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In Bureaucracy, History, Politics, Social commentary on December 3, 2024 at 12:13 am
On April 27, 2020, Joe Scarborough offered an important insight about why most Americans ignored President Donald Trump’s crimes and outrages for so long:
“Back in January Joe Biden wrote an Op-Ed that the President was not prepared for this coming pandemic, and things were going to get worse. And he said ‘Let your doctors talk. Let your scientists talk. Follow their lead.’
“…And it’s been one scam idea after another, that people then promoted on other networks, scam doctors promoting these scam solutions, claiming that everybody who had taken this malaria drug had been cured in certain hospitals. This is just the sort of thing that catches up to Donald Trump.
“I’ve said from the very beginning: You can lie about independent counsels, people won’t listen. You can lie about former FBI directors—“
MIKA BRZEZINSKI: “It doesn’t impact their lives.”
JOE SCARBOROUGH: “They’re still going to work, the kids are doing fine, they’ve got enough money to pay their rent, to pay their mortgage, You can even lie about the Ukraine call—they don’t really care.
“But all of these lies, all of these [COVID-19] scams that he’s been pushing…have been revealed as lies—not by the people on cable news, but by their doctors. By nurses they know. If you’ve got a doctor who’s been treating your family for 20-25 years, you’re going to believe that person more than a scam artist that’s pushing propaganda for Donald Trump on talk radio.“
On August 23, 2018, Trump, appearing on “Fox and Friends,” said: “I tell you what, if I ever got impeached, I think the market would crash, I think everybody would be very poor.”
Donald Trump
Thus, he appealed to the greed and fear of his voting base—and no doubt hoped to reach beyond it: “Keep me in power or you’ll all suffer for it.”
Then-White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders bragged, on June 4, 2018:
“Since taking office, the President has strengthened American leadership, security, prosperity, and accountability. And as we saw from Friday’s jobs report, our economy is stronger, Americans are optimistic, and business is booming.”
Many Congressional Republicans echoed this: The American people care only about the economy—and how well-off they are.
For eight years, Nazi Germany underwent such an epoch. Germans called it “The Happy Time.”
It began on January 30, 1933, when Adolf Hitler became Chancellor—and lasted until June 22, 1941, when Hitler invaded the Soviet Union.
Germans knew about the Nazis’ cruelty to the Jews, the conquests of Austria, Czechoslovakia and Poland, the mass arrests and concentration camps.
They didn’t care.
Frenzied Germans greet Adolf Hitler
The Gestapo didn’t have to watch everyone: German “patriots” gladly reported their fellow citizens—especially Jews—to the secret police.
As far as everyday Germans were concerned:
- The streets were clean and peaceful.
- Employment was high.
- The trouble-making unions were gone.
- Germany was once again “taking its rightful place” among ruling nations, after its catastrophic defeat in World War 1.
The height of “The Happy Time” came in June, 1940. In just six weeks, the Wehrmacht accomplished what the German army hadn’t in four years during World War 1: The total defeat of its longtime enemy, France.
Suddenly, French clothes, perfumes, delicacies, paintings and other “fortunes of war” came pouring into the Fatherland.
Most Germans believed der Krieg—“the war”—was over, and only good times lay ahead.
Then, on June 22, 1941, three million Wehrmacht soldiers slashed their way into the Soviet Union. The Third Reich was now locked in a death-struggle with a nation even more powerful than itself.
German soldiers in the Soviet Union
And then, on December 11, 1941—four days after Germany’s ally, Japan, attacked Pearl Harbor—Hitler declared war on the United States.
“The Happy Time” for Germans was over. Only prolonged disaster lay ahead.
Donald Trump has spent his life appealing to the greed or fear of those around him. For example:
- Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi personally solicited a political contribution from Trump around the same time her office deliberated joining an investigation of alleged fraud at Trump University and its affiliates.
- After Bondi dropped the Trump University case against Trump, he wrote her a $25,000 check for her re-election campaign.
- According to an April 14, 2019 story by ABC News, a nationwide review uncovered at least 36 criminal cases where Trump was invoked in direct connection with violent acts, threats of violence or allegations of assault.
- In nine cases, attackers hailed Trump in the midst or immediate aftermath of physically assaulting victims.
- In 10 more cases, perpetrators cheered or defended Trump while taunting or threatening others.
- And in another 10 cases, Trump and his rhetoric were cited in court to explain a defendant’s violent or threatening behavior.
But starting in January, 2020, Trump faced an enemy—to his re-election—that he couldn’t bribe or intimidate.
The deadly COVID-19 virus didn’t accept bribe-monies or grovel before a raging tyrant. As a result, 400,000 Americans died by the time Trump left office.
The Germans made a devil’s-bargain with Adolf Hitler—and paid dearly for it.
Millions of greedy Americans made a similar bargain with Donald Trump—and paid almost as dearly.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Military, Social commentary on November 22, 2024 at 12:11 am
The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 plunged the American Right into a depression.
Accusing Democrats of being “terrorist-lovers” just didn’t prove as profitable as accusing them of being “Communists.”
Then fate intervened.
The torch had barely gone out at the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics when Russian President Vladimir Putin began menacing the Ukraine.
Ukraine vs. Russia
Even while the Olympics played out on television, Ukrainians had rioted in Kiev and evicted their corrupt, luxury-loving president, Victor Yanukovych.
And that didn’t sit well with his “sponsor”—Putin.
Yanukovych had rejected a pending European Union association agreement. He had chosen instead to pursue a Russian loan bailout and closer ties with Russia.
And that had sat well with Putin.
Since the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991, Putin had yearned for its reestablishment. He had called that breakup “the greatest geopolitical tragedy of the 20th century.”
Vladimir Putin
Kremlin.ru, CC BY 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
Russia has long resisted Ukraine’s move towards European institutions—especially NATO.
So it was almost a certainty that Putin would retaliate.
And since late February, 2014, he began moving Russian troops into Ukraine and its autonomous republic, Crimea. Russia annexed Ukraine’s southern Crimean peninsula and backed separatists who captured large swathes of eastern Ukraine.
On December 3, 2021, the Washington Post reported: “The Kremlin is planning a multi-front offensive as soon as early next year involving up to 175,000 troops” against Ukraine.
And where there is activity by Russians, American Rightists are eager to turn such events to their own political advantage.
Right-wingers such as Senator Tom Cotton (R-AR): ”It is a result of a year of Joe Biden’s impotence and incompetence towards Russia in particular and in foreign policy more generally.”
Cotton had vigorously defended President Donald Trump’s attempted extortion of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in the face of Russian aggression.
In July, 2019, Trump told his acting chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, to withhold almost $400 million in promised military aid for Ukraine.
Then, on July 25, Trump telephoned Zelensky to “request” a “favor”: Investigate presumed 2020 Democratic Presidential Candidate Joe Biden and his son, Hunter, who had had business dealings in Ukraine.
Clearly implied in the call: Produce “dirt” on Biden—or you won’t get the military aid.
All of which overlooks a number of brutal political truths.
First, all great powers have spheres of interest—and jealously guard them.
For the United States, it’s Latin and Central America, as established by the Monroe Doctrine.
And just what is the Monroe Doctrine?
It’s a statement made by President James Monroe in his 1823 annual message to Congress, which warned European powers not to interfere in the affairs of the Western Hemisphere.
It has no legitimacy except the willingness of the United States to use armed force to back it up. When the United States no longer has the will or resources to enforce the Doctrine, it will cease to have meaning.
For the Soviet Union, its spheres of influence include the Ukraine. Long known as “the breadbasket of Russia,” in 2011, it was the world’s third-largest grain exporter.
Russia will no more give up access to that breadbasket than the United States would part with the rich farming states of the Midwest.
Second, spheres of influence often prove disastrous to those smaller countries affected.
Throughout Latin and Central America, the United States remains highly unpopular for its brutal use of “gunboat diplomacy” during the 20th century.
Among those countries invaded or controlled by America: Mexico, Cuba, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Columbia, Panama and the Dominican Republic.
The resulting anger has led many Latin and Central Americans to support Communist Cuba, even though its political oppression and economic failure are universally apparent.
Latin and Central America
Similarly, the Soviet Union forced many nations—such as Poland, Hungary and Czechoslovakia—to submit to the will of Moscow.
The alternative? The threat of Soviet invasion—as occurred in Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968.
Third, even “great powers” are not all-powerful.
In 1949, after a long civil war, the forces of Mao Tse-tung defeated the Nationalist armies of Chiang Kai-Shek, who withdrew to Taiwan.
China had never been a territory of the United States. Nor could the United States have prevented Mao from defeating the corrupt, ineptly-led Nationalist forces.
Even so, Republican Senators and Representatives such as Richard Nixon and Joseph McCarthy eagerly blamed President Harry S. Truman and the Democrats for “losing China.”
The fear of being accused of “losing” another country led Presidents John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson and Richard M. Nixon to tragically commit the United States to “roll back” Communism in Cuba and Vietnam.
Now Republicans—who claim the United States can’t afford to provide healthcare for its poorest citizens—want to turn the national budget over to the Pentagon.
They want the United States to “intervene” in Ukraine—even though this would mean going to war with the only nuclear power capable of turning America into an atomic graveyard.
Before plunging into conflicts that don’t concern us and where there is absolutely nothing to “win,” Americans would do well to remember the above-stated lessons of history. And to learn from them.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Military, Politics, Social commentary on November 21, 2024 at 12:11 am
In the United States, World War II—at least, that part of the war fought in Europe—used to be celebrated in movies and TV shows like “Combat!” and “The Rat Patrol.” Today, it’s largely forgotten, except by veterans groups and the conflict’s rapidly aging veterans.
But in the Soviet Union, “the Great Patriotic War” against Nazi Germany is still celebrated as the triumph of Soviet strength and determination against horrific odds and losses.
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine is unlikely to be remembered so fondly.
On April 28, 2006, Putin publicly stated that the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union was “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century.
“As for the Russian people, it became a genuine tragedy. Tens of millions of our fellow citizens and countrymen found themselves beyond the fringes of Russian territory.”
Putin was sounding a warning: He saw himself as Russia’s savior who would restore its lost empire.
Vladimir Putin
His invasion of Ukraine—officially called a “special military operation”—was intended as an important step toward that restoration.
Begun on February 24, the invasion targeted the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, in an attempt to overthrow the democratic government of President Volodymyr Zelensky.
Ukrainian troops were outgunned and outnumbered. As in the case of the Soviet Union in 1941, Western military analystss expected the attack to quickly succeed. The Biden administration offered to evacuate Zelensky to safety.
Zelensky refused: “The fight is here; I need ammunition, not a ride.”
But after weeks of combat, Russian forces retreated, stymied by ferocious Ukrainian resistance.
In July, the last city under Ukrainian control in Luhansk fell to Russia after weeks of artillery bombardment and street fighting. But the Russians made little progress as they tried to conquer the remainder of Donbas.
In late August, after weeks of buildup, Ukraine launched a counteroffensive in the southern region of Kherson. Ukraine deployed newly arrived missile systems supplied by the United States and other Western countries to destroy Russian ammunition dumps and a Russian air base in Crimea.
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.
Volodymyr Zelensky
On September 21, with Russian forces bogged down or retreating, Vladimir Putin announced the partial mobilization of 300,000 military reservists. All male citizens below 60 are now eligible to be drafted.
There are exceptions: Employees in IT and telecommunications, finance, “systemically-important” mass media outlets and interdependent suppliers, including registered media and broadcasters.
Still, 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.
During World War II, this would have been unthinkable: Whether driven by patriotism or a desire for vengeance on their German tormentors, Russians at all levels threw themselves into the conflict.
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:
“Our country possesses various means of destruction. When the territorial integrity of our nation is threatened, we, of course, will use all the means at our disposal to protect Russia and our people.”
To underscore his threat, he added: “Those who try to blackmail us with nuclear weapons should know that the weathervane can turn and point towards them.”
Putin’s threats have heightened world tensions and triggered speculation as to whether he would use nukes—against Ukraine or NATO countries, including the United States.
Volodymyr Zelensky thinks Putin is not bluffing.
President Joe Biden initially assured Americans there was no cause for concern. But since then the United States has stated that it has warned Putin that any use of nuclear weapons would trigger a catastrophic (non-specific) response against Russia.
Seen against the backdrop of Russia’s titanic victory in “the Great Patriotic War,” Putin’s repeated threats to use nuclear weapons actually underscore Russia’s weakness, not its strength.
Consider:
- “The Great Patriotic War” lasted almost four years—from June 22, 1941, to May 7, 1945.
- Russia’s opponent, Nazi Germany, was the most-feared military power in Europe.
- The war cost the Soviet Union at least 26 million lives before ending with the Red flag flying over Berlin.
- Almost the entire western half of the Soviet Union was devastated—first as the Germans overran territory from the Polish border to the gates of Moscow, and then again as the Soviets slowly pushed them back to Germany itself.
- For Russians, this was truly a “people’s war,” won through massive sacrifice and heroism—and without the use of nuclear weapons, which did not then exist.
Seventy-seven years after the end of World War II:
- Against the smaller and initially ill-equipped Ukrainian army, Russia has enjoyed a huge advantage in manpower and material.
- Yet so low is Russian morale that Putin has been forced to offer huge bribes to foreign mercenaries and even convicted criminals to refill his dispirited legions.
- Ukrainians, fueled by patriotism and a desire for vengeance, are fighting—and winning—their own version of “the Great Patriotic War.”
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In Bureaucracy, History, Military, Politics, Social commentary on November 20, 2024 at 12:05 am
On June 22, 1941, with 134 Divisions at full fighting strength and 73 more divisions for deployment behind the front, the German Wehrmacht invaded the Soviet Union.
Joseph Stalin, the longtime Soviet dictator, was stunned. The invasion had come less than two years after Germany had signed a non-aggression pact with the Soviet Union.
On August 23, 1939, Stalin had signed the German-Soviet Nonaggression Pact with German Fuhrer Adolf Hitler.
The reason: Each dictator got what he wanted—for the moment. Hitler was planning to invade Poland in a matter of days—and he wanted to avoid a war with the Soviet Union.
And Stalin got what he wanted: The eastern half of Poland.
Joseph Stalin
The agreement stunned the world. Since 1919, Nazis and Communists had fought bitter battles against each other in the streets of Germany during the Weimar Republic.
When this was replaced in 1933 by the Third Reich, German Communists were rounded up and imprisoned, if not murdered, by Hitler’s ruthless secret police, the Schutzstaffel (“Protective Squads”).
For the moment, however, all of that was conveniently forgotten.
And, surprising as it might seem, each dictator harbored a secret respect for the other.
After Hitler launched a blood-purge of his own private Stormtroopers army on June 30, 1934, Stalin exclaimed: “Hitler, what a great man! That is the way to deal with your political opponents!”
And Hitler was equally admiring of Stalin’s notorious ruthlessness: “After the victory over Russia,” he told his intimates, “it would be a good idea to get Stalin to run the country, with German oversight, of course. He knows better than anyone how to handle the Russians.”
Adolf Hitler
But Hitler hadn’t forgotten his life’s ambition to conquer the Soviet Union and utterly destroy “the scourge of Jewish-Marxism.”
Stalin received numerous warnings from the United States and Great Britain about the coming invasion. But he dismissed them as efforts by the West to trick him into violating the pact and turning Nazi Germany into his mortal enemy.
When informed of the attack, Stalin at first believed it was being made by rogue German forces. He refused to order an immediate counterattack.
Upon being convinced that the Wehrmacht intended to wage all-out war, he went into a funk in his dacha and shut himself off from everyone. To his closest associates he wailed: “Lenin left us a great inheritance and we, his heirs, have fucked it all up!”
Meanwhile, the Red Air Force was destroyed on the ground by the awesome Luftwaffe. And the Wehrmacht was advancing at a rate of 25 miles a day.
German soldiers marching through Russia
On July 3, after 10 days of brooding (and probably drinking heavily) in his dacha, Stalin finally took to the airways across the Soviet Union.
Never a spellbinding orator, Stalin spoke in slow and faltering tones. Nevertheless, his opening words were startling: “Comrades! Citizens! Brothers and sisters! Men of our army and navy! I am addressing you, my friends!”
Stalin had never addressed an audience this way, and he never would again.
He said the “peace loving” Soviet Union had been attacked by “fiends and cannibals” who wanted to restore the rule of the landlords and Czars. He claimed the non-aggression pact with Germany had given the army much-needed time to rearm and reorganize its forces.
This was accompanied by orders unprecedented in any other army: Those taken prisoner by the Germans were to be considered traitors—and shot or imprisoned. Those suspected of wounding themselves to avoid combat were also subject to summary execution. So were soldiers who had been legitimately wounded in battle but were suspected of inflicting those injuries.
The first two years of the war—1941 to 1943—proved disastrous for the Soviet Union.
During the first six months—June to December, 1941—German armies lured huge Soviet forces into gigantic “cauldron battles,” surrounding and exterminating them. An estimated 5.7 million prisoners of war (POWs) fell into German hands. Of these, at least 3.5 million died in custody.
But then the infamous Russian cold and snows of winter halted the Wehrmacht before Moscow.
In the summer of 1942 German forces once again mounted a ferocious offensive, driving all the way to the Volga—and Stalingrad.
But they became bogged down in bitter house-to-house fighting. With the arrival of winter, Soviet forces surrounded the Wehrmacht’s powerful Sixth Army. The besiegers became the besieged. On February 2, 1943, Field Marshal Friedrich von Paulus surrendered what remained of his army. The battle cost Germany 500,000 men, including 91,000 taken prisoner.
As the Red Army finally began to go over on the offensive, Stalin relaxed the iron controls that had long stifled creativity on the part of his commanders.
The infamous political commissars were removed from control over Russian generals. Gold braid and fancy uniforms were manufactured and rushed to the front as morale boosters.
The war would last another two years—costing the Soviet Union at least 26 million citizens—before it ended with the Red flag flying over Berlin.
Almost the entire western half of the Soviet Union was devastated—first as the Germans overran territory from the Polish border to the gates of Moscow, and then again as the Soviets slowly pushed them back to Berlin—the capital of the Third Reich itself.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Military, Politics, Social commentary on November 1, 2024 at 12:09 am
After taking office as President on January 20, 2017, Donald Trump continued to hurl threats of violence against those he hates.
“Trump’s language of violence started with immigrants when he launched his presidential campaign in 2015,” wrote Washington Post Reporter Eugene Scott. “There is a direct line from his language to real violence against immigrants and other innocent Americans caught in the maniacal mass shootings of the past year.
“And this cancer is spreading: to Congress, to the media, to the intelligence community, to foreign allies. There is no end in sight as Trump becomes increasingly unhinged and the GOP remains frozen in abject silence.”
On October 2, 2019, Journalist Nina Burleigh wrote: “Since 2015, TV-watching Americans have been subject to the deimatic spectacle of more than 400 rallies (at least 80 since his election) in which Trump sometimes openly and more often coyly urged supporters to violence. These spectacles have conditioned many Americans to fear him and his more enthusiastic supporters.”
Supporters giving the “Seig Heil” salute to Donald Trump
“Over the last few days, the President’s rhetoric of violence and hate has spread,” stated an October 3, 2019 press release by America’s Voice, a liberal immigration group.
“As Jamelle Bouie noted yesterday, ‘Over the weekend, in a rage over impeachment, President Trump accused Representative Adam Schiff of ‘treason,’ promised ‘Big Consequences’ for the whistle-blower who sounded the alarm about his phone call with President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine and shared a warning — from a Baptist pastor in Dallas — that impeachment ‘will cause a Civil War like fracture in this Nation from which our Country will never heal.’”
Trump’s opponents have good reason to fear. And not simply the public demonstrations by the President’s fanatical base. They should fear the secret fantasies of the Right.
Those secret fantasies have been revealed in a series of Right-wing videos featuring graphic acts of violence against those whom the Right—and Trump—hate.
From October 10 to 12, 2019, attendees of the American Priority Conference at the Trump National Doral Miami resort enjoyed many of those videos.
One of these, “The Trumpsman,” featured a digitized Trump shooting, stabbing and setting fire to such liberals—and even conservatives—as:
- Former President Bill Clinton
- Former Vice President Joe Biden
- Former Democratic Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton
- Democratic Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi
- Former President Barack Obama
- Vermont United States Senator Bernie Sanders
- Utah Senator Mitt Romney
- The late Arizona Senator John McCain
And legitimate news media—such as CBS, BBC, ABC, CNN, The New York Times and The Washington Post—were also depicted as among Trump’s victims.
The video was produced by Rightists who believed it reflected what Donald Trump would do to his enemies if only he could get away with it. And given his near-constant calls for violence against his critics, they were absolutely correct.
But the video’s critics were wrong to call for its suppression.
On the contrary—it should have bene widely seen for what it was: The Mein Kampf of Donald Trump and his fanatical followers, in and outside the Republican party.
Like Adolf Hitler’s autobiography, it depicted the future America can expect if the Right gains the power to live out its murderous fantasies. And the fantasy Right-wingers prize most: The brutal extermination of everyone who refuses to submit to their Fascistic tyranny.
“The Trumpsman” is part of a growing genre of pro-Trump memes that routinely earn thousands of views on sites like YouTube and Twitter. Many superimpose the faces of Trump and his chief supporters slaughtering Democrats, liberal celebrities and/or members of the media.
The event’s organizer, Alex Phillips, hurriedly claimed that the “unauthorized video” was shown “in a side room” at the American Priority Conference.
But there was an upside to this exercise in Right-wing porn. Democrats could have run TV ads showing limited clips from “The Trumpsman” video.
Unfortunately, the majority of Democrats lack the courage to attack their Right-wing enemies with the same ruthlessness used against them. That’s why they lost most Presidential elections of the 20th century.
Americans should be constantly warned: These videos were not made by liberals to parody the values and goals of the Republican party and its Right-wing supporters.
These videos were made by Right-wingers—and reflect the true values and intentions of the Republican party and its Right-wing supporters.
The boiler-plate rhetoric that gushes out of Republican conventions—about love of family, God and flag—is the public mask of the Right.
The videos that depict Right-wingers ruthlessly slaughtering anyone who dares to disagree with them reflect the real face of the Right.
Of course, most Americans never imagined that a President would:
- Refuse to accept the results of a legitimate Presidential election;
- Spend four years lying that he had lost through massive voter fraud;
- Incite a mob to attack Congress while it counted Electoral College votes—which he knew proved he had lost in 2020.
Trump’s opponents should stop deluding themselves that: “Surely he’ll never do that.”
Whatever they fear he will do, he will do.
Like all predators, he will stop only when he meets a stronger opponent.
Germans—and the rest of the world—learned that about Adolf Hitler. But only when it was too late.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Military, Politics, Social commentary on October 31, 2024 at 12:14 am
On November 9, 1923, Nazi Party Fuhrer Adolf Hitler tried to overthrow the government in Munich, Bavaria.
About 2,000 Nazis marched to the center of Munich, where they confronted heavily-armed police. A shootout erupted, killing 16 Nazis and four policemen.
Hitler was injured during the clash, but managed to escape. Two days later, he was arrested and charged with treason.
Put on trial, he found himself treated as a celebrity by a judge sympathetic to Right-wing groups. He was allowed to brutally cross-examine witnesses and even make inflammatory speeches.
At the end of the trial, he was convicted of treason and sentenced to five years’ imprisonment. Of this he served only nine months before being released.
Hitler used his time in Landsberg Prison, in Bavaria, to write his infamous book, Mein Kampf–—“My Struggle.” Part autobiography, part political treatise, it laid out his future plans—for a revitalized Germany and the conquest of other nations.
Adolf Hitler leaving Landsberg Prison, December, 20, 1924
Published in 1925, it was long ignored by all but the most fanatical Nazis. But as Hitler gained increasing numbers of votes in a series of elections, many people—inside and outside Germany—began paying attention to its contents.
By 1939 it had sold 5,200,000 copies and had been translated into 11 languages.
Most of those who bought the book never read it. Its style was bombastic, repetitious and illogical. The first edition contained grammatical errors, reflecting a self-educated man.
Few who read it took Hitler’s intentions seriously. Comedians portrayed him as a wildly gesturing crank who screamed constantly.
Hitler made no effort to hide his program for Germany under his rule. His candor led many people to believe he was a lunatic who could be safely ignored.
He was especially insistent on the need for eliminating world Jewry and conquering the Soviet Union.
On the former topic he wrote: “The nationalization of our masses will succeed only when, aside from all the positive struggle for the soul of our people, their international poisoners are exterminated.
“If at the beginning of the war and during the war twelve or fifteen thousand of these Hebrew corrupters of the nation had been subjected to poison gas, such as had to be endured in the field by hundreds of thousands of our very best German workers of all classes and professions, then the sacrifice of millions at the front would not have been in vain.”
A mere 17 years later, Hitler’s “Thousand-Year Reich” would translate those words into horrific action in a series of extermination camps equipped with gas chambers.
Hitler was equally insistent that Germany needed to find Lebensraum—“Living space”-–in the east. And by “east” he meant “Russia.”
Specifically: “And so we National Socialists consciously draw a line beneath the foreign policy tendency of our pre-War period. We take up where we broke off six hundred years ago.
“We stop the endless German movement to the south and west, and turn our gaze toward the land in the east. At long last we break off the colonial and commercial policy of the pre-War period and shift to the soil policy of the future.
“If we speak of soil in Europe today, we can primarily have in mind only Russia and her vassal border states.”
Hitler finally attained power on January 30, 1933. He realized that Germany was not yet strong enough to impose its will on other nations. So he set out on a secret crash program to make Germany the strongest military power in Europe.
In 1936, he set out on his “mission of Providence”:
- March, 1936: Ordering German troops to reoccupy the demilitarised zone between France and Germany (the Rhineland), in violation of the Versailles Treaty, which ended World War 1.
- July, 1936: Sending troops to Spain to support the Fascist army of General Francisco Franco.
- March 12, 1938: Occupying Austria and “unifying” it with Germany (the “Anschluss“).
- September 29, 1938: Bullying British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain into surrendering Czechoslovakia’s Sudetenland districts to Germany.
- September 1, 1939: Ordering the invasion of Poland, which unintentionally launched World War II.
- June 22, 1941: Ordering the invasion of the Soviet Union.
- 1941: Secretly ordering “the Final Solution of the Jewish Question,” resulting in the extermination of at least six million Jews.
Only after Hitler set out to conquer, first Europe, then the Soviet Union, did his victims and intended victims realize that Mein Kampf had given them a deadly warning. A warning too many of them had refused to heed.
By the time World War II ended:
- Fifty million men, women and children were died—most of them dying in agony.
- The Soviet Union, having crushed Nazi Germany, become a world power.
- Poland and eastern Europe—once captives of Nazi Germany—now found themselves captives of the Soviet Union.
- The United States, untouched by the war, emerged as the world’s superpower—and the only country strong enough to contain the Soviet Union.
But Adolf Hitler isn’t the only would-be dictator to give ample warning of his murderous intentions.
And, like most Germans in the Weimar Republic, which preceded Nazi Germany, most Americans refuse to take that warning seriously.
2016 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION, 2020 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION, ABC NEWS, ABRAHAM LINCOLN, ADAM SCHIFF, ADOLF HITLER, ALEXANDER VINDMAN, ALTERNET, AMERICABLOG, AP, BABY BOOMER RESISTANCE, BLOOMBERG, BUZZFEED, CBS NEWS, CNN, CROOKS AND LIARS, DAILY KOZ, DEMOCRATS, DONALD TRUMP, DRUDGE RETORT, FACEBOOK, FIVETHIRTYEIGHT, FOX NEWS NETWORK, GERRYMANDERING, HARPER’S MAGAZINE, HOUSE INTELLIGENCE COMMITTEE, HOWARD BAKER, HUNTER BIDEN, JOE BIDEN, JOEL MATHIS, KEN PAXTON, LYNDON JOHNSON, MARIA YOVANOVICH, MEDIA MATTERS, MEDICAID, MICK MULVANEY, MOTHER JONES, MOVEON, MSNBC, NATIONAL SECURITY COUNCIL, NBC NEWS, NEWSWEEK, NPR, POLITICO, POLITICUSUSA, RAW STORY, REPUBLICANS, REUTERS, RICHARD NIXON, ROBERT PAYNE, RUDI GIULIANI, RUSSIA, SALON, SEATTLE TIMES, SLATE, TALKING POINTS MEMO, THE ATLANTIC, THE CHICAGO SUN-TIMES, THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE, THE DAILY BEAST, THE DAILY BLOG, THE GUARDIAN, THE HILL, THE HUFFINGTON POST, THE LIFE AND DEATH OF ADOLF HITLER (BOOK), THE LOS ANGELES TIMES, THE NATION, THE NEW REPUBLIC, THE NEW YORK TIMES, THE VILLAGE VOICE, THE WASHINGTON POST, THINKPROGRESS, THIRD REICH, TIME, TRUTHDIG, TRUTHOUT, TWITTER, TWO POLITICAL JUNKIES, U.S. NEWS & WORLD REPORT, UKRAINE, UPI, USA TODAY, VOLODYMYR ZELENSKY, VOTER ID LAWS, WATERGATE, WONKETTE
In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on October 30, 2024 at 12:09 am
In a November 14, 2019 column, “Republicans Can’t Abandon Trump Now Because They’re All Guilty,” freelance journalist Joel Mathis warned: “Trump’s abuses of power mirror those of the GOP as a whole. Republicans can’t turn on him, because doing so would be to indict their party’s entire approach to politics.”
For example:
- At the state level, GOP legislatures have passed numerous voter ID laws over the last decade. Officially, the reason has been to prevent non-citizens from voting. In reality, the motive is to depress turnout among Democratic constituencies.
- When Democrats have won elections, Republicans have tried to block them from carrying out their policies. In Utah, voters approved Medicaid expansion at the ballot box—but Republicans nullified this.
- In North Carolina, Republican legislators prevented voters from choosing their representatives. Instead, Republican representatives chose voters through partisan sorting. In September, 2019, the state’s Supreme Court ruled the legislative gerrymandered district map unconstitutional.
The upshot of all this, wrote Mathis: “The president and his party are united in the belief that their entitlement to power allows them to manipulate and undermine the country’s democratic processes….The president and today’s GOP share the same sins. It will be difficult for them to abandon each other.”
On November 3, 2020, 81,255,933 Democratic voters outvoted 74,196,153 Republican voters to elect former Vice President Joseph Biden as the 46th President of the United States.
In the Electoral College—where Presidential elections are actually decided—Biden won by a margin of 306 to 232 votes for Trump.
Trump refused to accept that verdict. For the first time in American history, a President demanded a halt to the counting of votes while the outcome of an election hung in doubt.
States ignored his demand and kept counting.
Next, Trump ordered his attorneys to file lawsuits to overturn the election results, charging electoral fraud. Specifically:
- Illegal aliens had been allowed to vote.
- Trump ballots had been systematically destroyed.
- Tampered voting machines had turned Trump votes into Biden ones.
Throughout November and December, 61 cases were filed by Trump and his allies in state and federal courts—in Wisconsin, Arizona, Nevada, Michigan, Minnesota and Georgia, challenging the election results.
All were withdrawn by Trump’s attorneys or dismissed by Federal judges—some of them appointed by Trump himself.
Losing in the courts, Trump invited two Republican legislative leaders from Michigan to the White House to persuade them to stop the state from certifying the vote.
The Michigan legislators said they would follow the law.
On December 5, Trump called Georgia Governor Brian Kemp and asked him to call a special legislative session and convince state legislators to select their own electors that would support him, thus overturning Biden’s win.
Kemp refused, saying he lacked the authority to do so.
On December 8, the Supreme Court refused to hear Trump’s bid to reverse Pennsylvania’s certification of Biden’s victory. Representative Mike Kelly (R-PA), a Trump ally, argued that the state’s 2.5 million mail-in were unconstitutional.
The Court’s order read, “The application for injunctive relief presented to Justice [Samuel] Alito and by him referred to the Court is denied.” Although Trump had appointed three of the Court’s Justices, not one of them dissented.
Legal scholars almost unanimously agreed the Court’s action quashed Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election results through the courts.
The Supreme Court
On December 8, Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Missouri United States Senator Roy Blunt joined House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy in blocking a resolution asserting that Biden is the President-elect of the United States.
Still, Trump pressed on. On December 9, he asked the Supreme Court to block millions of Biden votes from Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
The request came in a filing with the court in a lawsuit brought by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton.
The Court refused.
* * * * *
The United States has indeed become a polarized country. But it’s not the polarization between Republicans and Democrats, or between conservatives and liberals.
It’s the polarization between Right-wing fanatics intent on enslaving everyone who doesn’t subscribe to their Fascistic beliefs and agenda—and those who resist being enslaved.
Those who hoped that Republicans would choose patriotism over partisanship got their answer on February 5. That was when the Republican-dominated Senate—ignoring the overwhelming evidence against him—acquitted Donald Trump on both impeachment articles.
It’s natural to regret that the United States has become a sharply divided nation. CNN has taken the lead in hand-wringing with a weepy-voiced PSA:
“Our trust has been broken—in our leaders, in our institutions and even some of our friends. And we are hurting, Now more than ever we need each other to listen, to learn from one another, and to rebuild those bonds. Because trust shows we believe in the good in each other. It’s what makes us human. And when we can trust one another, that is when we can truly achieve great things.”
But those who insist on the truth should realize there is only one choice:
Either non-Fascist Americans will destroy the Republican party and its voters that threaten to enslave them—or they will be enslaved by Republicans and their voters who believe they are entitled to manipulate and destroy the country’s democratic processes.
There is no middle ground.
2016 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION, 2020 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION, ABC NEWS, ABRAHAM LINCOLN, ADAM SCHIFF, ADOLF HITLER, ALEXANDER VINDMAN, ALTERNET, AMERICABLOG, AP, BABY BOOMER RESISTANCE, BLOOMBERG, BUZZFEED, CBS NEWS, CNN, CROOKS AND LIARS, DAILY KOZ, DEMOCRATS, DONALD TRUMP, DRUDGE RETORT, FACEBOOK, FIVETHIRTYEIGHT, FOX NEWS NETWORK, GERRYMANDERING, HARPER’S MAGAZINE, HOUSE INTELLIGENCE COMMITTEE, HOWARD BAKER, HUNTER BIDEN, JOE BIDEN, JOEL MATHIS, KEN PAXTON, LYNDON JOHNSON, MARIA YOVANOVICH, MEDIA MATTERS, MEDICAID, MICK MULVANEY, MOTHER JONES, MOVEON, MSNBC, NATIONAL SECURITY COUNCIL, NBC NEWS, NEWSWEEK, NPR, POLITICO, POLITICUSUSA, RAW STORY, REPUBLICANS, REUTERS, RICHARD NIXON, ROBERT PAYNE, RUDI GIULIANI, RUSSIA, SALON, SEATTLE TIMES, SLATE, TALKING POINTS MEMO, THE ATLANTIC, THE CHICAGO SUN-TIMES, THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE, THE DAILY BEAST, THE DAILY BLOG, THE GUARDIAN, THE HILL, THE HUFFINGTON POST, THE LIFE AND DEATH OF ADOLF HITLER (BOOK), THE LOS ANGELES TIMES, THE NATION, THE NEW REPUBLIC, THE NEW YORK TIMES, THE VILLAGE VOICE, THE WASHINGTON POST, THINKPROGRESS, THIRD REICH, TIME, TRUTHDIG, TRUTHOUT, TWITTER, TWO POLITICAL JUNKIES, U.S. NEWS & WORLD REPORT, UKRAINE, UPI, USA TODAY, VOLODYMYR ZELENSKY, VOTER ID LAWS, WATERGATE, WONKETTE
In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on October 29, 2024 at 12:13 am
On November 14, 2019, the CNN website showcased an opinion piece by Jane Carr and Laura Juncadella entitled: “Fractured States of America.”
And it opened:
“Some worry that it’s already too late, that we’ve crossed a threshold of polarization from which there is no return. Others look toward a future where more moderate voices are heeded and heard, and Americans can find better ways to relate to each other.
“Still others look back to history for a guide—perhaps for what not to do, or at the very least for proof that while it’s been bad before, progress is still possible.”
Then followed a series of anecdotes. The sub-headlines summed up many of the comments reported.
- “I was starting to hate people that I have loved for years.”
- “Voting for Trump cost me my friends.”
- “I feel like I’m living in hostile territory.”
- “Our children are watching this bloodsport.”
- “A student’s Nazi-style salute reflects the mate.”
- “Our leaders reflect the worst of us.”
- “I truly believe I will be assaulted over a bumper sticker.”
- “It already feels like a cold war.”
Abraham Lincoln warned: “A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this government cannot endure, permanently, half-slave and half-free. It will become all one thing or all the other.”
America now faces such a choice:
- To submit to the tyrannical aggression of a ruthless political party convinced that they are entitled to manipulate and undermine the country’s democratic processes; or
- To fiercely resist that aggression and the destruction of those democratic processes.
Consider the face-off between President Donald J. Trump and Army Lt. Colonel Alexander Vindman.
Vindman is a United States Army officer who served as the Director for European Affairs for the United States National Security Council. He was also a witness to Trump’s efforts to extort “a favor” from the president of Ukraine.
Lt. Colonel Alexander Vindman
Адміністрація Президента України [CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0)%5D
In July, 2019, Trump told his acting chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, to withhold almost $400 million in promised military aid for Ukraine, which faces increasing aggression from Russia.
On July 25, Trump telephoned Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to “request” a “favor”: Investigate 2020 Democratic Presidential Candidate Joe Biden and his son, Hunter, who has had business dealings in Ukraine.
The reason for such an investigation: To find embarrassing “dirt” on Biden.
“I was concerned by the call,” Vindman, who had heard Trump’s phone call, testified before the House Intelligence Committee. “I did not think it was proper to demand that a foreign government investigate a U.S. citizen, and I was worried about the implications for the U.S. Government’s support of Ukraine.
“I realized that if Ukraine pursued an investigation into the Bidens and Burisma, it would likely be interpreted as a partisan play which would undoubtedly result in Ukraine losing the bipartisan support it has thus far maintained. This would all undermine U.S. national security.”
Trump denounced Vindman as a “Never Trumper”—as if opposing his extortion attempt constituted a blasphemy. Republicans and their shills on the Fox News Network attacked him as well.
As a result, he sought physical protection by the Army for himself and his family.
(On February 7, 2020, he was reassigned from the National Security Council at Trump’s order.)
Donald Trump
* * * * *
On November 25, 2019, CNN political correspondent Jake Tapper interviewed Representative Adam Schiff on the coming impeachment trial.
What would it mean if Republicans uniformly oppose any articles of impeachment against Trump? asked Tapper.
“It will have very long-term consequences, if that’s where we end up,” replied Schiff.
“And if not today, I think Republican members in the future, to their children and their grandchildren, will have to explain why they did nothing in the face of this deeply unethical man who did such damage to the country.”
In his bestselling 1973 biography, The Life and Death of Adolf Hitler, British historian Robert Payne harshly condemned the German people for the rise of the Nazi dictator:
“[They] allowed themselves to be seduced by him and came to enjoy the experience….[They] followed him with joy and enthusiasm because he gave them license to pillage and murder to their hearts’ content. They were his servile accomplices, his willing victims.”
Like Hitler, Trump offered his Republican voters and Congressional allies intoxicating dreams: “I will enrich all of you. And I will humiliate and destroy those Americans you most hate.”
For his white, Fascistic, largely elderly audience, those enemies included blacks, atheists, Hispanics, non-Christians, Muslims, liberals, “uppity” women, Asians.
And, again like Hitler, his audience had always possessed these dreams. Trump offered them nothing new. As a lifelong hater, he undoubtedly shared their dreams. But as a lifelong opportunist, he realized that he could use them to catapult himself into a position of supreme power.
He despised his followers—both as voters and Congressional allies—for they were merely the instruments of his will.
For Trump’s supporters in the House and Senate, fear remains their overwhelming motivation. They fear that if they cross him—or simply don’t praise him enough—he will sic his fanatical base on them. And then they will lose their cozy positions—and the power and perks that go with them.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Medical, Politics, Social commentary, Uncategorized on October 3, 2024 at 12:12 am
Southern treason, racism and ignorance have given the United States five periods of infamy.
Infamy 4: 2000 – COVID-19 pandemic.
Donald Trump’s four-year Presidency produced a legacy of unprecedented racism, criminality, abuse of power and treason.
But the crime which brought him down was his unwillingness to protect Americans from the deadly COVID-19 pandemic.
The COVID-19 catastrophe slammed into the United States in January, 2020. It was the inevitable result of a natural disaster colliding with an evil and incompetent administration.
Trump’s “cures” for COVID-19 included denial, lies, Republican subservience, chaos, extortion, propaganda as news, quackery as medicine, demands to “re-open the country,” Ignoring the danger and—finally—resignation (“Learn to live with the virus”).
Trump quickly made the virus a referendum on himself. If you supported him, you didn’t wear a mask in public—even though no vaccine was available and hospitals were rapidly overwhelmed by debilitated and dying casualties of the virus.
On the July 21, 2021, edition of the PBS Newshour, Washington Post Columnist Jonathan Capehart outlined the catastrophic results of Trump’s behavior: “If we had had a president of the United States who took this seriously when this first came on the scene, if we had a Republican party that took this seriously enough to warn everyone, their constituents, saying, ‘Wash your hands, then put on a mask, then go get the vaccine,’ we wouldn’t be where we are right now.”
Jonathan Capehart
But neither Trump nor the Republican party urged Americans to “wash your hands, put on a mask, then go get the vaccine.”
It took the election of Joseph R. Biden to fashion a comprehensive attack on COVID-19.
By March, 2021, three vaccines—by Pfizer, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson—became available. A total of 90.4 million doses of these vaccines had been given. And 30.7 million Americans had been fully vaccinated against the virus.
But after a triumphant beginning, the pace of vaccinations slowed, then halted. By late July, 2021, only 49.6% of Americans had been fully vaccinated.
COVID-19 vaccination map – July 21, 2021
George Karabassis, CC BY 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
Many of those who had gotten one shot of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines refused to get the necessary second one.
What had happened?
“The people I know personally who are not getting the vaccine, for them, it was like, ‘They rushed this thing,'” theorized conservative New York Times columnist David Brooks on the PBS Newshour on July 23, 2021.
David Brooks
And leading the way to this catastrophe of self-destruction were the states of the South and Midwest: Mississippi (47.1%,), Alabama (50.5%), Arkansas (53.2%), and Tennessee (52.9%) with the lowest rates of residents who have gotten at least one shot.
By late July, 2021, three states—Florida, Texas and Missouri-–with lower vaccination rates accounted for 40% of all cases nationwide.
And colliding head-on with the refusals of millions to get vaccinated was the newer—and deadlier—Delta variant of COVID-19.
Just as the South unleashed the Civil War on America, it had ignited a new wave of COVID-19 on America.
Infamy 5: 2024 – Backing Trump again
Donald Trump is the only American President to be impeached twice—once for trying to extort “a favor” from Ukraine and again for inciting a violent attack on Congress.
On January 6, 2021, having failed to win re-election, he incited a deadly attack on Congressional members who were counting Electoral College votes. His goal: To intimidate them into throwing out the results and allowing him to become “President-for-Life.”
As a Presidential candidate in 2024, he has constantly repeated the lie that he won in 2020 but was cheated by massive vote fraud.
He has viciously attacked immigrants—both legal and illegal. During his September 11 debate with Vice President Kamala Harris, he falsely charged that legal Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, were “eating the dogs. They’re eating the cats. They’re eating the pets of the people that live there.”
The results: In Springfield, a string of bomb threats have shut down city and school buildings. Public events have been canceled. And state troopers have been sent in to guard students going to school.
Most ominously, Trump intends to implement Project 2025, the Right-wing Heritage Foundation’s blueprint for a Fascistic dictatorship. Under this:
- Career civil servants will be fired en masse and replaced by fanatical Right-wingers whose only loyalty is to Trump.
- The FBI director will be personally accountable to Trump—just as the KGB director is accountable to Vladimir Putin.
- The Department of Homeland Security will be abolished.
- Fossil fuels—the leading cause of global warming—will be favored and environmental regulations to combat climate change abolished.
- Abortion will be outlawed.
And, once again, it’s the South that threatens to end American democracy.
His attacks on nonwhites speak directly to Southerners’ longstanding racism. His attacks on the federal government feed into their resentment over losing the Civil War 159 years ago.
Most Southerners have abandoned democracy and lustily embraced the creation of a Right-wing dictatorship. Where they were once fiercely anti-Communist, they are now fiercely anti-liberal.
In 1776, Southerners’ fervent embrace of slavery almost aborted the Declaration of Independence and the birth of the American Republic.
In 2024, Southerners’ fervent embrace of racism, hatred and treason may signal its demise.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Medical, Politics, Social commentary on October 2, 2024 at 12:08 am
Throughout its history the South has been a hotbed of treason, racism and ignorance.
Today, it proudly continues holding fast to these traditions—as it threatens the entire country with a Fascistic dictatorship under Donald Trump.
Infamy 1: 1860 – 1865 – The Confederate States of America.
Union (blue) and Confederate (red) states: 1860 – 1865
Júlio Reis, CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
From 1860 to 1865, the South—Texas, Arkansas, Louisiana, Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Florida, South Carolina, North Carolina and Virginia—produced the greatest case of mass treason in America’s history.
According to The Destructive War, by Charles Royster, it wasn’t the cause of “states’ rights” that led 13 Southern states to withdraw from the Union in 1860-61. It was their demand for “respect,” which, in reality, translates into “e-g-o.”
“The respect Southerners demanded did not consist simply of the states’ sovereignty or of the equal rights of Northern and Southern citizens, including slaveholders’ right to take their chattels into Northern territory.
“It entailed, too, respect for their assertion of the moral superiority of slaveholding society over free society,” writes Royster.
It was not enough for Southerners to claim equal standing with Northerners; Northerners must acknowledge it. But this was something that the North was increasingly unwilling to do.
Finally, its citizens dared to elect Abraham Lincoln as President in 1860.
Lincoln and his new Republican party damned slavery—and slaveholders—as morally evil, obsolete and ultimately doomed. And they were determined to prevent slavery from spreading any further throughout the country.
Southerners found all of this intolerable.
Lincoln—during his First Inaugural Address—bluntly said that he did not intend to “directly or indirectly…interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so.”
Abraham Lincoln
But that was not enough for Southerners.
Only 10% of Southerners owned slaves. The other 90% of the population “had no dog in this fight,” as Southerners liked to say.
Yet they so admired and aspired to be like their “gentleman betters” that they threw in their lot with them.
On April 12, 1861—just over a month since Lincoln’s inauguration on March 4—Southern batteries opened fire on Union Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor, South Carolina.
This ignited the American Civil War, costing the lives of 750,000 Americans—at a time when the population of the United States stood at 31,443,321.
Four years later, Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia to Union General Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Courthouse.
Huge sections of the South had been laid waste by Union troops and more than 258,000 Southerners had been killed.
And slavery, the mainstay of Southern plantation life, had been ended forever.
The South had paid a high price for its investment in treason.
Infamy 2: 1964 – 2024 – Racism breeds Southern Republicans.
In 1964, Democratic President Lyndon B. Johnson pushed the Civil Rights Act through Congress, ending more than a century of blatant discrimination against blacks.
The South—which before the Civil War had been solidly Democratic—suddenly went solidly Republican.
To understand this mammoth shift, it’s vital to realize: In Lincoln’s time, the Republicans were the party of progressives.
The party was founded on an anti-slavery platform. Its members were thus reviled as “Black Republicans.” And until the 1960s, the South was solidly Democratic.
Democrats were the ones defending the status quo—slavery—and opposing the rights of freed blacks in the South of Reconstruction and long afterward.
When, in the early 1960s, Democrats championed the rights of blacks, Southerners bolted for the Republican party—which held to the same values that slavery/discrimination-supporting Democrats once did.
After signing the Civil Rights Act of 1964 into law, President Lyndon B. Johnson told an aide: “We have just lost the South for a generation.”
Johnson was wrong: A generation lasts 20 to 30 years. It’s been 60 years since the signing of the Act, and the South is still solidly within the Republican camp.
1968 election
Infamy 3: 2016 – Fascist racism elects Donald Trump as President.
Repeatedly, when asked why they supported Trump, his followers said: “He says what I’ve been thinking!”
And what Trump appealed to, above all else, was racist hatred.
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:
- Women
- Blacks
- Hispanics
- Asians
- Muslims
- The disabled
- Prisoners-of-war
Red States voted for Donald Trump – 2016
BobWyatt07, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
Whites comprised the overwhelming majority of the audiences at Trump rallies. Not all were racists, but many of those who were advertised it on T-shirts: “MAKE AMERICA WHITE AGAIN.”
And the vast majority of the white votes Trump got were in the South.
The 2008 election of Barack Obama as the first black President had shocked whites. His 2012 re-election had deprived them of the hope that 2008 had been an accident.
In 2016 macho, largely uneducated, anti-black Southern males couldn’t accept a woman—Hillary Clinton—occupying the White House.
They ignored reputable reports—later confirmed—that Trump’s campaign was backed by Russian oligarchs linked to Russian dictator Vladimir Putin, the former head of the KGB.
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“DEMOCRACY IST KAPUTT!”–FIRST GERMANY, NOW AMERICA: PART ONE (OF TWO)
In Bureaucracy, History, Politics, Social commentary on December 3, 2024 at 12:13 amOn April 27, 2020, Joe Scarborough offered an important insight about why most Americans ignored President Donald Trump’s crimes and outrages for so long:
“Back in January Joe Biden wrote an Op-Ed that the President was not prepared for this coming pandemic, and things were going to get worse. And he said ‘Let your doctors talk. Let your scientists talk. Follow their lead.’
“…And it’s been one scam idea after another, that people then promoted on other networks, scam doctors promoting these scam solutions, claiming that everybody who had taken this malaria drug had been cured in certain hospitals. This is just the sort of thing that catches up to Donald Trump.
“I’ve said from the very beginning: You can lie about independent counsels, people won’t listen. You can lie about former FBI directors—“
MIKA BRZEZINSKI: “It doesn’t impact their lives.”
JOE SCARBOROUGH: “They’re still going to work, the kids are doing fine, they’ve got enough money to pay their rent, to pay their mortgage, You can even lie about the Ukraine call—they don’t really care.
“But all of these lies, all of these [COVID-19] scams that he’s been pushing…have been revealed as lies—not by the people on cable news, but by their doctors. By nurses they know. If you’ve got a doctor who’s been treating your family for 20-25 years, you’re going to believe that person more than a scam artist that’s pushing propaganda for Donald Trump on talk radio.“
On August 23, 2018, Trump, appearing on “Fox and Friends,” said: “I tell you what, if I ever got impeached, I think the market would crash, I think everybody would be very poor.”
Donald Trump
Thus, he appealed to the greed and fear of his voting base—and no doubt hoped to reach beyond it: “Keep me in power or you’ll all suffer for it.”
Then-White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders bragged, on June 4, 2018:
“Since taking office, the President has strengthened American leadership, security, prosperity, and accountability. And as we saw from Friday’s jobs report, our economy is stronger, Americans are optimistic, and business is booming.”
Many Congressional Republicans echoed this: The American people care only about the economy—and how well-off they are.
For eight years, Nazi Germany underwent such an epoch. Germans called it “The Happy Time.”
It began on January 30, 1933, when Adolf Hitler became Chancellor—and lasted until June 22, 1941, when Hitler invaded the Soviet Union.
Germans knew about the Nazis’ cruelty to the Jews, the conquests of Austria, Czechoslovakia and Poland, the mass arrests and concentration camps.
They didn’t care.
Frenzied Germans greet Adolf Hitler
The Gestapo didn’t have to watch everyone: German “patriots” gladly reported their fellow citizens—especially Jews—to the secret police.
As far as everyday Germans were concerned:
The height of “The Happy Time” came in June, 1940. In just six weeks, the Wehrmacht accomplished what the German army hadn’t in four years during World War 1: The total defeat of its longtime enemy, France.
Suddenly, French clothes, perfumes, delicacies, paintings and other “fortunes of war” came pouring into the Fatherland.
Most Germans believed der Krieg—“the war”—was over, and only good times lay ahead.
Then, on June 22, 1941, three million Wehrmacht soldiers slashed their way into the Soviet Union. The Third Reich was now locked in a death-struggle with a nation even more powerful than itself.
German soldiers in the Soviet Union
And then, on December 11, 1941—four days after Germany’s ally, Japan, attacked Pearl Harbor—Hitler declared war on the United States.
“The Happy Time” for Germans was over. Only prolonged disaster lay ahead.
Donald Trump has spent his life appealing to the greed or fear of those around him. For example:
But starting in January, 2020, Trump faced an enemy—to his re-election—that he couldn’t bribe or intimidate.
The deadly COVID-19 virus didn’t accept bribe-monies or grovel before a raging tyrant. As a result, 400,000 Americans died by the time Trump left office.
The Germans made a devil’s-bargain with Adolf Hitler—and paid dearly for it.
Millions of greedy Americans made a similar bargain with Donald Trump—and paid almost as dearly.
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