Posts Tagged ‘WORLD WAR 11’
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Medical, Politics, Social commentary on July 21, 2022 at 12:10 am
Democrats want to believe a day will come when all races, colors and creeds will live together in harmony. Their policies aim at creating that sort of society.
Republicans have turned “illegal alien” into a battle cry.
This is especially true when inflation is high, jobs and housing are scarce, and local schools and hospitals are crammed with illegal aliens—who, by law, shouldn’t even be in the country.
Moreover, the “illegal alien” tagline often allows Republicans to sidestep criticism on even the most outrageous of their actions.
Example: The case of a 10-year-old Ohio girl who was raped—and had to travel to Indiana to obtain an abortion after the Supreme Court overturned Roe. v. Wade.
Ohio has a “heartbeat” law making abortion a crime after a fetal heartbeat is determined—usually within the first six weeks.
For Ohio’s Republican legislators and governor, the “rights” of a fetus far outweigh those of an actual human being—even if she is a child.
Ari Fleischer, former press secretary for President George W. Bush, recently said on Fox News that the girl’s illegal alien rapist from Guatemala was the villain, not the fetal heartbeat law.
“The agenda is to allow people to come into America without having to come here legally. If you start pointing things out like this, it makes it a moral question. And that’s why the press doesn’t want to face up to the fact it’s a moral issue that people should not be allowed in America unless they come here legally.”
Perhaps the most fatal reason why Democrats consistently lose elections: They believe—or want to believe—that voters are creatures of rationality.
Republicans learned long ago that most voters aren’t moved by appeals to their rationality. Instead, what counts with them is emotions—such as fear.
From the end of World War II in 1945 to the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the Enemy of Choice for Republicans was the Communists.
Millions of Americans were so pathologically frightened by “The Red Menace” that any Democratic politician libeled as a “Communist,” “Comsymp,” “fellow traveler” was considered at least a potential traitor, if not an actual one.
Among the Republican politicians who rode to victory on a wave of Red hysteria: Richard Nixon and Joseph McCarthy
Even as late as 1992, President George H.W. Bush and the Republican establishment charged that Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton might be a KGB plant. Their evidence: During his tenure at Oxford University in 1969-70, Clinton had briefly visited Moscow—and thus might have been turned into a “Manchurian Candidate.”
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Right-wingers had to settle for attacking their opponents as “liberals” and “soft on crime.” But these charges didn’t carry the same weight as “Communists” and “traitors.”
Then, on September 11, 2001, Republicans—and their Right-wing supporters—at last found a suitable replacement for the Red Menace: The Maniacal Muslim.
The World Trade Center on Septemeber 11, 2001
Led by President George W. Bush, Republicans used fear of Muslims to con and bully the nation into a needless, bloody, budget-busting war on Iraq.
The most immediate danger facing Democratic candidates: Their unwillingness to fight fire with fire.
Example 1: Republicans are now organizing a nationwide effort to suppress voter turnout among blacks and liberals.
Yet Democrats are not making any similar effort to suppress Right-wing turnout. Nor is the Biden Justice Department indicting those Republicans responsible for their anti-democratic efforts.
Example 2: On January 6, 2021, President Donald Trump—supported by at least 144 Republicans in the House and Senate—incited a treasonous coup to remain in office. This despite the overwhelming evidence that he had lost the 2020 election to Joseph Biden.
More than a year and a half has passed, and not one major Republican supporting such treason has been indicted for that infamy. Let alone tried, convicted and imprisoned.
The single biggest reason for the coming Democratic rout lies in the Biden administration’s toleration of Donald Trump’s continuing campaign of lies.
Trump continues to spread The Big Lie that he was robbed by a vast conspiracy—although not one of the more than 60 cases his lawyers brought before Federal judges proved this true.
Trump should have been indicted for treason by no later than mid-2021. Even then, the evidence was overwhelming that he had instigated the coup attempt. He’s clearly preparing to run again for President in 2024.
An indictment for treason would cast a heavy—if not fatal—blow to that decision. At the very least, Trump would be forced to mount a feverish—and expensive—defense.
And even many of his most fanatical supporters would question the wisdom of voting for a man who might well become a Federal prison inmate.
America now stands at the point where the German Weimar Republic stood in 1932: With an aged President (Paul von Hindenburg) unable—or unwilling—to cope with a surging Fascistic movement (led by Adolf Hitler).
The results of that collective failure destroyed Germany and left 60 million dead around the world.
The United States cannot afford to make that same fatal mistake.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Medical, Politics, Social commentary on July 20, 2022 at 12:10 am
There are many reasons why Democrats consistently lose elections.
A major one: Democrats believe that people can be better than they are—and, given the chance, want to become better than they are.
Republicans realize that most people like themselves as they are—and don’t want to change. At least, not in the altruistic ways Democrats envision.
If they want to change anything about themselves, it’s strictly at the materialistic level: More money, lower prices, more big-ticket toys.
Susan Page, Washington Bureau Chief for USA TODAY, summed up the popularity of the “Greed Appeal” to voters on the March 13, 2020 edition of “Washington Week in Review”:
“USA Today has conducted a poll about the economic concerns that are out there….And Congress—you’re seeing fear in this country about the economy.
“In fact, when we did this poll this week about how Americans’ lives have been affected by the Coronavirus, people expressed more concern about the economic and financial effect than they did about the health effect. And you know, that goes to why this matters so much to President Trump.
“How many voters have you talked to who said, you know, I don’t really like President Trump’s tweets, but I like what I see happening in my 401(k)? And when they look at their 401(k) this week, it may not look quite as bright as it did before.”
Democrats expect people to rise above their worst selves and embrace a higher, altruistic cause—civil rights, abortion rights, healthcare for all.
Republicans look for those who are comfortable in their racism, their greed, their hatred for women. They don’t try to reform them—they encourage them in their racism, greed and misogyny.
This began long before Donald Trump became a Presidential candidate in 2016.
When Richard Nixon announced his candidacy for President in 1968, he pursued what was euphemistically termed “a Southern strategy.”
In reality, this was aimed to exploit whites fear and hatred of blacks.
In a now-infamous 1981 interview, Right-wing political consultant Lee Atwater explained how this worked.
“You start out in 1954 by saying, ‘Nigger, nigger, nigger.’ By 1968 you can’t say ‘nigger’—that hurts you, backfires.
“So you say stuff like, uh, forced busing, states’ rights, and all that stuff, and you’re getting so abstract.
“Now, you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is, blacks get hurt worse than whites….
“‘We want to cut this,’ is much more abstract than even the busing thing, uh, and a hell of a lot more abstract than ‘Nigger, nigger.’
“So anyway you look at it, race is coming on the back burner.”
Lee Atwater
But blacks have by no means been the only targets—and victims—of Republican hate campaigns. A partial list of these would include:
- Liberals
- Women
- Socialists
- Secularists
- Disabled
- Environmentalists
- Hispanics
- Gays
- Lesbians
And now transgenders.
Republicans are experts at inciting hatred—and reaping huge gains in power as a result.
There can be no better example of a politician who has played successfully on the hatred of American voters than Donald Trump. If Barack Obama was the 2008 candidate of “Hope and Change,” then Trump was the 2016 candidate of “Hate and Fear.”
From June 15, 2015, when he launched his Presidential campaign, until October 24, 2016, Trump fired almost 4,000 angry, insulting tweets at 281 people and institutions that had somehow offended him.
Donald Trump
The New York Times needed two full pages of its print edition to showcase them.
Among his targets:
- Hillary Clinton
- The New York Times
- President Barack Obama
- CNN
- Actress Meryl Streep
- The Washington Post
- Singer Neil Young
- Democrats
- Actor Arnold Schwarzenegger
- Republicans
- Comedian John Oliver
- The State of New Jersey
- Beauty pageant contestants
Others he clearly delighted in insulting during the campaign included:
- Women
- Blacks
- Hispanics
- Asians
- Muslims
- The disabled
- Prisoners-of-war
Democrats want to believe a day will come when all races, colors and creeds will live together in harmony. Their policies aim at creating that sort of society.
Republicans know that most people instinctively feel comfortable with those who most resemble themselves. And they don’t seek out those who differ from themselves.
That’s why—in schools and prisons—whites sit mostly with whites, blacks sit mostly with blacks, and Hispanics sit mostly with Hispanics.
And if most Americans feel uncomfortable with fellow Americans who don’t resemble themselves, they are even more intolerant toward foreigners who don’t.
This is especially true when inflation is high, jobs and housing are scarce, and local schools and hospitals are crammed with illegal aliens—who, by law, shouldn’t even be in the country.
For these Americans, the Democrats’ “Kumbaya” message of love and tolerance falls on deaf ears. By contrast, Republicans’ cries of “Get rid of the illegal aliens!” ring loud and clear.
Illegal aliens crossing into the United States
Moreover, the “illegal alien” tagline often allows Republicans to sidestep criticism on even the most outrageous of their actions.
Example: The case of a 10-year-old Ohio girl who was raped—and had to travel to Indiana to obtain an abortion after the Supreme Court overturned Roe. v. Wade.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Medical, Politics, Social commentary on July 19, 2022 at 12:11 am
If you’re wondering what’s going to happen during the mid-term elections this November—and what will happen during the Presidential election of 2024—you can stop wondering.
The Democrats are going to lose—first the House (and maybe the Senate) on November 8. Then they’re going to lose the Presidential election on November 5, 2024.
Why?
Because Republicans understand the darker sides of human nature far better than Democrats—and don’t hesitate to take full advantage of them.
Democrats believe that people can be better than they are—and, given the chance, want to become better than they are.
Republicans realize that most people like themselves as they are—and don’t want to change. At least, not in the altruistic ways Democrats envision.
If they want to change anything about themselves, it’s strictly at the materialistic level: More money, lower prices, more big-ticket toys.
They may claim concern for others, but if given a choice between their pocketbook and a higher goal, most will vote for their pocketbook.
A first-rate example of this appeared on The PBS Newshour on July 15, during an exchange between conservative New York Times columnist David Brooks and Jonathan Capehart, associate editor for the Washington Post.
David Brooks (left) and Jonathan Capehart (right) on the PBS Newshour
Host William Brangham led off the exchange:
“I want to switch, Jonathan, to this issue of the continued fallout of the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade. And Democrats seem to believe that this could be one of the things that might give them at least some trace of a fighting chance in the midterms.
“And we saw we this week this sort of horrendous case of a young 10-year-old girl who had been raped. She got pregnant. She then had to leave her state [Ohio] and go to another state [Indiana] where abortion would still be allowed.
“And GOP officials tried to make hay of it. They doubted that that story really existed. The local [Attorney General] said, we’re going to go after the doctor that performed this.
“Do you think that—that issue and the extremity of the way that this is being handled will actually benefit Democrats?”
Capehart: “It should. The idea that we’re talking about violence against a child, and then being forced by the state to give birth to this child, going to another state so she can terminate that pregnancy, and then being persecuted and prosecuted by the state for doing that….
“We are in “Handmaid’s Tale” territory here. We are turning into Gilead. And if there are people out there who are upset by the Supreme Court decision, by what Republican legislators around the country in states and localities are doing to further restrictions and bans on abortion.
“I don’t know what else could push people to the polls more than not just being stripped of a constitutional right, but having your right to — right to freedom, right to privacy, right to liberty not just taken away, but local officials doing everything they can to ensure that you don’t have autonomy over your own body.
“If that doesn’t get people out to the polls, I don’t know what will.”
Brangham then turned to Brooks:
“I mean, David, this was an incredibly extreme case, in some ways crystallized the sharpness and the horribleness of this division in this country.
“Do you think it will redound to the Democrats’ benefit?”
Brooks: “A little, but, frankly, not much.
“Now, abortion rights defenders, they should pursue their cause with the passion that they’re bringing to it….
“But there’s just a giant gap between what a lot of Democrats want to talk about and what the whole rest of the country wants to talk about. And if you ask people, what’s the most important issues, progressives want to talk about abortion and guns.
“The entire rest of the country, independents, conservatives, unaffiliated people, they want talk about the economy. And, for them, the economy is way up here. Jobs are number one. Inflation is number two.
“And so why is Joe Biden at 33 percent approval in the latest Times poll? It’s the economy. Why in the same poll do half of Hispanics support the Republicans now? The economy. These are earthquake numbers for Democrats…..
“But if Democrats, if they’re not talking about economic policy every day, then they’re just not talking about the policy that is clearly ranking number one with a vast majority of voters.”
No Republican has appealed more directly to greed as a motivator than Donald Trump.
On August 23, 2018, Trump, as President, offered additional evidence that he’s “not like other people.” He did so by giving an unprecedented reason why he shouldn’t be impeached: “I tell you what, if I ever got impeached, I think the market would crash, I think everybody would be very poor.”
White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders doubtless spoke for millions of Trump supporters when she said, 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.”
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on June 27, 2022 at 12:10 am
You can’t appreciate the ordeal—and the heroism—of Robert Francis “Beto” O’Rourke on May 25 if you know nothing about Roland Freisler.
Not that O’Rourke and Freisler have anything in common.
O’Rourke, 49, represented the Texas 16th Congressional district from 2013 to 2019. A Democrat, he ran for the United States Senate in 2018 and for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2020. He is now the Democratic nominee for the 2022 Texas governorship.
Robert “Beto” O’Rourke
Gage Skidmore, CC BY-SA 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
Freisler (October 30, 1893 – February 3, 1945) was a German Nazi jurist, judge and politician who served as the State Secretary of the Reich Ministry of Justice from 1934 to 1942 and President of the People’s Court from 1942 to 1945.
His mastery of legal texts, verbal force and fanatical commitment to Nazi ideology made him the most-feared judge in Nazi Germany. He was an admirer of Andrei Vyshinsky, the chief prosecutor of the Stalinist purge trials, and reportedly copied his demeanor.
Friesler demanded strict penalties against “race defilement”—sexual relations between “Aryans” and “inferior races”—designating this as “racial treason.”
Between 1942 and 1945, Freisler ordered 5,000 people executed. These included approximately 200 people hanged for alleged involvement in the July 20, 1944, plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler. Ninety per cent of all cases brought before him resulted in death or life imprisonment.
Freisler’s treatment of these defendants was especially brutal and humiliating. During the trial of Erwin von Witzleben, the former field marshal tried to hold up his trousers because he had been given oversized and beltless clothing. Freisler yelled at him: “You dirty old man, why do you keep fiddling with your trousers?”
On February 3, 1945, an American bombing raid on Berlin forced Freisler to adjourn proceedings and order the prisoners before him be taken to an air raid shelter. But he stayed behind to gather files before leaving.
A bomb struck the court building, and while Freisler hurriedly gathered his documents, a masonry column crushed him. He died instantly, and his flattened remains were found beneath the rubble.
Roland Freisler
Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-J03238 / CC-BY-SA 3.0, CC BY-SA 3.0 DE <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/de/deed.en>, via Wikimedia Commons
Among the files he clutched was that of Fabian von Schlabrendorff, a member of the July 20 plot who faced execution. Because Freisler died, Schlabrendorff, survived the war.
When Freisler was brought to Lützow Hospital, a worker commented: “It is God’s verdict.”
Now, fast forward 77 years to a different country—but the same Fascistic mentality.
On May 24, 2022, 18-year-old Salvador Ramos, armed with an AR-15 assault rifle, entered Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas. He shut himself inside two adjoining classrooms and fatally shot 19 students and two teachers and wounded 17 other people.
He remained in the school for more than an hour before members of the United States Border Patrol Tactical Unit fatally shot him.
The next day, Republican Texas Governor Greg Abbott staged a press conference in Uvalde. Joining him were Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick, House Speaker Dade Phelan, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and Texas United States Senators John Cormyn and Ted Cruz.
As always happens after a gun massacre, the assembled Republicans blamed it on everything but the ready availability of military-style firearms to virtually anyone—including criminals, terrorists and the mentally ill.
“Inevitably when there’s a murder of this kind, you see politicians try to politicize it, you see Democrats and a lot of folks in the media whose immediate solution is to try to restrict the constitutional rights of law-abiding citizens,” Ted Cruz told reporters. “That doesn’t work. It’s not effective. It doesn’t prevent crime.”
Paxton similarly rejected any effort at gun control: “I’d much rather have law-abiding citizens armed and trained so that they can respond when something like this happens because it’s not going to be the last time.”
This totally ignored the fact that armed Texas police, knowing they were facing a man armed with an AR-15 assault rifle, waited more than an hour to enter the school.
O’Rourke was having none of it. He had become outraged about gun violence after a 2019 mass shooting in his hometown, El Paso, killed 23 people.
About 15 minutes after Abbott began speaking to the media and fellow Republicans onstage, O’Rourke moved to the third row of the Uvalde High School auditorium. When Abbott concluded his comments and introduced Patrick, O’Rourke rose and walked to the stage and spoke directly to Abbott.
“The time to stop the next shooting is right now, and you are doing nothing,” O’Rourke said. “You are offering up nothing. You said this was not predictable. This was totally predictable when you choose not to do anything.”
Republicans onstage furiously reacted.
Cruz: “Sit down and don’t play this stunt.”
Patrick: “You’re out of line and an embarrassment.”
Uvalde Mayor Don McLaughlin: “I can’t believe that you’re a sick son of a bitch that would come to a deal like this to make a political issue.”
Police escorted O’Rourke out of the room. Just as some defendants had dared to warn Freisler he would face trial for war crimes, O’Rourke had a similar warning for Abbott:
“This is on you until you choose to do something different,” O’Rourke said, as he was escorted out of the room.
“This will continue to happen. Somebody needs to stand up for the children of this state or they will be continue to be killed just like they were killed in Uvalde yesterday.”
It remains to be seen whether history will hold Greg Abbott as accountable for mass deaths as it has Roland Freisler.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on April 12, 2022 at 12:12 am
The Right’s fixation on transgender “dangers” is only the latest in a long string of “enemies” painted by the Republican party.
During the 1960s and 1970s, the “enemy” was blacks. The key to winning votes of racist whites without appearing racist lay in what Republicans called “the Southern Strategy.”
It was this that won Richard Nixon the Presidency in 1968 and 1972 and the White House for George H.W. Bush in 1988.
In a now-infamous 1981 interview, Right-wing political consultant Lee Atwater explained how this worked:
“You start out in 1954 by saying, ‘Nigger, nigger, nigger.’ By 1968 you can’t say ‘nigger’—that hurts you, backfires.
“So you say stuff like, uh, forced busing, states’ rights, and all that stuff, and you’re getting so abstract.
“Now, you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is, blacks get hurt worse than whites….
“‘We want to cut this,’ is much more abstract than even the busing thing, uh, and a hell of a lot more abstract than ‘Nigger, nigger.’
“So anyway you look at it, race is coming on the back burner.”
Lee Atwater
At the end of his life, Atwater recognized the monster he had helped unleash.
Like Reinhard Heydrich—the designer of the “Final Solution” who, on his deathbed, begged forgiveness for his crimes—Atwater, in a 1991 article for Life, apologized to former Democratic Presidential nominee Michael Dukakis for the “naked cruelty” of the 1988 campaign.
But blacks have by no means been the only targets—and victims—of Republican hate campaigns. A partial list of these would include:
- Liberals
- Women
- Socialists
- Secularists
- Disabled
- Environmentalists
- Hispanics
- Gays
- Lesbians
And now transgenders.
George Orwell’s classic 1949 novel, 1984, serves as a better guide to Republican electioneering than any official statement of the GOP.
1984 is set in a futuristic dictatorship called Oceania, whose constantly alternating mortal enemies are Eurasia and Eastasia.
A daily fixture of life in Oceania is the “Two Minutes Hate.” During this, Party members must watch a film depicting the Party’s enemies and express their hatred for them in exactly two minutes.
Chief among these is Emmanuel Goldstein, who is obviously based on Leon Trotsky, the longtime antagonist of Joseph Stalin, dictator of the Soviet Union for almost 30 years.
The “Two Minutes Hate” serves as a form of brainwashing, whose purpose is to whip ordinary citizens into a frenzy of hatred and loathing for whoever the Party designates as it—and their—-mortal enemies.
Since the end of World War II, Republicans have regularly hurled the charge of “treason” against anyone who dared to run against them for office or think other than Republican-approved thoughts.
Republicans had been locked out of the White House from 1933 to 1952, during the administrations of Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman.
Determined to regain the Presidency by any means, they found that attacking the integrity of their fellow Americans a highly effective tactic.
During the 1950s, Wisconsin Senator Joseph R. McCarthy rode a wave of paranoia to national prominence–by attacking the patriotism of anyone who disagreed with him.
Joseph McCarthy
Elected to the Senate in 1946, he rose to national prominence on February 9, 1950, after giving a fiery speech in Wheeling, West Virginia:
“The State Department is infested with communists. I have here in my hand a list of 205—a list of names that were made known to the Secretary of State as being members of the Communist Party and who nevertheless are still working and shaping policy in the State Department.”
Americans were already growing increasingly fearful of Communism:
- Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin had not withdrawn the Red Army from the countries it had occupied in Eastern Europe during World War II.
- In 1948, the Soviet Union developed—and demonstrated—its own atomic bomb, an achievement U.S. scientists had claimed would not happen for at least a decade.
- In 1949, China fell to the triumphant armies of Mao Tse Tung.
But anti-communism as a lever to political advancement sharply accelerated following McCarthy’s speech. Republicans—resentful at being denied the White House since 1932—seized upon anti-communism as their passport to power.
No American—no matter how prominent—was safe from the accusation of being a Communist or a Communist sympathizer—”a Comsymp” or “fellow traveler” in the style of the era.
Among those accused:
- Secretary of State George C. Marshall, who had overseen America’s strategy for defeating Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan
- President Harry S. Truman
- Playwrights Lillian Hellman and Arthur Miller
- Actors Charlie Chaplin, Zero Mostel, Lloyd Bridges, Howard Da Silva, Edward G. Robinson and John Garfield
- Composers Arron Copland and Elmer Bernstein
- Physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, who presided over the creation of America’s atomic bomb
- Actresses Lee Grant, Delores del Rio, Ruth Gordon and Lucille Ball
- Journalists Edward R. Murrow and William L. Shirer, who had chronicled the rise of Nazi Germany
- Folksinger Pete Seeger
- Writers Irwin Shaw, Howard Fast, John Steinbeck and Dashiell Hammett
Even “untouchable” Republicans became targets for such slander.
The most prominent of these was President Dwight D. Eisenhower–labeled ”a conscious, dedicated agent of the Communist Conspiracy” by Robert Welch, who founded the John Birch Society in 1958.
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In History, Military, Politics, Social commentary on April 4, 2022 at 12:10 am
Victory Through Air Power is a 1943 Walt Disney animated Technocolor feature film released during World War II. It’s based on the book—of the same title—by Alexander P. de Seversky.
Its thesis is summed up in its title: That by using bombers and fighter aircraft, the United States can attain swift, stunning victory over its Axis enemies: Germany, Italy and Japan.
Although it’s not explicitly stated, the overall impression given is that, through the use of air power, America can defeat its enemies without deploying millions of ground troops.
The movie has long since been forgotten except by film buffs, but its message has not. Especially by the highest officials within the U.S. Air Force.
Although the Air Force regularly boasted of the tonnage of bombs its planes dropped over Nazi Germany, it failed to attain its primary goal: Break the will of the Germans to resist.
On the contrary: Just as the German bombings of England had solidified the will of the British people to resist, so Allied bombing increased the determination of the Germans to fight on.
Nor did the failure of air power end there.
On June 6, 1944—D-Day—the Allies launched their invasion of Nazi-occupied France.
The operation was the largest amphibious invasion in history. More than 160,000 troops landed—73,000 Americans, 61,715 British and 21,400 Canadians.
Allied air power bombed and strafed German troops out in the open. But it couldn’t dislodge soldiers barricaded in steel-and-concrete-reinforced bunkers or pillboxes. Those had to be dislodged, one group at a time, by Allied soldiers armed with rifles, dynamite and flamethrowers.
Soldier using flamethrower
This situation proved true throughout the rest of the war.
Then, starting in 1964, the theory of “Victory Through Air Power” once again proved a dud—in Vietnam.
From 1964 to 1975, seven million tons of bombs were dropped on Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia—more than twice the amount of bombs dropped on Europe and Asia in World War II.
Yet the result proved exactly the same as it had in World War II: The bombing enraged the North Vietnamese and steeled their resolve to fight on to the end.
Hanoi ordered the distribution of rifles to its citizens—to be used for shooting at American planes. Although this probably didn’t bring any planes down, it greatly increased morale among the populace.
American bomber
The belief that victory could be achieved primarily—if not entirely—through air power had another unforeseen result during the Vietnam war. It gradually sucked the United States ever deeper into the conflict.
To bomb North Vietnam, the United States needed air force bases in South Vietnam. This required that those bombers and fighters be protected.
So a force to provide round-the-clock security had to be maintained. But there weren’t enough guards to defend themselves against a major attack by North Vietnamese forces.
So more American troops were needed—to guard the guards.
North Vietnam continued to press greater numbers of its soldiers into attacks on American bases. This forced America to provide greater numbers of its own soldiers to defend against such attacks.
Eventually, the United States had more than 500,000 ground troops fighting in Vietnam—with no end in sight to the conflict.
But it isn’t enough to subdue a conquered nation—it must be occupied. And air power alone will not suffice.
Americans learned this to their dismay in Iraq after quickly taking Baghdad and subduing the forces of Saddam Hussein. On May 1, 2003, President George W. bush declared the war over.
Except that it wasn’t.
A nationwide insurgency quickly mushroomed—and there simply weren’t enough American troops to prevent or stop these attacks. These continued until the United States finally withdrew from Iraq in 2011.
Since February 24, Russian President Vladimir Putin has directed carpet-bombing attacks on Ukraine, Russia’s neighboring republic. They have leveled cities such as Mariupol with cluster bombs and phosphorus bombs.
Vladimir Putin
Kremlin.ru, CC BY 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
Cluster bombs contain small explosive bombs called “sub-munitions.” Dropped from an aircraft or fired from the ground, they open in the air and release the sub-munitions. This scatters a carpet of bombs over a large area without any degree of accuracy.
They don’t explode on impact but remain hazardous as anti-personnel landmines. Up to 87% of recorded victims are civilians.
And yet Ukrainians continue to fiercely resist. At least seven Russian generals have been killed, and NATO estimates that Russia has lost between 21,000 and 45,000 in dead and wounded.
Finally, pulverizing cities from the air comes with a cost—to those doing the pulverizing.
In the 1964 classic, Becket, England’s Chancellor, Thomas Becket (Richard Burton) has captured a French city for his king, Henry II (Peter O’Toole) and is about to lead a peaceful parade of soldiers into it.
“In my day,” complains an English baron, “we marched into a city and slaughtered the lot.”
“Yes—into a dead city,” retorts Becket. “I want to give the King living cities to increase his wealth.”
It’s more than a safe bet that Victory Through Air Power will prove as hollow a slogan in the future as it has in the past.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Military, Politics, Social commentary on March 30, 2022 at 12:14 am
Sometimes your worst enemies aid you in ways you could never help yourself.
From July 10 to October 31, 1940, hundreds of badly-outnumbered pilots of the British Royal Air Force (RAF) fought off relentless attacks by Germany’s feared Luftwaffe—since known as the Battle of Britain.
But Adolf Hitler wasn’t prepared to give up. He believed he could so terrorize Britons that they would insist that their government submit to German surrender demands.
From September 7, 1940 to May 21, 1941, the Luftwaffe subjected England—and especially London—to a ruthless bombing campaign that became known as The Blitz.
The undamaged St. Paul’s Cathredal, December, 1940
More than 100 tons of high explosives were dropped on 16 British cities.
During 267 days—almost 37 weeks—between 40,000 and 43,000 British civilians were killed. About 139,000 others were wounded.
Clearly, what Great Britain desperately needed most was a miracle.
Exactly that happened 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.
German tanks invading Russia
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.
Now they were locked in a fight to the death.
People in England were suddenly hopeful. Britain now had a powerful ally whose resources might tip the balance against Hitler.
Fast forward to 2022.
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) was created in March, 1949 by the United States, Canada, Great Britain, France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg. In 1952, Greece, Turkey and West Germany were admitted.
NATO emblem
Its purpose: To provide collective security against the Soviet Union.
Following World War II, Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin had refused to withdraw his occupying forces from the Eastern European countries they had entered on their way to defeating Nazi Germany.
These Soviet-dominate countries: Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Romania, Bulgaria, Albania and East Germany.
Behind NATO stood the threat of the American “nuclear umbrella”—and Article V, which states that an attack on one ally would trigger a counterattack by all of them.
From its founding in 1949 to 2017, America’s leadership of NATO—and the importance of the alliance—remained unquestioned.
The Presidency of Donald J. Trump (2017-2021) dramatically changed both.
From the outset, Trump attacked NATO as being “very unfair” to the United States. He attacked its members as deadbeats who didn’t contribute an equal share of monies to the organization.
But Trump’s disdain for NATO may well have been grounded in his “bromance” with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin press conference
He had refused to accept the unanimous conclusion of the FBI, CIA and National Security Agency that Russia had interfered in the 2016 Presidential election to put him in the White House over Hillary Clinton.
He had often praised Putin, both during the 2016 campaign and after entering the White House.
And he had publicly defended Putin against these agencies in an infamous press conference with Putin in Helsinki, Finland, on July 16, 2018.
On January 14, 2019, the New York Times reported that, several times in 2018, Trump discussed withdrawing the United States from NATO. This would effectively doom the 29-nation alliance and empower Russia, which had spent years seeking to weaken it.
Meanwhile, Putin, intent on restoring the borders of the former Soviet Union, swept from one war to the next.
- In 1999-2000, he waged the Second Chechen War, restoring federal control of Chechnya.
- In 2008, he invaded the Republic of Georgia, which had declared its independence as the Soviet Union began to crumble. The war ended with 20% of Georgia’s territory under Russian military occupation.
- In 2014, Putin invaded and subsequently annexed the Crimean Peninsula from Ukraine.
Through all of this, NATO did nothing but launch verbal condemnations.
The reason:
- Fear of igniting a nuclear war; and/or
- Belief that Russia was simply acting within its own sphere of influence.
Coupled with Trump’s repeated displays of subservience, it’s likely that Putin felt he could get away with any aggression.
On February 24, Putin ordered the invasion of Ukraine. And those who had thought the Cold War was over realized it wasn’t.
Suddenly, NATO came alive—with a vengeance:
- At least 40,000 allied troops are now under direct NATO command in the eastern part of the alliance.
- More than 130 fighter jets are on advanced high alert.
- More than 200 allied ships are stationed at sea in the region.
- NATO activated defense plans that would allow military commanders to deploy elements of the multinational Response Force.
Perhaps most important, the United States has a President—Joe Biden—who is not in thrall to Putin. As a result, it has led the world in imposing harsh economic sanctions on Russia:
- Russia has become a global economic pariah.
- Over 30 countries, representing well over half the world’s economy, have announced sanctions and export controls targeting Russia.
- The country’s banking system has all but collapsed.
- On the stock market, the ruble is worth less than the penny.
- And oligarchs linked to Putin have had their assets frozen around the world.
Seventy-nine years ago, events turned around for England when all seemed lost. The same has happened for NATO and the United States.
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In Entertainment, History, Military, Politics, Social commentary on March 16, 2022 at 12:50 am
Major Dundee is a 1965 Sam Peckinpah Western focusing on a Union cavalry officer (Charlton Heston) who leads a motley troop of soldiers into Mexico to rescue three children kidnapped by Apaches.
Along the way they liberate Mexican villagers and clash with French lancers trying to establish Mexico as a French colony under would-be emperor Archduke Maximilian 1.
The Wild Bunch is universally recognized as Peckinpah’s greatest achievement. It has certainly had a far greater impact on audiences and critics than Major Dundee. According to Heston, this was really the movie Peckinpah wanted to make while making Dundee, but he couldn’t quite get his mind around it.
As a result, Dundee’s virtues have been tragically overlooked. It has a larger cast of major characters than Bunch, and these are men an audience can truly like and identify with:
- The charm of Benjamin Tyreen (Richard Harris), a Confederate lieutenant forced into Union service;
- The steady courage of Sergeant Gomez;
- The quiet dignity of Aesop (Brock Peters), a black soldier;
- The quest for maturity in young, untried bugler Tim Ryan (Michael Anderson, Jr.);
- The on-the-job training experience of impetuous Lt. Graham (Jim Hutton); and
- The stoic endurance of Indian scout Sam Potts (James Coburn).
These men are charged with a dangerous and dirty mission, and do it as well as they can, but you wouldn’t fear inviting them to meet your family.
Major Dundee (Charlton Heston)
That was definitely not the case with The Wild Bunch, four hardened killers prepared to rip off anyone, anytime, and leave a trail of bodies in their wake. The only place where you would have felt safe seeing them, in real-life, was behind prison bars.
The Wild Bunch
Dundee is an odyssey movie, in the same vein as Saving Private Ryan. Both films start with a battle, followed by the disappearance of characters who need to be searched for and brought back to safety.
Just as Dundee assembles a small force to go into Mexico, so, too, does Captain John Miller (Tom Hanks) do the same, with his hunting ground being France.
Dundee’s men retrieve the kidnapped children and survive a near-fatal battle with Indians. Miller’s men twice clash with the Germans before finding their quarry, James Ryan.
Before Dundee can return to the United States, he must face and defeat a corps of French soldiers. Before Miller can haul Ryan back to safety, he must repulse a German assault.
Both groups of soldiers—Dundee’s and Miller’s—are transformed by their experiences in ways neither group could possibly articulate. (Miller, being a highly literate schoolteacher, would surely do a better job of this than the tight-jawed Dundee.)
Dundee’s soldiers return to a United States that’s just ended its Civil War with a Union victory—and the death of slavery. Miller’s soldiers return to a nation that is now a global superpower.
Of course, Ryan was fortunate in having Steven Spielberg as its director. With his clout, there was no question that Ryan would emerge as the film he wanted.
Peckinpah lacked such clout. And he fought with everyone, including the producer, Jerry Bressler, who ultimately held the power to destroy his film. This guaranteed that his movie would emerge far differently than he had envisioned.
Sam Peckinpah
In 2005, an extended version of Dundee was released, featuring 12 minutes of restored footage. (Much of the original footage was lost after severe cuts to the movie.)
In this new version, we fully see how unsympathetic a character the martinet Dundee really is. Owing to Heston’s career of playing heroes—such as Moses and El Cid—it’s easy to overlook Dundee’s arrogance and lethal fanaticism and automatically view him as a hero.
If he is indeed that, he is a hero with serious flaws.
And his self-imposed mission poses questions for us today:
- Where is the line between professional duty and personal fanaticism?
- How do we balance the success of a mission against its potential costs—especially if they prove appalling?
- At what point—if any—does personal conscience override professional obligations?
Whether intentionally or not, in Major Dundee, Peckinpah laid out a microcosm of the American history that would immediately follow the Civil War.
Former Confederates and Unionists would forego their regional animosities and fight against a recognized mutual enemy—the Indians. This would prove a dirty and drawn-out war, stripped of the glory and (later) treasured memories of the Civil War.
Just as Dundee’s final battle with French lancers ended with an American victory won at great cost, so, too, would America’s forays into the Spanish-American War and World Wars 1 and 11 prove the same.
Ben Tyreen’s commentary on the barbarism of French troops (“Never underestimate the value of a European education”) would be echoed by twentieth-century Americans uncovering the horrors of Dachau and Buchenwald.
And America would learn to project its formidable military power at great cost. Toward the end of the movie, Teresa Santiago (Senta Berger), the ex-patriot Austrian widow, would ask Dundee: “But who do you answer to?”
It is a question that still vividly expresses the view of the international community as this superpower colossus hurtles from one often-disastrous conflict to the next.
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In History, Law, Law Enforcement, Medical, Military, Politics, Social commentary on February 3, 2022 at 12:10 am
It takes courage to stand up to dictators. These Russians—and Americans—did so.
And paid the price.
Next up: Nikolai Sergeyvich Zhilayev (pronounced Zill-lay-ev) was a Russian musicologist and the teacher of several 20th-century Russian composers.
Among these: Dimitri Shostakovich (September 25, 1906 – August 9, 1975)
Among his friends—to his ultimate misfortune—was Mikhail Nikolayevich Tukhachevsky, the former military hero now falsely condemned and executed as a traitor by Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin.
In 1938, Zhilayev (November 18, 1881 – January 20, 1938) also became a casualty of what has become known as The Great Terror.
In his posthumously-published memoirs, Testimony, Shostakovich, his pupil and friend, described how Zhilayev faced his end with a calmness that awed even the NKVD (the predecessor to the KGB) secret police sent to arrest him.
Dimitri Shostakovich
“He had a large picture of Tukhachevsky in his room, and after the announcement that Tukhachevsky had been shot as a traitor to the homeland, Zhilayev did not take the picture down.
“I don’t know if I can explain how heroic a deed that was….As soon as the next poor soul was declared an enemy of the people, everyone destroyed in a panic everything connected with that person….
“And naturally, photographs flew into the fire first, because if someone informed on you, reported that you had a picture of an enemy of the people, it meant certain death.
“Zhilayev wasn’t afraid. When they came for him, Tukhachevsky’s prominently hung portrait amazed even the executioners.”
“What, it’s still up?” one of the secret police asked.
“The time will come,” Zhilayev replied, “when they’ll erect a monument to him.”
As, in fact, has happened.
Meanwhile, Stalin has been universally condemned as one of history’s greatest tyrants.
Third hero—Brett Crozier, the former commanding officer of the aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt.
Graduating from the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis in 1992, he received his Master’s Degree in National Security and Strategic Studies from the Naval War College in 2007.
From 2017 to 2018 he commanded the USS Blue Ridge. In November, 2019, he was given command of the nuclear aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt.
On March 24, 2020, reports circulated that three members of the crew had tested positive for COVID-19. The next day the number of stricken sailors increased to eight. A few days later, it was “dozens.” The sailors reportedly became ill at sea, two weeks after a port call at Danang, Vietnam.
The initial cases were airlifted to a military hospital. The Roosevelt was ordered to Guam. After the ship docked on March 27, 2020, all 5,000 aboard were ordered to be tested for the virus. But only about 100 stricken sailors were allowed to leave the ship. The rest remained on board.
On March 30, Crozier emailed a four-page internal letter to multiple Naval officials, pleading to have the majority of the crew evacuated and quarantined on shore. Given the crowded sleeping quarters and narrow passageways of the vessel, Crozier wrote that it was impossible to follow social distancing and quarantine procedures:
“This will require a political solution but it is the right thing to do. We are not at war. Sailors do not need to die. If we do not act now, we are failing to properly take care of our most trusted asset—our Sailors….
“This is a necessary risk. Keeping over 4,000 young men and women on board the TR is an unnecessary risk and breaks faith with those Sailors entrusted to our care.”
Brett Crozier
Crozier sent his letter via a non-secure, unclassified email to 20 to 30 recipients, as well as the captain’s immediate chain of command. He reportedly believed that his immediate supervisor would not allow him to send it.
And his superior later confirmed that he would not have allowed Crozier to send it.
On March 31, someone leaked the letter to the San Francisco Chronicle, which published it.
On April 1, the Navy ordered the aircraft carrier evacuated. A skeleton crew of 400 remained aboard to maintain the nuclear reactor, the fire-fighting equipment, and the ship’s galley.
On April 2, Crozier was relieved of command by acting United States Secretary of the Navy Thomas Modly.
By that time, about 114 crew members—out of a total of around 4,000—reportedly tested positive for COVID-19.
As Crozier disembarked, sailors loudly saluted him with a standing ovation: “Cap-tain Cro-zier!”
Modly claimed that Crozier’s letter “raised alarm bells unnecessarily. It undermines our efforts and the chain of command’s efforts to address this problem, and creates a panic and this perception that the Navy’s not on the job, that the government’s not on the job, and it’s just not true.”
Actually, the Trump administration had frittered away January and February, with President Donald Trump giving multiple—and misleading—press conferences. In these, he played down the dangers of COVID-19, saying that “we’re on top of it”—even as the virus spread across the country.
“It was a betrayal. And I can tell you one other thing: because he did that he put it in the public’s forum and it is now a big controversy in Washington, DC,” continued Modly. [Italics added]
This was the United States Navy under Donald Trump—who threw “betrayal” and “treason” at anyone who dared reveal the truth about institutional crimes and failures.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Medical, Military, Politics, Social commentary on February 2, 2022 at 1:38 am
…A truly great man is ever the same under all circumstances. And if his fortune varies, exalting him at one moment and oppressing him at another, he himself never varies, but always preserves a firm courage, which is so closely interwoven with his character that everyone can readily see that the fickleness of fortune has no power over him.
The conduct of weak men is very different. Made vain and intoxicated by good fortune, they attribute their success to merits which they do not possess. And this makes them odious and insupportable to all around them. And when they have afterwards to meet a reverse of fortune, they quickly fall into the other extreme, and become abject and vile.
—Niccolo Machiavelli, The Discourses
Four heroes, three villains.
Two of the heroes are Russians; three are Americans.
The villains: One Russian (actually, Georgian); two American.
First up—in order of disappearance: Mikhail Nikolayevich Tukhachevsky (pronounced too-ka-chev-sky).
Tukhachevsky (February 4, 1893 – June 12, 1937) was a major Soviet military leader and theoretician from 1918 to 1937.
He commanded the Soviet Western Front during the Russian-Polish War (1920-21) and served as Chief of Staff of the Red Army (1925-1928).
He fought to modernize Soviet armament, as well as develop airborne, aviation and mechanized forces. Almost singlehandedly, he created the theory of deep operations for Soviet forces.
Mikhail Tukhachevsky
All of these innovations would reap huge dividends when the Soviet Union faced the lethal fury of Adolf Hitler’s Wehrmacht.
In 1936, Tukhachevsky warned Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin that Nazi Germany might attack without warning—and ignite a long and murderous war.
Stalin—the son of a Georgian cobbler—resented Tukhachevsky’s coming from a noble family. A monumental egomaniac, he also hated that Tukhachevesky’s fame rivaled his own.
Warned of the approaching German danger, Stalin shouted: “What are you trying to do—frighten Soviet authority?”
Joseph Stalin
The attack that Tukhachevsky warned against came five years later—on June 22, 1941, leaving at least 26 million Russians dead.
But Tukhachevsky wasn’t alive to command a defense.
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.
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.”
In 1937-38, the Red Army fell prey to Stalin’s paranoia.
Its victims included:
- Three of five marshals (five-star generals);
- Thirteen of 15 army commanders (three- and four-star generals);
- Fifty of 57 army corps commanders; and
- One hundred fifty-four out of 186 division commanders.
And heading the list of those marked for death was Marshal Mikhail Tukhachevsky.
Arrested on May 22, 1937, he was interrogated and tortured. As a result, he “confessed” to being a German agent plotting to overthrow Stalin and seize power.
On his confession, which survives in the archives, his bloodstains can clearly be seen.
On June 11, 1937, the Soviet Supreme Court convened a special military tribunal to try Tukhachevsky and eight generals for treason.
It was a sham: The accused were denied defense attorneys, and could not appeal the verdict—-which was foregone: Death.
In a Russian version of poetic justice, five of the eight generals who served as Tukhachevsky’s judges were themselves later condemned and executed as traitors.
Within hours of the verdict, Tukhachevsky was summoned from his cell and shot once in the back of the head.
From 1937 until 1956, Tukhachevsky was officially declared a traitor and fifth-columnist.
Then, on February 25, 1957, Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev delivered his bombshell “Secret Speech” to the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
In this, he denounced Stalin (who had died in 1953) as a ruthless tyrant responsible for the slaughter of millions of innocent men, women and children. He condemned Stalin for creating a “personality cult” around himself, and for so weakening the Red Army that Nazi Germany was able to easily overrun half of the Soviet Union from 1941 to 1943.
On January 31, 1957, Tukhachevsky and his co-defendants were declared innocent of all charges and were “rehabilitated.”
Today, he is once again—rightly—considered a Russian hero and military genius. And Stalin is universally—and rightly—seen as a blood-stained tyrant.
Mikhail Tukhachevsky appears on a 1963 Soviet Union postage stamp
Next hero: Nikolai Sergeyvich Zhilayev (pronounced Zill-lay-ev)
Zhilayev (November 18, 1881 – January 20, 1938) was a Russian musicologist and the teacher of several 20th-century Russian composers. Among these: Dimitri Shostakovich.
Zhilayev, a member of the Russian Academy of Art-Sciences, taught at the Moscow Conservatory. Among his friends—to his ultimate misfortune—was Mikhail Tukhachevsky.
In 1938, he, too, became a casualty of what has become known as The Great Terror.
In his posthumously-published memoirs, Testimony, Shostakovich, his pupil and friend, described how Zhilayev faced his end with a calmness that awed even the NKVD secret police sent to arrest him.
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WHY REPUBLICANS WILL WIN IN 2022–AND 2024: PART THREE (END)
In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Medical, Politics, Social commentary on July 21, 2022 at 12:10 amDemocrats want to believe a day will come when all races, colors and creeds will live together in harmony. Their policies aim at creating that sort of society.
Republicans have turned “illegal alien” into a battle cry.
This is especially true when inflation is high, jobs and housing are scarce, and local schools and hospitals are crammed with illegal aliens—who, by law, shouldn’t even be in the country.
Moreover, the “illegal alien” tagline often allows Republicans to sidestep criticism on even the most outrageous of their actions.
Example: The case of a 10-year-old Ohio girl who was raped—and had to travel to Indiana to obtain an abortion after the Supreme Court overturned Roe. v. Wade.
Ohio has a “heartbeat” law making abortion a crime after a fetal heartbeat is determined—usually within the first six weeks.
For Ohio’s Republican legislators and governor, the “rights” of a fetus far outweigh those of an actual human being—even if she is a child.
Ari Fleischer, former press secretary for President George W. Bush, recently said on Fox News that the girl’s illegal alien rapist from Guatemala was the villain, not the fetal heartbeat law.
“The agenda is to allow people to come into America without having to come here legally. If you start pointing things out like this, it makes it a moral question. And that’s why the press doesn’t want to face up to the fact it’s a moral issue that people should not be allowed in America unless they come here legally.”
Perhaps the most fatal reason why Democrats consistently lose elections: They believe—or want to believe—that voters are creatures of rationality.
Republicans learned long ago that most voters aren’t moved by appeals to their rationality. Instead, what counts with them is emotions—such as fear.
From the end of World War II in 1945 to the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the Enemy of Choice for Republicans was the Communists.
Millions of Americans were so pathologically frightened by “The Red Menace” that any Democratic politician libeled as a “Communist,” “Comsymp,” “fellow traveler” was considered at least a potential traitor, if not an actual one.
Among the Republican politicians who rode to victory on a wave of Red hysteria: Richard Nixon and Joseph McCarthy
Even as late as 1992, President George H.W. Bush and the Republican establishment charged that Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton might be a KGB plant. Their evidence: During his tenure at Oxford University in 1969-70, Clinton had briefly visited Moscow—and thus might have been turned into a “Manchurian Candidate.”
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Right-wingers had to settle for attacking their opponents as “liberals” and “soft on crime.” But these charges didn’t carry the same weight as “Communists” and “traitors.”
Then, on September 11, 2001, Republicans—and their Right-wing supporters—at last found a suitable replacement for the Red Menace: The Maniacal Muslim.
The World Trade Center on Septemeber 11, 2001
Led by President George W. Bush, Republicans used fear of Muslims to con and bully the nation into a needless, bloody, budget-busting war on Iraq.
The most immediate danger facing Democratic candidates: Their unwillingness to fight fire with fire.
Example 1: Republicans are now organizing a nationwide effort to suppress voter turnout among blacks and liberals.
Yet Democrats are not making any similar effort to suppress Right-wing turnout. Nor is the Biden Justice Department indicting those Republicans responsible for their anti-democratic efforts.
Example 2: On January 6, 2021, President Donald Trump—supported by at least 144 Republicans in the House and Senate—incited a treasonous coup to remain in office. This despite the overwhelming evidence that he had lost the 2020 election to Joseph Biden.
More than a year and a half has passed, and not one major Republican supporting such treason has been indicted for that infamy. Let alone tried, convicted and imprisoned.
The single biggest reason for the coming Democratic rout lies in the Biden administration’s toleration of Donald Trump’s continuing campaign of lies.
Trump continues to spread The Big Lie that he was robbed by a vast conspiracy—although not one of the more than 60 cases his lawyers brought before Federal judges proved this true.
Trump should have been indicted for treason by no later than mid-2021. Even then, the evidence was overwhelming that he had instigated the coup attempt. He’s clearly preparing to run again for President in 2024.
An indictment for treason would cast a heavy—if not fatal—blow to that decision. At the very least, Trump would be forced to mount a feverish—and expensive—defense.
And even many of his most fanatical supporters would question the wisdom of voting for a man who might well become a Federal prison inmate.
America now stands at the point where the German Weimar Republic stood in 1932: With an aged President (Paul von Hindenburg) unable—or unwilling—to cope with a surging Fascistic movement (led by Adolf Hitler).
The results of that collective failure destroyed Germany and left 60 million dead around the world.
The United States cannot afford to make that same fatal mistake.
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