Posts Tagged ‘SLATE’
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In Bureaucracy, History, Military, Politics, Social commentary on August 10, 2017 at 12:05 am
“The White House is Propping Up Depressed Trump With Two Folders of Propaganda A Day.”
So read an August 8 headline on the PoliticusUSA website.
The story to which it was attached opened:
“Donald Trump receives two folders of screen grabs, transcripts, and pictures of himself looking strong each day as the White House using the communications office to compile propaganda that makes Trump feel better.”
It then quoted Vice News as stating:
“Twice a day since the beginning of the Trump administration, a special folder is prepared for the president. The first document is prepared around 9:30 a.m. and the follow-up, around 4:30 p.m.
“Former Chief of Staff Reince Priebus and former Press Secretary Sean Spicer both wanted the privilege of delivering the 20-to-25-page packet to President Trump personally, White House sources say.
Donald Trump
“These sensitive papers, described to VICE News by three current and former White House officials, don’t contain top-secret intelligence or updates on legislative initiatives.
“Instead, the folders are filled with screenshots of positive cable news chyrons (those lower-third headlines and crawls), admiring tweets, transcripts of fawning TV interviews, praise-filled news stories, and sometimes just pictures of Trump on TV looking powerful.”
And how reliable a news source is PoliticusUSA?
According to Media Bias / Fact Check, which bills itself as “The Most Comprehensive Media Bias Resource”:
“PoliticusUsa is a left wing biased news and opinion website. PoliticusUsa typically sources to credible media sources such as Reuters and are factual in reporting as we were unable to find any instances of failed fact checks.
“Though headlines tend to be somewhat sensational, the content of articles is evidence based with occasional use of loaded words that convey emotion. In short, PoliticusUsa is left biased through story choices and wording, but factual in reporting. (5/15/2016)”
Trump unhesitatingly takes credit for the achievements of others. In an August 9th tweet, he implied that, during his seven-month administration, he had greatly strengthened America’s nuclear arsenal:
“My first order as President was to renovate and modernize our nuclear arsenal. It is now far stronger and more powerful than ever before….”
In fact, President Barack Obama was responsible for much of the improvements to the arsenal. The Defense Department and Energy Department spent billions of dollars on refurbishing the arsenal and bringing aging nuclear weapons up to modern capabilities.
Barack Obama
While Trump never blushes to take the credit, he quickly shifts blame to others when an enterprise goes wrong.
In February, Trump approved and ordered a Special Forces raid in Yemen on an Al-Qaeda stronghold. The assault resulted in the death of Navy SEAL Chief Petty Officer William “Ryan” Owens.
Disavowing any responsibility for the failure, Trump said: “This was a mission that was started before I got here. This was something they wanted to do.
“They came to me, they explained what they wanted to do—the generals—who are very respected, my generals are the most respected that we’ve had in many decades, I believe. And they lost Ryan.”
But Trump is hardly unique among world leaders to listen only to “happy news.”
As his armies were forced to retreat on all fronts, Adolf Hitler increasingly demanded that his ministers refrain from “defeatist talk.”
Hoping for victory—and stating that it was inevitable—became the key to saving one’s job—if not life—in the steadily-declining Third Reich.
Adolf Hitler
This was best illustrated in his treatment of Albert Speer. Hitler had often proclaimed him “my genius architect” before appointing him Minister of Armaments in 1942. As Speer revved up the production of military hardware, Hitler continued to hail his “genius.”
But as Allied bombing raids increasingly devastated Germany’s industrial plants, armaments production began to fall. This forced Speer to tell his Fuhrer the unpalatable truth: Germany was losing its capacity to wage war.
Hitler didn’t want to hear it, turning instead to those who fed him a diet of “happy news.” When Speer’s deputy, Karl Otto Saur, told Hitler, “By Christmas, we’ll have air superiority!” Hitler was ecstatic.
At a meeting with his generals, the Fuhrer announced: “We have the good fortune to have a genius in our armaments ministry. I mean Saur.”
The promised air superiority never materialized.
As even Hitler came to realize that the end was near, he turned his anger on the Germany he had so often claimed to love.
“If the war is lost,” Hitler told Speer, “the nation will also perish….This nation will have proved to be the weaker one and the future will belong solely to the stronger eastern nation.”
He ordered a massive “scorched-earth” campaign throughout Germany.
All German agriculture, industry, ships, communications, roads, food stuffs, mines, bridges, stores and utility plants were to be destroyed.
If implemented, it would deprive the entire German population of even the barest necessities after the war.
Fortunately for Germany, Speer dared to sabotage the “Nero Order,” thus ensuring a future for those who survived the war.
But Hitler’s demands for only “happy news” did not save him—or his regime.
Feeding himself a diet of “happy news” detached from reality will not save Donald Trump. Nor will it save those Americans who insist on believing it.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Military, Politics, Social commentary on August 9, 2017 at 1:42 am
On June 22, 1941, Adolf Hitler ordered his powerful Wehrmacht to invade the Soviet Union.
Since September 1, 1939, his army had conquered Poland, Norway, Denmark, Holland, Belgium and France.
Now, he believed, it was time to “settle accounts” with the Soviet Union. Only there could Germany obtain the “living space” it “needed” for its expanding population.
And now seemed to be the perfect time to do it.
Joseph Stalin, dictator of the Soviet Union, had decimated the Red Army with a series of purges in 1937-38. Its best officers had been shot as “enemies of the State.” Their replacements were untried in war—and fearful of showing initiative that might get them executed.
Adolf Hitler with his generals
At first, Hitler felt giddy with excitement. Turning to Alfred Jodl, his chief of operations of the Wehrmacht, he said: “We have only to kick in the door and the whole rotten structure will come crashing down.”
But soon afterward–almost as if he had just looked into the future and seen that he had none–he told an aide: “At the beginning of each campaign, one pushes a door into a dark, unseen room. One can never know what is hiding inside.”
That certainly proved true for Hitler. Within four years, he was dead and the Red Army occupied Berlin.
Among the questions Hitler and his generals had refused to ask themselves—and answer:
- What if the Soviet Union didn’t collapse after “a few powerful blows”?
- What if the war lasted longer than the summer—while German troops were wearing summer uniforms?
- What if the war actually lasted into the winter?
- What if most of the roads in Russia were unpaved—and German tanks got bogged down in, first, autumn mud, and then winter snow?
- What if Stalin convinced ordinary Russians that they weren’t fighting to save his Communist dictatorship–but to save Holy Mother Russia itself?
By the end of the four-year conflict, all of these possibilities had become reality:
- The Soviet Union didn’t collapse—although, in October, 1941, it seemed about to do so.
- The war did last longer than the summer—and, when winter struck, countless German soldiers in summer uniforms froze to death in the below-zero cold.
- German tanks did become mired—first in mud, then in snow. Russian tanks, having wider tracks, easily outmaneuvered their German counterparts.
- Stalin did proclaim that this was a struggle to save Holy Mother Russia against a barbaric enemy. And widespread German atrocities convinced them this was true.
German soldiers marching through Russia
Now, fast forward from the Fuhrership of Adolf Hitler to the Presidency of Donald Trump.
During a July 19 meeting with his generals in the White House Situation Room, Trump said the United States was “losing” the war in Afghanistan. He blamed them for lacking a strategy to “win,” and suggested firing the top commander in the field, General John Nicholson.
Trump also asked the generals how the United States could take a portion of Afghanistan’s mineral wealth. He had previously said that the United States should have seized Iraq’s oil after America invaded in 2003.
Even more bizarrely, he repeatedly compared the war in Afghanistan to renovating the elite “21” Club in Manhattan.
Donald Trump
Trump claimed that after the restaurant had been closed for a year, a consultant suggested that a bigger kitchen be built in the establishment.
Trump told the generals that he would have been better served speaking to the waiters who worked there. And he added that he would do better speaking to veterans of Afghanistan rather than generals.
(Adolf Hitler displayed a similar obsession after the German Sixth Army was forced to surrender at Stalingrad on February 2, 1943. About 94,000 men fell into Russian hands.
(But what most infuriated Hitler was that Friedrich Paulus, the newly-promoted Field Marshal, had allowed himself to be taken prisoner. Hitler raged that Paulus should have committed suicide.
(Three times during his rant, Hitler spoke of a German woman who had killed herself after she found she could no longer go on. His point: If even a weak-willed woman could summon up the courage to take her own life, there was no excuse for a German soldier refusing to do so.)
Friedrich Paulus
Trump left the national security meeting without making a decision on a strategy. His advisers were stunned, administration officials and others briefed on the meeting said.
During the presidential campaign, Trump often boasted that he knew more than American military generals. This despite his having dodged the Vietnam war via five draft deferments.
American troops have been deployed in Afghanistan since October 7, 2001, when Operation Enduring Freedom was launched. The Taliban, which controlled the country, had refused to turn over Osama bin Ladin, the Al-Qaeda mastermind of the 9/11 attacks.
About 8,400 members of the U.S. military are now currently serving in Afghanistan, fighting the Taliban and Al-Qaeda. A total of 1,833 Americans have been killed in action there.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on August 8, 2017 at 12:23 am
For five years, Donald Trump, more than anyone, popularized the fiction that President Barack Obama was born in Kenya—and was therefore ineligible to be President.
Now Trump finds himself haunted by something far worse than a slander: The truth.
Since taking office on January 20, Trump has been ensnared in a series of revelations about collaboration between members of his 2016 Presidential campaign and Russian Intelligence agents.
The FBI, CIA and National Security Agency have unequivocally stated that Russian Intelligence played a major role in trying to sway the election for Trump.
During the 2016 race, Trump furiously disagreed with this finding. “They have no idea if it’s Russia or China or somebody. It could be somebody sitting in a bed some place. I mean, they have no idea,” Trump told “Fox News Sunday” on Dec. 11.
And as late as August 3, 2017, addressing a rally of his Right-wing followers in West Virginia, Trump said: “Most people know there were no Russians in our campaign; there never were. We didn’t win because of Russia; we won because of you,”
But Trump’s denials contradict the revelations that have emerged about his behavior.
TRUMP’S DENIALS
July 27, 2016, in Doral, Florida: Trump told a local CBS news channel: “I mean I have nothing to do with Russia. I don’t have any jobs in Russia. I’m all over the world but we’re not involved in Russia.”
Donald Trump
October 24, 2016 at a Florida campaign rally: Trump said, “I have nothing to do with Russia, folks, I’ll give you a written statement.”
January 11, 2017: Trump launched the first in a series of tweets denying any ties between Russian Intelligence and his campaign: “Russia has never tried to use leverage over me. I HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH RUSSIA – NO DEALS, NO LOANS, NO NOTHING!”
February 7, 2017: “I don’t know [Russian President Vladimir] Putin, have no deals in Russia, and the haters are going crazy – yet Obama can make a deal with Iran, #1 in terror, no problem!”
February 16, 2017: “The Democrats had to come up with a story as to why they lost the election, and so badly (306), so they made up a story – RUSSIA. Fake news!”
May 8, 2017: “The Russia-Trump collusion story is a total hoax, when will this taxpayer funded charade end?”
TRUMP’S BEHAVIOR
May 9, 2017: Trump fired FBI Director James Comey. Comey had been leading an investigation into alleged collusion between Trump advisers and Russian officials when he was fired.
James Comey
At first, Trump claimed that he fired Comey for mishandling the FBI’s investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server.
May 10, 2017: But, in a meeting at the White House, Trump told Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak: “I faced great pressure because of Russia. That’s taken off.”
May 11, 2017: And in an interview with NBC reporter Lester Holt, Trump admitted the real reason:
“And, in fact, when I decided to just do it, I said to myself, I said: ‘You know, this Russia thing with Trump and Russia is a made up story, it’s an excuse by the Democrats for having lost an election that they should’ve won.’”
July 8, 2017: The New York Times reported that Donald Trump Junior met at Trump Tower on June 9, 2016, with a Kremlin-connected Russian lawyer who promised to offer damaging information about Clinton.
Trump Junior released a statement: “We primarily discussed a program about the adoption of Russian children that was active and popular with American families years ago and was since ended by the Russian government, but it was not a campaign issue at the time and there was no follow up.”
July 12 and July 16, 2017: Trump’s lawyer, Jay Sekulow, denied that the President was involved in drafting his son’s statement about the Trump Tower meeting.
July 19, 2017: In an interview with The New York Times, Trump warned Special Counsel and former FBI Director Robert Mueller to avoid looking into his personal finances. Asked if he would fire Mueller over an examination of his finances, Trump made it clear that he might.
July 20, 2017: The Washington Post reported that Trump was consulting with advisers “about his power to pardon aides, family members and even himself” in connection to the probe led by Mueller.
July 31, 2017: The Washington Post reported that, to conceal the purpose of the Trump Tower meeting, President Trump dictated a misleading statement for his son. In this, the reason for the meeting was given as a discussion about the adoption of Russian children—and not to obtain damaging information on Clinton from Russian Intelligence agents.
August 1, 2017: White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said President Trump was involved in drafting the false statement that Trump Junior released about the Trump Tower meeting. Sanders called the matter “of no consequence.”
August 3, 2017: The Wall Street Journal reported that Mueller had convened a grand jury in Washington, D.C. to investigate Russia’s interference in the 2016 election. This gives Mueller broad authority to subpoena documents and compel witnesses to testify under oath.
As the late New York Times reporter Harrison E. Salisbury warned: “The truth, I was ultimately to learn, is the most dangerous thing. There are no ends to which men of power will not go to put out its eyes.”
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on August 7, 2017 at 12:12 am
In 2011, Donald Trump, host of NBC’s “The Apprentice,” was thinking of running for President against the incumbent, Barack Obama.
To gain popularity among America’s Right-wing, Trump almost singlehandedly created the popular fiction that the President was born in Kenya—and was not an American citizen.
His motive: To convince Americans that Obama was an illegitimate President.
Donald Trump
Among the statements Trump made:
February 10, 2011: “Our current president came out of nowhere. Came out of nowhere. In fact, I’ll go a step further: The people that went to school with him, they never saw him, they don’t know who he is. It’s crazy.”
March 23, 2011: “I want him to show his birth certificate.…There’s something on that birth certificate that he doesn’t like.”
March 30, 2011: “If you are going to be president of the United States you have to be born in this country. And there is a doubt as to whether or not he was. …He doesn’t have a birth certificate. He may have one, but there’s something on that, maybe religion, maybe it says he is a Muslim. I don’t know. Maybe he doesn’t want that. Or he may not have one. But I will tell you this. If he wasn’t born in this country, it’s one of the great scams of all time.”
April 7, 2011: “I have people that have been studying it, and they cannot believe what they’re finding. You are not allowed to be a president if you’re not born in this country. Right now I have real doubts.”
April 25, 2011: “I’ve been told very recently…that the birth certificate is missing. I’ve been told that it’s not there or it doesn’t exist. And if that’s the case, it’s a big problem.”
On April 27, President Obama released his original, long-form Hawaiian birth certificate.
The long-form version of President Obama’s birth certificate
“We do not have time for this kind of silliness,” said Obama at a press conference. “We have better stuff to do. I have got better stuff to do. We have got big problems to solve.”
Still, Trump pursued his campaign of slander on Twitter:
May 18, 2012: “Let’s take a closer look at that birth certificate.@BarackObama was described in 2003 as being “born in Kenya.” http://bit.ly/Klc9Uu
August 6, 2012: “An ‘extremely credible source’ has called my office and told me that @BarackObama‘s birth certificate is a fraud.”
August 27, 2012: “Why do the Republicans keep apologizing on the so called “birther” issue? No more apologies—take the offensive!”
September 13, 2012: “Wake Up America! See article: “Israeli Science: Obama Birth Certificate is a Fake”
June 30, 2013: “@davidrhythmguit: @realDonaldTrump @Chuffman48 Mark Cuban accepts the fact that the President of the United States was born here. Doubt it”
August 22, 2013: “Why are people upset w/ me over Pres Obama’s birth certificate? I got him to release it, or whatever it was, when nobody else could!”
December 12, 2013: “How amazing, the State Health Director who verified copies of Obama’s “birth certificate” died in plane crash today. All others lived”
November 23, 2014: “@futureicon: @pinksugar61 Obama also fabricated his own birth certificate after being pressured to produce one by @realDonaldTrump“
Eventually, Trump decided not to run in 2012.
But he did declare his candidacy for President on June 16, 2015. And he continued to insist that Obama was an illegitimate President.
Meanwhile, Trump’s popularity among blacks steadily fell. In June, 2016, a Quinnipiac poll revealed that Trump had 1% of support from black voters—while 91% backed Hillary Clinton.
Even the managers of Trump’s campaign urged him to put the “birther” issue behind him.
And so, on September 16, 2016—10 days before his scheduled first debate with Democratic Presidential nominee Hillary Clinton—Trump made his version of a reversal.
Donald Trump: “President Barack Obama was born in the United States.”
He did so in about seven seconds and 40 words—after spending a half hour paying tribute to the military and promoting his new upscale hotel in Washington, D.C.:
“Now, not to mention her in the same breath, but Hillary Clinton and her campaign of 2008 started the birther controversy.
“I finished it. I finished it. You know what I mean.
“President Barack Obama was born in the United States, period. Now we all want to get back to making America strong and great again.”
His tone made it clear that he felt uneasy making that statement—and wanted to get it over with as fast as possible.
He refused to take questions from reporters covering the event. Nor did he apologize for his five-year campaign of slander.
Eight months after winning the 2016 election, Trump finds himself pursued by a charge as deadly as the one he hurled at Barack Obama: That he colluded with Russian Intelligence agents to sabotage the electoral chances of Hillary Clinton.
Even worse for Trump: It’s backed up with evidence by America’s premier domestic and foreign Intelligence agencies: The FBI, CIA and National Security Agency.
The discovery of numerous contacts between Trump campaign officials and Russian Intelligence agents led the FBI to launch an investigation into Russia’s efforts to influence the outcome of the 2016 Presidential election.
That investigation is still ongoing.
And the House and Senate Intelligence Committees have launched their own investigations into the same.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Politics, Social commentary on August 4, 2017 at 12:03 am
In Stalingrad, a 1993 war movie, a platoon of German Army soldiers leaves behind the beaches and beauties of Italy and find themselves fighting desperately to stay alive in Russia.
Early in the film, there is an exchange that has its real-life counterpart almost 75 years later.
A young, idealistic German lieutenant, newly transferred to the Russian front, is horrified when he sees a fellow soldier from another unit sadistically beat a Russian prisoner to death.
He seeks out the man’s superior, a captain, and says: “Captain, I must protest about the behavior of your men.”
“You want to protest?” asks the captain, grinning sardonically. “Tell the Fuhrer.”
Fast forward to January 28, 2017, the day after President Donald J. Trump signed into law an executive order which:
- Suspended entry of all refugees to the United States for 120 days;
- Barred Syrian refugees indefinitely;, and
- Blocked entry into the United States for 90 days for citizens from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen.
The new rules—and the efforts of security personnel at major international airports to enforce them—triggered a tsunami of chaos and fear among travelers.
“We’ve gotten reports of people being detained all over the country,” said Becca Heller, the director of the International Refugee Assistance Project. “They’re literally pouring in by the minute.”
Refugees on flights when the order was signed on January 27 were detained upon arrival.
Many students attending American universities were blocked from returning to the United States from visits abroad.
According to Homeland Security officials:
- 109 people who were already in transit to the United States when the order was signed were denied access;
- 173 were stopped before boarding planes heading to America;
- 81 who were stopped were eventually given waivers to enter the United States.
Internationally, travelers were seized by panic when they were not allowed to board flights to the United States. In Dubai and Istanbul, airport and immigration officials turned passengers away at boarding gates. At least one family was removed from a flight it had boarded.
Earlier on January 28, Trump, isolated in the White House from all the chaos he had unleashed in airports across the nation and throughout the world, said:
“It’s not a Muslim ban, but we were totally prepared. It’s working out very nicely. You see it at the airports, you see it all over.”
Then the American Civil Liberties Union intervened.
Two Iraqi immigrants, defended by the ACLU, accused Trump of legal and constitutional overreach.
The Iraqis had been detained at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York City. One had served as an interpreter for American forces in Iraq for a decade. The other was en route to reunite with his wife and son in Texas.
The interpreter, Hameed Khalid Darweesh, was released after nearly 19 hours of detention. So was the other traveler, Haider Sameer Abdulkhaleq Alshawi.
Before the two men were released, one of their lawyers, Mark Doss, a supervising attorney at the International Refugee Assistance Project, asked an official, “Who is the person we need to talk to?”
“Call Mr. Trump,” said the official, who refused to identify himself.
He might just as well have said: “You want to protest? Tell the Fuhrer.”
The ACLU action secured at least a temporary blocking of part of Trump’s order. A Brooklyn judge barred the government from deporting some arrivals who found themselves ensnared by the Presidential order.
Judge Ann M. Donnelly of the Federal District Court in Brooklyn, ruled that sending the travelers home could cause them “irreparable harm.” She said the government was “enjoined and restrained from, in any manner and by any means, removing individuals” who had arrived in the United States with valid visas or refugee status.
But she did not force the administration to let in people otherwise blocked by the executive order who have not yet traveled to the United States. Nor did she issue a broader ruling on the constitutionality of the order.
* * * * *
On November 8, millions of ignorant, hate-filled, Right-wing Americans elected Donald Trump—a man reflecting their own hate and ignorance—to the Presidency.
Summing up Trump’s character in a March 25, 2016 broadcast of The PBS Newshour, conservative political columnist David Brooks warned: “The odd thing about [Trump’s] whole career and his whole language, his whole world view is there is no room for love in it. You get a sense of a man who received no love, can give no love….
“And so you really are seeing someone who just has an odd psychology unleavened by kindness and charity, but where it’s all winners and losers, beating and being beat. And that’s part of the authoritarian personality.”
There were countless warning signs available for Trump’s supporters to see—if they had wanted to see them:
- His threats against his political opponents;
- His five-year “birtherism” slander against President Obama—which even he was forced to disavow;
- His rampant egomania;
- His attacks on everyone who dared to disagree with him;
- His refusal to release his tax returns;
- His history of bankruptcies and lawsuits filed against him;
- His bragging about sexually abusing women (“Grab them by the pussy”).
Those who voted against Trump are now experiencing the truth of the Nazi slogan: “The Fuhrer proposes and disposes for all.”
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Politics, Social commentary on August 3, 2017 at 12:02 am
When historians—and ordinary citizens—think about the Third Reich, the name of Werner Willikens doesn’t immediately spring to mind.
Adolf Hitler, Herman Goring, Joseph Goebbels, Heinrich Himmler, Adolf Eichmann—yes.
But Werner Willikens? Why him?
Ian Kershaw has unearthed the reason.
Ian Kershaw is a British historian and author who has written extensively about the Third Reich. He is best-known for his monumental, two-volume biography, Hitler 1889–1936: Hubris (1998) and Hitler 1936–1945: Nemesis (2000).
Ian Kershaw
Willikens, State Secretary in the Ministry of Food, gave a speech on February 21, 1934 that casts new light on how Hitler came to exercise vast authority over Nazi Germany:
“Everyone who has the opportunity to observe it knows that the Fuhrer can hardly dictate from above everything he intends to realize sooner or later.
“On the contrary, up till now everyone with a post in the new Germany has worked best when he has, so to speak, worked towards the Fuhrer….
“In fact, it is the duty of everybody to try to work towards the Fuhrer along the lines he would wish. Anyone who makes mistakes will notice it soon enough.
“But anyone who really works towards the Fuhrer along his lines and towards his goal will certainly both now and in the future one day have the finest reward in the form of the sudden legal confirmation of his work.”
Volker Ullrich, bestselling author of Hitler: Ascent 1889 – 1939, summed up the results of this interplay between Hitler and his subjects:
“Kershaw tried to show that in many instances Hitler didn’t need to do very much at all since German society—everyone from the underlings surrounding him to ordinary people on the street—were increasingly inclined to anticipate and fulfill the Fuhrer’s every wish, ‘working towards him.’
“…Kershaw did not minimize the historical role played by Hitler and his insane, ideological fixations, but he did illustrate that without the readiness of many people to work for the man in charge, there would have been no way he could have achieved his murderous aims.
“Kershaw’s main thesis was that the dynamics of the Nazi regime arose from the interplay of Hitler’s intentions with activism emanating from subordinate individuals and institutions. The results were ever more radical ‘solutions.’”
With the Third Reich dying in the flames of Berlin, at about 3:30 p.m. on April 30, 1945, Adolf Hitler simultaneously bit on a cyanide capsule and fired a pistol shot into his right temple.
The concept of “working towards the Fuhrer” seemed to have come to a literally fiery end.
Fast forward almost 72 years later—to 4:42 p.m. on January 27, 2017.
Newly inaugurated President Donald J. Trump signs into law an executive order that:
- Suspends entry of all refugees to the United States for 120 days;
- Bars Syrian refugees indefinitely; and
- Blocks entry into the United States for 90 days for citizens of Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen.
Trump’s executive order read: “In order to protect Americans, the United States must ensure that those admitted to this country do not bear hostile attitudes toward it and its founding principles.
“The United States cannot, and should not, admit those who do not support the Constitution, or those who would place violent ideologies over American law.”
President Donald Trump
But that statement excluded three extremely troubling facts.
First: Over the past four decades, there have been no fatal attacks within the United States by immigrants from any of those seven banned countries.
Second, approximately 3,000 Americans have been killed by immigrants from Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, and Turkey. Most of those victims died during the attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center on September 11, 2001.
In fact, 15 of the 19 highjackers who took part in those attacks came from Saudi Arabia. Osama bin Ladin, the mastermind of the attacks, was himself a Saudi from a wealthy family with strong ties to the Saudi Royal Family.
Third, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, and Turkey are all countries where President Trump has close business ties. His properties include two luxury towers in Turkey and golf courses in the United Arab Emirates.
Trump lists companies on his FEC filing possibly related to a development project in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia’s second-biggest city, located outside Mecca: DT Jeddah Technical Services Manager LLC, DT Jeddah Technical Services Manager Member Corp., THC Jeddah Hotel Manager LLC and THC Jeddah Hotel Manager Member Corp.
Trump lists two companies on his FEC filing possibly related to business in Egypt: Trump Marks Egypt and Trump Marks Egypt LLC.
The full dimensions of Trump’s holdings throughout the Middle East aren’t known because he has refused to release his tax returns.
On January 11, Trump said that:
- He would resign from his positions at the Trump Organization but that he would not divest his ownership.
- The organization would be managed by his sons Eric and Don Jr. and chief financial officer Allen Weisselberg.
- The organization would terminate pending deals and not seek new international business.
Walter Shaub, director of the Office of Government Ethics, said that these measures did not resolve the President’s conflict-of-interest problems and called them “meaningless.”
It was after Trump signed his executive order that the true consequences of “working towards the Fuhrer”—or President—were fully revealed.
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In Bureaucracy, Business, Entertainment, History, Military, Social commentary, Uncategorized on August 2, 2017 at 1:51 am
Anthony “The Mooch” Scaramucci desperately sought a high-stakes position with the Donald Trump White House.
He would have done better to have studied the truths offered in the 1940 movie, The Man I Married.
Carol Cabbott (Joan Bennett) is the editor of The Smart World, married to Eric Hoffman (Francis Lederer) a German. They have a seven-year-old son, Ricky (Johnny Russell).
Sometime in the 1930s they decide to vacation in Nazi Germany. Eric is quickly enamored of the Third Reich. His ardor is shared by Frieda (Anna Sten) a former schoolmate who reunites with him.
Frieda and Eric attend Nazi gatherings, and he decides to stay in Germany. Carol, however, is appalled at the cruelty and barbarism of the Reich and can’t wait to return to the United States.
As time passes, Eric becomes more strident in his worship of Adolf Hitler. Carol and he grow increasingly estranged.
Eventually, Eric tells Carol he is in love with Frieda and wants a divorce. Even worse, he wants to keep his son in Germany, to become a loyal follower of the Nazis.
For Carol, the situation is desperate: Under German law, Eric’s rights will trump hers.
But then fate takes a hand. While visiting his elderly father, Eric learns something truly shocking: His mother was a Jewess—the absolute worst calamity that could befall an ardent Nazi.
“If you won’t let your son return to America with his mother,” says his father, “I will go to the authorities and show them the marriage certificate.”
Eric is stunned. So is Frieda, who is standing by when the news breaks. Disgusted that she was about to “racially defile” herself, she angrily stalks out.
Suddenly, Eric now says he doesn’t know what came over him, and he wants to return to the United States. Even more startling, he expects to go on with his marriage to Carol, as if nothing has happened.
But, for Carol, the damage is too great and the marriage is over.
She and Ricky return to the United States without Eric—who has lost everything: His wife, his son and his future with the Third Reich.
Now, fast forward to the 21st century of Donald Trump’s America—and the fate of Anthony Scaramucci.
Anthony Scaramucci
Jdarsie11 [CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)%5D
In 2005, Scaramucci founded SkyBridge Capital, a global alternative investment firm.
But, in 2017, hoping to attain a position with the Trump administration, he resigned from his co-management role and ended his affiliation with SkyBridge.
On January 12, he was named Assistant to President Trump and director of the White House Office of Public Liaison and Intergovernmental Affairs.
Then disaster struck. On January 31, Trump’s chief of staff, Reince Priebus, called Scaramucci “to tell him he should pull out of consideration.”
Priebus opposed Scaramucci’s appointment because of Scaramucci’s stake in Skybridge Capital. The reason: Skybridge held a majority stake sale to RON Transatlantic EG and HNA Capital (U.S.) Holding, a Chinese conglomerate with close ties to China’s Communist Party.
But then Scaramucci’s future with the Trump administration suddenly appeared a reality.
On July 21, 2017, he was named as White House Communications Director, to take office on July 25. Even more importantly, he would report directly to the President—and not to Priebus, as had White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer.
Spicer, who had opposed Scarmucci’s hiring, resigned on the day of the appointment. Priebus had also strongly argued against the hiring, to no avail.
Then Scaramucci’s own hubris intervened.
On July 26, in a call to Ryan Lizza of The New Yorker, Scaramucci said he would rid the White House of “leakers.” He threatened to fire the entire White House Communications staff if Lizza didn’t reveal the source who had leaked the story of a dinner he had had with Trump.
He blasted Priebus as a “leaker” and “a fucking paranoid schizophrenic, a paranoiac,” and predicted that Priebus “would resign soon.”
Scaramucci also had harsh words for Trump’s chief strategist, Steve Bannon: “I’m not Steve Bannon, I’m not trying to suck my own cock. I’m not trying to build my own brand off the fucking strength of the President. I’m here to serve the country.”
On July 27, Priebus resigned as chief of staff.
The next day, Trump announced that he had named retired general John F. Kelley as Priebus’ replacement.
Then, on July 31, Scaramucci joined Spicer and Priebus as an ex-White House employee—dismissed by Trump at Kelly’s request, according to The New York Times.
And, like Eric Hoffman in The Man I Married, Scaramucci found himself without a marriage.
His wife, Deidre Ball—like Carol Hoffman—despised the man he yearned to work for: Donald Trump.
Married to Scaramucci in 2014, Ball filed for divorce in early July 2017 when she was eight months pregnant with their second child.
On July 24, Deidre gave birth to the couple’s son, James—while Anthony was in West Virginia attending the Boy Scouts Jamboree with Trump. He reportedly sent her a note: “Congratulations, I’ll pray for our child.”
Like Icarus, the mythical character who flew too close to the sun, he rose to the heights—and plunged to his doom.
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In Bureaucracy, Entertainment, History, Politics, Social commentary on July 31, 2017 at 12:56 am
As both a Presidential candidate and President, Donald Trump has repeatedly used Twitter to attack hundreds of real and imagined enemies in politics, journalism, TV and films.
From June 15, 2015, when he launched his Presidential campaign, until October 24, 2016, Trump fired almost 4,000 angry, insulting tweets at 281 people and institutions that had somehow offended him.
Donald Trump
The New York Times needed two full pages of its print edition to showcase them.
Among his targets:
- Hillary Clinton
- President Barack Obama
- Actress Meryl Streep
- Singer Neil Young
- Actor Arnold Schwarzenegger
- Comedian John Oliver
- News organizations
- The State of New Jersey
- Beauty pageant contestants
Others he clearly delighted in insulting during the campaign included:
- Women
- Blacks
- Hispanics
- Asians
- Muslims
- The disabled
- Prisoners-of-war
As a Presidential candidate and President, he has shown outright hatred for President Barack Obama. For five years, he slandered Obama as a Kenyan-born alien who had no right to hold the Presidency.
Barack Obama
Only on the eve of the first Presidential debate with Hillary Clinton—in September, 2016—did he finally admit that Obama had been born in the United States.
Then, on March 4, 2017, in a series of unhinged tweets, Trump accused Obama of tapping his Trump Tower phones prior to the election:
“Terrible! Just found out that Obama had my ‘wires tapped’ in Trump Tower just before the victory. Nothing found. This is McCarthyism!”
Thus, without offering a shred of evidence to back it up, Trump accused his predecessor of committing an impeachable offense.
Both the FBI and Justice Department have vigorously refuted this slander.
Trump’s all-out effort to destroy the Affordable Care Act—nicknamed “Obamacare”—has been driven by his mania to erase every vestige of the Obama Presidency.
Even attending a Boy Scout Jamboree became, for Trump, a way to attack the former President.
“By the way, just a question. Did President Obama ever come to a jamboree?” Trump asked the crowd of 40,000, encouraging them to boo Obama. And many of them did.
As President, he has bullied and insulted even his own handpicked Cabinet officers and White House officials.
- His press secretary, Sean Spicer, quit on July 21. The reason: He believed—correctly—that his loyalty to Trump had become a one-way street. 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.
- Trump has waged a Twitter-laced feud against Jeff Sessions, his Attorney General. 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 has publicly said that if he had known Sessions would recuse himself—because of his past contacts with Russian officials—he would have picked someone else for Attorney General.
- Trump repeatedly humiliated his chief of staff, Reince Priebus—at one point ordering him to kill a fly that was buzzing about. On July 28, Priebus resigned.
As Americans have watched Trump’s behavior with morbid fascination, many of them have asked: “What makes him do the things he does?”
It’s a question asked–and answered—in the 1993 Western, Tombstone. And the answer given in that movie may be just hold the answer to the question so many Americans are now asking about Trump.
Tombstone recounts the legendary blood feud between the Ike Clanton outlaw gang and the Earp brothers—Wyatt, Morgan and Virgil—in the famous gold-mining town in 1880s Arizona.
Wyatt Earp has been challenged to a gunfight by quick-trigger gunman Johnny Ringo. Although he impulsively accepted the challenge, Wyatt now realizes he’s certain to be killed. Thus follows this exchange with his longtime friend, the pistol-packing dentist, John H. “Doc” Holliday:
WYATT EARP: What makes a man like Ringo, Doc? What makes him do the things he does?
JOHN H. “DOC” HOLLIDAY: A man like Ringo….got a great empty hole right through the middle of him. He can never kill enough or steal enough….or inflict enough pain to ever fill it.
EARP: What does he need?
HOLLIDAY: Revenge.
EARP: For what?
HOLLIDAY: Bein’ born.
Donald Trump was born into a world of wealth and privilege. His father gave him $200 million, which he channeled into a real estate empire. He has claimed to be worth a billion dollars.
He has been linked—often by his own boasts—to some of the most beautiful women in the world. He has been a major force on TV through his “reality show,” The Apprentice. He has literally stamped his name on hundreds of buildings.
And now he holds the Presidency of the United States, the most powerful office in the Western world.
Yet he remains filled with a poisonous hatred that encompasses almost everyone. Since taking office, he has offered nothing positive in his agenda.
Instead, he has focused his efforts on what he can take from others. At the top of his list: The Affordable Health Act, which provides access to medical care for millions who previously could not obtain it.
As first-mate Starbuck says of Captain Ahab in Herman Melville’s classic novel, Moby Dick: “He is a champion of darkness.”
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on July 28, 2017 at 12:02 am
So you want to visit the Pentagon and see how America’s military works to protect you? Fine.
Just be prepared to accept the requirements that go with “security theater.”
A memo from the Public Affairs Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense, dated February 2, 2012, offers this gem:
The Pentagon
“Proper personal identification (ID) must be produced when requested by Pentagon Police prior to entering the Pentagon as follows.
- Ages 12 and under – ID not required.
- Ages 13 to 17 – One form of photo ID or a parent/guardian to vouch for them.
- Ages 18 and up – Two forms of ID: one form must be a government issued photo ID, the other may be a credit/debit card, U.S. passport, birth certificate, or another item with the individual’s name printed on it, excluding business cards.”
Let’s break all this down:
“Ages 12 and under – ID not required.” Strapping bombs to children was a favorite tactic of the Viet Cong. And Al Qaeda has not hesitated to make use of the same weapon. It’s not comforting to learn that our military is still looking at children as “babes of innocence” rather than as possible “bombs of convenience.”
“Ages 13 to 17 – One form of photo ID or a parent/guardian to vouch for them.” Great! So long as an adult says, “Yeah, he’s mine,” any teenager can gain entry to America’s most important military center. This includes those teens who resent the American military’s presence around the world.
“Ages 18 and up – Two forms of ID: one form must be a government issued photo ID, the other may be a credit/debit card, U.S. passport, birth certificate, or another item with the individual’s name printed on it.”
Knowing a person’s identity is useful—so long as you have a reliable database system to match it against. An example of this is the FBI’s National Crime Information Center (NCIC).
Since 1967, the NCIC has been America’s central database for tracking crime-related information. It’s linked with such information repositories as:
- Federal law enforcement agencies
- State law enforcement agencies
- Local law enforcement agencies
- Federal and state motor vehicle registration/licensing agencies.
The NCIC makes available a variety of personal and property records for law enforcement and security purposes, covering:
- Convicted sex offenders
- Criminal convictions
- Foreign fugitives
- Immigration violators
- Persons with active protection orders
- Parolees
- Persons with active arrest warrants
- Secret Service protective alerts
- Terrorist organizations and membership
- Violent gang organizations and membership
Behind this lies a simple but highly effective formula, which was best-expressed in the classic 1973 movie, The Day of the Jackal. An anonymous professional killer has been hired to assassinate French President Charles de Gaulle.
At a government meeting called to thwart the plot, a top security expert says: “The first task is to give this man a name. With a name, we get a face, with a face a passport, with a passport an arrest.”
But if you don’t have a reliable database system to match an ID against, forcing people to “show me your ID” is worthless. What does “John Smith” mean to the average ill-paid security guard?
Even if the person is a wanted criminal, just looking at his ID card is worthless. Unless, of course, the person is so notorious as a criminal that his name is known to almost everyone: “My God, it’s Osama bin Laden!”
That’s presuming that the person is not only notorious but stupid enough to flaunt it. There is, after all, such a thing as a falsified ID. Every teenager who’s ever wanted access to a can of beer knows that.
If it seems impossible that any security official could be so stupid, consider this:
In 2010 a friend of mine decided to rent a P.O. box at his local Postal Service office. He was promptly told he would have to provide two pieces of identification, such as:
- A driver’s license or State ID card
- A passport
- A birth certificate
- A bill from a utility company, such as for phone or electric service.
Now, consider:
- He lived only a few blocks from the post office where he was applying for a P.O. box.
- He had lived at the same apartment building for 22 years.
- The Postal Service had been delivering his mail there that entire time—sometimes knocking at his door to do so.
- When he came to its counter to retrieve mail that was otherwise un-deliverable, his showing a State ID card had been entirely enough.
But, to rent a P.O. box at that very same post office, he had to prove he wasn’t a terrorist. And one of the ways he was to do this was to show a utility bill.
What does paying money to an electric or gas company prove about anyone? Osama bin Laden was paying for utilities in a Pakistani house—and the Pakistanis didn’t say: “Hey, we can’t supply electricity to you–you’re a terrorist.”
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In Bureaucracy, Business, History, Politics, Social commentary on July 27, 2017 at 12:05 am
The Tea Party hated President Barack Obama and believed he should be impeached.
That you could have easily learned by visiting its website.
But there is a great deal about the Tea Party itself that its website won’t tell you.
Such as:
- Despite its propaganda, it is not a “grassroots organization” comprised of “ordinary Americans.”
- It was created with money from the tobacco industry and the billionaire Koch brothers.
- Its purpose is to co-opt Right-wing Americans and channel their votes into legislation that benefits the 1% richest.
That’s the conclusion of a study by the National Cancer Institute of the National Institute of Health.
National Cancer Institute
The roots of the Tea Party lie in the early 1980s, when tobacco companies started pouring money into third-party groups.
Their mission was two-fold:
- To fight excise taxes on cigarettes; and
- To combat health studies showing a link between cancer and secondhand smoke.
Stanton Glantz, professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, has been a longtime foe of the tobacco industry.
Dr. Stanton Glantz
In 2012, he authored a study for the peer-reviewed academic journal, Tobacco Control. Writing about the ties between the Tea Party and the tobacco industry, Glantz noted:
“The Tea Party, which gained prominence in the USA in 2009, advocates limited government and low taxes. Tea Party organisations, particularly Americans for Prosperity and FreedomWorks, oppose smoke-free laws and tobacco taxes.
“Rather than being a purely grassroots movement that spontaneously developed in 2009, the Tea Party has developed over time, in part through decades of work by the tobacco industry and other corporate interests.”
Click here: ‘To quarterback behind the scenes, third-party efforts’: the tobacco industry and the Tea Party — Fallin et al. –
Charles and David Koch, the real founders of the Tea Party
Most people believe the Tea Party originated as a 2009 grassroots uprising to protest taxes. But its origins can be traced to 2002.
That was when the Charles and David Koch and tobacco-backed Citizens for a Sound Economy set up the first Tea Party website.
From the National Cancer Institute’s study of the Tea Party:
- “The Tea Party, a loosely organised network of grassroots coalitions at local and state levels, is a complex social and political movement to the right of the traditional Republican Party that promotes less government regulation and lower taxes.”
- “David Koch was a co-founder of Citizens for a Sound Economy (CSE) and Americans for Prosperity (AFP) Foundation,” both major allies of the tobacco industry.
- “National organisations funded by corporations, particularly Americans for Prosperity (AFP) and FreedomWorks, played an important role in structuring and supporting the Tea Party in the initial stages. They provided training, communication and materials for the earliest Tea Party activities, including the first ‘Tea Party’ on 27 February 2009.”
- “FreedomWorks organised the nationwide Tea Party tax protests in April 2009, the town hall protests about the proposed healthcare reform in August 2009 and the Taxpayers’ March on Washington the following September 2009.”
- “As of 2012, AFP and FreedomWorks were supporting the tobacco companies’ political agenda by mobilising local Tea Party opposition to tobacco taxes and smoke-free laws.”
- “In many ways, the Tea Party of the late 2000s has become the ‘movement’ envisioned by Tim Hyde, RJR director of national field operations in the 1990s, which was grounded in patriotic values of ‘freedom’ and ‘choice’ to change how people see the role of ‘government’ and ‘big business’ in their lives, particularly with regard to taxes and regulation.”
- “Many factors beyond the tobacco industry have contributed to the development of the Tea Party. Anti-tax sentiment has been linked to notions of patriotism since the inception of the USA when the colonies were protesting against taxation by the British.”
- “In addition, the Tea Party has origins in the ultra-right John Birch Society of the 1950s, of which Fred Koch (Charles and David Koch’s father) was a founding member.”
- “Although the Tea Party is a social movement, it has been affiliated closely with, and somewhat incorporated into, the Republican Party. This may be due in part to the increased conservatism of politically active Republicans since 1970s and the increased polarisation of American politics.”
- “….AFP and FreedomWorks…capitalised on the changing political realities following President Barack Obama’s election in 2008.”
- “In particular, they harnessed anti-government sentiment arising from the confluence of the mortgage and banking bailout, President Barack Obama’s stimulus package and the Democratic push for healthcare reform, which provided them with the opportunity for more successful grassroots-level Tea Party organising.”
CHART SHOWING Connections between the tobacco industry, third-party allies and the Tea Party, from the 1980’s (top) through 2012 (bottom).
Since 2008, the Tea Party has played a major role in American politics.
Throughout 2009, its thuggish supporters sought to terrorize members of Congress into opposing passage of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), otherwise known as Obamacare.
This despite the fact that the ACA offered many of them their only chance to obtain access to medical care.
And in 2010 they played a pivotal role in delivering the House of Representatives to the Republican Party. Similarly, they helped Republicans take control of the Senate in 2014.
Yet the vast majority of the Tea Party’s low-level membership probably doesn’t know the origins—or the real purposes—of their organization.
But for those for whom truth is important, “the truth”—as The X-Files tagline once went—“is out there.”
Bureaucracybuster's Blog 
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PROPPING UP THE FUHRER–AT ALL COSTS
In Bureaucracy, History, Military, Politics, Social commentary on August 10, 2017 at 12:05 am“The White House is Propping Up Depressed Trump With Two Folders of Propaganda A Day.”
So read an August 8 headline on the PoliticusUSA website.
The story to which it was attached opened:
“Donald Trump receives two folders of screen grabs, transcripts, and pictures of himself looking strong each day as the White House using the communications office to compile propaganda that makes Trump feel better.”
It then quoted Vice News as stating:
“Twice a day since the beginning of the Trump administration, a special folder is prepared for the president. The first document is prepared around 9:30 a.m. and the follow-up, around 4:30 p.m.
“Former Chief of Staff Reince Priebus and former Press Secretary Sean Spicer both wanted the privilege of delivering the 20-to-25-page packet to President Trump personally, White House sources say.
Donald Trump
“These sensitive papers, described to VICE News by three current and former White House officials, don’t contain top-secret intelligence or updates on legislative initiatives.
“Instead, the folders are filled with screenshots of positive cable news chyrons (those lower-third headlines and crawls), admiring tweets, transcripts of fawning TV interviews, praise-filled news stories, and sometimes just pictures of Trump on TV looking powerful.”
And how reliable a news source is PoliticusUSA?
According to Media Bias / Fact Check, which bills itself as “The Most Comprehensive Media Bias Resource”:
“PoliticusUsa is a left wing biased news and opinion website. PoliticusUsa typically sources to credible media sources such as Reuters and are factual in reporting as we were unable to find any instances of failed fact checks.
“Though headlines tend to be somewhat sensational, the content of articles is evidence based with occasional use of loaded words that convey emotion. In short, PoliticusUsa is left biased through story choices and wording, but factual in reporting. (5/15/2016)”
Trump unhesitatingly takes credit for the achievements of others. In an August 9th tweet, he implied that, during his seven-month administration, he had greatly strengthened America’s nuclear arsenal:
“My first order as President was to renovate and modernize our nuclear arsenal. It is now far stronger and more powerful than ever before….”
In fact, President Barack Obama was responsible for much of the improvements to the arsenal. The Defense Department and Energy Department spent billions of dollars on refurbishing the arsenal and bringing aging nuclear weapons up to modern capabilities.
Barack Obama
While Trump never blushes to take the credit, he quickly shifts blame to others when an enterprise goes wrong.
In February, Trump approved and ordered a Special Forces raid in Yemen on an Al-Qaeda stronghold. The assault resulted in the death of Navy SEAL Chief Petty Officer William “Ryan” Owens.
Disavowing any responsibility for the failure, Trump said: “This was a mission that was started before I got here. This was something they wanted to do.
“They came to me, they explained what they wanted to do—the generals—who are very respected, my generals are the most respected that we’ve had in many decades, I believe. And they lost Ryan.”
But Trump is hardly unique among world leaders to listen only to “happy news.”
As his armies were forced to retreat on all fronts, Adolf Hitler increasingly demanded that his ministers refrain from “defeatist talk.”
Hoping for victory—and stating that it was inevitable—became the key to saving one’s job—if not life—in the steadily-declining Third Reich.
Adolf Hitler
This was best illustrated in his treatment of Albert Speer. Hitler had often proclaimed him “my genius architect” before appointing him Minister of Armaments in 1942. As Speer revved up the production of military hardware, Hitler continued to hail his “genius.”
But as Allied bombing raids increasingly devastated Germany’s industrial plants, armaments production began to fall. This forced Speer to tell his Fuhrer the unpalatable truth: Germany was losing its capacity to wage war.
Hitler didn’t want to hear it, turning instead to those who fed him a diet of “happy news.” When Speer’s deputy, Karl Otto Saur, told Hitler, “By Christmas, we’ll have air superiority!” Hitler was ecstatic.
At a meeting with his generals, the Fuhrer announced: “We have the good fortune to have a genius in our armaments ministry. I mean Saur.”
The promised air superiority never materialized.
As even Hitler came to realize that the end was near, he turned his anger on the Germany he had so often claimed to love.
“If the war is lost,” Hitler told Speer, “the nation will also perish….This nation will have proved to be the weaker one and the future will belong solely to the stronger eastern nation.”
He ordered a massive “scorched-earth” campaign throughout Germany.
All German agriculture, industry, ships, communications, roads, food stuffs, mines, bridges, stores and utility plants were to be destroyed.
If implemented, it would deprive the entire German population of even the barest necessities after the war.
Fortunately for Germany, Speer dared to sabotage the “Nero Order,” thus ensuring a future for those who survived the war.
But Hitler’s demands for only “happy news” did not save him—or his regime.
Feeding himself a diet of “happy news” detached from reality will not save Donald Trump. Nor will it save those Americans who insist on believing it.
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