Posts Tagged ‘THE PRINCE’
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In Bureaucracy, Business, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on January 17, 2023 at 12:10 am
It took 15 votes—and a series of humiliating concessions—for Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) to become Speaker of the House of Representatives.
All of the concessions he made were to the most Right-wing members of the House. And all of those members are fanatically dedicated to destroying whatever legacy President Joseph R. Biden hopes to leave.
At the top of their list: Impeaching Biden.
Republicans refused to impeach and convict Donald Trump after he incited a deadly riot against the United States Capitol Building. But they’re eager to remove Biden for what they consider the most impeachable offense of all.
He defeated a Republican candidate for President.
President Joseph Biden
And not just any Republican candidate: The candidate who had made no secret of his desire to be “President-for-Life.”
During the mid-term elections, Republicans had expected to sweep both the House and Senate. This would have given them virtual control of the government.
For the House is the body that initiates revenue bills and impeaches federal officials. And the Senate holds the power to confirm Presidential appointments that require consent, and to provide advice and consent to ratify treaties.
But Democrats went on a rare offensive and rightly attacked Republicans as intending to gain absolute control over the lives of their fellow Americans. And voters rejected the candidates favored by Trump for local and federal offices.
Thus, Republicans had to settle for controlling the House.
Even so, they intend to abuse their new-found powers to the utmost. Among their topmost goals:
- Bringing false impeachment charges against President Biden;
- Investigating FBI officials who rightly investigated evidence of Donald Trump’s collaboration with Russia;
- Investigating the President’s son, Hunter, for unspecified offenses, to damage his father’s credibility; and
- Holding America’s economy hostage by refusing to raise the debt ceiling unless Biden makes cuts in taxes and aid programs for the poor and middle class.
Hunter Biden
Center for Strategic & International Studies, CC BY 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
If Democrats follow their usual mantra of “When they go low, we go high,” they will cower before Republican aggression and sacrifice their legislative agenda.
Yet they can snatch victory from the jaws of impending defeat—providing they are willing to follow the advice Robert F. Kennedy offered for combating the Mafia: “If we do not attack organized criminals with weapons and techniques as effective as their own, they will destroy us.”
Counterattack Strategy #1: Attack Republicans as traitors selling out the country to Vladimir Putin
Numerous Republicans have taken “campaign contributions”—i.e., bribes—from Russian oligarchs linked to Putin.
One Russian oligarch—Len Blavatnik—has given millions of dollars to top Republican leaders—such as Senators Mitch McConnell (Kentucky), Marco Rubio (Florida) and Lindsey Graham (South Carolina).
In just 2017, Blavatnik contributed the following to GOP Political Action Committees (PACs):
- $1.5 million to PACs associated with Rubio.
- $1 million to Trump’s Inaugural Committee.
- $1 million to McConnell’s Senate Leadership Fund.
- $3.5 million to a PAC associated with McConnell.
- $1.1 million to Unintimidated PAC, associated with Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker.
- $250,000 to New Day for America PAC, associated with Ohio Governor John Kasich.
- $800,000 to the Security is Strength PAC, associated with Senator Lindsey Graham.
The Biden administration need not ask the CIA or FBI to unearth these contributions. They can be easily found within the files of the Federal Election Commission (FEC).
Putin’s monies have been well-spent: About 90 House Republicans—out of a total of 213—attended Volodymyr Zelensky’s address to Congress on December 21, according to CQ Roll Call. Some who did spent much of the speech on their phones.
Many Republicans—such as House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, who in 2021 received about $255,000 from Blavatnik—have openly threatened to end all funding for Ukraine’s heroic struggle against Russian aggression.
Kevin McCarthy
This would prove an effective technique. From the end of World War II to the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Republicans successfully attacked Democrats as at least potential sellouts, if not actual traitors.
The advantage of attacking Russian-bribed Republicans today is that even some “Reagan Republicans”—such as James Kirchick, a conservative reporter, foreign correspondent, author, and columnist—have openly denounced this treason.
Thus, the White House could ignite an internal conflict within the Right by pitting Republicans against each other.
Counterattack Strategy #2: Concede NOTHING to Republicans
Donald Trump shut down the Federal Government on December 22, 2018, because Democrats refused to finance his useless border wall against Mexico.
So Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi shut down his State of the Union appearance.
As CNN political analyst Chris Cillizza noted: “What Pelosi seems to understand better than past Trump political opponents is that giving ANY ground is a mistake. You have to not only stand firm, but be willing to go beyond all political norms—like canceling the SOTU—to win.”
His ego strung, Trump reopened the government.
And with Republicans threatening to not raise the debt ceiling unless their extortionate demands are met, the White House can effectively counter this danger:
Deduct from the budget every dollar directed toward Republican states. This would vastly reduce the size of the Federal budget, since subsidizing these failed economies accounts for a substantial portion of the budget.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Military, Politics, Social commentary on January 16, 2023 at 12:10 am
No shortage of pundits have sized up Donald Trump—first as a Presidential candidate, then as the nation’s 45th President, and now as a potential Presidential candidate in 2024.
But how does Trump measure up in the estimate of Niccolo Machiavelli, the 16th-century Florentine statesman?
It is Machiavelli whose two great works on politics—The Prince and The Discourses—remain textbooks for successful politicians more than 500 years later.
Niccolo Machiavelli
Let’s start with Trump’s notoriety for hurling insults at virtually everyone, including:
- Latinos
- Asians
- Muslims
- Blacks
- The Disabled
- Women
- Prisoners-of-War
These insults delight his white, under-educated followers. But they have alienated millions of other Americans who might have voted for him.
Here’s Machiavelli’s advice on issuing threats and insults:
-
“I hold it to be a proof of great prudence for men to abstain from threats and insulting words towards any one.
-
“For neither the one nor the other in any way diminishes the strength of the enemy—but the one makes him more cautious, and the other increases his hatred of you, and makes him more persevering in his efforts to injure you.”
For those who expected Trump to shed his propensity for constantly picking fights once he became President, Machiavelli warned:
-
“…If it happens that time and circumstances are favorable to one who acts with caution and prudence he will be successful. But if time and circumstances change he will be ruined, because he does not change the mode of his procedure.
-
“No man can be found so prudent as to be able to adopt himself to this, either because he cannot deviate from that to which his nature disposes him, or else because, having always prospered by walking in one path, he cannot persuade himself that it is well to leave it…
-
“For if one could change one’s nature with time and circumstances, fortune would never change.”
Then there is Trump’s approach to consulting advisers:
Asked on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” who he consults about foreign policy, Trump replied; “I’m speaking with myself, number one, because I have a very good brain and I’ve said a lot of things.”
Donald Trump
Machiavelli advised:
-
“A prudent prince must [choose] for his counsel wise men, and [give] them alone full liberty to speak the truth to him, but only of those things that he asks and of nothing else.
-
“But he must be a great asker about everything and hear their opinions, and afterwards deliberate by himself in his own way, and in these counsels…comport himself so that every one may see that the more freely he speaks, the more he will be acceptable.”
On selecting good advisers, Machiavelli taught:
- “The first impression that one gets of a ruler and his brains is from seeing the men that he has about him.
- “When they are competent and loyal one can always consider him wise, as he has been able to recognize their ability and keep them faithful.
- “But when they are the reverse, one can always form an unfavorable opinion of him, because the first mistake that he makes is in making this choice.”
Among the advisers Trump relied on in his 2016 Presidential campaign:
- Founder of Latinos for Trump Marco Gutierrez told MSNBC’s Joy Reid: “My culture is a very dominant culture. And it’s imposing, and it’s causing problems. If you don’t do something about it, you’re gonna have taco trucks every corner.”
- At a Tea Party for Trump rally at a Harley-Davidson dealership in Festus, Missouri, former Missouri Republican Party director Ed Martin reassured the crowd that they weren’t racist for hating Mexicans.
From the outset of his Presidential campaign, Trump polled extremely poorly among Hispanic voters. Comments like these didn’t increase his popularity.
- Wayne Root, opening speaker and master of ceremonies at many Trump campaign events, told Virginia radio host Rob Schilling: People on public assistance and women getting birth control through Obamacare should not be allowed to vote.
Comments like this were a big turn-off among the 70% of women who had an unfavorable opinion of him—and anyone who receives Medicaid, Medicare or Social Security.
- Trump’s spokeswoman, Katrina Pierson, claimed that Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton were responsible for the death of Captain Humayun Khan—who was killed by a truck-bomb in Iraq in 2004.
Obama became President in 2009—almost five years after Khan’s death. And Clinton became Secretary of State the same year.
When your spokeswoman becomes a nationwide laughingstock, your own credibility goes down the toilet as well.
Finally, Machiavelli offered a warning that especially applies to Trump: Unwise princes cannot be wisely advised.
-
“It is an infallible rule that a prince who is not wise himself cannot be well advised, unless by chance he leaves himself entirely in the hands of one man who rules him in everything, and happens to be a very prudent man. In this case, he may doubtless be well governed, but it would not last long, for the governor would in a short time deprive him of the state.”
All of which would lead Niccolo Machiavelli to warn, if he could witness American politics today: “This bodes ill for your Republic.”
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In Business, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on January 6, 2023 at 12:14 am
For President Donald Trump and Congressional Republicans, the single greatest achievement of their time in office was to drastically cut taxes on the wealthy (including themselves).
It’s a view that Niccolo Machiavelli would dispute.
In 1513, Machiavelli, the Florentine statesman who has been called the father of modern political science, published his best-known work: The Prince.
Niccolo Machiavelli
Among the issues he confronted was how to preserve liberty within a republic. And key to this was mediating the eternal struggle between the wealthy and the poor and middle class.
Machiavelli deeply distrusted the nobility because they stood above the law. He saw them as a major source of corruption because they could buy influence through patronage, favors or nepotism.
Successful political leaders must attain the support of the nobility or general populace. But since these groups have conflicting interests, the safest course is to choose the latter.
Writes Machiavelli:
….He who becomes prince by help of the [wealthy] has greater difficulty in maintaining his power than he who is raised by the populace. He is surrounded by those who think themselves his equals, and is thus unable to direct or command as he pleases.
But one who is raised to leadership by popular favor finds himself alone, and has no one, or very few, who are not ready to obey him. [And] it is impossible to satisfy the [wealthy] by fair dealing and without inflicting injury upon others, whereas it is very easy to satisfy the mass of the people in this way.
Machiavelli warns that the general populace is more honest than the nobility—i.e., wealthy. The wealthy seek to oppress, while the populace wants to simply avoid oppression.
A political leader cannot protect himself against a hostile population, owing to their numbers, but he can against the hostility of the great, as they are but few.
The worst that a prince has to expect from a hostile people is to be abandoned, but from hostile nobles he has to fear not only desertion but their active opposition. And as they are more far seeing and more cunning, they are always in time to save themselves and take sides with the one who they expect will conquer.
The prince is, moreover, obliged to live always with the same people, but he can easily do without the same nobility, being able to make and unmake them at any time, and improve their position or deprive them of it as he pleases.
Unfortunately, political leaders throughout the world—including the United States–have ignored this sage advice.
In 2012, Tax Justice Network, which campaigns to abolish tax havens, commissioned a study of their effect on the world’s economy.
The study was entitled, “The Price of Offshore Revisited: New Estimates for ‘Missing’ Global Private Wealth, Income, Inequality and Lost Taxes.”
http://www.taxjustice.net/cms/upload/pdf/Price_of_Offshore_Revisited_120722.pdf
The research was carried out by James Henry, former chief economist at consultants McKinsey & Co. Among its findings:
Summing up this situation, the report noted: “We are up against one of society’s most well-entrenched interest groups. After all, there’s no interest group more rich and powerful than the rich and powerful.”
Fortunately, Machiavelli has supplied timeless remedies to this increasingly dangerous situation:
- Assume evil among men—and most especially among those who possess the greatest concentration of wealth and power.
- Carefully monitor their activities—the way the FBI now regularly monitors those of the Mafia and major terrorist groups.
- Ruthlessly prosecute the treasonous crimes of the rich and powerful—and, upon their conviction, impose severe punishment.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Politics, Social commentary on December 29, 2022 at 12:15 am
In facing off against President Donald Trump, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi proved the embodiment of Niccolo Machiavelli’s “lion and the fox.”
Trump couldn’t believe that Nancy Pelosi meant it when she politely refused to let him give his State of the Union address in the House of Representatives until he reopened the Federal Government.
He dared her to say plainly that she would deny him access.
THE LION
So she did—issuing a statement saying that the speech was off—until the government reopened.
Donald Trump
THE FOX:
Pelosi didn’t let herself be drawn into any Twitter slugfests with a semi-literate dictator. She could well afford to sit out the shutdown, since only the Fascistic Right truly believed she was responsible for it.
And she capitalized on the unexpected help she received from one of Trump’s highest-ranking officials: Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross.
Asked on CNBC if he knew that many Federal employees had been reduced to going to food banks, Ross—a billionaire—said yes, but he didn’t understand why.
His suggestion: They could just take out a loan.
“So the 30 days of pay that some people will be out, there’s no real reason why they shouldn’t be able to get a loan against it, and we’ve seen a number of ads of financial institutions doing that.
“True, the people might have to pay a little bit of interest. But the idea that it’s ‘paycheck or zero’ is not a really valid idea.”
Wilbur Ross
It was a remark worthy of Marie Antoinette’s reported (but inaccurate) dismissal of the miseries of impoverished French citizens: “Let them eat cake.”
And Pelosi didn’t hesitate to point it out:
“Is this the ‘Let them eat cake,’ kind of attitude? Or ‘Call your father for money?’ Or ’This is character-building for you; it’s all going to end up very well—just as long as you don’t get your paychecks?’”
As CNN political analyst Chris Cillizza saw it: “What Pelosi seems to understand better than past Trump political opponents is that giving ANY ground is a mistake. You have to not only stand firm, but be willing to go beyond all political norms—like canceling the SOTU—to win.”
And Julian Zelitzer, another CNN political analyst, agreed: “Pelosi did not hesitate to use her political power aggressively. From the start of this process, she has remained steadfast in her insistence that closing the government was not a legitimate way to make demands for new forms of spending.
“While sometimes Democrats become leery about seeming too partisan and not being civil enough, Pelosi and the Democrats stood their ground. She drew a line in the sand and stuck by it.”
When Republicans claim that Democrats aren’t being “civil,” they mean: “They’re not doing exactly as we tell them to do.”
And of course Republicans tried to convince voters that Trump had not threatened to shut down the government—and then had done so. Republicans like Texas United States Senator Rafael “Ted” Cruz repeatedly railed against the “Pelosi-Schumer shutdown.”
But the vast majority of voters weren’t having it. They had seen the original broadcast where Trump made his threat. And if they had missed the original, there were plenty of re-broadcasts of that moment on news networks to alert them.
As Pelosi and Democrats held firm, Republicans began getting desperate.
- They were being depicted in the news as extortionists while 800,000 of their fellow Americans suffered.
- Those businesses that served them—such as grocery stores and auto repair shops—were being starved of revenue.
- There was legitimate fear that the entire airline industry might have to shut down for lack of enough air traffic controllers to regulate air traffic.
- Worst of all for Republicans, chaos at airports threatened the travel plans of hundreds of thousands of people traveling to and from the upcoming Super Bowl. Most Americans might not know the name of their Senator, but they take their sports fetish seriously.
By January 25, the 35th day of the shutdown, an ABC News/Washington Post poll showed that 53% of Americans blamed Trump for the shutdown. His popularity had fallen to a historic low of 37%. And 60% disapproved of how he was handling negotiations to reopen the government.
So, on that same date, Trump did what his Hispanic-hating base thought was impossible: He caved.
He walked into the White House Rose Garden and said he would sign a bill to reopen the government for three weeks.
And, for Pelosi, the sweetest moment was yet to come.
Nancy Pelosi
True, Trump had said he would not give the State of the Union address on his originally scheduled date of January 29th. But eventually he did.
And when this happened, Pelosi sat directly behind him—along with Vice President Mike Pence—the whole time.
Unlike Trump, who revels in bragging about how powerful and brilliant he is, she didn’t have to.
Simply sitting behind him, probably trying hard to suppress a gleeful smile, she nevertheless reminded the audience that she was the one who had taught this failed businessman “the art of the deal.”
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In Bureaucracy, History, Politics, Social commentary on December 28, 2022 at 12:11 am
It’s one of the most famous passages in The Prince, Niccolo Machiavelli’s classic work on Realpolitik.
“A prince…must imitate the fox and the lion, for the lion cannot protect himself from traps, and the fox cannot defend himself from wolves. One must therefore be a fox to avoid traps, and a lion to frighten wolves. Those who wish to be only lions do not realize this.”
Niccolo Machiavelli
As House Minority Leader (2011 – 2019) and then Speaker of the House (2007 – 2011; 2019 – 2023), Nancy Pelosi proved she was both.
But her greatest contributions to the United States almost certainly came during the last two years of the infamous Trump administration.
THE FOX:
On December 11, 2018, Pelosi—then House Majority Leader—and Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer, met with President Donald Trump in the Oval Office.
And, true to his love of publicity, Trump made sure the meeting was televised live on TV.
Nancy Pelosi
Trump soon moved to the matter he truly cared about: Demanding $5.6 billion to create a wall along the U.S.-Mexican border: “And one way or the other, it’s going to get built. I’d like not to see a government closing, a shutdown. We will see what happens over the next short period of time.”
[“One way or the other”—“so doer so”—was a favorite phrase of Adolf Hitler’s, meaning: If he couldn’t bully his opponents into surrendering, he would use violence.]
PELOSI: I think the American people recognize that we must keep government open, that a shutdown is not worth anything, and that you should not have a Trump shutdown. You have the White House—
TRUMP: Did you say Trump—
PELOSI: A Trump shutdown. You have the White House—
TRUMP: I was going to call it a Pelosi shutdown.
Charles Schumer
TRUMP: The wall is a part of border security. You can’t have very good border security without the wall.
PELOSI: That’s simply not true. That is a political promise.
[By “political promise,” Pelosi meant this was an appeal Trump made to his hardcore base. which he expected to re-elect him.]
SCHUMER: Twenty times you have called for, “I will shut down the government if I don’t get my wall.” None of us have said—you’ve said it.
TRUMP: Okay, you want to put that on my—I’ll take it. You know what I’ll say: “Yes, if we don’t get what we want, one way or the other…I will shut down the government. Absolutely.”
Trump, determined to bully Pelosi and Schumer into bending to his will, didn’t realize he had just set himself up for disaster.
Trump shut down the government on December 22. About 380,000 government employees were furloughed and another 420,000 were ordered to work without pay.
And Trump told Congressional leaders the shutdown could last months or even years.
For Trump, “the wall” was absolutely necessary—but not to keep illegal aliens out. They would go over, under or around it.
The real intent of the wall was to keep Trump in—the White House.
Trump’s fanatical base believed that a wall across the U.S.-Mexico border would stop all illegal immigration. And he knew that if he didn’t build it, they wouldn’t re-elect him.
The effects of the shutdown quickly became evident:
- For weeks, hundreds of thousands of government workers missed paychecks.
- Increasing numbers of employees of the Transportation Safety Administration (TSA)—which provides security against airline terrorism—began refusing to come to work, claiming to be sick.
- At the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) many air traffic controllers called in “sick.” Those who showed up to work without pay grew increasingly frazzled as they feared being evicted for being unable to make rent or house payments.
- Due to the shortage of air traffic controllers, many planes weren’t able to land safely at places like New York’s LaGuardia Airport.
- Many Federal employees—such as FBI agents—were forced to rely on soup kitchens to feed their families.
- Celebrity chef Jose Andres launched ChefsForFeds, which offered free hot meals for government employees and their families at restaurants across the country.
- Many workers tried to bring in money by babysitting or driving for Uber,
THE LION:
Pelosi, unlike many Democrats, realized this was America’s version of the Munich Conference: Democrats must hold firm against a tyrant’s extortionate demands. Otherwise, every time Trump didn’t get his way, there would be no end to such shutdowns in the future.
From the start, Pelosi insisted that Democrats would not surrender to threats of a government shutdown. And Democrats held firm, refusing to make concessions on the wall.
Second, Pelosi publicly stated that Trump could not make his annual State of the Union speech in the House of Representatives until the government was re-opened.
She politely cited as her reason that the building would not be “secure” owing to the shutdown and the nonpayment of the men and women who would be charged with its protection.
Since both the House and Senate must jointly issue an invitation to the President to make such an address, Pelosi’s veto effectively scotched Trump’s appearance.
For the publicity-addicted Trump, who revels in pontificating to adoring crowds, this was a major—and unexpected—blow.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Military, Politics, Social commentary on December 27, 2022 at 12:10 am
In January, 2018, the White House banned the use of personal cell phones in the West Wing. The official reason: National security.
The real reason: To prevent staffers from leaking to reporters.
More ominously, well-suited men roamed the halls of the West Wing, carrying devices that pick up signals from phones that aren’t government-issued.
“Did someone forget to put their phone away?” one of the men would ask if such a device was detected. If no one said they had a phone, the detection team started searching the room.
Phone detector
The devices can tell which type of phone is in the room.
This is the sort of behavior Americans have traditionally—and correctly—associated with dictatorships
In his memo outlining the policy, then-Chief of Staff John Kelly warned that anyone who violated the phone ban could be punished, including “being indefinitely prohibited from entering the White House complex.”
Yet even these draconian methods did not end White House leaks.
White House officials still spoke with reporters throughout the day and often aired their grievances, whether about annoying colleagues or competing policy priorities.
Aides with private offices sometimes called reporters on their desk phones. Others got their cell phones and called or texted reporters during lunch breaks.
According to an anonymous White House source: “The cellphone ban is for when people are inside the West Wing, so it really doesn’t do all that much to prevent leaks. If they banned all personal cellphones from the entire [White House] grounds, all that would do is make reporters stay up later because they couldn’t talk to their sources until after 6:30 pm.”
Other sources believed that leaks wouldn’t end unless Trump started firing staffers. But there was always the risk of firing the wrong people. Thus, to protect themselves, those who leaked might well accuse tight-lipped co-workers.
Within the Soviet Union (especially during the reign of Joseph Stalin) fear of secret police surveillance was widespread—and absolutely justified.
Among the methods used to keep conversations secret:
- Turning on the TV or radio to full volume.
- Turning on a water faucet at full blast.
- Turning the dial of a rotary phone to the end—and sticking a pencil in one of the small holes for numbers.
- Standing six to nine feet away from the hung-up receiver.
- Going for “a walk in the woods.”
- Saying nothing sensitive on the phone.
The secret police (known as the Cheka, the NKVD, the MGB, the KGB, and now the FSB) operated on seven working principles:
- Your enemy is hiding.
- Start from the usual suspects.
- Study the young.
- Stop the laughing.
- Rebellion spreads like wildfire.
- Stamp out every spark.
- Order is created by appearance.
Trump has always ruled through bribery and fear. He’s bought off (or tried to) those who might cause him trouble—like porn actress Stormy Daniels. And he’s threatened or filed lawsuits against those he couldn’t or didn’t want to bribe—such as contractors who have worked on various Trump properties.
But Trump couldn’t buy the loyalty of employees working in an atmosphere of hostility—which breeds resentment and fear. And some of them took revenge by sharing with reporters the latest crimes and follies of the Trump administration.
The more Trump waged war on the “cowards and traitors” who worked most closely with him, the more some of them found opportunities to strike back. This inflamed Trump even more—and led him to seek even more repressive methods against his own staffers.
This proved a no-win situation for Trump.
The results were twofold:
- Constant turnovers of staffers—with their replacements having to undergo lengthy background checks before coming on; and
- Continued leaking of embarrassing secrets by resentful employees who stayed.
**********
As host of NBC’s “The Apprentice,” Trump became infamous for booting off contestants with the phrase: “You’re fired.” In fact, he so delighted in using this that, in 2004, he tried to gain trademark ownership of it.
But the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office rejected his application. American copyright law explicitly prohibits copyright protections for short phrases or sayings.
Upon taking office as President, Trump bullied and insulted even White House officials and his own handpicked Cabinet officers. This resulted in an avalanche of firings and resignations.
The first two years of Trump’s White House saw more firings, resignations, and reassignments of top staffers than any other first-term administration in modern history. His Cabinet turnover exceeded that of any other administration in the last 100 years.
In 1934, Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin, seeing imaginary enemies everywhere, ordered a series of purges that lasted right up to the German invasion in 1941.
No one was safe from execution—not even the men who slaughtered as many as 20 to 60 million.
Fittingly, for all the fear he inspired, Stalin was plagued by paranoia. He lived in constant fear of assassination. Although surrounded by bodyguards, he distrusted even them.
Thus Stalin, who had turned the Soviet Union into a vast prison, became its leading prisoner.
Similarly, Donald Trump daily proved the accuracy of the age-old warning: “You can build a throne of bayonets, but you can’t sit on it.”
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Military, Politics, Social commentary on December 26, 2022 at 12:10 am
Donald Trump has often been compared to Adolf Hitler. But his reign bears far more resemblance to that of Joseph Stalin.
Germany’s Fuhrer, for all his brutality, maintained a relatively stable government by keeping the same men in office—from the day he took power on January 30, 1933, to the day he blew out his brains on April 30, 1945.
Adolf Hitler
Bundesarchiv, Bild 146-1990-048-29A / CC-BY-SA 3.0 [CC BY-SA 3.0 de (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/de/deed.en)%5D
Heinrich Himmler, a former chicken farmer, remained head of the dreaded, black-uniformed Schutzstaffel, or Protection Squads, known as the SS, from 1929 until his suicide in 1945.
In April, 1934, Himmler was appointed assistant chief of the Gestapo (Secret State Police) in Prussia, and from that position he extended his control over the police forces of the whole Reich.
Hermann Goering, an ace fighter pilot in World War 1, served as Reich commissioner for aviation and head of the newly developed Luftwaffe, the German air force, from 1935 to 1945.
And Albert Speer, Hitler’s favorite architect, held that position from 1933 until 1942, when Hitler appointed him Reich Minister of Armaments and War Production. He held that position until the Third Reich collapsed in April, 1945.
Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin, by contrast, purged his ministers constantly. For example: From 1934 to 1953, Stalin had no fewer than three chiefs of his secret police, then named the NKVD:
- Genrikh Yagoda – (July 10, 1934 – September 26, 1936)
- Nikolai Yezhov (September 26, 1936 – November 25, 1938) and
- Lavrenty Beria (November, 1938 – March, 1953).
Stalin purged Yagoda and Yezhov, with both men executed after their arrest.
Joseph Stalin
He reportedly wanted to purge Beria, too, but the latter may have acted first. There has been speculation that Beria slipped warfarin, a blood-thinner often used to kill rats, into Stalin’s drink, causing him to die of a cerebral hemorrhage.
Stalin’s record for slaughter far eclipses that of Hitler.
For almost 30 years, through purges and starvation caused by enforced collections of farmers’ crops, Stalin slaughtered 20 to 60 million people.
The 1930s were a frightening and dangerous time to be alive in the Soviet Union. In 1934, Stalin, seeing imaginary enemies everywhere, ordered a series of purges that lasted right up to the German invasion in 1941.
An example of Stalin’s paranoia occurred one day while the dictator walked through the Kremlin corridors with Admiral Ivan Isakov. Officers of the NKVD (the predecessor to the KGB) stood guard at every corner.
“Every time I walk down the corridors,” said Stalin, “I think: Which one of them is it? If it’s this one, he will shoot me in the back. But if I turn the corner, the next one can shoot me in the face.”
Another Russian-installed tyrant who has sought to rule by fear: President Donald J. Trump.
In fact, he admitted as much to journalist Bob Woodward during the 2016 Presidential race: “Real power is—I don’t even want to use the word—fear.”
Donald Trump
As a Presidential candidate, Trump repeatedly used Twitter to attack hundreds of real and imagined enemies in politics, journalism, TV and films.
As President, he continued to insult virtually everyone, verbally and on Twitter. His targets included Democrats, Republicans, the media, foreign leaders and even members of his Cabinet.
In Russian, the word for “purge” is “chistka,” for “cleansing.” Among the victims of Trump’s recurring chistkas:
- Sally Yates – Assistant United States Attorney General
- James Comey – FBI Director
- Andrew McCabe – FBI Deputy Director
- Jeff Sessions – United States Attorney General
- Rachel Brand – Associate United States Attorney General
- Randolph “Tex” Alles – Director of the United States Secret Service
- Krisjen Nielsen – Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security
In his infamous political treatise, The Prince, Niccolo Machiavelli, the Florentine statesman, asked: “Is it is better to be loved or feared?”
And he answered it thus:
“The reply is, that one ought to be both feared and loved, but as it is difficult for the two to go together, it is much safer to be feared than loved.
“For it may be said of men in general that they are ungrateful, voluble, dissemblers, anxious to avoid danger and covetous of gain; as long as you benefit them, they are entirely yours….
“And the prince who has relied solely on their words, without making other preparations, is ruined….
“And men have less scruple in offending one who makes himself loved than one who makes himself feared; for love is held by a chain of obligations which, men being selfish, is broken whenever it serves their purpose; but fear is maintained by a dread of punishment which never fails.”
But Machiavelli warned about relying primarily on fear: “Still, a prince should make himself feared in such a way that if he does not gain love, he at any rate avoids hatred, for fear and the absence of hatred may well go together.”
**********
Donald Trump has violated that counsel throughout his life. He not only makes enemies, he revels in doing so—and in the fury he has aroused.
Filled with a poisonous hatred that encompasses almost everyone, Trump, as Presidential candidate and President, repeatedly played to the hatreds of his Right-wing base.
As first-mate Starbuck said 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, Politics, Social commentary on November 4, 2022 at 12:17 am
Most Americans believe that Nazi Germany was defeated because “we were the Good Guys and they were the Bad Guys.”
Not so.
The United States—and its allies, Great Britain and the Soviet Union—won the war for reasons that had nothing to do with the righteousness of their cause. These included:
- Nazi Germany—–i.e, its Fuehrer, Adolf Hitler—made a series of disastrous decisions. Chief among these: Attacking its ally, the Soviet Union, and declaring war on the United States;
- The greater material resources of the Soviet Union and the United States; and
- The Allies waged war as brutally as the Germans.
On this last point:
- From D-Day to the fall of Berlin, captured Waffen-SS soldiers were often shot out of hand.
- When American troops came under fire in the German city of Aachen, Lt. Col. Derrill Daniel brought in a self-propelled 155mm artillery piece and opened up on a theater housing German soldiers. After the city surrendered, a German colonel labeled the use of the 155 “barbarous” and demanded that it be outlawed.
German soldiers at Stalingrad
- During the battle of Stalingrad in 1942, Wilhelm Hoffman, a young German soldier and diarist, was appalled that the Russians refused to surrender. He wrote: “You don’t see them at all, they have established themselves in houses and cellars and are firing on all sides, including from our rear—barbarians, they used gangster methods….”
In short: The Allies won because they dared to meet the brutality of a Heinz Guderian with that of a George S. Patton.
This is a lesson long ignored by the liberals of the Democratic Party. As a result, Republicans now may capture both houses of Congress and—in 2024—the Presidency.
An example of this occurred on March 25, 2018.
On CBS’ “Sunday Morning,” former President Jimmy Carter said that even if Special Counsel Robert Mueller found evidence that President Donald Trump had broken the law, “my own preference would be that he not be impeached.”
Instead, Carter would want Trump to “be able to serve out his term, because I think he wants to do a good job. And I’m willing to help him, if I can help him, and give him the benefit of the doubt.
“You know, I have confidence in the American system of government. I think ultimately the restraints on a president from the Congress and from the Supreme Court will be adequate to protect our nation, if he serves a full term.”
Jimmy Carter
By March 25, 2018, Trump—having held office for little more than a year—had:
- Fired FBI Director James Comey for refusing to pledge his personal loyalty—and for investigating documented ties between Russian Intelligence agents and the 2016 Trump Presidential campaign;
- Threatened to fire Special Counsel Robert Mueller, who was assigned to take over that investigation after the Comey firing;
- Repeatedly attacked the nation’s press as “fake news” and “the enemy of the American people”;
- Contemptuously dismissed the warnings of American Intelligence agencies that Russia subverted the 2016 Presidential campaign—and planned to do the same for the upcoming mid-term elections in November, 2018.
- Repeatedly praised Russian dictator Vladimir Putin—and refused to enforce Congressionally-mandated sanctions against Russia for its subversion of the 2016 Presidential election.
Trump, in short, had only contempt for the humility of a Jimmy Carter.
Barack Obama, like Carter, believes in rationality and decency. He feels more comfortable responding to attacks on his character than attacking the character of his enemies.
As a graduate of Columbia University and Harvard Law School, Obama was one of the most academically gifted Presidents in American history.
Yet he failed—like Carter—to grasp and apply this fundamental lesson taught by Niccolo Machiavelli, the father of modern political science.
In The Prince, Machiavelli warns:
From this arises the question whether it is better to be loved than feared, or feared more than loved.
The reply is, that one ought to be both feared and loved, but as it is difficult for the two to go together, it is much safer to be feared than loved….
And men have less scruple in offending one who makes himself loved than one who makes himself feared; for love is held by a chain of obligations which, men being selfish, is broken whenever it serves their purpose; but fear is maintained by a dread of punishment which never fails.
Obama’s failure to recognize the truth of Machiavelli’s lesson allowed Republicans to thwart many of his Presidential ambitions—such as picking a replacement for deceased Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia.
Throughout 2016, liberals celebrated on Facebook and Twitter the “certain” Presidency of Vermont U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders or former First Lady Hillary Clinton.
They fully expected to win the White House again, and thought they might retake the Senate—and maybe even the House of Representatives.
Michelle Obama’s mantra of “When they go low, we go high” proved no match for Trump’s millions of Russian trolls flooding the Internet with legitimately fake news.
For Democrats to win elective victories and enact their agenda, they must find their own George Pattons to take on the Waffen-SS generals among Republican ranks.
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In Bureaucracy, Business, History, Military, Politics, Social commentary on October 28, 2022 at 12:11 am
Ask the average person, “What do you think of Niccolo Machiavelli?” and he’s likely to say: “The devil.”
In fact, “The Old Nick” became an English term used to describe Satan and slander Machiavelli at the same time.
Niccolo Machiavelli
The truth, however, is more complex. Machiavelli was a passionate Republican, who spent most of his adult life in the service of his beloved city-state, Florence.
The years he spent as a diplomat were tumultuous ones for Italy—with men like Pope Julius II and Caesare Borgia vying for power and plunging Italy into one bloodbath after another.
Florence, for all its wealth, lacked a strong army, and thus lay at the mercy of powerful enemies, such as Borgia. Machiavelli often had to use his wits to keep them at bay.
Machiavelli is best-known for his writing of The Prince, a pamphlet on the arts of gaining and holding power. Its admirers have included Benito Mussolini and Joseph Stalin.
But his longer and more thoughtful work is The Discourses, in which he offers advice on how to maintain liberty within a republic. Among its admirers were many of the men who framed the Constitution of the United States.
Most people believe that Machiavelli advocated evil for its own sake.
Not so. Rather, he recognized that sometimes there is no perfect—or perfectly good—solution to a problem.
Sometimes it’s necessary to take stern—even brutal—action to stop an evil (such as a riot) before it becomes widespread:
“A man who wishes to make a profession of goodness in everything must inevitably come to grief among so many who are not good. And therefore it is necessary for a prince, who wishes to maintain himself, to learn how not to be good, and to use this knowledge and not use it, according to the necessity of the case.”
His counsel remains as relevant today as it did during his lifetime (1469 – 1527). This is especially true for politicians—and students of political science.
But plenty of ordinary citizens can also benefit from the advice he has to offer—such as those in business who are asked to give advice to more powerful superiors.
Machiavelli warns there is danger in urging rulers to take a particular course of action: “For men only judge of matters by the result, all the blame of failure is charged upon him who first advised it, while in case of success he receives commendations. But the reward never equals the punishment.”
This puts would-be counselors in a difficult position: “If they do not advise what seems to them for the good of the republic or the prince, regardless of the consequences to themselves, then they fail to do their duty.
“And if they do advise it, then it is at the risk of their position and their lives, for all men are blind in thus, that they judge of good or evil counsels only by the results.”
Thus, Machiavelli warns that an adviser should “take things moderately, and not to undertake to advocate any enterprise with too much zeal, but to give one’s advice calmly and modestly.”
The person who asked for the advice may follow it, or not, as of his own choice, and not because he was led or forced into it by the adviser.
Above all, the adviser must avoid the danger of urging a course of action that runs “contrary to the wishes of the many.
“For the danger arises when your advice has caused the many to be contravened. In that case, when the result is unfortunate, they all concur in your destruction.”
Or, as President John F. Kennedy famously said after the disastrous invasion of Cuba at the Bay of Pigs in April, 1961: “Victory has a hundred fathers and defeat is an orphan.”
John F. Kennedy
By “not advocating any enterprise with too much zeal,” the adviser gains two advantages:
“The first is, you avoid all danger.
“And the second consists in the great credit which you will have if, after having modestly advised a certain course, your counsel is rejected, and the adoption of a different course results unfortunately.”
Finally, the time to give advice is before a catastrophe occurs, not after. Machiavelli gives a vivid example of what can happen if this rule is ignored.
King Perseus of Macedon had gone to war with Paulus Aemilius—and suffered a humiliating defeat. Fleeing the battlefield with a handful of his men, he later bewailed the disaster that had overtaken him.
Suddenly, one of his lieutenants began to lecture Perseus on the many errors he had committed, which had led to his ruin.
“Traitor,” raged the king, turning upon him, “you have waited until now to tell me all this, when there is no longer any time to remedy it—” And Perseus slew him with his own hands.
Niccolo Machiavelli sums up the lesson as this:
“Thus was this man punished for having been silent when he should have spoken, and for having spoken when he should have been silent.”
Be careful that you don’t make the same mistake.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Military, Politics, Social commentary on October 17, 2022 at 12:13 am
On February 24, Russian dictator Vladimir Putin launched an unprovoked invasion of neighboring Ukraine.
Officially called a “special military operation,” it was intended as an important step toward restoring Russia’s lost empire after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.
Ukrainian troops were initially outgunned and outnumbered. But after weeks of combat, Russian forces retreated, stymied by ferocious Ukrainian resistance.
By September, Ukrainian forces launched a rapid offensive, recapturing much of the northeastern Kharkiv region, including the city of Izium. Previously, the Russians had been using this as a key logistics hub.
On September 21, with Russian forces bogged down or retreating, Putin announced the partial mobilization of 300,000 military reservists. All male citizens below 60 are now eligible to be drafted.
The announcement set off a massive exodus of at least 194,000 Russian men (and their wives or girlfriends) to such neighboring countries as Turkey, Georgia, Kazakhstan and Mongolia.
On the same day Putin announced the mobilization, he threatened to use nuclear weapons to defend not simply Russia but the Ukrainian territory his forces had captured.
Thus, in a series of swift moves, Putin:
- Turned Russia into an international pariah;
- Plunged its economy into chaos through Western sanctions;
- Infuriated millions of Russians through his draft;
- Brought NATO to the brink of all-out war; and
- Humiliated Russia by exposing its military incompetence.
Putin is reportedly not inclined to heed contrary advice. But he would do well to heed that of Niccolo Machiavelli, the father of political science. In his masterwork, The Discourses, Machiavelli warned:
When a prince becomes universally hated, it is likely that he’s harmed some individuals—who thus seek revenge. This desire is increased by seeing the prince is widely loathed.
A prince, then, should avoid incurring such universal hatred. By doing this, he protects himself from such vengeance-seekers.
Niccolo Machiavelli
Another Communist dictator—Joseph Stalin—may have paid the price for violating this counsel.
Throughout his 30-year reign over the Soviet Union, Stalin was responsible for the deaths of at least 20 million men, women and children.
These deaths resulted from executions, a man-made famine through the forced collectivation of harvests, deportations and imprisonment in Gulag camps.
Joseph Stalin
Robert Payne, the acclaimed British historian, vividly portrayed the crimes of this murderous tyrant in his brilliant 1965 biography, The Rise and Fall of Stalin.
According to Payne, Stalin was planning yet another purge during the last weeks of his life. This would be “a holocaust greater than any he had planned before.
“The chistka [purge] had become a ritual like a ceremonial cleansing of a temple performed every three or four years according to ancient laws.
“The first chistka had taken place during the early months of the [Russian] revolution. It had proved so salutary that periodical bloodbaths were incorporated in the unwritten laws of the state.
“This time there would be a chistka to end all chistkas, a purging of the entire body of the state from top to bottom. No one, not even the highest officials, was to be spared.”
Yet Stalin did nothing to calm their fears. He often summoned his “comrades” to the Kremlin for late-night drinking bouts, where he freely humiliated them.
“What would you do without Stalin?” he asked one night. “You’d be like blind kittens.”
Then, on January 13, 1953, the Soviet Union’s two government-controlled newspapers—Pravda (“Truth”) and Izvestiya (“News”)—announced that a sinister plot by nine Jewish doctors had been uncovered.
Its alleged object: No less than the murder of Joseph Stalin himself.
Stalin’s closest associates—veteran observers of past purges—quickly realized that another was about to descend. And there could be no doubt who its chief victims would be.
Then, on March 4, 1953, Moscow Radio announced: “During the night of March 1-2, while in his Moscow apartment, Comrade Stalin suffered a cerebral hemorrhage affecting vital areas of the brain.”
Death came to Stalin on March 5.
The imprisoned doctors were quickly released.
Officially, the cause was ruled a cerebral hemorrhage. Stalin was 73 and in poor health from a lifetime of smoking and little exercise.
But it’s equally possible that he died of unnatural causes.
In the 2004 book, Stalin’s Last Crime, Vladimir P. Naumov, a Russian historian, and Jonathan Brent, a Yale University Soviet scholar, assert that he might have been poisoned.
If this happened, the occasion was during a final dinner with four members of the Politburo: Lavrenti P. Beria, chief of the secret police; Georgi M. Malenkov, Stalin’s immediate successor; Nikita S. Khrushchev, who eventually rose to the top spot; and Nikolai Bulganin, minister of the armed forces.
Lavrenti Beria
The authors believe that, if Stalin was poisoned, the most likely suspect was Beria. And the method: Slipping warfarin, a tasteless and colorless blood thinner also used as a rat killer, into his glass of wine.
In Khrushchev’s 1970 memoirs, he quotes Beria as telling Vyacheslav M. Molotov, another Politburo member, two months after Stalin’s death: “I did him in! I saved all of you.”
With Vladimir Putin making himself universally hated and threatening to bring nuclear destruction upon Russia itself, this would be a good time for Communist history to repeat itself.
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HOW DEMOCRATS CAN DEFEAT EXTORTION: PART ONE (OF TWO)
In Bureaucracy, Business, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on January 17, 2023 at 12:10 amIt took 15 votes—and a series of humiliating concessions—for Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) to become Speaker of the House of Representatives.
All of the concessions he made were to the most Right-wing members of the House. And all of those members are fanatically dedicated to destroying whatever legacy President Joseph R. Biden hopes to leave.
At the top of their list: Impeaching Biden.
Republicans refused to impeach and convict Donald Trump after he incited a deadly riot against the United States Capitol Building. But they’re eager to remove Biden for what they consider the most impeachable offense of all.
He defeated a Republican candidate for President.
President Joseph Biden
And not just any Republican candidate: The candidate who had made no secret of his desire to be “President-for-Life.”
During the mid-term elections, Republicans had expected to sweep both the House and Senate. This would have given them virtual control of the government.
For the House is the body that initiates revenue bills and impeaches federal officials. And the Senate holds the power to confirm Presidential appointments that require consent, and to provide advice and consent to ratify treaties.
But Democrats went on a rare offensive and rightly attacked Republicans as intending to gain absolute control over the lives of their fellow Americans. And voters rejected the candidates favored by Trump for local and federal offices.
Thus, Republicans had to settle for controlling the House.
Even so, they intend to abuse their new-found powers to the utmost. Among their topmost goals:
Hunter Biden
Center for Strategic & International Studies, CC BY 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
If Democrats follow their usual mantra of “When they go low, we go high,” they will cower before Republican aggression and sacrifice their legislative agenda.
Yet they can snatch victory from the jaws of impending defeat—providing they are willing to follow the advice Robert F. Kennedy offered for combating the Mafia: “If we do not attack organized criminals with weapons and techniques as effective as their own, they will destroy us.”
Counterattack Strategy #1: Attack Republicans as traitors selling out the country to Vladimir Putin
Numerous Republicans have taken “campaign contributions”—i.e., bribes—from Russian oligarchs linked to Putin.
One Russian oligarch—Len Blavatnik—has given millions of dollars to top Republican leaders—such as Senators Mitch McConnell (Kentucky), Marco Rubio (Florida) and Lindsey Graham (South Carolina).
In just 2017, Blavatnik contributed the following to GOP Political Action Committees (PACs):
The Biden administration need not ask the CIA or FBI to unearth these contributions. They can be easily found within the files of the Federal Election Commission (FEC).
Putin’s monies have been well-spent: About 90 House Republicans—out of a total of 213—attended Volodymyr Zelensky’s address to Congress on December 21, according to CQ Roll Call. Some who did spent much of the speech on their phones.
Many Republicans—such as House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, who in 2021 received about $255,000 from Blavatnik—have openly threatened to end all funding for Ukraine’s heroic struggle against Russian aggression.
Kevin McCarthy
This would prove an effective technique. From the end of World War II to the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Republicans successfully attacked Democrats as at least potential sellouts, if not actual traitors.
The advantage of attacking Russian-bribed Republicans today is that even some “Reagan Republicans”—such as James Kirchick, a conservative reporter, foreign correspondent, author, and columnist—have openly denounced this treason.
Thus, the White House could ignite an internal conflict within the Right by pitting Republicans against each other.
Counterattack Strategy #2: Concede NOTHING to Republicans
Donald Trump shut down the Federal Government on December 22, 2018, because Democrats refused to finance his useless border wall against Mexico.
So Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi shut down his State of the Union appearance.
As CNN political analyst Chris Cillizza noted: “What Pelosi seems to understand better than past Trump political opponents is that giving ANY ground is a mistake. You have to not only stand firm, but be willing to go beyond all political norms—like canceling the SOTU—to win.”
His ego strung, Trump reopened the government.
And with Republicans threatening to not raise the debt ceiling unless their extortionate demands are met, the White House can effectively counter this danger:
Deduct from the budget every dollar directed toward Republican states. This would vastly reduce the size of the Federal budget, since subsidizing these failed economies accounts for a substantial portion of the budget.
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