Posts Tagged ‘ROE V. WADE’
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In Bureaucracy, Law, Law Enforcement, Medical, Politics, Social commentary on March 1, 2023 at 12:12 am
Given the all-out Republican assault on their liberties, gays could become convinced that they are becoming the targets of state-sponsored terrorism—as were Jews in Nazi Germany.
In such a case, they may turn to a more drastic means than elections and the courts to protect themselves: Violence.
Political violence has a long and deadly history in the United States.
Before the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861, violence was commonplace along the Kansas-Missouri border as pro- and anti-slavery elements slaughtered one another.
After the Civil War ended in 1865, Ku Klux Klansmen across the South terrorized blacks into submission even though slavery was now illegal.
With the advent of the civil rights movement in 1960, blacks and their supporters once again became targets for violence.
A minority of black leaders like Malcom X and H. Rapp Brown told blacks they should violently defend themselves. But the vast majority of blacks—including bloodied civil rights workers—adhered to Martin Luther King’s call for non-violence.
Martin Luther King (left), Malcom X (right)
Still, there is no guarantee that those who suffer persecution and violence will remain non-violent. Their motive could be revenge—or to send a message to ward off future attacks.
Such was the fate of SS-Obergruppenfuhrer Reinhard Heydrich..
A tall, blond-haired formal naval officer, he was both a champion fencer and talented violinist. Heydrich joined the Schutzstaffel, or Protective Squads, better known as the SS, in 1931, and quickly became head of its counterintelligence service.
Reinhard Heydrich
In September, 1941, Heydrich was appointed “Reich Protector” of Czechoslovakia, which had fallen prey to Germany in 1938 but whose citizens were growing restless under Nazi rule.
Heydrich immediately ordered a purge, executing 92 people within the first three days of his arrival in Prague. By February, 1942, 4,000-5,000 people had been arrested.
In January, 1942, Heydrich convened a meeting of high-ranking political and military leaders in Wannsee, Germany, to streamline “the Final Solution to the Jewish Question.”
An estimated six million Jews were thus slaughtered.
On May 27, 1942, two British-trained Czech commandos—Jan Kubis and Joseph Gabcik—waited in Prague at a hairpin turn in the road always taken by Heydrich. When Heydrich’s Mercedes slowed down, Gabcik raised his machinegun—which jammed.
Heydrich ordered his driver to halt so he could take aim at his would-be assassins. It proved a fatal mistake.
Rising in his seat, he aimed his revolver at Gabcik—as Kubis lobbed a hand grenade at the car. The explosion drove steel and leather fragments of the car’s upholstery into Heydrich’s diaphragm, spleen and lung.
Hitler dispatched doctors from Berlin to save the Reich Protector. But infection set in, and on June 4, Heydrich died at age 38.
Heydrich’s wrecked Mercedes
The assassination sent shockwaves through the upper echelons of the Third Reich. No one had dared assault—much less assassinate—a high-ranking Nazi official.
The Nazis had slaughtered tens of thousands without hesitation—or fear that the same might happen to them.
Suddenly they realized that the fury they had aroused could be turned against themselves.
Which brings us to the leaders of America’s own Right-wing.
The names of infamous Nazis were widely known:
- Reichsmarshall Hermann Goering;
- Propaganda Minister Paul Joseph Goebbels;
- SS-Reichsfuhrer Heinrich Himmler;
- Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop;
- SS Obergruppenfuhrer Reinhard Heydrich;
- Adolf Hitler.
And so are the names of infamous leaders of the American Right:
- Texas Senator Ted Cruz;
- Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas;
- Commentator Tucker Carlson;
- Evangelist Franklin Graham;
- Florida Governor Ron DeSantis;
- Former President Donald Trump.
The differences between these two infamous groups are these:
In Nazi Germany, ordinary Germans could not learn about the personal lives of their dictators—including their home addresses—and conspire against them.
In the United States, ordinary citizens can learn about the personal lives of their would-be dictators by newspapers, Internet and TV—even on the Right’s own propaganda network, Fox News. “People finder” websites, for a modest price, provide names and addresses of potential targets—and their relatives.
In Nazi Germany, firearms were tightly controlled.
In the United States, the Right-wing National Rifle Association has successfully lobbied to put lethal firepower into the hands of virtually anyone who wants it.
Since their reversal of abortion rights in Roe v. Wade on June 24, 2022, at least six Right-wing Supreme Court Justices have lived under heavy guard by the U.S. Marshals Service. They may well be forced to do so for the rest of their lives.
But radical evangelists like Franklin Graham and Right-wing propagandists like Tucker Carlson cannot expect lifelong government protection. They would have to provide their own security—or take their chances.
So many Republicans are calling for an all-out war on gays that any number of them could become the targets—and victims—of retaliation.
Republicans boast that they want to “get the government off the backs of the people.” Yet they are waging war against people for the most intimate of reasons: Their choice of sex partners.
Reinhard Heydrich believed he was invulnerable to the hatred of the enemies he had raised against himself. That arrogance cost him his life.
The day may soon come when America’s own Right-wingers start learning the same lesson.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Medical, Politics, Social commentary on February 28, 2023 at 12:13 am
The politics of “smear and fear” have been good to Republicans—and their Right-wing allies.
Meanwhile, the Republican “base” refuses to learn that those who portray themselves as morally superior are usually:
- Hypocrites, who are in effect saying: “Do as I say, not as I do,” or
- Fanatics, who intend to force their version of morality on others.
So long as millions of hate-filled Right-wingers support the endless succession of “two minute hates,” Republicans will continue to target an endless series of victims.
And Right-wingers who are stirred up by Republicans’ anti-gay rhetoric often target gays, lesbians and transgenders in violent attacks.
- According to the Southern Poverty Law Center: “In the first six months of 2022, the Proud Boys counterprotested or harassed people on at least 28 separate occasions at LGBTQ and reproductive justice events around the country – together acting as a coordinated attack on gender equity and bodily autonomy….
- “On June 26, library patrons attending a drag queen story hour at a public library in Sparks, Nevada, encountered what has now become an increasingly regular sight: a group of men clad in the Proud Boys’ black-and-yellow uniform.
- “They held signs that accused participants of ‘grooming’ children and yelled at parents that they were ‘sick.’ One of those Proud Boys allegedly approached the building with a gun, causing patrons – including a number of children – to flee inside to safety. ‘We had some people who were visibly shaken and sobbing,’ a librarian told a local reporter.”
Proud Boys Flag
Anthony Crider, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
According to a December 10, 2022 story in Business Insider:
- “By the end of November, far-right activists took part in at least 55 public actions targeting members of the LGBT+ community — up from 16 the year before, an increase of some 340% — with a corresponding rise in violent attacks on people perceived to be gay or transgender, according to a report released this week by the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project, or ACLED….
- “While racism remains the primary driver of the far right, anti-LGBTQ actions have ‘fueled the largest increase in far-right protest activity,’ [according to an FBI annual risk assessment for 2022] with the rise in such activity ‘strongly’ correlating with a rise in violent attacks, of which there have been no fewer than 20, including the murder….of five people at a gay nightclub in Colorado Springs. Though we don’t have a specific motive the suspect has a history of online and offline bigotry.”
So what’s the reason for the GOP’s constantly dialing up fear and hatred of gays?
“They have an interest in keeping the base riled up about one thing or another, and when one issue fades, as with same-sex relationships and same-sex marriage, they’ve got to find something else. It’s almost frantic,” said Randall Balmer, a Dartmouth professor who authored Bad Faith: Race and the Rise of the Religious Right.
According to Balmer, the rise of the Religious Right was now driving Republican support for anti-trans legislation.
White Right-wing evangelicals backed Ronald Reagan against Jimmy Carter in 1980 and catapulted him to the White House.
Any Republican who wanted to gain the Presidency had to pay homage to the evangelical base, Balmer says.
In 2015, Donald Trump initially campaigned on welcoming gays and lesbians into the Republican platform. But he soon dropped this stance to win support from Right-wing evangelicals.
Donald Trump
That support proved crucial to his gaining the White House—just as it had proved crucial to Reagan in 1980 and 1984.
Gays have fought back on political and legal fronts, with mixed success.
According to move.org, among the best states for gays are: California, Oregon, Colorado and New York.
It’s no coincidence that these states have a majority Democratic population and legislature.
Among the worst states for gays are: Arizona, Idaho, Texas, Oklahoma, Wyoming, Arkansas and South Carolina.
Gays increasingly fear that the Supreme Court’s reversal of Roe v. Wade could lead to a reversal of its previous legalizing of same-sex marriage.
And this could very well happen. For decades, abortion rights advocates believed the Court wouldn’t dare strike down a right it had recognized as far back as 1973.
Immediately following the Court’s decision on Roe, Justice Clarence Thomas said that the landmark high court rulings that legalized same-sex marriage and contraception rights should be reconsidered.
Clarence Thomas
Thomas’ remark has been widely interpreted as an invitation to Right-wing states to bring challenges to those rulings.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton hopes the state legislature enacts a law that criminalizes sodomy so he can defend it at the Supreme Court.
And Stuart Adams, the Republican president of the State Senate, would support Utah’s joining other states to press the Supreme Court’s ending the right to same-sex marriage.
Given the all-out Republican assault on their liberties, gays could become convinced that they are becoming the targets of state-sponsored terrorism—as were Jews in Nazi Germany.
In such a case, they may turn to a more drastic means than elections and the courts to protect themselves: Violence.
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable,” said President John F. Kennedy in a 1962 address on the first anniversary of the Alliance for Progress.
His warning remains as valid today as it did 61 years ago.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Medical, Politics, Social commentary on February 27, 2023 at 12:12 am
In a June 19, 2015 editorial, Rolling Stone magazine writer Jeb Lund noted:
“The Republican Party has weaponized its supporters, made violence a virtue and, with almost every pronouncement for 50 years, given them an enemy politicized, racialized and indivisible.
“Movement conservatives have fetishized a tendentious and ahistorical reading of the Second Amendment to the point that the Constitution itself somehow paradoxically ‘legitimizes’ an armed insurrection against the government created by it.
“Those leading said insurrection are swaddled by the blanket exculpation of patriotism. At the same time, they have synonymized the Democratic Party with illegitimacy and abuse of the American order.
“This is no longer an argument about whether one party’s beliefs are beneficial or harmful, but an attitude that labels leftism so antithetical to the American idea that empowering it on any level is an act of usurpation.”
Not content with this, Republicans have aimed slander and hatred at those who dare to vote Democratic. In the past, this has included:
- Blacks
- Women
- The disabled
- Environmentalists
- Liberals
More recently, the groups Republicans most delight in vilifying are:
- Hispanics
- Gays
- Lesbians
- Transgenders
George Orwell’s classic 1949 novel, 1984, serves as a better guide to Republican electioneering strategy than any official statement of the GOP.
1984 is set in a futuristic dictatorship called Oceania, whose constantly alternating mortal enemies are Eurasia and Eastasia.
A daily fixture of life in Oceania is the “Two Minutes Hate.” During this, Party members must watch a film depicting the Party’s enemies and express their hatred for them in exactly two minutes.
Chief among these is Emmanuel Goldstein, who is obviously based on Leon Trotsky, the longtime antagonist of Joseph Stalin, dictator of the Soviet Union for almost 30 years.
The “Two Minutes Hate” serves as a form of brainwashing, whose purpose is to whip ordinary citizens into a frenzy of hatred and loathing for whoever the Party designates as its—and their—-mortal enemies.
It fully describes the motivations—and effects—of Republicans’ attacks on their self-proclaimed enemies.
Without a speck of evidence to back up such defamatory claims, Republicans—both politicians and their followers—attack Democratic candidates as “groomers” and “pedophiles.”
This has led to deadly attacks on gays, lesbians and transgenders.
In December, 2014, Republicans in the Michigan House of Representatives passed “The Religious Freedom Restoration Act.”
The bill allows public agencies and private businesses to refuse service to anyone under the claim that their “religious beliefs” had been affronted.
And the State government is legally prevented from intervening if a person claimed that his/her “deeply-held religious beliefs” was the reason for acting—or not acting—in a certain way.
Thus:
- An emergency room doctor can refuse service to a gay or lesbian needing medical care.
- A pharmacist can refuse to fill a doctor’s prescription for birth control or HIV medication.
- A DMV clerk can refuse to give a driver’s license to someone who’s divorced.
- An employer can deny equal pay to women.
Republicans have introduced similar “right-to-discriminate” legislation in other states as well:
- On March 28, 2022, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed into law the “Parental Rights in Education” bill. This bans public school teachers from holding classroom instruction about sexual orientation or gender identity in kindergarten through grade three.
- In October, 33 Congressional Republicans introduced a similar “Don’t Say Gay” bill that would prohibit, on a nationwide basis, the use of federal funds “to develop, implement, facilitate, or fund any sexually-oriented program, event, or literature for children under the age of 10, and for other purposes.”
- On June 24, 2022, the Supreme Court’s reversed Roe v. Wade, guaranteeing a woman’s legal right to abortion. Soon afterward, Texas, Attorney General Ken Paxton said that he would willingly defend at the Supreme Court any law the Legislature enacted that criminalized sodomy.
- In Utah, Stuart Adams, the Republican president of the State Senate, said he would support Utah’s joining with other states to press the Supreme Court to end the right to same-sex marriage.
Republicans have defended such legislation by equating gays with child predators.
In fact, the Child Molestation Research & Prevention Institute states that 90% of child molesters target children in their network of family and friends, and the majority are men married to women.
Yet Republicans and their Rightist allies have refused to condemn such heterosexual—and Right-wing—child molesters as Dennis Hastert and Josh Duggar.
Josh Duggar, the “all-American” child molester
On May 21, 2015, responding to press leaks, Duggar resigned as director of the Family Research Council, a Right-wing organization dedicated to fighting sexually-oriented issues such as same-sex marriage, abortion and pornography.
In 2002-3, as a 14-15 year-old, Duggar had fondled the breasts and vaginas of five underage girls—four of whom were his own sisters.
And on October 28, 2015, Hastert—Speaker of the House of Representatives from 1999 to 2007–pleaded guilty to structuring money transactions in a way to avoid requirements to report where the money was going.
The reason: One of his victims had started blackmailing him.
Dennis Hastert
The reason: To conceal the truth about his past as a child molester. Hastert had abused four young boys when he was their high school wrestling coach. One was only 14 years old.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Medical, Politics, Social commentary on July 18, 2022 at 12:10 am
You can’t understand what’s happening in Texas—and other states where abortion is now banned as a crime—without knowing the story of Pavlik Morozov.
Pavel Trofimovich Morozov—better known by the diminutive Pavlik—was born on November 14, 1918. Until his 13th birthday, he did nothing to win the status of a Hero of the Soviet Union.
Then his chance came—in 1932, at the height of Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin’s campaign to confiscate the grain of millions of Soviet peasants.
Stalin intended to convert the backward Soviet Union into a major industrial power within a decade. Central to this: Turning land privately farmed by peasants into collective farms which would be “great factories of grain.”
Morozov was a dedicated Communist who led the Young Pioneers at his school and supported Stalin’s forced collections policies.
In 1932, at the age of 13, Morozov reported his father, Trofim, to the political police, the GPU—the forerunner to the KGB.
According to one account,, Trofim, the chairman of the Gerasimovka Village Soviet, had been “forging documents and selling them to the bandits and enemies of the Soviet State” (as the sentence read).
Another account charges him with hoarding grain.
Pavlik Morozov
Trofim Morozov was sentenced to 10 years in a labor camp. There his sentence was changed to execution, which was carried out.
On September 3, 1932, Pavlik’s infuriated uncle, grandfather, grandmother and a cousin murdered him, along with his younger brother.
Only the uncle escaped arrest by the GPU’s sentence to “the highest measure of social defense”—execution by a firing squad.
Soviet authorities quickly turned Pavlik Morozov into a Communist martyr. He became a subject for readings, plays, songs, a symphonic poem, a full-length opera and no fewer than six biographies.
The goal of these efforts: To encourage other Soviet children to inform on their parents.
Which brings us, appropriately enough, to 2022 America—and the June 24 Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade, the Court’s historic decision legalizing abortion in 1973.
For Right-wing states dominated by Republican governors and/or legislatures, it isn’t enough to forbid women in their states to get abortions. They insist on preventing them from terminating their pregnancies (even in cases of rape and/or incest) in states where abortion is legal.
And key to making this a reality is turning America into a nation of Pavlik Morozovs.
Even before the Supreme Court handed down its infamous decision, Missouri gave the nation a foretaste of what was to come.
A first-of-its-kind proposal from Missouri lawmakers allowed private citizens to sue anyone who helped a Missouri resident obtain an abortion.
This included the out-of-state physician who performed the procedure to whoever helped transport a person across state lines to a clinic.
Republican state Rep. Mary Elizabeth Coleman admitted that her measure specifically targeted a Planned Parenthood clinic in Illinois just across the river from St. Louis that opened in 2019 with the stated goal of serving Missouri patients.
Mary Elizabeth Coleman
“If you believe as I do that every person deserves dignity and respect and protection whether they’re born or unborn, then of course you want to protect your citizens, no matter where they are,” Coleman told POLITICO.
“If a Missouri resident is hurt, even in Illinois, by a product that they bought in Illinois, there is still jurisdiction for them to sue in a Missouri court because that’s home for them … and this is extending that same kind of thought to abortion jurisprudence.”
This totally ignores the huge difference between unknowingly buying a defective product that causes harm and knowingly seeking a medical procedure.
Abortion pills—now the most popular method of terminating a pregnancy in the United States—are also a target of Republican-dominated states.
Several states including Texas have moved to ban prescribing the drugs via telemedicine and sending them by mail to people’s homes. Many others are looking to implement similar bans in the wake of the Biden administration’s move earlier this year to loosen restrictions on the pills.
Anti-abortion-rights activists claim they can’t eliminate all abortions without deterring travel across state lines. They blame pro-choice advocates who are raising money to help people terminate a pregnancy in another state.
“You have a very aggressive industry working on helping people circumvent pro-life laws,” said Kristi Hamrick with Students for Life of America, which has chapters lobbying for restrictions in all 50 states. “So the conversation in Missouri and other locations is in direct response to that.”
In post-Roe America, a woman’s cell phone can also become her legal undoing.
Digital period tracking apps could be used against them. As a result, many experts advise removing them from cell phones.
More than 100 million women use period tracking applications. They help predict the date of the next period, the ovulation period, and track the signs of premenstrual syndrome. Dozens of applications are available.
And if you want to talk about abortion online in Texas, remember: Doing so on Facebook or Twitter could hurt you.
Texas residents could find themselves in legal hot water for sharing a Facebook or Twitter post on how to get an abortion or holding an online fundraiser for someone seeking one.
Thus Texans, who have long prided themselves on their independence from authority, have become a state filled with informers hoping to get rich quick by invading the privacy of others.
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In History, Politics, Social commentary on July 1, 2022 at 5:09 pm
In The Destruction of Hillary Clinton, author Susan Bordo indicts a wide range of groups for Clinton’s failure to win the 2016 election.
Yet she refuses to put any blame on Clinton herself for a series of self-inflicted wounds. Four of these have already been mentioned.
Among the others:
#5 Democrats and liberals fell prey to hubris.
They dismissed Donald Trump as a bad joke: Surely voters would reject a bombastic, thrice-married “reality show” host who had filed for corporate bankruptcy four times.
Many liberals believed Clinton would bury him at the polls: Blacks, women, youth and Hispanics will turn out huge for her. Democrats will retake the Senate, and maybe even retake the House.
They didn’t.
#6 The coalition that twice elected Barack Obama deserted Hillary Clinton.
Clinton did worse-than-expected among all the groups she was counting on to support her: Blacks, women, youth and Hispanics.
- In 2012, Obama got 93% of the black vote; in 2016, Clinton got 88%.
- In 2012, Obama got 55% of the women’s vote; in 2016, Clinton won 54%.
- In 2012, Obama got 60% of the vote of those under 30; in 2016, Clinton got 54%.
- In 2012, Obama got 71% of the Hispanic vote; in 2016, Clinton got 65%.
Clinton proved less popular even among whites than Obama: In 2012, Obama won 39% of their votes; in 2016, Clinton won 37%.
#7 Trump, adopting the role of a populist, appealed to blue-collar voters. Clinton offered a “love-your-CEO” economic plan—and suffered for it.
Trump visited “Rustbelt” states like Michigan and Pennsylvania and vowed to “bring back” jobs that had been lost to China, such as those in coal mining and manufacturing. Clinton didn’t deign to show up, assuming she had those states “locked up.”
Most economists agree that, in a globalized economy, such jobs are not coming back, no matter who becomes President.
Even so, voters backed the man who came to promise them a better future, and shunned the woman who didn’t come to promise them any future at all.
In May, Democratic pollster CeLinda Lake had warned Clinton to revamp her economic platform. Clinton ignored the advice.
“Democrats simply have to come up with a more robust economic frame and message,” Lake said after the election. “We’re never going to win those white, blue-collar voters if we’re not better on the economy. And 27 policy papers and a list of positions is not a frame. We can laugh about it all we want, but Trump had one.”
#8 Hillary Clinton gave only one memorable speech during the campaign.
This was the “basket of deplorables” speech, delivered at a New York fundraiser on September 9. It was the only Clinton speech to be widely quoted by Democrats and Republicans.
She divided Donald Trump’s supporters into two groups. The first group were the “deplorables,” for whom she showed open contempt:
“You know, to just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. Right? The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic–you name it. And unfortunately there are people like that. And he has lifted them up.
“He has given voice to their websites that used to only have 11,000 people—now 11 million. He tweets and retweets their offensive hateful mean-spirited rhetoric. Now, some of those folks—they are irredeemable, but thankfully they are not America.”
Hillary Clinton (Gage Skidmore photo)
But the second group, she said, consisted of poor, alienated Americans who rightly felt abandoned by their employers and their government:
“But….that other basket of people are people who feel that the government has let them down, the economy has let them down, nobody cares about them, nobody worries about what happens to their lives and their futures, and they’re just desperate for change. It doesn’t really even matter where it comes from.
“They don’t buy everything [Trump] says, but he seems to hold out some hope that their lives will be different. They won’t wake up and see their jobs disappear, lose a kid to heroin, feel like they’re in a dead-end. Those are people we have to understand and empathize with as well.”
#9 After giving this speech, Clinton threw away the good it might well have done her.
First, the day after making the speech, she apologized for it: “Last night I was ‘grossly generalistic,’ and that’s never a good idea. I regret saying ‘half—that was wrong.”
Many of Trump’s followers were racists, sexists and xenophobes—who deserved condemnation, not apologies. By apologizing, she looked weak, indecisive, even cowardly.
Second, having eloquently reached out to many of the men and women who were a prime constituency for Trump, she failed to offer an economic package to quickly and effectively address their vital needs for jobs and medical care.
The reason: She had failed to put one together long ago.
All she had to offer was boilerplate rhetoric, such as: “Education is the answer.”
Worst of all, Trump turned her speech against her, tweeting: “Wow, Hillary Clinton was SO INSULTING to my supporters, millions of amazing, hard working people. I think it will cost her at the Polls!”
It did.
The United States barely survivid a Right-wing coup attempt in 2021. Democrats can’t risk losing the 2024 election to another Right-wing Republican. Hillary Clinton is not the future; she represents an increasingly irrelevant past.
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In History, Politics, Social commentary on June 30, 2022 at 12:10 am
On June 28, CNN’s political analyst, Chris Cillizza, offered this suggestion:
“In the immediate aftermath of the Supreme Court’s monumental decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, conservative writer John Ellis took to the internet to make a provocative case: It was time for Hillary Clinton to make a(nother) political comeback….
“Ellis’ argument is centered on the ideas that 1) President Joe Biden, who will be 82 shortly after the 2024 election, is simply too old to run again (Ellis is far from the only person making that case) and 2) The Democratic bench is not terribly strong.”
Ellis has apparently forgotten—or chooses to ignore—that in 2016 she was an uninspiring candidate who ran a self-destructive campaign.
Unable to face the blunt realities of these truths, her defenders have blamed everyone but Clinton for her failing to “crack the glass ceiling” and become the first female President of the United States.
Among those who come in for blame: WikiLeaks; Vermont U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders; younger women; and even Monica Lewinsky.
According to Clinton’s defenders, it was
- Bernie Sanders’ fault for daring to challenge Clinton for the Democratic nomination—and refusing to accept that it was “Hillary’s turn” to become President.
- WikiLeaks’ fault for publishing emails sent by members of the Democratic National Committee—which proved the supposedly impartial DNC was working to secure the nomination for Clinton.
- Younger women’s fault for not identifying with a woman old enough to be their grandmother—and who has lived an extraordinarily privileged life since she became First Lady in 1993.
- Monica Lewinsky’s fault for being a reminder to voters that Hillary’s husband had disgraced the Presidency in an oral sex scandal.
All of these factors certainly played a part in why Clinton lost the White House for the second time in eight years. But they are not all the factors behind her loss.
Among these:
#1 Hillary Clinton was an uninspiring candidate.
When Barack Obama ran for President in 2008, NBC Anchor Tom Brokaw compared his rallies to Hannah Montana concerts. Audiences were excited by his charisma, eloquence, relative youth (47) and optimism (“Yes We Can!”).
Clinton radiated none of these qualities. She was 67 when she declared her candidacy for President—and looked it. Her speaking voice grated like the proverbial fingernail on a blackboard.
Hillary Clinton
She seemed to have been around forever—as First Lady (1993-2001), as Senator from New York (2001-2009) and as Secretary of State (2009-2013). Those born after 2000 thought of the Clinton Presidency as ancient history. She was offering a resume—and voters wanted an inspiration.
#2 Clinton brought a lot of baggage with her.
In contrast to Obama, whose Presidency had been scandal-free, Clinton—rightly or wrongly—has always been dogged by charges of corruption.
During the Clinton Presidency, a failed land deal—Whitewater—while Bill Clinton was Governor of Arkansas triggered a seven-year investigation by a Republican special prosecutor. No criminality was uncovered, and no charge was brought against either Clinton.
After leaving the White House, she and her husband set up the Clinton Foundation, a public charity to bring government, businesses and social groups together to solve problems “faster, better, at lower cost.”
As Secretary of State, more than half of Clinton’s meetings with people outside government were with donors to the Clinton Foundation. If a “pay-to play” system wasn’t at work, one certainly seemed to be.
She cast further suspicion on herself by her unauthorized use of a private email server. This wasn’t revealed until March, 2015—after she was no longer Secretary of State.
She claimed she had used it to avoid carrying two cell-phones. But, as Secretary of State, she traveled with a huge entourage who carried everything she needed. Her critics believed she used a private email system to hide a “pay-for-pay” relationship with Clinton Foundation donors.
#3 As a candidate for President, she “secretly” worked with Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, the chair of the Democratic National Committee, to ensure that she would get the nomination.
As DNC chair, Wasserman-Schultz was expected to be impartial toward all Democratic candidates seeking the prize. This included Vermont U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders, Clinton’s chief competitor.
Bernie Sanders
So Sanders and his supporters were outraged when, on July 22, WikiLeaks released 19,252 emails and 8,034 attachments hacked from computers of the highest-ranking officials of the DNC.
The emails revealed a clear bias for Clinton and against Sanders. In one email, Brad Marshall, the chief financial officer of the DNC, suggested that Sanders, who is Jewish, could be portrayed as an atheist.
#4 The Obamas’ support proved a plus/minus for Clinton.
Understandably, President Obama wanted to see his legacies continued—and she was the only candidate who could do it.
So he—and his wife, Michelle—stormed the country, giving eloquent, passionate speeches and firing up crowds on Clinton’s behalf.
President Barack Obama
So long as either Obama stood before a crowd, the magic lasted. But once the event was over, the excitement vanished. Hillary simply didn’t arouse enough passion to keep it going.
Obama’s supporters found Clinton wanting—in attractiveness, grace, eloquence, trustworthiness and the ability to inspire.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Medical, Politics, Social commentary on June 29, 2022 at 12:12 am
“If anyone reproaches me and asks why I did not resort to the regular courts of justice, then all I can say is this: In this hour I was responsible for the fate of the German people, and thereby I became the Supreme Judge of the German people!”
That was how Chancellor—not yet Fuhrer-–Adolf Hitler justified his June 30, 1934 purge of his private army, the brown-shirted S.A. It has gone down in history as “The Night of the Long Knives.”
Adolf Hitler
It took five “Supreme Judges” of the American people to purge the right to abortion for millions of American women—including victims of rape and incest.
Hitler’s “blood purge” carried Germany yet another step closer to Nazi dictatorship. Similarly, the Supreme Court has carried the United States yet another step closer to a Republican dictatorship.
In the past, the Supreme Court has made decisions that have blackened its reputation in the eyes of historians.
One of these occurred in 1857, in what has become known as the “Dred Scott decision.” The Court decided 7–2 that neither Scott nor any other person of African ancestry could claim citizenship in the United States.
The case centered on slaves Dred and Harriet Scott and their children, Eliza and Lizzie. The Scotts claimed that they should be granted their freedom because Dred had lived in Illinois and the Wisconsin Territory for four years. Slavery was illegal in those jurisdictions, and their laws said that slaveholders gave up their rights to slaves if they stayed for an extended period.
Dred Scott
Chief Justice Roger B. Taney ruled that freeing Scott and his family would “improperly deprive Scott’s owner of his legal property.”
As despicable as the Dred Scott decision was, it nevertheless lay grounded in the existing laws of that time. The Court did not reverse an earlier ruling. Millions who were already enslaved were kept enslaved. But it did not extend slavery throughout the country.
The Court’s reversal of Roe v. Wade set a huge and dangerous legal precedent.
On January 22, 1973, the Court had struck down virtually every anti-abortion law in the country. On June 24, 2022, it overturned that decision.
It went, in effect, from having expanded freedom of choice to suddenly abolishing it. And the Justices did so in the single most intimate aspect of a woman’s life.
Once people have tasted a benefit, they expect it to continue. When President Barack Obama fought to secure passage of the Affordable Care Amendment (ACA) Republicans repeatedly and savagely tried to prevent its becoming law.
And once it became law, Republicans continued to try to overturn it. They knew that if millions of poor and middle-class Americans finally won the right to obtain medical care, they would support it as wholeheartedly as they did Medicare, Social Security and the Civil Rights Act.
For 49 years, Republicans made ending the right to abortion their key issue for gaining and holding elective office. It won them cheers, votes and monies from the Religious Right and powerful Right-wing forces such as Fox News.
Now, suddenly, they have attained their objective. Millions of women will no longer be able to obtain an abortion in cases of rape or incest—let alone because of a failed condom or birth control pill.
Nor is that the only right the Justices intend to revoke.
In his concurring opinion, Justice Clarence Thomas said that the Roe decision should prompt the Court to reconsider all of this Court’s substantive due process precedents. And he named the three landmark decisions that established those rights.
Clarence Thomas
According to Kenji Yoshino, Professor of Constitutional Law at the New York University School of Law:
“The Ninth Amendment says that there are unenumerated [implied] rights in the Constitution. And those include things that we take for granted every day, like the right to vote, the right to marry, the right to travel.
“These are all rights that are nowhere enumerated explicitly in the constitution but that we nonetheless take for granted as Americans.
“One of the most shocking things about [the Court’s] opinion was that these unenumerated rights will only be respected if they are deeply rooted in this nation’s history and traditions. And so it essentially said that if the framers of the 14th Amendment in 1868 didn’t recognize the right and question that the right didn’t have constitutional existence.
“And so that’s what leads Justice Thomas and that concurrence, to see an opening to say, ‘Well, maybe we’ll get rid of not just the right to abortion, but also the right to same-sex marriage, the right to sexual intimacy and the privacy of your home, and even the right to contraception.'”
Thomas, says Yoshino, is inviting lower courts to reach that conclusion. He is also inviting Right-wing litigants to bring cases which can eventually reach the Supreme Court.
Thomas is in effect saying that once this happens, the right to same-sex marriage, contraception and privacy can be struck down by the Court—just as it has struck down the right to abortion.
Mark Antony, speaking in William Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar,” had it right: “The evil that men do lives after them.”
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In Bureaucracy, Business, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Medical, Politics, Social commentary on June 28, 2022 at 12:10 am
On June 24, the Supreme Court did what millions of Right-wing Americans had wanted it to do for 49 years: Strike down Roe v. Wade, holding there is no longer a Constitutional right to abortion.
The opinion was the one that almost every American recognized, and set a huge precedent for revoking a right that had been enshrined in law since 1973.
It will unleash seismic changes in the United States unseen since, on May 17, 1954, the Court declared segregation illegal in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka.
From now on, abortion rights will be determined by states. Half of these have already passed or will soon pass laws that ban abortion. Other states have enacted measures strictly regulating under what circumstances it can be legally performed.
Still other states have moved to strengthen their laws allowing the procedure.
“Roe was egregiously wrong from the start,” Justice Samuel Alito wrote in his majority opinion. “Its reasoning was exceptionally weak, and the decision has had damaging consequences. And far from bringing about a national settlement of the abortion issue, Roe and Casey have enflamed debate and deepened division.”
The Supreme Court
Actually, it was not Roe that “enflamed debate and deepened divisions” but the nearly 50-year campaign by the (largely Christian) Right to deny women control of their bodies.
For abortion foes, the Millennium has arrived. For its defenders, the United States has entered a new Dark Ages. Yet the war over abortion may well be far from over.
The states certain to ban or severely restrict the right to abortion are: Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, New Hampshire, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, West Virginia, Wisconsin, Wyoming.
Those states guaranteeing a woman’s right to abortion: California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Kansas, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Montana, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington.
The following states do not ban or protect the right to abortion in their constitution: Indiana, Nebraska, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Virginia.
At present, both abortion supporters and opponents assume that:
- Women seeking abortion in states where it is banned will have to flee to states where it is legally allowed; and
- Those states where it is banned will aggressively try to prevent those women from leaving to obtain an abortion, or punish them when they return.
Both of these assumptions—in many cases—may turn out to be wrong.
Why?
Because they both leave out the wild card in this ongoing war over reproductive rights: The 326 Indian reservations in the United States.
A Bureau of Indian Affairs map of Indian reservations belonging to federally recognized tribes in the continental United States
Reservations exist in states that ban abortion—and in those that permit it. For women seeking abortions in states where it is banned, these reservations may play a pivotal role in their ability to obtain that service.
The reason: The United States Constitution recognizes that tribal nations are sovereign governments, just like Canada or California.
That means that tribal governments can determine their own governance structures, pass laws, and enforce laws through police departments and tribal courts.
There are Indian reservations in the following states that will ban or severely restrict the right to abortion: Arizona, Florida, Idaho, Iowa, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, North Dakota, South Dakota, Utah, Wisconsin, Wyoming.
Consider the implications of this for abortion-banning states:
- Arizona has 18 Indian reservations. One spans into Utah.
- Colorado has two, one of which spreads into Utah.
- Florida has two.
- Idaho has eight.
- Louisiana has three.
- Michigan has seven.
- Mississippi has one.
- Nevada has two which spread into Idaho and Utah..
- North Dakota has six.
- South Dakota has ten.
- Utah has seven.
A foretaste of what may be coming can be glimpsed in the history of gambling (euphemistically called “Indian gaming”) on Indian reservations.
The first Indian casino was built in Florida by the Seminole tribe, which opened a successful high-stakes bingo parlor in 1979. Other tribes quickly followed suit, and by 2000 more than 150 tribes in 24 states had opened casino or bingo operations on their reservations.
By 2005, annual revenues had reached more than $22 billion, and Indian gambling accounted for about 25% of all legal gambling receipts in the United States.
Millions of women are now threatened with forced pregnancy. And many lack the money to travel out-of-state to obtain an abortion. Thus, they will have strong incentive to travel within their home states—so long as there is an abortion-providing clinic on a nearby Indian reservations.
And there will be enormous financial incentives for reservations to provide such services.
Estimates of the number of illegal abortions in the 1950s and 1960s range between 200,000 and 1.2 million. Thanks to five Right-wing Supreme Court Justices, there will be no shortage of candidates for this procedure.
And the Constitutional status of Indian reservations as sovereign nations will protect clinics operating on their lands.
Of course, some states are moving aggressively to punish women who leave their borders to seek abortion elsewhere.
That is a topic to be dealt with in an upcoming column.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on June 22, 2022 at 12:12 am
The United States Marshals Service is now charged with protecting the nine Justices who comprise the Supreme Court of the United States.
Deputy U.S. marshals have had decades of experience in protecting Federal judges, members of Congress and organized crime witnesses
As protectors, they are probably best-known as the operators of the Justice Department’s Witness Security Program. Launched as part of the Organized Crime Control Act of 1970, they have successfully protected and relocated thousands of endangered organized crime witnesses.
But there are significant differences between the security provided for Mafia witnesses and that being provided for Supreme Court Justices.
While a witness is testifying, s/he receives 24-hour protection from five to a score of marshals. Since visits to courthouses are especially dangerous, marshals often use deception as a vital weapon in keeping their charges alive.
A caravan of marshals cars, with sirens blaring, will pull up to the front of a courthouse, with a deputy playing the role of the witness. While all eyes (including those of mob assassins) are focused on this, a postal truck will enter the building through an underground passage. Inside: The witness and one or two guards dressed as mailmen.
A witness security detail
Helicopters and speedboats have also been used to transport witnesses to and from court.
In at least one case, marshals installed Joseph “The Animal” Barboza, the most-feared Mafia hitman in New England, in a fortified room inside the courthouse. When it came time to testify, he would be brought into the courtroom through the judges’ elevator.
But once testifying is completed, the marshals no longer offer 24-hour protection. Instead, they provide witnesses (and their wives and children, if there are any) with new names, Social Security numbers, driver’s licenses and other records supporting their new identities.
Then they are shipped off to a new state where—hopefully—they can start their lives over on the right side of the law and safe from their enemies.
Thus, round-the-clock protection by the marshals isn’t intended to be permanent.
But in the case of at least six Supreme Court Justices this may well prove different. These are the ones who are preparing to strike down Roe v. Wade and re-criminalize abortion for millions of women.
To prevent attacks on the Justices at the Supreme Court, an eight-foot, “non-scalable” fence now surrounds the building.
Once a long-held fundamental right is revoked, anger toward those responsible becomes the natural reaction. And for some people, that anger can easily flare into violence.
Thanks to the Supreme Court’s January 22, 1973 Roe decision, abortion has been legal throughout the United States for 49 years. Those who have been born since can’t recall a time when it was a criminal offense.
On June 8, Nicholas John Roske, 26, of Simi Valley, California, was arrested by deputy U.S. marshals near Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s house in Maryland after threatening to kill the Justice. He was armed with a Glock 17 pistol, ammunition, a knife, zip ties, pepper spray and duct tape.
In this case, the marshals had been alerted by Roske’s threat. But the truly dangerous assassin is one who doesn’t announce his intentions and simply acts on them.
Knowing you are so hated that people want to murder you creates huge psychological pressures on those threatened. Some people become prisoners of their own bodyguard, venturing out only when absolutely necessary.
Others adopt a “Live it up, because tomorrow I may die” attitude. They chafe at the security regimen imposed on them, sometimes even trying to elude their protectors.
Security specialists for the Marshals Service have warned countless witnesses: “You’ve got to realize that your life’s in danger. Keep your eyes open. Use your head. Don’t lie to us. Stay close to us.
“Keep us apprised of everything that’s going on. Suppose you’re sitting out on your balcony and you see something flash. What could it be? A pair of binoculars? A rifle-scope? Be aware of your position, and help us protect you.”
Presidents have been protected by the United States Secret Service since 1901, when Vice President Theodore Roosevelt became the first Chief Executive to be assigned agents.
Before this, three Presidents had been assassinated—Abraham Lincoln (1865); James A. Garfield (1881) and William McKinley, Roosevelt’s predecessor (1901).
In 1963, John F. Kennedy would become the fourth.
Two attempts were made on Gerald Ford (1975) and, in 1981, Ronald Reagan was seriously wounded.
As a result, it’s unthinkable that a President would not be guarded round-the-clock.
But no Supreme Court Justice has ever been assassinated.
Justices have been able to come and go as they please, without even being recognized by the vast majority of citizens they affect with their rulings.
That will soon change—at least for those who intend to strike down Roe. They will become familiar faces—for those who hate them. Already, their home addresses have been splashed across the Internet.
At least 13 states will automatically ban abortion in the first and second trimesters if Roe is overturned. This will create legions of new enemies for the Justices. And there will be no end-date to this hatred.
Which means the Justices will likely live in fear—and under heavy armed guard—for the rest of their lives.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on June 21, 2022 at 12:13 am
Tyrants know they lack legitimate authority–and so they must live behind armed guards and high fences. They constantly fear being overthrown–or killed.
“It was only years later, when I was imprisoned at Spandau, that I really understood what it must be like to live each day under such intense psychological pressure,” Albert Speer, architect and Minister of Armaments to Adolf Hitler, told Playboy during a 1971 interview.
“Looking back on Hitler’s physical environment in his military bunkers in Berlin and Rastenburg, I realized how similar the atmosphere was to a prison—immense concrete walls and ceilings, harsh electric light instead of daylight, iron doors and iron grilles over the few windows.
“Even Hitler’s brief strolls through the barbed wire perimeters, surrounded by armed guards and police dogs, resembled a convict’s exercise in the jail yard. Hitler had turned all of Europe into a prison, but he had become its leading prisoner.”
Albert Speer and Adolf Hitler
Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-V00555-3 / CC-BY-SA 3.0, CC BY-SA 3.0 DE <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/de/deed.en>, via Wikimedia Commons
At least six Justices of the United States Supreme Court have joined Adolf Hitler as prisoners of their own bodyguard.
In the past, Justices came and went as ordinary citizens did. Occasionally they made a controversial decision, but then the uproar died down and everything stayed the same.
It took the alleged gutting of Roe v. Wade to change all that.
On May 2, Politico published a leaked draft of the Supreme Court majority decision in Dobbs vs. Jackson Women’s Health Organization that would explicitly overturn Roe v. Wade.
In doing so, it would end the Court’s 49-year-old decision guaranteeing a woman’s right to obtain an abortion.
Reaction was swift—and devastatingly angry.
Threats of violence against the Justices have poured in—especially the six Right-wing ones behind the decision:
- Amy Coney Barrett
- Brett M. Kavanaugh
- Clarence Thomas
- Samuel A. Alito
- Neil M. Gorsuch and
- John J. Roberts.
Justices of the Supreme Court
As a result, all nine Justices have been given extra security through the U.S. Marshals Service.
The marshals have had decades of experience in protecting Federal organized crime witnesses, members of Congress and Federal judges. So the odds are that the Justices will remain safe from violent attack.
The question that remains to be answered: How well will they hold up under the intense pressures of facing potential violence—and having to live under constant guard?
Almost immediately after Politico published its article on the Justices’ decision to overturn Roe, an eight-foot steel fence went up around the Supreme Court building. All entry points were blocked to vehicles and police patrols were beefed up.
As if that were not claustrophobic enough, the Justices’ home addresses were quickly shared online.
Justices have received threatening phone calls at their homes.
The group, “Ruth Sent Us”—named in honor of deceased Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg—planned a protest at what it called “the homes of the six extremist justices.”
“ANNOUNCING: Walk-by Wednesday, May 11, 2022! At the homes of the six extremist justices, three in Virginia and three in Maryland. If you’d like to join or lead a peaceful protest, let us know,” the website stated.
“Our 6-3 extremist Supreme Court routinely issues rulings that hurt women, racial minorities, LGBTQ+ and immigrant rights. We must rise up to force accountability using a diversity of tactics.”
The group even published a Google Maps graphic pinpointing homes “where the six Christian fundamentalist Justices issue their shadow docket rulings from.
“We intend to stop the corruption of our Supreme Court, and stop the spread of fascist laws,” the group said. “Instead of waiting for the extremist Court to strip our rights further, we must rise up now.”
In Virginia, where three of the six justices live, protesting outside a private home is illegal.
Justice Samuel Alito, author of the draft majority opinion, canceled a scheduled appearance in Nashville, and the other justices are also cutting back on public events.
Meanwhile, the Court has been thrown into a frenzy of self-investigation to discover who leaked the upcoming decision.
Far more attention has been paid to this by the Justices than to the enormous implications for millions of American women if abortion once becomes a criminal act. Chief Justice John Roberts publicly said: “To the extent this betrayal of the confidences of the court was intended to undermine the integrity of our operations, it will not succeed.”
Not all protests were aimed at the Justices.
Ruth Sent Us also planned to target Catholic churches on Mother’s Day—telling followers to protest “that six extremist Catholics set out to overturn Roe.” It published a video of churchgoers trying to kick out protesters who interrupted a service, chanting, “Without this basic right, women can’t be free — abortion on demand and without apology.”
The Catholic group, CatholicVote, demanded that President Joe Biden condemn Ruth Sent Us for targeting Catholic churches and disrupting Mass on Mother’s Day.
Joseph Biden
Biden, a lifelong Catholic, strongly favors abortion rights.
The U.S. Marshals Service has operated the Witness Security Program for threatened organized crime witnesses since 1970. Of its approximately 19,100 participants, none have been killed who followed its guidelines.
But there are serious differences between the security afforded Mafia witnesses—and that being accorded Supreme Court Justices.
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IF “QUEERS” STRIKE BACK: PART THREE (END)
In Bureaucracy, Law, Law Enforcement, Medical, Politics, Social commentary on March 1, 2023 at 12:12 amGiven the all-out Republican assault on their liberties, gays could become convinced that they are becoming the targets of state-sponsored terrorism—as were Jews in Nazi Germany.
In such a case, they may turn to a more drastic means than elections and the courts to protect themselves: Violence.
Political violence has a long and deadly history in the United States.
Before the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861, violence was commonplace along the Kansas-Missouri border as pro- and anti-slavery elements slaughtered one another.
After the Civil War ended in 1865, Ku Klux Klansmen across the South terrorized blacks into submission even though slavery was now illegal.
With the advent of the civil rights movement in 1960, blacks and their supporters once again became targets for violence.
A minority of black leaders like Malcom X and H. Rapp Brown told blacks they should violently defend themselves. But the vast majority of blacks—including bloodied civil rights workers—adhered to Martin Luther King’s call for non-violence.
Martin Luther King (left), Malcom X (right)
Still, there is no guarantee that those who suffer persecution and violence will remain non-violent. Their motive could be revenge—or to send a message to ward off future attacks.
Such was the fate of SS-Obergruppenfuhrer Reinhard Heydrich..
A tall, blond-haired formal naval officer, he was both a champion fencer and talented violinist. Heydrich joined the Schutzstaffel, or Protective Squads, better known as the SS, in 1931, and quickly became head of its counterintelligence service.
Reinhard Heydrich
In September, 1941, Heydrich was appointed “Reich Protector” of Czechoslovakia, which had fallen prey to Germany in 1938 but whose citizens were growing restless under Nazi rule.
Heydrich immediately ordered a purge, executing 92 people within the first three days of his arrival in Prague. By February, 1942, 4,000-5,000 people had been arrested.
In January, 1942, Heydrich convened a meeting of high-ranking political and military leaders in Wannsee, Germany, to streamline “the Final Solution to the Jewish Question.”
An estimated six million Jews were thus slaughtered.
On May 27, 1942, two British-trained Czech commandos—Jan Kubis and Joseph Gabcik—waited in Prague at a hairpin turn in the road always taken by Heydrich. When Heydrich’s Mercedes slowed down, Gabcik raised his machinegun—which jammed.
Heydrich ordered his driver to halt so he could take aim at his would-be assassins. It proved a fatal mistake.
Rising in his seat, he aimed his revolver at Gabcik—as Kubis lobbed a hand grenade at the car. The explosion drove steel and leather fragments of the car’s upholstery into Heydrich’s diaphragm, spleen and lung.
Hitler dispatched doctors from Berlin to save the Reich Protector. But infection set in, and on June 4, Heydrich died at age 38.
Heydrich’s wrecked Mercedes
The assassination sent shockwaves through the upper echelons of the Third Reich. No one had dared assault—much less assassinate—a high-ranking Nazi official.
The Nazis had slaughtered tens of thousands without hesitation—or fear that the same might happen to them.
Suddenly they realized that the fury they had aroused could be turned against themselves.
Which brings us to the leaders of America’s own Right-wing.
The names of infamous Nazis were widely known:
And so are the names of infamous leaders of the American Right:
The differences between these two infamous groups are these:
In Nazi Germany, ordinary Germans could not learn about the personal lives of their dictators—including their home addresses—and conspire against them.
In the United States, ordinary citizens can learn about the personal lives of their would-be dictators by newspapers, Internet and TV—even on the Right’s own propaganda network, Fox News. “People finder” websites, for a modest price, provide names and addresses of potential targets—and their relatives.
In Nazi Germany, firearms were tightly controlled.
In the United States, the Right-wing National Rifle Association has successfully lobbied to put lethal firepower into the hands of virtually anyone who wants it.
Since their reversal of abortion rights in Roe v. Wade on June 24, 2022, at least six Right-wing Supreme Court Justices have lived under heavy guard by the U.S. Marshals Service. They may well be forced to do so for the rest of their lives.
But radical evangelists like Franklin Graham and Right-wing propagandists like Tucker Carlson cannot expect lifelong government protection. They would have to provide their own security—or take their chances.
So many Republicans are calling for an all-out war on gays that any number of them could become the targets—and victims—of retaliation.
Republicans boast that they want to “get the government off the backs of the people.” Yet they are waging war against people for the most intimate of reasons: Their choice of sex partners.
Reinhard Heydrich believed he was invulnerable to the hatred of the enemies he had raised against himself. That arrogance cost him his life.
The day may soon come when America’s own Right-wingers start learning the same lesson.
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