacks, Hispanics and gays—until each group became politically influential enough to defeat Republican candidates.
Today, most right-wing politicians at least grudgingly court all of these groups.
When Muslims become a significant political force in their own right, the Right will court them, too. And then move on to yet another helpless scapegoat to blame for America’s troubles.
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