Posts Tagged ‘ROD SERLING’
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In Business, Entertainment, History, Medical, Military, Politics, Social commentary on March 6, 2025 at 12:12 am
On November 8, 1963—57 years before COVID-19 invaded the United States—Rod Serling’s “The Twilight Zone” offered a prophecy of future disaster for the country.
“The Old Man in the Cave” is set in a post-apocalyptic rural town in 1974, 10 years after a nuclear war has devastated the United States.
A nuclear explosion
The townspeople have discovered a supply of canned food. However, they are waiting for Mr. Goldsmith [John Anderson], their leader, to return with a message from the mysterious and unseen “old man in the cave.” Then they will learn whether the food is contaminated with radiation.
When Goldsmith returns, he informs them that the old man has declared the food is contaminated and that it should be destroyed.
Shortly thereafter, three soldiers led by Major French [James Coburn] enter the town and clash with Goldsmith as they try to establish their authority.
French is clearly a precursor of Donald Trump: Demanding instant obedience and threatening death to anyone who disobeys him, he claims he will organize the region to rebuild society..
Donald Trump
However, Goldsmith believes that French and his men simply want to strip the town of its food.
French attacks the townspeople’s belief in the seemingly infallible “old man in the cave.” He tells them they have survived these past 10 years—but they haven’t lived.
Fifty-seven years later, Donald Trump will furiously attack not COVID-19 but the medical advice of his own Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)—especially that provided by Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top expert on infectious disease.
He will disdain the wearing of masks and social distancing, and attack those Democratic governors who impose stay-at-home orders to contain the virus. He will offer a series of rosy predictions—none of which come true—that the virus will soon end.
His “cures” include ingesting Clorox bleach and/or having UV light shined up one’s anus.
COVID-19 virus
And French holds himself out as the man who can deliver them a wonderful new future.
Fifty-seven years later, Donald Trump will similarly declare: “I have joined the political arena so that the powerful can no longer beat up on people that cannot defend themselves. Nobody knows the system better than me, which is why I alone can fix it.”
French tempts the townspeople to eat the food Goldsmith warned was contaminated. There is a wild orgy of gluttony as they greedily consume it.
Only Goldsmith refuses to partake in the food orgy.
The townspeople turn on Goldsmith and threaten him with death unless he reveals the identity of “the old man in the cave.” Goldsmith finally takes the assembly to the cave to reveal his source: A computer.
French incites the townspeople to stone the computer with rocks and canned goods until it explodes. Then French leads the people into celebrating their new-found freedom from this “tyranny”.
Fifty-seven years later, Trump will similarly incite his followers to attack the United States Capitol building to halt the legal transfer of Presidential power from himself to Joe Biden.
But as Goldsmith had insisted, the “old man” was correct: The canned goods were contaminated with radiation. All the townspeople—including French and the soldiers—die, their bodies left lying throughout the streets.
Trump will similarly tempt millions of Americans to ignore the deaths of tens of thousands of their fellow citizens from COVID-19 and the overwhelming of the nation’s hospitals. The result will be a vast increase in deaths.
Only one man survives—Goldsmith, who has refused to eat the forbidden food and somberly walks out of the now-dead town.
As always in a “Twilight Zone” episode, it is Rod Serling who gets the final word: “Mr. Goldsmith, survivor. An eyewitness to man’s imperfection. An observer of the very human trait of greed. And a chronicler of the last chapter—the one reading ‘suicide’. Not a prediction of what is to be, just a projection of what could be. This has been The Twilight Zone.”
Rod Serling
Except that Serling was wrong: “The Old Man in the Cave” has proven an uncanny prediction of what did happen in America.
* * * * *
The chief lesson to be learned from the COVID-19 epidemic is that catastrophe inevitably results when natural disaster collides with an evil and incompetent administration.
And totally ignoring that lesson were the 77 million Americans who re-elected Donald Trump—the man most responsible for the deaths of 400,000 Americans—as President.
Under his tyrannical rule, the United States suffered not simply from a lethal virus but a combination of denial, lies, Republican subservience, chaos, extortion, propaganda as news, quackery as medicine, premature demands to “re-open the country,” ignoring the danger and—finally—resignation (“Learn to live with the virus”).
Even after three vaccines were produced, millions of Americans—almost all of them Right-wing Trump supporters—refused to protect themselves and the families and friends they claimed to love.
And Trump has appointed Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.—a 14-year heroin addict and fanatical anti-vaccine proponent—Secretary of Health and Human Services.
As if on cue: A mystery illness has emerged in the Congo whose symptoms—which include fever, vomiting and internal bleeding—result in death in 48 hours.
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In Bureaucracy, Entertainment, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Military, Politics, Social commentary on September 19, 2023 at 12:21 am
On September 5, Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio was sentenced to 22 years to federal prison for his role in the January 6, 2021 coup attempt.
But before he was hauled away by deputy U.S. marshals, Tarrio, 39, had his beg-a-thon moment with the judge who sentenced him: “On November 3, 2020, something that I never expected happened—my candidate lost. I felt like something was personally stolen from me.
“Every media channel that I turned to told me I was justified.”
Enrique Tarrio
He claimed that he was “not a political zealot” and denied that changing the outcome of the election was his goal on January 6.
Tarrio wasn’t in Washington on January 6. He had been arrested on January 4 in a separate case. Still, he was convicted for organizing the Proud Boys’ role in the riot and for encouraging the violence that interrupted the counting of Electoral College votes.
Wearing an orange prison jumpsuit and escorted by deputy U.S. marshals, he blamed himself and apologized to the officers who were injured during the riot—of which he was a proud instigator.
“Today I stand before you a different man… I wish to reorient my life’s purpose… I want to rejoin my local church and be an active part of helping others. I hope your honor can hear the sincerity. Please show me mercy. Do not take my 40s from me. God bless this entire court.”
U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly wasn’t buying it:
“That day broke our previously unbroken tradition of the peaceful transfer of power, which is truly among the most precious things that we had as Americans. That previously unbroken string is now broken. And it’s going to take time and effort to fix it.”
Capitol Police facing off with Stormtrumpers
Kelly was especially disturbed by Tarrio’s comparing the January 6 traitors to the country’s Founding Fathers:
“You apologized here today, but I must say, comparing what Dominic Pezzola [another Proud Boys member who attacked the Capitol Building] did to George Washington—the man who helped encourage the notion of a peaceful, orderly transfer of power—by relinquishing power to let someone else be chosen. It slanders the father of our country.”
Just as Zachary Rehl’s lawyer had found excuses for his client’s treasonous behavior, so, too, did Tarrio’s legal team find excuses for his.
According to them, Tarrio was simply a “misguided patriot” instead of a terrorist, and was simply being a “Keyboard Ninja, saying things he shouldn’t have.”
Tarrio’s pleadings for leniency didn’t stop with himself. He also enlisted the aid of his aunt, godmother, mother, fiancée and younger sister.
His aunt and godmother sent in letters pleading for leniency which were read by defense attorney Nayib Hassan.
“Henry [Tarrio’s birth name] is not a monster like he’s made out to be,” one letter read.
Stormtrumpers inside the Capitol Building
Tarrio’s mother, fiancée, and his younger sister also spoke of Tarrio’s character as they asked for leniency, saying his incarceration has greatly affected his family.
“This mother stands before you today begging you for leniency for Henry,” his mother told Judge Kelly. “We need him home as soon as we can. The Henry that came into the system is not the Henry that’s here today.”
The younger sister cried as she spoke: “He is the glue that keeps us together. The idea of him not being around for all the milestones is hard to bear.”
Apparently, it didn’t occur to Tarrio—when planning the January 6 coup attempt—that there might be consequences for his treason.
Tarrio’s fiancée said the couple wanted to start a family together and asked the judge to consider the “direct effect” a long prison sentence could have on those ambitions: “Henry is a flawed man, as are we all, but he is not blind to it.”
In getting a prison sentence of 22 years, Tarrio proved lucky: The Justice Department had asked for a sentence of 33 years.
Tarrio’s sentencing is the last in a series of historic seditious conspiracy cases brought by the Justice Department after the Capitol Building was attacked.
* * * * *
History teaches us that republics that tolerate treason soon become former republics.
For Republicans, gaining—and retaining—absolute power has become their foremost reason for existence.
It isn’t enough for them to create voter suppression laws to prevent their opponents from voting. They now insist on the right to violently overthrow any Democrat who somehow manages to win the Presidency against them.
Rod Serling’s “Twilight Zone” episode, “Death’s Head Revisited,” reveals how Republicans react when confronted with overwhelming evidence of their evil.
In that episode, a former Nazi SS camp captain returns to the Dachau concentration camp to savor the torments he once inflicted on helpless men and women. To his horror, he’s greeted by the ghosts of those victims.
To one of them—Becker—he says: “That was such a long time ago. Let’s forget about all that—unpleasantness—and move on.”
Thus have Republicans reacted when confronted with overwhelming evidence that President Donald J. Trump, having lost the 2020 Presidential election, incited violence against the Government of the United States.
And just as most of the Original Nazis were forced to confront their past “unpleasantness”-–and were punished for it—today’s Republicans must face punishment for their own.
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In Bureaucracy, Entertainment, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Military, Politics, Social commentary on September 18, 2023 at 12:38 am
“The Germans are always at your throat or at your feet.”
So said former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill after Nazi Germany had destroyed most of Europe and now lay begging for mercy from its former victims.
And what held true for Germans after World War II holds equally true for Fascistic supporters of Donald Trump when they face justice for their crimes.
Nothing better demonstrates this than the reactions of three members of the notorious Proud Boys terrorist group at their sentencing on August 31.
Their crime: Seditious conspiracy for their role in trying to overturn the results of the 2020 Presidential election.
On January 6, 2021, they launched a violent attack on the nation’s Capitol Building to prevent the counting of Electoral College votes. That count—as they knew—was certain to establish that former Vice President Joseph R. Biden had won the 2020 Presidential election.
Stormtrumpers scaling Capitol Building walls
Which meant an end to Donald Trump’s ambitions to become “President-for-Life.”
Self-described Proud Boys organizer Joe Biggs received a sentence of 17 years.
Biggs sobbed as he was sentenced. He pleaded for leniency to take care of his daughter and cancer-stricken mother: “I wanted to see what would happen. My curiosity got the best of me. I’m not a terrorist. I’m one of the nicest people in the world.”
U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly wasn’t having it, saying that American elections must be respected: “You did play a role in riling up the crowd. If you don’t like how an election is being conducted, you can speak out, call, write or meet with election officials. You can engage in peaceful protest. File a lawsuit.’
The judge ruled that Biggs qualified for a terrorism sentencing enhancement because he tore down a fence that stood between police and rioters.
Joe Biggs
Biggs, a veteran who sustained a head injury while deployed in Iraq, worked for Alex Jones’ conspiracy website Infowars.
A second member of the group, former Marine Zachary Rehl, got 15 years in prison.
“I know that I have to be punished and I understand,” said Biggs, who then pleaded: “Please give me the chance, I beg you, to take my daughter to school and pick her up.”
He added: “I know that I messed up that day, but I am not a terrorist.”
Fortunately, the judge did not agree with him.
“The nature of the constitutional moment we were in that day is something that is so sensitive that it deserves a significant sentence,” said Judge Kelly.
“Our Constitution and laws give you so many important rights that Americans have fought and died for and that you yourself put on a uniform to defend. People around the world would give anything for these rights.”
Rehl, 37, of Port Richmond, Philadelphia. described Jan. 6 as a “despicable day” as he read from a prepared statement through tears. With his lawyer, Norman Pattis, consoling him, Rehl told the judge he fell “hook, line, sinker” for politicians spewing lies about the 2020 election, causing him to lose sight over what was truly important in life—his family.
Zachary Rehl
A sobbing Rehl told the judge that he had lost his military pension and much more since his arrest: “For what it’s worth, I stand here today and say that I am done with all of it. I am done with politics; I am done peddling lies for other people who don’t care about me.”
Rehl had a considerably different attitude on January 6, 2021, when he joined the mob that stormed the Capitol Building. Newly surfaced body camera footage shows him pepper-spraying police.
At his trial, confronted with that footage, he said he couldn’t recall attacking police during the attempted coup: “If you believe I did anything wrong that day,” he told the jury, “I really do truly apologize.”
In the days prior to the coup attempt, Rehl advocated “firing squads for the traitors that are trying to steal the election” on social media.
After the riot, Rehl regretted that the mob hadn’t stopped Congress’ certification vote—which correctly documented that former Vice President Joe Biden had won the 2020 Presidential election.
“Looking back, it sucked,” he texted other members of the Philadelphia Proud Boys chapter on January 7. “We should have held the Capitol. Everyone shoulda showed up armed and took the country back the right way.”
Reading that text in court, Judge Kelly was appalled: “I mean, my God. My God.”
The January 6 coup attempt wasn’t Rehl’s first violent outing on Trump’s behalf. In 2018, he led a pro-Trump “We the People” rally outside Independence Hall that provoked violent clashes with anti-Trump demonstrators.
Norman Pattis, Rehl’s attorney, did his best to whitewash his client’s treasonous behavior: “If there’s a direct threat to democracy greater than an insurrection, I’d say it’s a stolen election. They decided to engage in behavior that reflected our highest ideals.”
He compared the Proud Boys’ actions to those of the Founding Fathers who took up arms to fight tyranny.
He said that the 30-year sentence prosecutors sought “will not promote respect for the law. It will create a martyrdom syndrome.”
The judge sentenced Rehl to 15 years’ imprisonment.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Politics, Social commentary on April 28, 2023 at 12:10 am
As Republican Senators in Washington, D.C., prepared to block the creation of a bipartisan investigation into the January 6 insurrection, another event was taking place.
In Dalton, Georgia, Representative Matt Gaetz (R – FL) gave an impassioned speech to a crowd. His topic: The Second Amendment.
“It’s not about hunting. It’s not about recreation. It’s not about sports. The Second Amendment is about maintaining within the citizenry the ability to maintain an armed rebellion against the government, if that becomes necessary. I hope it never does.”
In short: It’s about treason.
On the May 28, 2021 edition of The PBS Newshour, correspondent Lisa Desjardins explained:
“There, you heard—it’s about maintaining an armed insurrection. He said he doesn’t hope that it comes to pass. But this is different than traditional conservative thought about protecting liberty, individuals’ homes.
“This is an obvious statement about making government itself the enemy. I should note, of course, that Representative Gaetz is under federal investigation, over accusations involving prostitution and corruption that he denies.
“But we wanted to highlight this clip, because we—the crowd’s reaction, and Representative Gaetz pointedly talking about government as the potential enemy.”
Matt Gaetz
Anyone who still doubts that the Right generally and the followers of Donald Trump in particular aren’t bent on establishing a dictatorship need only consider this.
On May 31, 2021, QAnon hosted a conference called the For God and Country Patriot Roundup in Dallas. The event was attended by conspiracy theorists and peddlers of Donald Trump’s lie that the 2020 Presidential election was “stolen” from him by massive vote fraud.
One of Its keynote speakers was retired Army General Michael T. Flynn. Flynn had been Trump’s first national security advisor—until he was forced to resign for lying about his past meetings with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak.
In December, 2016, Flynn had talked with Kislyak about removing the sanctions placed on Russia by the outgoing Obama administration. The sanctions had been placed in retaliation for Russia’s efforts to manipulate the 2016 Presidential election.
“I want to know why what happened in Myanmar can’t happen here?” a member of the audience, who identified himself as a Marine, asked Flynn.
“No reason, I mean, it should happen here. No reason. That’s right,” Flynn responded.
From his remarks, it was clear that Flynn supported a similar overthrow of the government of the United States.
Later, when this was made clear to him, Flynn denied it.
In a message posted to a Parler account, Flynn claimed that his words had been twisted: “Let me be VERY CLEAR – There is NO reason whatsoever for any coup in America, and I do not and have not at any time called for any action of that sort.”
But Flynn’s behavior in the closing weeks of the Trump administration confirm that he has advocated the use of military force to install—or maintain—a dictatorship.
After losing the 2020 Presidential election to former Vice President Joseph Biden, Trump was desperate to remain in office. Flynn was present at an Oval Office meeting where he suggested that Trump could invoke martial law to overturn the results.
It wasn’t clear whether Trump endorsed the idea, but others in the room forcefully shot it down.
“Flynn’s remarks border on sedition,” said Rep. Elaine Luria (D-VA), a retired Navy commander who vice-chairs the House Armed Services Committee, about Flynn’s comments at the QAnon conference.
“There’s certainly conduct unbecoming an officer. Those are both things that can be tried under the Uniform Code of Military Justice and I think that as a retiree of the military, it should certainly be a path that we consider to have consequences for these types of words.”
Elaine Luria
At the same event in Dallas, Flynn also claimed—falsely: “Trump won. He won the popular vote, and he won the Electoral College vote.”
As a matter of fact, Trump won neither.
Biden won 81,268,924 popular votes to Trump’s 74,216,154. And in the Electoral College, Biden won 306 votes to Trump’s 232.
* * * * *
History teaches us that republics that tolerate treason soon become former republics.
For Republicans, gaining—and retaining—absolute power has become their foremost reason for existence.
It isn’t enough for them to create voter suppression laws to prevent their opponents from voting. They now insist on the right to violently overthrow any Democrat who somehow manages to win the Presidency against them.
Rod Serling’s “Twilight Zone” episode, “Death’s Head Revisited,” reveals how Republicans react when confronted with overwhelming evidence of their evil.
In that episode, a former Nazi SS camp captain returns to the Dachau concentration camp to savor the torments he once inflicted on helpless men and women. To his horror, he’s greeted by the ghosts of those victims.
To one of them—Becker—he says: “That was such a long time ago. Let’s forget about all that—unpleasantness—and move on.”
Thus have Republicans reacted when confronted with overwhelming evidence that President Donald J. Trump, having lost the 2020 Presidential election, incited violence against the Government of the United States.
And just as most of the Original Nazis were forced to confront their past “unpleasantness”-–and were punished for it—today’s Republicans must face punishment for their own.
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In Business, Entertainment, History, Medical, Politics, Social commentary on June 3, 2022 at 12:14 am
On November 8, 1963—57 years before COVID-19 invaded the United States—Rod Serling’s “The Twilight Zone” offered a prophecy of future disaster for the country.
“The Old Man in the Cave” is set in a post-apocalyptic rural town in 1974, 10 years after a nuclear war has devastated the United States.
A nuclear explosion
The townspeople have discovered a supply of canned food. However, they are waiting for Mr. Goldsmith [John Anderson], their leader, to return with a message from the mysterious and unseen “old man in the cave.” Then they will learn whether the food is contaminated with radiation.
When Goldsmith returns, he informs them that the old man has declared the food is contaminated and that it should be destroyed.
Shortly thereafter, three soldiers led by Major French [James Coburn] enter the town and clash with Goldsmith as they try to establish their authority.
French is clearly a precursor of Donald Trump: Demanding instant obedience and threatening death to anyone who disobeys him, he claims he will organize the region to rebuild society..
Donald Trump
However, Goldsmith believes that French and his men simply want to strip the town of its food.
French attacks the townspeople’s belief in the seemingly infallible “old man in the cave.” He tells them they have survived these past 10 years—but they haven’t lived.
Fifty-seven years later, Donald Trump will furiously attack not COVID-19 but the medical advice of his own Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)—especially that provided by Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top expert on infectious disease.
He will disdain the wearing of masks and social distancing, and attack those Democratic governors who impose stay-at-home orders to contain the virus. He will offer a series of rosy predictions—none of which come true—that the virus will soon end.
His “cures” include ingesting Clorox bleach and/or having UV light shined up one’s anus.
COVID-19 virus
And French holds himself out as the man who can deliver them a wonderful new future.
Fifty-seven years later, Donald Trump will similarly declare: “I have joined the political arena so that the powerful can no longer beat up on people that cannot defend themselves. Nobody knows the system better than me, which is why I alone can fix it.”
French tempts the townspeople to eat the food Goldsmith warned was contaminated. There is a wild orgy of gluttony as they greedily consume it.
Only Goldsmith refuses to partake in the food orgy.
The townspeople turn on Goldsmith and threaten him with death unless he reveals the identity of “the old man in the cave.” Goldsmith finally takes the assembly to the cave to reveal his source: A computer.
French incites the townspeople to stone the computer with rocks and canned goods until it explodes. Then French leads the people into celebrating their new-found freedom from this “tyranny”.
Fifty-seven years later, Trump will similarly incite his followers to attack the United States Capitol building to halt the legal transfer of Presidential power from himself to Joe Biden.
But as Goldsmith had insisted, the “old man” was correct: The canned goods were contaminated with radiation. All the townspeople—including French and the soldiers—die, their bodies left lying throughout the streets.
Trump will similarly tempt millions of Americans to ignore the deaths of tens of thousands of their fellow citizens from COVID-19 and the overwhelming of the nation’s hospitals. The result will be a vast increase in deaths.
Many of the businesses Trump hoped to keep open—to ensure his own re-election—will be shuttered.
Only one man survives—Goldsmith, who has refused to eat the forbidden food and somberly walks out of the now-dead town.
As always in a “Twilight Zone” episode, it is Rod Serling who gets the final word: “Mr. Goldsmith, survivor. An eyewitness to man’s imperfection. An observer of the very human trait of greed. And a chronicler of the last chapter—the one reading ‘suicide’. Not a prediction of what is to be, just a projection of what could be. This has been The Twilight Zone.”
Rod Serling
Except that Serling was wrong: “The Old Man in the Cave” has proven an uncanny prediction of what did happen in America.
* * * * *
The chief lesson to be learned from the COVID-19 epidemic is that catastrophe inevitably results when natural disaster collides with an evil and incompetent administration.
And the man who stands most responsible for the deaths of 400,000 Americans in 2020 is Donald Trump, the 45th President of the United States.
Under his tyrannical rule, the United States suffered not simply from a lethal virus but a combination of denial, lies, Republican subservience, chaos, extortion, propaganda as news, quackery as medicine, premature demands to “re-open the country,” ignoring the danger and—finally—resignation (“Learn to live with the virus”).
Even now, when three vaccines have been produced, millions of Americans—almost all of them Right-wing Trump supporters—refuse to protect themselves and the families and friends they claim to love.
Mark Anthony—in William Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar”—had it right: “The evil that men do lives after them.”
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In Business, Entertainment, History, Medical, Politics, Social commentary on October 26, 2021 at 12:20 am
On November 8, 1963—57 years before COVID-19 invaded the United States—Rod Serling’s “The Twilight Zone” offered a prophecy of future disaster for the country.
“The Old Man in the Cave” is set in a post-apocalyptic rural town in 1974, 10 years after a nuclear war has devastated the United States.
A nuclear explosion
The townspeople have discovered a supply of canned food. However, they are waiting for Mr. Goldsmith [John Anderson], their leader, to return with a message from the mysterious and unseen “old man in the cave.” Then they will learn whether the food is contaminated with radiation.
When Goldsmith returns, he informs them that the old man has declared the food is contaminated and that it should be destroyed.
Shortly thereafter, three soldiers led by Major French [James Coburn] enter the town and clash with Goldsmith as they try to establish their authority.
French is clearly a precursor of Donald Trump: Demanding instant obedience and threatening death to anyone who disobeys him. He claims his job is to organize the region so that society can be rebuilt.
Donald Trump
However, Goldsmith believes that French and his men simply want to strip the town of its food.
French tries to dispel the townspeople’s beliefs in the seemingly infallible “old man in the cave” and take control of the area. He tells them they have survived these past 10 years—but they haven’t lived.
Fifty-seven years later, Donald Trump will furiously attack not COVID-19 but the medical advice of his own Centers for Disease Control and Prevention—especially that provided by Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top expert on infectious disease.
He will disdain the wearing of masks and social distancing, and attack those Democratic governors who impose stay-at-home orders to contain the virus. He will offer a series of rosy predictions—none of which come true—that the virus will soon end.
His “cures” include ingesting Clorox bleach and/or having UV light shined up one’s anus.
COVID-19 virus
And French holds himself out as the man who can deliver them a wonderful new future.
Fifty-seven years later, Donald Trump will similarly declare: “I have joined the political arena so that the powerful can no longer beat up on people that cannot defend themselves. Nobody knows the system better than me, which is why I alone can fix it.”
French tempts the townspeople to eat the food Goldsmith warned was contaminated. There is a wild orgy of gluttony as they greedily consume it.
Only Goldsmith refuses to partake in the food orgy.
The townspeople turn on Goldsmith and threaten him with death unless he reveals the identity of “the old man in the cave.” Goldsmith finally takes the assembly to the cave. There it’s revealed that his source has been a computer.
French incites the townspeople to destroy the machine, and they stone it to death with rocks and canned goods. Then French leads the people into celebrating their new-found freedom from this “tyranny”.
Fifty-seven years later, Trump will similarly incite his followers to attack the United States Capitol building to halt the legal transfer of Presidential power from himself to Joe Biden.
But as Goldsmith had insisted, the “old man” was correct: The canned goods were contaminated with radiation. All the townspeople—including French and the soldiers—die, their bodies left lying throughout the streets.
Trump will similarly tempt millions of Americans to ignore the deaths of tens of thousands of their fellow citizens from COVID-19 and the overwhelming of the nation’s hospitals. The result will be a vast increase in deaths and the shuttering of many of the businesses Trump hoped to keep open.
Only one man survives—Goldsmith, who has refused to eat the forbidden food and somberly walks out of the now-dead town.
As always in a “Twilight Zone” episode, it is Rod Serling who gets the final word: “Mr. Goldsmith, survivor. An eyewitness to man’s imperfection. An observer of the very human trait of greed. And a chronicler of the last chapter—the one reading ‘suicide’. Not a prediction of what is to be, just a projection of what could be. This has been The Twilight Zone.”
Rod Serling
Except that Serling was wrong: “The Old Man in the Cave” has proven an uncanny prediction of what did happen in America.
* * * * *
The chief lesson to be learned from the COVID-19 epidemic is that catastrophe inevitably results when natural disaster collides with an evil and incompetent administration.
And the man who stands most responsible for the deaths of 400,000 Americans is Donald Trump, the 45th President of the United States.
Under his tyrannical rule, the United States suffered not simply from a lethal virus but a combination of denial, lies, Republican subservience, chaos, extortion, propaganda as news, quackery as medicine, premature demands to “re-open the country,” ignoring the danger and—finally—resignation (“Learn to live with the virus”).
Even now, when three vaccines have been produced, millions of Americans—almost all of them Right-wing Trump supporters—refuse to protect themselves and the families and friends they claim to love.
Mark Anthony—in William Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar”—had it right: “The evil that men do lives after them.”
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Politics, Social commentary on August 5, 2021 at 12:10 am
As Republican Senators in Washington, D.C., prepared to block the creation of a bipartisan investigation into the January 6 insurrection, another event was taking place.
In Dalton, Georgia, Representative Matt Gaetz (R – FL) gave an impassioned speech to a crowd. His topic: The Second Amendment.
“It’s not about hunting. It’s not about recreation. It’s not about sports. The Second Amendment is about maintaining within the citizenry the ability to maintain an armed rebellion against the government, if that becomes necessary. I hope it never does.”
In short: It’s about treason.
On the May 28 edition of The PBS Newshour, correspondent Lisa Desjardins explained:
“There, you heard—it’s about maintaining an armed insurrection. He said he doesn’t hope that it comes to pass. But this is different than traditional conservative thought about protecting liberty, individuals’ homes.
“This is an obvious statement about making government itself the enemy. I should note, of course, that Representative Gaetz is under federal investigation, over accusations involving prostitution and corruption that he denies.
“But we wanted to highlight this clip, because we—the crowd’s reaction, and Representative Gaetz pointedly talking about government as the potential enemy.”
Matt Gaetz
Anyone who still doubts that the Right generally and the followers of Donald Trump in particular aren’t bent on establishing a dictatorship need only consider this.
On May 31, QAnon hosted a conference called the For God and Country Patriot Roundup in Dallas. The event was attended by conspiracy theorists and peddlers of Donald Trump’s lie that the 2020 Presidential election was “stolen” from him by massive vote fraud.
One of Its keynote speakers was retired Army General Michael T. Flynn. Flynn had been Trump’s first national security advisor—until he was forced to resign for lying about his past meetings with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak.
In December, 2016, Flynn had talked with Kislyak about removing the sanctions placed on Russia by the outgoing Obama administration. The sanctions had been placed in retaliation for Russia’s efforts to manipulate the 2016 Presidential election.
“I want to know why what happened in Myanmar can’t happen here?” a member of the audience, who identified himself as a Marine, asked Flynn.
“No reason, I mean, it should happen here. No reason. That’s right,” Flynn responded.
From his remarks, it was clear that Flynn supported a similar overthrow of the government of the United States.
Later, when this was made clear to him, Flynn denied it.
In a message posted to a Parler account, Flynn claimed that his words had been twisted: “Let me be VERY CLEAR – There is NO reason whatsoever for any coup in America, and I do not and have not at any time called for any action of that sort.”
But Flynn’s behavior in the closing weeks of the Trump administration confirm that he has advocated the use of military force to install—or maintain—a dictatorship.
After losing the 2020 Presidential election to former Vice President Joseph Biden, Trump was desperate to remain in office. Flynn was present at an Oval Office meeting where he suggested that Trump could invoke martial law to overturn the results.
It wasn’t clear whether Trump endorsed the idea, but others in the room forcefully shot it down.
“Flynn’s remarks border on sedition,” said Rep. Elaine Luria (D-VA), a retired Navy commander who vice-chairs the House Armed Services Committee, about Flynn’s comments at the QAnon conference.
“There’s certainly conduct unbecoming an officer. Those are both things that can be tried under the Uniform Code of Military Justice and I think that as a retiree of the military, it should certainly be a path that we consider to have consequences for these types of words.”
Elaine Luria
At the same event in Dallas, Flynn also claimed—falsely: “Trump won. He won the popular vote, and he won the Electoral College vote.”
As a matter of fact, Trump won neither.
Biden won 81,268,924 popular votes to Trump’s 74,216,154. And in the Electoral College, Biden won 306 votes to Trump’s 232.
* * * * *
History teaches us that republics that tolerate treason soon become former republics.
For Republicans, gaining—and retaining—absolute power has become their foremost reason for existence.
It isn’t enough for them to create voter suppression laws to prevent their opponents from voting. They now insist on the right to violently overthrow any Democrat who somehow manages to win the Presidency against them.
Rod Serling’s “Twilight Zone” episode, “Death’s Head Revisited,” reveals how Republicans react when confronted with overwhelming evidence of their evil.
In that episode, a former Nazi concentration camp captain returns to Dachau, to savor the torments he once inflicted on helpless men and women. To his horror, he’s greeted by the ghosts of those victims.
To one of them—Becker—he says: “That was such a long time ago. Let’s forget about all that—unpleasantness—and move on.”
Thus have Republicans reacted when confronted with overwhelming evidence that President Donald J. Trump, having lost the 2020 Presidential election, incited violence against the Government of the United States.
And just as most of the Original Nazis were forced to confront their past “unpleasantness”—and were punished for it—today’s Republicans must face punishment for their own.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on February 18, 2021 at 12:07 am
“U.S. democracy wasn’t set up to deal with a president openly behaving like a James Bond villain while being protected by a political party behaving more like a mafia than a civic institution.”
—The Washington Monthly
TRUMP’S ULTIMATE TREASON
On January 6, the United States Senate, with Vice President Mike Pence presiding, would certify states’ Electoral College results of the 2020 election.
That morning, President Donald Trump urged Pence to flip the results of the election to give him a win.
Pence replied that he was not authorized by the Constitution to overturn those results.
But as Pence went off to the Capitol Building housing the Senate and House of Representatives, Trump had one last card to play.
Mike Pence
For weeks, Trump had ordered his legions of Right-wing Stormtrumpers to descend on Washington, D.C. on January 6.
On December 20, he had tweeted: “Statistically impossible to have lost the 2020 Election. Big protest in DC on January 6th. Be there, will be wild!”
In tweets, he promoted the rally again on December 27 and 30, and January 1.
On January 6, Trump appeared at the Ellipse, a 52-acre park south of the White House fence and north of Constitution Avenue and the National Mall in Washington, D.C.
A stage had been set up for him to address tens of thousands of his supporters, who eagerly awaited him.
Trump ordered them to march on the Capitol building to express their anger at the voting process and to intimidate their elected officials to reject the results.
Donald Trump addresses his Stormtrumpers
“Our country has had enough. We will not take it anymore, and that is what this is all about. And to use a favorite term that all of you people really came up with, we will stop the steal….
“Republicans are constantly fighting like a boxer with his hands tied behind his back….And we’re going to have to fight much harder….
“And after this, we’re going to walk down and I’ll be there with you. We’re going to walk down to the Capitol. And we’re going to cheer on our brave Senators and Congressmen and women and we’re probably not going to be cheering so much for some of them.
“Because you’ll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength and you have to be strong. We have come to demand that Congress do the right thing and only count the electors who have been lawfully slated.”
The Stormtrumpers marched to the United States Capitol—and quickly brushed aside Capitol Police, who made little effort to arrest or shoot them.
The “Jolly Roger” meets Donald Trump
- Members of the mob attacked police with chemical agents, metal poles and lead pipes.
- Injuries suffered by almost 140 officers included concussions, broken ribs, smashed spinal discs, a lost eye.
- Several rioters carried plastic handcuffs, possibly intending to take hostages. Others carried walkie-talkies.
- Senators ran down a flight of stairs and along a hallway as police held off rioters.
Stormtrumpers scaling Capitol Building walls
- Many of the lawmakers’ offices were occupied and vandalized—including that of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a favorite Right-wing target.
- Insurrectionists shouted “Hang Pence!” for his refusal to block certification of Biden’s victory.
- Others yelled, “Where are you, Nancy [Pelosi]?”
- Lawmakers huddled under desks and behind locked doors, expecting to die any minute.
Stormtrumpers inside the Capitol Building
More than three hours passed before police—using riot gear, shields and batons—retook control of the Capitol.
And Trump? After giving his inflammatory speech, he returned to the White House—to watch his handiwork on television. He initially rebuffed requests to mobilize the National Guard.
This required intervention by Pat A. Cipollone, the White House Counsel, among other officials.
Told that Secret Service agents had spirited Pence off the floor of the Senate following the attack, Trump tweeted: “Mike Pence didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done.”
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) frantically called Trump, begging him to call off the rioters.
“Well, Kevin, I guess these people are more upset about the election than you are,” replied Trump.
While the rioting was still erupting, Trump posted a video on Twitter: “I know you’re hurt. We had an election that was stolen from us….But you have to go home now. We have to have peace. We have to have law and order….So go home. We love you. You’re very special.”
THE TREASONOUS LEGACY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY
The conscience of Rod Serling still speaks to us.
And we need only watch his “Twilight Zone” episode, “Death’s Head Revisited,” to fully understand how Republicans react when they are confronted with overwhelming evidence of their evil.
In that episode, a former Nazi concentration camp captain returns to Dachau, to savor the torments he once inflicted on helpless men and women. To his horror, he’s greeted by the ghosts of those victims.
To one of them—Becker—he says: “That was such a long time ago. Let’s forget about all that–unpleasantness—and move on.”
That is how Republicans have reacted when confronted with overwhelming evidence that President Donald J. Trump, having lost the 2020 Presidential election, incited violence against the Government of the United States.
And just as most of the Original Nazis were forced to confront their past “unpleasantness”—and punished for it—so, too, must Republicans be forced to confront—and punished for—their own.
A former tormentor—and his former tormented victim—confront each other in “Death’s Head Revisited”
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on February 17, 2021 at 12:05 am
TRUMP’S FINAL SCHEMES TO REMAIN IN POWER
Throughout November and December, 2020, cases were filed in Wisconsin, Arizona, Nevada, Michigan, Minnesota and Georgia challenging the election results. None were supported by evidence of fraud—as even Trump’s lawyers admitted when questioned by judges.
In Michigan, Trump’s attorneys dropped their federal suit to block the certification of Detroit-area ballots.
By November 21, more than 30 cases were withdrawn by Trump’s attorneys or dismissed by Federal judges—some of them appointed by Trump himself.
Ultimately, from November 3 to December 14, Trump and his allies lost 59 times in court, either withdrawing cases or having them dismissed by Federal and state judges.
Donald Trump
On November 19, losing in the courts, Trump invited two Republican legislative leaders from Michigan to the White House. The reason: To persuade them to stop the state from certifying the vote.
The Michigan legislators said they would follow the law.
On December 5, Trump called Georgia Governor Brian Kemp and asked him to call a special legislative session and convince state legislators to select their own electors that would support him, thus overturning Biden’s win.
Kemp refused, saying he lacked the authority to do so.
On December 8, the Supreme Court refused to hear Trump’s bid to reverse Pennsylvania’s certification of Biden’s victory. Representative Mike Kelly (R-PA), a Trump ally, argued that the state’s 2.5 million mail-in votes were unconstitutional.
The Court’s order read, “The application for injunctive relief presented to Justice [Samuel] Alito and by him referred to the Court is denied.”
Although Trump had appointed three of the Court’s Justices, not one of them dissented.
On December 10, the Supreme Court refused to let a Texas lawsuit overturn the results in four battleground states: Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
The majority of their votes—cast for Biden—were critical to Trump’s defeat.
“Texas has not demonstrated a judicially cognizable interest in the manner in which another state conducts its elections,” the court said without further comment. It dismissed all other related claims as moot.
The request for their overturning came in a lawsuit brought by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton. A Trump ally, Paxton has been indicted on felony securities fraud charges. He have been seeking a Presidential pardon as reward for his effort.
Seventeen Republican state Attorney Generals—and 126 Republican members of Congress—supported the lawsuit. They feared Trump’s fanatical base would “primary” them if they didn’t publicly declare their loyalty—to a man they knew was slated to leave office within two months.
Had the Court acted on Paxton’s request, the results for democracy would have been catastrophic.
“Texas seeks to invalidate elections in four states for yielding results with which it disagrees,” Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro told the justices in legal papers. “Its request for this court to exercise its original jurisdiction and then anoint Texas’s preferred candidate for president is legally indefensible and is an affront to principles of constitutional democracy.”
Meanwhile, top Republicans—such as Vice President Mike Pence, Missouri United States Senator Roy Blunt and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell—refused to congratulate Biden as the winner.
Mitch McConnell
In fact, the vast majority of House and Senate Republicans refused to publicly acknowledge Biden as President-Elect of the United States. The reason: They were still in thrall to Trump’s fanatical base.
They feared that if they broke with the soon-to-be-ex-President, they would be voted out of office at the next election—and lose their cozy positions and the power and perks that come with them.
Then, on December 30, Missouri Republican Senator Josh Hawley announced that, on January 6, 2021, he would object to the certification of some states’ Electoral College results. As many as 140 House Republicans and 25 from the Senate were expected to join him.
This would have forced Republicans to:
- Vote to reject Trump’s unsubstantiated claims of massive voter fraud; or
- Disenfranchise millions of voters who had voted for Biden.
“Josh Hawley and anyone who supports his effort are engaged in the attempted overthrow of democracy,” Democratic Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy said.
“There is no evidence that there was any fraud. Senator Hawley apparently believes that if a Democrat wins the presidential race, it must be illegitimate by definition, even absent any actual evidence of misbehavior.”
Nebraska Republican Senator Ben Sasse bluntly offered the reason for this effort: ‘”We have a bunch of ambitious politicians who think there’s a quick way to tap into the president’s populist base without doing any real, long-term damage. But they’re wrong—and this issue is bigger than anyone’s personal ambitions.”
Having lost in 59 court cases to overturn the election results, Trump opted for some old-fashioned arm-twisting.
On January 2, 2021, Trump called the office of Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger. The reason: To pressure him to “find” enough votes to overturn former Vice President Joe Biden’s win in the state’s presidential election.
“All I want to do is this. I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have, because we won the state,” Trump lied.
He even threatened Raffensperger with criminal prosecution if he did not change the vote count in Trump’s favor: “That’s a criminal offense. And you can’t let that happen.”
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on February 16, 2021 at 12:23 am
PREVENTING TREASON IN 2020
Donald Trump didn’t win a majority of the popular vote in 2016—but he got enough help from Russian dictator Vladimir Putin to put him over the top in the Electoral College.
And Trump gladly reciprocated.
On July 16, 2018, Trump attended a press conference in Helsinki, Finland, with Putin.
There he blamed American Intelligence agencies—such as the FBI, CIA and National Security Agency—instead of Putin for Russia’s subversion of the 2016 Presidential election: “I have President Putin. He just said it’s not Russia. I will say this: I don’t see any reason why it would be.”
In early 2020, SEAL Team Six raided a Taliban outpost and recovered $500,000 in American cash. The CIA believed that Putin had offered money to Taliban militants to kill American soldiers in Afghanistan. Trump—who received Intelligence from a wide range of military and civilian agencies—claimed he wasn’t told.
So notorious was the role played by Russian trolls and hackers in winning Trump the 2016 election that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) was determined to prevent a repetition in 2020.
The man ultimately tasked with this mission was Chris Krebs, the director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency run by DHS.
Chris Krebs
Krebs launched a massive effort to counter lies spread by Russians—and Americans—on social media platforms. Among his duties:
- Sharing Intelligence from agencies such as the CIA and National Security Agency with local officials about foreign efforts at election interference.
- Ensuring that domestic voting equipment was secure.
- Attacking domestic misinformation head-on.
As a result, Krebs was widely praised for revamping the department’s cybersecurity efforts and increasing coordination with state and local governments.
By all accounts—except Trump’s—the 2020 election went very smoothly.
As a result of the vast increase in election security, Trump not only failed to win the popular vote again but couldn’t get the help he expected from Putin.
On November 17, Trump fired Chris Krebs.
The reason: Krebs had not only countered Russian propaganda lies—he had dared to counter Trump’s as well. For example: He rejected Trump’s claims of widespread voter fraud: There “is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised.”
Too cowardly to confront Krebs, Trump fired him by tweet—and accompanied the outrage with yet another lie:
“The recent statement by Chris Krebs on the security of the 2020 election was highly inaccurate, in that there were massive improprieties and fraud, including dead people voting, poll watchers not allowed into polling locations, glitches in the voting machines which changed votes from Trump to Biden, late voting, and many more. Therefore, effective immediately, Chris Krebs has been terminated as director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.”
In a November 17 story on the CNN website, CNN reporters Kaitlan Collins and Paul LeBlanc bluntly concluded:
“[Krebs’] dismissal underscores the lengths Trump is willing to go to punish those who don’t adopt his conspiratorial view of the election.
“Since CNN and other outlets called the race for President-elect Joe Biden, Trump has refused to accept the results, instead pushing baseless conspiracies that his second term is being stolen.
“This includes falsely claiming during an election night address that he had already won reelection, that he had won states that were actually still up in the air at the time and that his opponents were perpetrating a fraud.”
TRUMP’S FINAL SCHEMES TO REMAIN IN POWER
On November 3, Joseph Biden became President-elect of the United States by winning 81,283,495 votes, or 51.4% of the vote, compared to 74,223,755 votes, or 46.9% of the vote cast for Trump.
In the Electoral College—which actually determines the winner—the results were even more stunning: 306 votes for Biden, compared with 232 for Trump. It takes 270 votes to be declared the victor.
From the moment Biden was declared the winner, Trump set out to overturn that verdict.
Joseph Biden
Trump refused to accept that verdict.
Speaking from the White House in the early hours of November 4, Trump sounded like a petulant child whose planned outing has been suddenly called off:
“We were getting ready for a big celebration, we were winning everything and all of a sudden it was just called off. The results tonight have been phenomenal…I mean literally we were just all set to get outside and just celebrate something that was so beautiful, so good, such a vote such a success.”
For the first time in American history, a President demanded a halt to the counting of votes while the outcome of an election hung in doubt.
States ignored his demand and kept counting.
Next, Trump ordered his attorneys to file lawsuits to overturn the election results, charging electoral fraud. Specifically:
- Illegal aliens had been allowed to vote.
- Trump ballots were systematically destroyed.
- A sinister computer program turned Trump votes into Biden ones.
Throughout November and December, cases were filed in Wisconsin, Arizona, Nevada, Michigan, Minnesota and Georgia challenging the election results. None were supported by evidence of fraud—as even Trump’s lawyers admitted when questioned by judges.
On November 13, nine cases meant to attack President-Elect Joseph Biden’s win in key states were denied or dropped. A law firm challenging the vote count in Pennsylvania withdrew from the effort.
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400,000 COVID DEATHS LATER, AMERICANS AWAIT THEIR NEXT PLAGUE
In Business, Entertainment, History, Medical, Military, Politics, Social commentary on March 6, 2025 at 12:12 amOn November 8, 1963—57 years before COVID-19 invaded the United States—Rod Serling’s “The Twilight Zone” offered a prophecy of future disaster for the country.
“The Old Man in the Cave” is set in a post-apocalyptic rural town in 1974, 10 years after a nuclear war has devastated the United States.
A nuclear explosion
The townspeople have discovered a supply of canned food. However, they are waiting for Mr. Goldsmith [John Anderson], their leader, to return with a message from the mysterious and unseen “old man in the cave.” Then they will learn whether the food is contaminated with radiation.
When Goldsmith returns, he informs them that the old man has declared the food is contaminated and that it should be destroyed.
Shortly thereafter, three soldiers led by Major French [James Coburn] enter the town and clash with Goldsmith as they try to establish their authority.
French is clearly a precursor of Donald Trump: Demanding instant obedience and threatening death to anyone who disobeys him, he claims he will organize the region to rebuild society..
Donald Trump
However, Goldsmith believes that French and his men simply want to strip the town of its food.
French attacks the townspeople’s belief in the seemingly infallible “old man in the cave.” He tells them they have survived these past 10 years—but they haven’t lived.
Fifty-seven years later, Donald Trump will furiously attack not COVID-19 but the medical advice of his own Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)—especially that provided by Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top expert on infectious disease.
He will disdain the wearing of masks and social distancing, and attack those Democratic governors who impose stay-at-home orders to contain the virus. He will offer a series of rosy predictions—none of which come true—that the virus will soon end.
His “cures” include ingesting Clorox bleach and/or having UV light shined up one’s anus.
COVID-19 virus
And French holds himself out as the man who can deliver them a wonderful new future.
Fifty-seven years later, Donald Trump will similarly declare: “I have joined the political arena so that the powerful can no longer beat up on people that cannot defend themselves. Nobody knows the system better than me, which is why I alone can fix it.”
French tempts the townspeople to eat the food Goldsmith warned was contaminated. There is a wild orgy of gluttony as they greedily consume it.
Only Goldsmith refuses to partake in the food orgy.
The townspeople turn on Goldsmith and threaten him with death unless he reveals the identity of “the old man in the cave.” Goldsmith finally takes the assembly to the cave to reveal his source: A computer.
French incites the townspeople to stone the computer with rocks and canned goods until it explodes. Then French leads the people into celebrating their new-found freedom from this “tyranny”.
Fifty-seven years later, Trump will similarly incite his followers to attack the United States Capitol building to halt the legal transfer of Presidential power from himself to Joe Biden.
But as Goldsmith had insisted, the “old man” was correct: The canned goods were contaminated with radiation. All the townspeople—including French and the soldiers—die, their bodies left lying throughout the streets.
Trump will similarly tempt millions of Americans to ignore the deaths of tens of thousands of their fellow citizens from COVID-19 and the overwhelming of the nation’s hospitals. The result will be a vast increase in deaths.
Only one man survives—Goldsmith, who has refused to eat the forbidden food and somberly walks out of the now-dead town.
As always in a “Twilight Zone” episode, it is Rod Serling who gets the final word: “Mr. Goldsmith, survivor. An eyewitness to man’s imperfection. An observer of the very human trait of greed. And a chronicler of the last chapter—the one reading ‘suicide’. Not a prediction of what is to be, just a projection of what could be. This has been The Twilight Zone.”
Rod Serling
Except that Serling was wrong: “The Old Man in the Cave” has proven an uncanny prediction of what did happen in America.
* * * * *
The chief lesson to be learned from the COVID-19 epidemic is that catastrophe inevitably results when natural disaster collides with an evil and incompetent administration.
And totally ignoring that lesson were the 77 million Americans who re-elected Donald Trump—the man most responsible for the deaths of 400,000 Americans—as President.
Under his tyrannical rule, the United States suffered not simply from a lethal virus but a combination of denial, lies, Republican subservience, chaos, extortion, propaganda as news, quackery as medicine, premature demands to “re-open the country,” ignoring the danger and—finally—resignation (“Learn to live with the virus”).
Even after three vaccines were produced, millions of Americans—almost all of them Right-wing Trump supporters—refused to protect themselves and the families and friends they claimed to love.
And Trump has appointed Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.—a 14-year heroin addict and fanatical anti-vaccine proponent—Secretary of Health and Human Services.
As if on cue: A mystery illness has emerged in the Congo whose symptoms—which include fever, vomiting and internal bleeding—result in death in 48 hours.
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