The ancient historian, Plutarch, warned: “And the most glorious episodes do not always furnish us with the clearest discoveries of virtue or vice in men.
“Sometimes a matter of less moment, an expression or a jest, informs us better of their characters and inclinations than the most famous sieges, the greatest armaments, or the bloodiest battles.”
On August 15, President Donald Trump gave just such an example.
He did so by equating Nazis, Ku Klux Klamsmen and other white supremacists with those who protested against them in Charlottesville, Virginia, over the weekend of August 12-13.
Donald Trump
“I think there is blame on both sides,” said Trump in an impromptu press conference in the lobby of Trump Tower, in Manhattan, New York.
“I will tell you something. I watched those very closely, much more closely than you people [news media] watched it. And you had a group on one side that was bad and you had a group on the other side that was also very violent. And nobody wants to say that. But I’ll say it right now.
“You had a group on the other side [those opposing the white supremacists] that came charging in without a permit and they were very, very violent….
“Well, I do think there’s blame. Yes, I think there is blame on both sides. You look at both sides. I think there is blame on both sides. And I have no doubt about it. And you [news media] don’t have doubt about it either.”
Apparently, some of Trump’s fellow Republicans do doubt there was blame on both sides.
“There’s no moral equivalency between racists & Americans standing up to defy hate& bigotry. The President of the United States should say so,” tweeted Arizona Senator John McCain.
“Through his statements yesterday,” said South Carolina Senator Lindsay Graham, “President Trump took a step backward by again suggesting there is moral equivalency between the white supremacist neo-Nazis and KKK members who attended the Charlottesville rally and people like Ms. Heyer. I, along with many others, do not endorse this moral equivalency.”
Heather Heyer was the 32-year-old paralegal who was killed on August 13 when a car plowed into a crowd protesting a white supremacist “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville. Nineteen others were injured in the incident.
“Mr. President, you can’t allow #WhiteSupremacists to share only part of blame. They support idea which cost nation & world so much pain,” Florida’s Senator Marco Rubio tweeted.
And Arizona’s other Senator, Jeff Flake, tweeted: “We can’t accept excuses for white supremacy & acts of domestic terrorism. We must condemn. Period.”
Ohio Governor John Kasich, who had opposed Trump as a Presidential candidate in 2016, said on NBC’s “Today Show”:
“This is terrible. The President of the United States needs to condemn these kinds of hate groups. The President has to totally condemn this. It’s not about winning an argument.”
John Kasich
During the Presidential primaries, Kasich had run an ad comparing Trump to Germany’s Fuhrer, Adolf Hitler:
“And you might not care if Donald Trump says he’s going to round up all the Hispanic immigrants, because you’re not one.
“And you might not care if Donald Trump says it’s OK to rough up black protesters, because you’re not one.
“And you might not care if Donald Trump wants to suppress journalists, because you’re not one.
“But think about this:
“If he keeps going, and he actually becomes President, he might just get around to you. And you’d better hope that there’s someone left to help you.”
That point was forcibly driven home on the night of August 11.
That was when hundreds of torch-bearing Nazis, Ku Klux Klansmen and other white supremacists marched on the University of Virginia campus.
Their faces twisted with hatred, they repeatedly shouted:
“You will not replace us!”
“Jews will not replace us!”
“Blood and soil!”
“Whose streets? Our streets!”
For the vast majority of Americans, such scenes had existed only in newsreel footage of torch-bearing columns of Nazi stormtroopers flooding the streets of Hitler’s Germany.
The fall of Nazi Germany came 72 years ago—on May 7, 1945. Today, veterans of World War II are rapidly dying off.
But their sons and daughters are still alive to pass on, secondhand, the necessary for standing up to such barbarism.
And so can films like “Saving Private Ryan” and “Schindler’s List.”
At the end of “Saving Private Ryan,” a dying Captain John H. Miller (Tom Hanks) tells Private James Ryan (Matt Damon) whose life he has saved: “Earn this.”
A dying Captain Miller tells Ryan: “Earn this.”
Returning to Miller’s burial site in France decades later, an elderly Ryan speaks reverently to the white cross over Miller’s grave:
“Every day I think about what you said to me that day on the bridge. I tried to live my life the best that I could. I hope that was enough. I hope that, at least in your eyes, I’ve earned what all of you have done for me.”
Those are sentiments wasted on those who mounted the “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville.
And they are equally wasted on a President who condemns those who stand up to Fascism.
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CENSORSHIP: IT’S THE REPUBLICAN WAY
In Bureaucracy, Entertainment, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on February 5, 2024 at 12:38 amRepublican Governor Ron DeSantis likes to refer to his state as “the free state of Florida.”
But for those who cherish the right to read whatever they want, Florida’s legislative agenda offers anything but freedom.
Among those books pulled from public libraries—temporarily or permanently—are John Green’s “Looking for Alaska,” Colleen Hoover’s “Hopeless,” Margaret Atwood’s “The Handmaid’s Tale” and Grace Lin’s picture story “Dim Sum for Everyone!”
Florida’s Martin County school district removed dozens of books from its middle schools and high schools. Among these: Toni Morrison’s Pulitzer Prize-winning “Beloved,” James Patterson’s “Maximum Ride” thrillers, and numerous novels by Jodi Picoult.
Ron DeSantis
Bill O’Reilly, the former Fox News host, staunchly supported Florida’s book ban laws enacted by DeSantis. Then two of his own books—Killing Jesus and Killing Reagan: The Violent Assault That Changed a Presidency—were temporarily removed from the Escambia County School District.
Suddenly, O’Reilly changed his mind.
“It’s absurd. Preposterous,” O’Reilly told Newsweek. He threatened to “find out exactly who made the decisions … [and] put their pictures on television and on my website … and I’m going to ask them for a detailed explanation of why they did that.
“When DeSantis signed the book law, I supported the theme because there was abuse going on in Florida. There were far-left progressive people trying to impose an agenda on children, there’s no doubt about it.”
So O’Reilly believes it’s OK to censor books promoting a “far-left progressive” view. Censorship is wrong only when it condemns his books to oblivion.
Bill O’Reilly
Bill O’Reilly at the World Affairs Council of Philadelphia.jpg: World Affairs Council of Philadelphiaderivative work: Karppinen, CC BY 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
Under Florida’s HB 1069 bill, affected titles include dictionaries, The Autobiography of Malcolm X, and Anne Frank’s Diary of a Young Girl.
A partial list of the 1,600 books banned in Escambia County, Florida, includes:
Nazi book burning
All of which means: If you want to read something forbidden by the State and can’t meet the high prices of bookstores, you’re not going to read it.
At least, not in Florida.
In 1969, the Young Rascals sang:
All the world over, so easy to see
People everywhere just wanna be free
but this ignores a grim and fundamental truth: Many people don’t want to be free.
Psychoanalyst Erich Fromm noted this in his 1941 bestseller, Escape From Freedom.
Its thesis: People who can’t accept the dangers and responsibilities that come with freedom will probably turn to authoritarianism.
Democracy has freed many people, but it also makes others feel alienated and dehumanized. Many Germans turned to Nazism for a sense of belonging and purpose.
Many people hold a twisted concept of what accounts for freedom. They accuse their enemies of being tyrants, while fiercely supporting a dictatorship of their own. A favorite marching song of Hitler’s SS went:
Clear the streets, the SS marches!
They will take the road from tyranny to freedom!
Such people fervently believe that they are being persecuted if they aren’t allowed to persecute those they hate.
Thus, during the Presidency of Barack Obama, millions of Republicans believed themselves victims because they weren’t allowed to
(1) discriminate on the basis of race or sex; and
(2) deny medical care to millions of poor and middle-class Americans.
The same holds true for the followers of Ron DeSantis.
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