One summer night in 1923, during a booze-fueled dinner, Joseph Stalin opened his hear to his two fellow diners.
One of these was Felix Dzerzhinsky, then the chief of the Cheka, the dreaded Soviet secret police (and precursor to the KGB). The other was Lev Kamenev, a member of the powerful Central Committee of the Communist party.
Kamenev asked his companions: “What is your greatest pleasure?”
And Stalin is reported to have said: “To choose one’s victim, to prepare one’s plans minutely, to slake an implacable vengeance and then to go to bed. There is nothing sweeter in the world.”
Thirteen years later, in August, 1936, Kamenev would be forced to confess to forming a terrorist organization. Its alleged purpose: To assassinate Stalin and other leaders of the Soviet government.
On August 25, 1936, Kamenev was executed in the notorious Lubyanka prison.
Donald Trump may not have read Stalin’s notorious quote about finding pleasure in vengeance. But he has given his own variation of it.
While addressing the National Achievers Conference in Sidney, Australia, in 2011, he offered this advice on how to achieve success: “Get even with people. If they screw you, screw them back 10 times as hard. I really believe it.”
Throughout his business career, Trump strictly practiced what he preached—becoming a plaintiff or a defendant in no fewer than 3,500 lawsuits.
Since January 20, he has carried this “get even” philosophy into the Presidency.
The result has been unprecedented White House infighting, turmoil—and departures. Among the casualties:
- Steve Bannon – Chief strategist and senior counselor: On August 17, 2016, Bannon was appointed chief executive of Trump’s presidential campaign. On August 18, 211 days into his tenure, he was fired. A major reason: Trump was angered by the news media’s—and even many comedians’—depiction of Bannon as the real power in the White House.
- Anthony Scaramucci – White House communications director: To celebrate his new job, he gave an insult-ridden interview to The New Yorker. Among his targets: Then-Chief of Staff Reince Priebus (“a fucking paranoid schizophrenic”) and Steve Bannon (““I’m not Steve Bannon, I’m not trying to suck my own cock”). Scaramucci’s career ended in just six days—on July 31.
- Reince Priebus – White House Chief of Staff: After repeatedly being humiliated by Trump—who at one point ordering him to kill a fly that was buzzing about—Priebus resigned on July 28, 190 days into his tenure.
- Jeff Sessions – Attorney General: Trump made him the target of a Twitter-laced feud. Sessions’ “crime”? Recusing himself from any decisions involving investigations into well-established ties between Russian Intelligence agents and members of Trump’s Presidential campaign. Trump publicly said that if he had known Sessions would recuse himself—because of his own past contacts with Russian officials—he would have picked someone else for Attorney General.
- Sean Spicer – Press Secretary: Resigned on July 21, 183 days into his tenure. The reason: Trump kept him in the dark about events Spicer needed to know—such as an interview that Trump arranged with the New York Times—and which ended disastrously for Trump.
- James Comey – FBI Director: Comey did not work for the Trump Presidential campaign. But many political analysts believe he played perhaps the decisive role in electing the reality TV mogul. Comey’s announcement—11 days before Election Day—that he was re-opening the Hillary Clinton email server case convinced millions of voters that she had committed a crime. If, as some believed, Comey did so to curry favor with Trump, he proved mistaken. Trump summoned Comey to the White House and, in a private meeting, demanded a pledge of personal loyalty. Comey refused to give this—or to drop the FBI’s investigation into collaboration between Russian Intelligence agents and Trump campaign officials. On May 9, Trump sent his longtime private bodyguard and chief henchman, Keith Schiller, to the FBI with a letter announcing Comey’s firing. (FBI directors do not have Civil Service protection and can be fired at any time by the President.)
- Mike Flynn – National Security Advisor: After resigning from the Defense Intelligence Agency, he vigorously supported Trump at rallies and events—including at the Republican National Convention. As a reward, he was appointed National Security Advisor. But he was forced to resign just 25 days into his tenure. The reason: The media revealed that he hadmisled Vice President Mike Pence about his multiple meetings with Sergey Kislyak, Russian Ambassador to the United States, before Trump’s inauguration.
As if such turmoil wasn’t enough, even worse may be to come. According to Politico: Many White House staffers are starting to look for the exits, even though the one-year mark of Trump’s first term is still months away.
“There is no joy in Trumpworld right now,” one source told Politico. “Working in the White House is supposed to be the peak of your career, but everyone is unhappy, and everyone is fighting everyone else.”
A mass exodus would cause even greater difficulties for the Trump administration, which has not filled hundreds of available positions because many people don’t want to join.
The Trump administration is hiring at a slower pace than the administrations of George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama—including nominations and confirmations.
Fewer positions filled means less effective enforcement of the Trump agenda. For those who oppose it, this is something to celebrate.
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NAZIS PAST—AND PRESENT
In Bureaucracy, History, Military, Politics, Social commentary on October 4, 2018 at 12:05 amFrank Brandenburg had just turned 16 in 1979 when he saw the NBC mini-series Holocaust, depicting the Third Reich’s extermination of six million Jewish men, women and children.
He was stunned. Had such atrocities really taken place?
His parents, friends and teachers refused to talk about Adolf Hitler and his Nazi party that had tyrannically ruled Germany for 12 years.
“No one wants to talk today about that! Let the past sleep,” he was repeatedly told.
Frank Brandenburg had a deeply personal reason for pursuing the truth. He was a citizen of West Germany, growing up in a country that was still divided in two for having lost World War II—a war Hitler had started.
He started reading such books about the Holocaust as:
So Brandenburg did something no other teenager had dared attempt: He set out to meet and interview as many former members of the Third Reich as possible.
Among those he interviewed:
These interviews ultimately became a 1990 book: Quest: Searching for Nazi Germany’s Past, co-authored by Brandenburg and Ib Melchior. It is a book that can never be duplicated, because those interviewed by Brandenburg are now dead.
Of his encounters with so many former Nazis, Brandenburg reflected:
“Today I know that in some cases…I was confronted with defensive statements, evasion, self-exoneration and prejudiced portrayals of the facts.
“But when I began my project, at the age of 16, I—naively—had no conception that this might be the case. Not one of the people I talked to expressed any kind of guilt or remorse. Not one of them had regrets or concern for their victims.
“Yet, it is easier for me to understand that. Who, in his old age, wants to admit having committed such misdeeds? To admit that everything one had believed in, worked for and lived for, had been corrupt?”
Nazi SS soldiers marching
Which helps explain the reaction historians will receive when, in the future, they interview supporters of Donald Trump.
The Original Nazis were guided by Hitler’s belief that the world was polluted by corruption and ugliness—and their mission was to remove that ugliness and corruption.
This meant removing those peoples they deemed inferior—Jews, Slavs (Poles, Serbs, Russians), Communists, liberals, gypsies, the physically and mentally handicapped.
Today’s Republicans believe themselves to be the only legitimate political party. And so do their supporters.
No sin—or even crime—is intolerable if it’s committed by a Republican.
On October 7, 2916, The Washington Post leaked a video of Republican Presidential nominee Donald Trump making sexually predatory comments about women:
You know I’m automatically attracted to beautiful—I just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star they let you do it. You can do anything.
Donald Trump
Right-wingers rushed to excuse Trump’s misogynist comments as mere “frat boy” talk.
In 2017, Roy Moore, the twice-ousted former chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court, ran for the state’s U.S. Senator.
Four women, in a Washington Post story, accused Moore of seeking romantic relationships with teenage girls while he was in his 30s, and even trolling malls for such dates.
Kay Ivey, the state’s Governor, offered the real reason why Republicans supported Moore:
“I believe in the Republican party, what we stand for, and, most important, we need to have a Republican in the United States Senate to vote on things like the Supreme Court justices, other appointments the Senate has to confirm and make major decisions. So that’s what I plan to do, vote for Republican nominee Roy Moore.”
In short: The mission of the Republican party is to attain absolute power over the lives of American citizens. Compared to that, electing even accused sexual predators shrinks to insignificance.
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