Tag Archives: Hitler

If You Want To Destroy A Country ….

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Or … 2025 is our 1984

There are several ways to destroy a generally well-functioning country. One is invasion. Vladimir Putin is trying that in Ukraine, cheered on by Donald Trump, Tulsi Gabbard and other Republican sycophants. Invasions are self-evidently messy. Lives are lost by the thousands, property is destroyed, and the psychological impact on all sides of the conflict can last for generations.

One can imagine that Trump’s stated desire to “own” Canada and Greenland (he would prefer the term “merge” no doubt, being a captain of industry and all) would, if anyone in his White House staff had the temerity to suggest this is a really bad idea, lead to Trump throwing himself on the floor, kicking his feet and screaming like the man-child he is: “I want it, I want it! I want it! Why can’t I have it?!! I’m now the king of the United States. Just ask the Supreme Court. I want it! Waaahhh!!”

But, of course, that’s not what’s happening. Despite being the largest collection of incompetents ever assembled, Trump’s “team” has discovered other ways to bring the country to its knees.

Most everyone has heard of, and many have read, the novel, 1984, by George Orwell. Wikipedia does a creditable job of summarizing the central idea:

The story takes place in an imagined future. The current year is uncertain, but believed to be 1984. Much of the world is in perpetual war. Great Britain, now known as Airstrip One, has become a province of the totalitarian superstate Oceania, which is led by Big Brother, a dictatorial leader supported by an intense cult of personality manufactured by the Party’s Thought Police. The Party engages in omnipresent government surveillance and, through the Ministry of Truth, historical negationism and constant propaganda to persecute individuality and independent thinking.

I don’t recall that the book explains how the world reached that state, but it’s not too hard to imagine when one recalls a little history. You know, Germany under Hitler, Russia under Stalin, to name a few.

We have Donald Trump. Many people thought Hitler was insane. Many people also think Trump is insane. He was elected to a second term in office despite grotesque failures of leadership in his first term, resulting in, among other things, the avoidable deaths of hundreds of thousands of Americans. Trump revealed himself fully between 2016 and 2021. His opponent in 2024 was an intelligent, accomplished person who has served as Vice President of the United States for four years, so she was also experienced in the highest echelons of government. BUT she was a woman, and she was of Asian heritage, and she was Black. Case closed. The American electorate chose to put the loon back in power.

And what did we get? Exactly what could be, and was, expected. Examples will follow in roughly reverse chronological order in the next post.

As an aside, first, I note that I am no wide-eyed dreamer. I have been around a long time, started my career as a federal employee in fact. The government of the United States, like all governments, has many “issues.” There are inefficiencies. One of the core driving principles of the government is “don’t make obvious mistakes.” A prime example is the rulemaking process. This is what often happens.

Congress adopts legislation. Even the most detailed laws are often the products of compromises that create ambiguities or simply leave major implementation details to later-developed regulations. The country prefers that approach to simply saying, “let the bureaucrats figure it out as they wish from time to time.” We have developed an astonishingly complex process to govern “rulemaking,” with the result that regulations can take years, literally, to produce after the enabling legislation has passed.

The process involves examination of the relationship of the law in question to many other laws having to do with economic impact, environmental impact and many others. This approach, long and tedious as it may be, is preferred to subjecting ourselves to the random, arbitrary decisions of people who may or may not know what they are doing and don’t want to take the time and effort to learn. Slow and steady wins the race in our system.

However, this approach has several strong advantages:

    1. All interested parties get to express their views and offer their evidence to the decision-maker(s);
    2. The process is designed to assure that the decision-making agency has all relevant information before it when it decides what regulations, if any, should be adopted;
    3. The process governed by the Administrative Procedure Act is very demanding, taking much time and effort by many federal employees, many of whom are highly experienced experts in the subjects being regulated;
    4. Court review is available to assure agencies adhere to the governing legal principles, assuring fairness to affected parties and that the process is properly executed;
    5. All the foregoing takes much time and effort, especially given that most federal agencies are working multiple rulemakings simultaneously, in addition to enforcement actions and other statutory responsibilities.

I will now describe in horrifying detail an actual rulemaking of the Department of Transportation. I participated in on behalf of my then-employer, the American Society of Travel Advisors. Try your best to get through it. The “FR” references are to the Federal Register which is a triple-column “book” published every workday in 7-point type (a bit over half the size of the print in this blog) and including proposed and final regulations by all federal agencies. You can get a feel for its scale from the page numbers. I included them in case you want to see the actual documents.

On May 23, 2014, DOT published a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking to “enhance protections for air travelers and to improve the air travel environment, including a proposal to clarify and codify the Department’s interpretation of the statutory definition of ‘‘ticket agent.’’” [79 FR 29970] The NPRM also proposed, among other things, “to require airlines and ticket agents to disclose at all points of sale the fees for certain basic ancillary services associated with the air transportation consumers are buying or considering buying.”

The NPRM consumed 32 pages of the Federal Register.  Comments were due by August 21, 2014.

Comments by interested parties were plentiful. And typically, they ran the gamut: the proposal is too broad, too expensive, not broad enough; you got this wrong, you got this right; the proposals are impractical and unnecessary; the proposals don’t go far enough … and many, many more.

On January 19, 2017, DOT issued a Supplemental Notice of Proposed Rulemaking to expand the scope of the original proposal:

In light of the comments on this issue, the Department is issuing this SNPRM, which focuses solely on the issue of transparency of certain ancillary service fees. The other issues in the 2014 NPRM are being addressed separately. [82 FR 7536]

The SNPRM consumed 24 Federal Register pages. Comments were due by March 20, 2017.

The Department withdrew the SNPRM on December 14, 2017:

In the notice of withdrawal of proposed rulemaking, 82 FR 58778 (Dec. 14, 2017), the Department stated that its existing requirements provide consumers information regarding fees for ancillary services and noted that the withdrawal was consistent with Executive Order (E.O.) 13771, ‘‘Reducing Regulation and Controlling Regulatory Costs,’’ [issued by Donald Trump] which has since been revoked.

But,

On July 9, 2021, the President [now Joe Biden] issued E.O. 14036, ‘‘Promoting Competition in the American Economy,’’ which launched a whole-of-government approach to strengthen competition.

… section 5, paragraph(m)(i)(F) of E.O. 14036 states that ‘‘[t]he Secretary of Transportation shall: . . . not later than 90 days after the date of this order, consider initiating a rulemaking to ensure that consumers have ancillary fee information, including ‘‘baggage fees,’’ ‘‘change fees,’’ and ‘‘cancellation fees,’’ at the time of ticket purchase.’’

Thus, the changes of presidential administrations first killed, then revived the proposed rules that occupied most of 20 Federal Register pages, seven years into the mission. DOT published the new NPRM on October 20, 2022, more than eight years into the mission. Comments were now due by December 19, 2022.

But, alas, parties on both sides of the issues sought more time. DOT granted those requests, extending the comment deadline to January 23, 2023 [87 FR 77765]. Another request for extension was denied on January 26, 2023, although, typically, “late-filed comments will be considered to the extent practicable.”

On March 3, 2023, DOT took the extraordinary step of announcing a virtual public hearing on certain issues in the rulemaking, the hearing to be held on March 16, 2023, with further comments due by March 23, 2023. [88 FR 13389]

Finally, on April 30, 2024, DOT published the final regulations in 89 FR 34620, consuming 57 Federal Register pages.

The rulemaking process had taken more than 10 years. In truth much more, because before the first publication in 2014, much legal, economic and other work had been put into creating the first set of proposed rules.

But, alas, it’s not over until it’s over. At the behest of the airlines, the regulation was “stayed” in 2024 by the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals and on January 28, 2025, the court remanded the rules to DOT for further proceedings. The decision was based on what the court held was a fatal mistake that violated the Administrative Procedure Act, the law whose requirements ultimately lead to all the process surrounding federal rulemaking: the court found, DOT had “justified the Rule using cost-benefit data … that was not available during the notice-and-comment period.”

Whether these rules will ever be finalized is an open question, given the Trump administration’s hostility to consumer interests and regulation of business in general.

To repeat: the alternatives to this long and often painful process would allow members of government to make arbitrary and capricious decisions driven by conflicts of interest, personal bias, and other inappropriate considerations. THAT is why the government seems “inefficient.” It is inefficient by design so that other critical values are protected.

Could the process be made more efficient? Perhaps. But opening the government process to oversight and interference by people who know nothing about the governing law and little or nothing about the underlying issues and problems being addressed every day is not better government. It is tyranny.

For better or worse, for richer or poorer, we are married to this process. The courts get very upset, and rightly so, when an agency fails to follow the process correctly. That results in “remands for further proceedings,” which can mean more years of delay in reaching final rules.

Government under a system of “laws not men” is probably one of the most complex and difficult endeavors that mankind has ever undertaken. Add to that the fact that the continental United States occupies roughly 3,706,269 square miles with 161,000 square miles of that being water. The contiguous United States has an area of about 3,119,884 square miles and the State of Alaska alone embraces 586,412square miles. There are 50 states, the District of Columbia, plus more than a dozen territories under US ownership, management or sovereignty.” 

The land mass is astonishingly diverse. Some bodies of water (Lake Superior) are larger than some states (South Carolina thus also Rhode Island, etc.). Together the Great Lakes occupy more than 94,000 square miles and collectively are larger than the states of New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Vermont, and New Hampshire combined. The State of Hawaii is about 2,400 miles from the US west coast and consists of 137 islands! We have mountains, deserts, forests, plains … everything.

Add to that the fact that the population of the United States numbers some 340 million people.

Legislating for this diverse aggregation of people, land, water and much else is complicated. It may be a general principle of the universe that a large, diverse country requires a large, complex government, especially if that government is to have a major role in promoting the “life, liberty and pursuit of happiness” of the population.

The lesson is ended. I may have bored you beyond repair. Sorry, not sorry. I will return to the headline topic, If You Want To Destroy A Country …., in another post shortly. Rest up. It’s going to get worse, much worse. Donald Trump means to have his revenge on the country he believes treated him badly. And the Republican Party is happy to go along to get along. The fate of our democracy, our economy, and our very lives is on the line. Trump’s goons, dressed in black, masked, with no visible identification, are snatching people off the streets and disappearing them. The United States is now the new Russia.

The Fork in the Road to Democracy or Dictatorship

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An article published in The Hill suggests that Donald Trump’s promises that if re-elected he will engage in violent retribution against his enemies have inspired members of Congress to breach protocol and almost come to blows. Trump’s violent talk shows signs of taking over Congress  https://tinyurl.com/djbp5rss Those threats are, of course, among many other Trump/GOP assaults on the centuries-old system of American democratic government.

The article was inspired by a first-term Republican Senator from Oklahoma challenging the president of the Teamsters union to a fistfight in a hearing. The article also reports that Mitt Romney had much to say about the situation, noting the self-evident fact that “the Republican Party has become the party of Trump.” Romney, the master of understatement when it comes to criticizing looney Republicans, said the fight challenge was “clearly unfortunate.” Bold stuff from the man who in 2016 had said that Trump was “worthless”, a “fraud”, and that “he’s playing the American public for suckers: he gets a free ride to the White House and all we get is a lousy hat.” https://tinyurl.com/5dsvuy5x

Romney, you will recall, promptly bent the knee to president-elect Trump to seek a Cabinet post – which was, of course, denied. Trump knows how to treat “disloyal” people.

The article notes that “Trump’s use of violent rhetoric has since become almost routine,” accurate except for the “almost” modifier. Trump now engages in violent talk every day, using language identical to that made famous by Adolf Hitler and other dictators of the past. GOP Trump loyalists aren’t concerned. Their plan to steal the 2020 election and stay in power didn’t work as they imagined but the playbook remains valid for their purposes. The 2024 election is just another chance for them.

When a politician tells you he wants to “take over” your country, you should believe him. Trump aspires to fascist domination of the entire federal and state government apparatus. Republican politicians are so busy trying to avoid Trump’s wrath that they continue to make “both sides” false equivalencies and to equivocate about what is really happening. One example is Republican Senator Mike Rounds:

 It’s not the route that I’d like to see any of us go,” … I understand the reason why there was anger.

both individuals should have had a different approach to resolving it.

you’re seeing folks on both sides of the political spectrum being less respectful of other people.

I don’t know if he changed [norms] or simply responded to what he saw from other people. I think he sensed that the American people were allowing this to go on, and he’s taken advantage of it, but it’s not the direction that I think our country should go.

Powerful stuff, those Republicans speak. I’m sure you didn’t miss the “both sides” he snuck in there. Brings to mind Trump’s comment about the Nazi march in Charlottesville: “very fine people, on both sides.” The Post article goes on to cite other incidents including one in which former Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) was accused of elbowing another Republican representative in the back.

The First Amendment and the associated long history of American acceptance of “free speech” allow for this kind of violent rhetoric in the absence of an imminent threat of violence by the speaker or someone in league with him. That is what happened on January 6. We now learn from Mediaite.com that Republicans are cheering the release of previously withheld security footage from January 6 because they have somehow reached the conclusion that it shows police collusion and thus sustains their belief that the entire episode was an “inside job” by the “left.” Trump Supporters Cheer Release of Jan. 6 Footage Showing Trump Supporters Storming the Capitol  https://tinyurl.com/bderutcr

Republicans have learned nothing. And some of the January 6 Capitol-desecrators have recanted their professions of error and remorse that were used performatively for compliant judges to secure lesser sentences. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-66169914

Many questions leap to mind. One of the most prominent is whether American corporations are going to continue playing deaf and dumb while spraying advertising dollars and PAC contributions on rightwing Republican candidates. Historically, American corporations, armed with “personhood” by the Supreme Court Citizens United case, have tried to have it both ways. Those days must end now. If the corporate community is indifferent to the fate of American democracy, consumers must show them the consequences by withholding purchases.

Donald Trump and his supporters have made clear their intention to destroy the American administrative state that accounts for massive amounts of economy-stimulating expenditures while assuring that the worst short-term instincts of capitalism are at least to some degree regulated in the public interest. Trump has, for example, made clear he will wreck the civil service system to assure that only workers completely loyal to him have federal jobs.

The United States is not alone in the world. Among numerous others, Russia, under the complete control of dictator Vladimir Putin, is waiting for an opportunity to strike a fatal blow against this country. Trump has previously subordinated himself to Putin in open displays of obsequious submission. Once Trump is back in power, Putin will have a free hand. At the end of the day, Putin, whom Trump openly admires, is no different than Josef Stalin and Adolf Hitler.

I had occasion recently to be reminded of some of James Madison and Alexander Hamilton’s more salient observations about government in the Federalist Papers that helped secure ratification of the Constitution. Some of the more relevant ones include:

The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.
― James Madison, Federalist Papers

It has been frequently remarked, that it seems to have been reserved to the people of this country to decide, by their conduct and example, the important question, whether societies of men are really capable or not, of establishing good government from reflection and choice, or whether they are forever destined to depend, for their political constitutions, on accident and force.
― Alexander Hamilton, The Federalist Papers

On the other hand, it will be equally forgotten that the vigor of government is essential to the security of liberty; that, in the contemplation of a sound and well-informed judgment, their interest can never be separated; and that a dangerous ambition more often lurks behind the specious mask of zeal for the rights of the people than under the forbidden appearance of zeal for the firmness and efficiency of government. History will teach us that the former has been found a much more certain road to the introduction of despotism than the latter, and that of those men who have overturned the liberties of republics, the greatest number have begun their career by paying an obsequious court to the people; commencing demagogues, and ending tyrants.

― Alexander Hamilton, The Federalist Papers

If the federal government should overpass the just bounds of its authority and make a tyrannical use of its powers, the people, whose creature it is, must appeal to the standard they have formed, and take such measures to redress the injury done to the Constitution as the exigency may suggest and prudence justify.
― Alexander Hamilton, The Federalist Papers

To judge from the conduct of the opposite parties, we shall be led to conclude that they will mutually hope to evince the justness of their opinions, and to increase the number of their converts by the loudness of their declamations and the bitterness of their invectives. An enlightened zeal for the energy and efficiency of government will be stigmatized as the offspring of a temper fond of despotic power and hostile to the principles of liberty. An over-scrupulous jealousy of danger to the rights of the people, which is more commonly the fault of the head than of the heart, will be represented as mere pretense and artifice, the stale bait for popularity at the expense of the public good.
― Alexander Hamilton, The Federalist Papers

Sean Hannity’s America –Apocalypse Here

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This blog post was originally intended to be a satirical sendup of Sean Hannity’s televised statement set out below:

“I’d like to see the perimeter of every school in American surrounded, secured by retired police…military …. Add a metal detector …. have one armed guard on every floor of every school, all over every mall, the perimeter and inside every hall of every mall.”

[Sean Hannity, Fox News, following the Dayton and El Paso slaughters]

I was dissuaded by the better judgment of my wife that this was not a time for comedic treatments of the horrors of gun massacres even if satirically directed at people like Hannity.

I will therefore just address the Hannity prescription for solving the gun problem directly. It is a gun problem despite all the Republican/NRA/Trump blather about mental health, video games and all the other excuses. Other countries have all those same activities/conditions in one form or another but only in the United States are high-capacity, military-grade weapons freely available to almost everyone and only in the U.S. are the slaughters of multiple people a daily occurrence. Guns are the root of the problem, regardless of the motivation behind the people who use them to massacre innocent people. Sane or insane, angry or delusional, hurt, frustrated, whatever the “inspiration,” the fact remains that without high-capacity magazines and weapons capable of automatic fire, the death toll would be dramatically reduced.

It is particularly troubling to hear Republicans argue that we need to solve mental health problems in the U.S. first. Virtually everyone would agree that’s a worthy goal, but even if a national program of some type were adequately funded and initiated tomorrow, the problems of mental health are not going to be resolved in any foreseeable time frame. To argue, therefore, that “solving mental health” is the way to end gun violence is to argue for a solution that has no realistic chance to change the death toll any time soon. This argument, like the “restore God to his/her rightful place in society” is a prescription for failure, a program to do nothing while the slaughter continues unabated.

Now let’s look more closely at Hannity’s “solution.” Even though it is so stupid as to defy comprehension, it deserves some attention because Hannity enjoys a national audience from his perch atop the parrot house known as Fox News. Many people actually believe what Hannity says and are incapable, it seems, of thinking through the implications of his commentary.

Stop for a moment then and picture in your mind the school nearest to where you live. Now imagine that the school entry doors are set up like the security areas at the airport. This would be necessary because most of the students typically arrive at the same time to start classes every day. The security system therefore must be prepared to handle a large volume of kids with backpacks, book bags, jackets in winter, and so on, just like at the airport. Hannity’s proposal thus requires x-ray scanners, metal detectors and the security machinery used at airports where similar circumstances prevail.

Moreover, we know from occasional incidents at airports that metal detectors inside the building would not stop an incursion by a student armed with an automatic rifle and willing to sacrifice himself for whatever “cause” is motivating his killer impulses. Therefore, to achieve Hannity’s “solution,” security must be moved out from the school building to the perimeter of the school property. This would keep a shooter as far away from the cover of the school building as possible.

Of course, in both urban and suburban environments, this “solution” would push the security perimeter into the surrounding neighborhood, with untold disruptions to the comings and goings of the people who live or work there. To meet the threat of a shooter with an assault rifle, the people manning these security positions would have to be armed and equipped with bullet-resistant vests.

The space between the security “gates” would, of course, have to be closed off so that no one could evade security by simply going around the gates. Razor-wire coils might work. How is that going to go over in the neighborhood?  Moreover, a secondary armed force would be necessary in case someone did find a way into the protected zone. Since Hannity also proposed having armed security on each floor of a school, perhaps those folks could stand watch during the entry period in the morning. But they would actually have to be looking out for incursions all day long, because the reality of school life is that some kids arrive at odd hours, due to medical appointments, cars that don’t start or other interruptions to planned living. At the end of the day, the school would have to be “swept” by the security force to be sure no one remained inside.

I could go on with this, but I think the implications of the Hannity proposal for school security are obvious, unworkable and absurd. His suggestion to convert schools and malls into war zones is just another Fox News attempt to inflame the Trump right-wing political base with a simplistic approach that, upon even mild reflection, cannot possibly accomplish the job for which it is allegedly intended.

It’s actually a good way to complete the destruction of the public-school system that the Trump administration has been working to undermine through the policies of Betsy Devos and, while they’re at it, to destroy the economics of the shopping malls that already face enormous challenges from Internet competition. Maybe in the end all the right wingers want to do is replace all the civilian jobs with retired police and military armed with weapons of war, spending all day waiting for some fool to challenge them. The cost of this would be staggering and the impact on education stultifying. But the National Rifle Association will be happy and, therefore, so will the Republican leadership in Congress that toes the NRA line. If the Republican leadership has rejected Hannity’s insanity, I haven’t seen it.

Hannity’s vision of an America of armed camps we once called ‘schools’ and ‘malls’ should repulse every true American. That vision is not patriotism. It’s the kind of world envisioned by the likes of Adolf Hitler. And, apparently, also by Donald Trump.

Is a Non-Violent Solution to Trump Feasible?

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Another outrage, another march. This time – Families Together. I marched again, from Foley Square in Lower Manhattan across the Brooklyn Bridge (yes, that one).  We dispersed quietly on the other side of the bridge and took the subway home.

The closest I can come to describing the feel of it is that it was like sitting through a baseball game in August, losing 1-0 at the end and slinking out of the stadium, exhausted and enervated by the heat and the futility and the sense of loss. The crowd was in a mixed mood, with the usual chanting but also some anger in the tone. At the same time everyone was buoyed up, cheering loudly, when cars would pass on the adjacent roadway, horns blasting and fists pumping out of windows in solidarity with the marchers. One or two gave us the finger; favor returned.

More to the point, at one spot on the bridge a young man was handing out slips of paper headed “STOP I.C.E. DEPORTATIONS,” The paper went on, “Starting now, we will be occupying space and interfering with deportations, not with court hearings or release of immigrants.” It includes the hashtag #OccupyICENYC,” among others. The Instagram account of that name, like many other social media sites, is a verbal battleground between those who see ICE as a military-type deportation force “following orders” from the Great Leader (recalling Nazi Germany) and people who appear to be terrified that the United States is being overrun by crazed hordes of lawbreakers and who support most forms of abuse of “lawbreakers,” regardless of their personal situation (fleeing MS-13, for example). Passions over these issues are running high and seem to be escalating as the “Abolish ICE” theme gained a foothold among the protesters and became a major point of counterattack by Trump’s supporters.

I was reminded of a scene from the late 1960s, during one of the largest of the protest marches against the Vietnam War. We were moving along on the National Mall, tens of thousands strong, when there appeared a small group of rough looking young men carrying Viet Cong flags and screaming at the protesters as they ran by “you’ll never end the war that way – come with us!”

The effort to recruit the protesters in a more aggressive posture failed at the time, although throughout the war protest period there were major incidents of violence inspired by the hatred and fear of what the United States was doing in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos. For the most part the protesters believed that peaceful resistance was, in the long run, the only effective means of pressuring the government to change course. The conflict and passions ran deep, dividing families, neighbors and congregations.

In the end, the protests, I believe, had a lot to do with changing the “public mind” about the war, helped along by journalists who risked, and sometimes gave, their lives to reveal the lies the government was telling about body counts, strategy and pretty much everything about the war. In the end, the U.S. “strategy” became untenable. The United States, for the first time, was defeated.

The Trump administration, like the Nixon one, has the strong support of perhaps 30 to 40 percent of the voting population. Those people appear not to care that the President of the United States is a serial liar, corrupt to the core. He continues to feed on their ignorance. As Trump and his enablers in Congress and state governments work to strip social and economic support from the population while, like Scott Pruitt, the head of the Environmental Protection Agency, continuing to enrich themselves, Trump’s supporters stick with him because of single issues that are at the core of their belief-systems. Issues like abortion. They are so sure that it is right for the government to intervene in the personal lives of women that they will accept any form of degradation to roll back the right to abortion. Their anger, fear and ignorance are so profound that they do not grasp the significance of the changes Trump is making to our government.

Trump, with his enablers at Fox News, Breitbart and other right-wing fantasy-news shows, continues to escalate the rhetoric, conspiracy theories and outright lies. His tweets are more personal and strident than ever. He attacks and threatens American companies that react unfavorably to his trade policies. He directly threatens long-standing U.S. allies with “you will do as I want or else.” I don’t believe any other president in American history has behaved this way. It sounds more like Adolf Hitler demonizing segments of German society than an elected leader of a democracy.

In discussions with conservative friends over the years, I have asked a hard question but never received a good response: how long do you suppose the American underclasses are going to accept the tilting of the economic and political system against them before they say “enough” and rise to challenge those who are oppressing them? No one seemed ever to believe such a thing is possible here in the United States of America, land of the free and home of the brave.

The usual response was a form of whataboutism that I did not recognize as such at the time: if you work hard, you can get ahead; if not, too bad. My family came here legally so why should we let people who came here illegally become citizens? It’s our country — love it or leave it. And so on. Similar responses to those from Trump supporters. Don’t care what is happening to “them;” they’re not “us,” so to hell with them. Beneath Trump’s adoring masses are racism and xenophobia that we, foolishly, thought had finally been vanquished when Barack Obama was twice elected President.

Let me be clear that I do not believe violence is a workable response to the Trump despotism. My concern is that as Trump’s moral depravity, selfishness and egomania continue to degrade political discourse and threaten democratic institutions, including the right to equal counting of votes in elections, while he conspires with foreign powers hostile to the American way of life, we are going to cross a line of intolerance from which violent responses will seem to many the only viable response remaining. People in the right-wing already are talking of violent responses to any attempt to remove Trump from office, regardless of the evidence against him. ICE is arresting protesters, including elected officials, for purported interference with its deportation program that has, with direction and overt approval from the highest stations in the Trump administration, ripped apart families and shredded the oath of office he took to support the Constitution. Trump has overtly called for government coercive actions against people that will bypass the court system and ignore the clear mandates of the Due Process Clause of the Constitution.

Trump’s history as a corporate mogul is well documented. His behavior has been that of a bully who ordered underlings around at his whim, cheated many people and bankrupted many companies. It is therefore hardly surprising that a man who does not read, has no patience with facts that complicate his personal advancement and who has behaved with astonishing cruelty toward disabled people, women and non-whites, citizen and non-citizen alike, would behave like an ignorant bully in public life, catering only to those who show total obeisance to him. It seems entirely plausible that such a person would stop at nothing, including conspiring with enemies of the United States, to achieve his personal ambitions. It has happened elsewhere, and as many thoughtful scholars have documented, it can happen here.

As Trump’s conduct continues to degrade the office of the President, to undermine relations with important foreign allies, and to threaten the ability of the American political system to hold him accountable, the question lingers:  how long will this go on before desperation takes hold and desperate measures are taken? Even the Women’s March is growing impatient, as shown by this tweet: “Like we’ve been saying: marching is not enough. It’s time for direct action. It’s time to disobey. #WomenDisobey” The tweet referenced an opinion piece in the Guardian to the same effect. https://bit.ly/2KNvN3D

There is no clear answer to my question, I suppose. The question is, as it has always been, too hard. I believe that there is one, and probably only one, ray of hope that can forestall our descent into violent resistance: the elections of 2018. If you have read my posts before, you have no doubt seen my pleas regarding the importance of getting out the vote. As I reflect on our troubled past as a nation, not perfect but far from the worst, it seems to me that the election, the precious irreplaceable right, and obligation, to vote is the only path to salvation as a free democratic country.

In practice, however, it is not enough to just vote. The Trumpers are alarmed and engaged about the threat to their hero and they will be aggressive in voting too. And, of course, there are the numerous, documented cases in which legitimate voters have been rejected for various reasons at polling places around the country, particularly in red states. What is needed, I suggest, is for every voter in contestable precincts to take responsibility to (1) have all eligible members of the family registered to vote in November, (2) create an ironclad plan for how the family will get to the polls, and (3) identify one or more other people who may need help getting to the polls or actually voting and do what is necessary to get them there. Your country, your freedom is at stake here. One-party control of the government must be ended and this is the only way to do it.

For those interested, I have posted photographs from the New York City Families Together March in a separate post below this one.

Visiting the Holocaust Museum

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For years, I have resisted visiting this museum, in part because I had read many books detailing the history of the Nazi takeover of Germany and its aftermath and, in part, because I knew how jarring it would be. When my wife announced Sunday morning that she had acquired time-entry tickets for that afternoon, I relented.

The museum is indeed a jarring experience. The faces of the visitors, many quite young and many very old, tell the tale. Seeing the photographs and films while hearing the voices of the men and women who perpetrated the most monstrous genocide in world history is not for the light-of-heart. The cruelty of it cannot be described; it has to be seen. Even then, it sometimes does not register because it is so alien to how normal human beings see other human beings.

There are many lessons to be taken away from the experience of the Nazis in Germany. I won’t pretend to be competent to state them all. Others have done so in words more memorable than anything I can offer. But I can, I think, draw one observation that, for me, was the dominant idea and the dominant sensation that impressed itself on me as I passed through the origins, the implementation and the end results of the Nazi worldview. This sensation does not diminish the horror and the outrage of the Holocaust in any way, but aside from profound revulsion at what was done in the name of racial purity, there is a practical lesson that has immediate relevance to the United States and indeed the entire world.

I am speaking of complicity. Understated somewhat in the museum displays is the historical reality that much of the world, and in particular and notably the United States, turned its back on the Jewish refugees who were trying to escape the Holocaust spreading across Europe in the 1930s. And there is the historical reality of appeasement, the belief that by giving Hitler some of what he wanted, he would stop the ruthless expansion toward world domination that he so clearly stated was his ultimate desire. Intelligent people concluded that another war with Germany was to be avoided no matter what, that Hitler could be sated with a few more pieces of territory, a few more subjugated populations. The world largely stood by and watched Germany roll over much of Europe. Citizens of some of the victim countries actually welcomed the Nazi invasion. By the time the United States actively intervened, it was almost too late. Millions died, millions, while governments around the world failed to act.

Now let us turn to the present. I have written about this before. See http://bit.ly/2qoDaYE. Visiting the museum brings the message into sharp focus. Many of the same tactics used by Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party are routinely employed by the President Trump, his acolytes in the White House and his appointees in the major Executive Department agencies. Trump’s attempts to delegitimize the independent media, calling them the “enemies of the people” are right out of Hitler’s playbook. That may seem harsh or over-wrought but the history is there to be seen. Holocaust-deniers are just like climate science-deniers in their capacity to block the truth in favor of more satisfying mythologies.

I won’t belabor this. I don’t know that Trump plans to replace the Constitution, but then again, we have seen him refer to it as “archaic” and “really bad for the country.” He has railed at the courts for decisions he opposed and generally appears to see the Constitution as an unjustified obstacle to his political agenda. He has many apologists who are quick to respond that “he really didn’t mean that” or “he is just frustrated; pay attention to his actions, not his words.”

But his words are his actions. Many people said the same things about Adolf Hitler’s words. Then they saw his actions and remained silent or joined the Nazi bandwagon.

The real point is that people of good will who value their freedom must not be complicit in Trump’s undermining of American institutions such as the free press. Silence is complicity as much as active cooperation. Both silence and active cooperation made Hitler’s rise to power possible. They have the same effect in our time. It is the moral responsibility of every person who believes in the ideals of the American way of life as enshrined in the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the invitation inscribed on the Statue of Liberty to actively resist the Trump administration’s cynical effort to undermine those ideals.

You can do this by subscribing to the information sources at MoveOn.org, ACLU.org, Indivisible.US, PeoplePower.org, Dailykos.com, TakeCareBlog.com or any of the other major authenticated sources of real information about what the Trump administration is doing to undermine the quality of the air you breathe, the water you drink, and the freedoms you enjoy as an American. Sign the petitions, participate in the marches, stand up and fight back! If you know someone who voted for Trump, reach out to them and politely, without judgment or acrimony, try to reason with them using the facts and truths that are readily available. And then VOTE in 2018. There is no other way. Do not be complicit by your silence and your inaction.

As you leave the Holocaust Museum, you pass a wall inscribed with these words of Martin Niemöller, a Protestant pastor who openly opposed Hitler and spent seven years in Nazi concentration camps:

First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Socialist.

Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

Nothing more to say.

Black Friday Redux

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I thought “Black Friday” was a day, immediately after giving thanks for all our advantages, when we were supposed to go collectively insane and buy everything in and out of sight because it was cheap because it was Black Friday which is always right after Thanksgiving….

Then, this past Friday, yesterday, I opened the Washington Post to the headline that President-elect Trump (hereafter just “Trump”) has chosen a general with the nickname “Mad Dog” to be Secretary of Defense. In case you missed it, the paper also reported that Trump has threatened U.S. companies with “consequences” for moving jobs offshore, details to come later. Meanwhile, back in Washington (aka the Nation’s Capitol, hereafter the NC), it was revealed that “rogue employees” of the NC’s Metro system have been falsifying reports regarding safety conditions for at least a year, placing thousands of daily commuters at risk for another fatal derailment. Management didn’t know. Meanwhile, on Capitol Hill, Hou­­se Democrats are upset that Trump won’t explain how he will prevent conflicts of interest and violation of his lease for the Trump hotel on Pennsylvania avenue once he becomes the actual President.

Meanwhile, in Pakistan, the Post reports, thousands of protesters are marching in the streets about charges of corruption involving Prime Minister Sharif, whom Trump just days ago called on the phone, without, it appears, consulting anyone at the State Department or other U.S. agency with expertise regarding Pakistan, and whom Trump then declared was “fantastic,” according to a Pakistani transcript. Trump has not denied the adulation he heaped upon Sharif.

Meanwhile, back in the NC, Trump was reported to have picked former high-ranking officers of Goldman Sachs to manage the key financial agencies of the federal government. Meanwhile, elsewhere in the news, on Wednesday of this week, Ms. Scottie Hughes, known for her role as surrogate for Trump declared, on The DIane Rehm Show, that “facts” are no longer a … fact:

“… on one hand, I hear half the media saying that these are lies. But on the other hand, there are many people that go, “no, it’s true.’ And so one thing that has been interesting this entire campaign season to watch, is that people that say facts are facts—they’re not really facts. Everybody has a way – it’s kind of like looking at ratings, or looking at a glass of half-full water. Everybody has a way of interpreting them to be the truth, or not truth. There’s no such thing, unfortunately, anymore as facts.” [emphasis added by ShiningSeaUSA.com]

Black Friday déjà vu all over again. No more facts. Imagine. A report for The Atlantic said Ms. Hughes stated later in the interview that she was a “classically studied journalist,” which may explain her position on “facts.” It was, in fact (sorry, couldn’t help myself), none other than Friedrich Nietzsche, writing in the 1880’s, who first said there were no facts, only interpretations. Ms. Hughes should be more forthcoming about her sources when she throws out lines denying the existence of facts.

Nietzsche also said:

 “[D]eception, flattering, lying and cheating, talking behind the back, posing, living in borrowed splendor, being masked, the disguise of convention, acting a role before others and before oneself—in short, the constant fluttering around the single flame of vanity is so much the rule and the law that almost nothing is more incomprehensible than how an honest and pure urge for truth could have arisen among men. They are deeply immersed in illusions and dream images; their eye only glides only over the surface of things … their feeling nowhere leads into truth, but contents itself with the reception of stimuli, playing, as it were, a game of blind man’s bluff ….”

On Truth and Lie in an Extra-Moral Sense,  1873, reproduced at      http://oregonstate.edu/instruct/phl201/modules/Philosophers/Nietzsche/Truth_and_Lie_in_an_Extra-Moral_Sense.htm

Perhaps this is the root explanation for Trump’s popularity even among people who acknowledge that he is a remorseless liar. That, I suppose, would be a matter of interpretation whether you believe Nietzsche or not. I don’t pretend to have the answer. I am still trying to absorb Friday’s major news items, another Black Friday in what promises to be a long line of them. Buckle up.

It also occurs to me that if you were among the long-suffering college students who took philosophy and always wondered why, this latest skirmish about the meaning of reality may be the answer. People like Nietzsche sometimes come out of nowhere to explain, or at least give context to, the otherwise inexplicable. It helps to have at least heard of him, as Ms. Hughes would no doubt verify, but only, of course, as her “interpretation,” not as fact. For in her world, and in the world of our new Chief Executive, “the truth is whatever I say it is.” Hitler and Stalin would approve.