Pep Talk

Donald "Bone Spurs""Veterans are losers and suckers" Trump has said he would like to show up at Pete Hegseth's meeting of all US military command staff today and give them "a pep talk." 

 Wouldn't you love to see that? 

 Me neither.

True Things 4

Larry Ellison is, apparently, the owner of NBC, CNN, TikTok (only recently, of course), and Oracle, a company that seems to have access to an unimaginable landscape of data, including yours and mine.

During Oracle's 2024 Financial Analyst Meeting in Las Vegas this month, which he joined by video, he said, ""Citizens will be on their best behavior because we're constantly watching & recording everything that's going on."  This was presented as a good thing.

Behave.

In Favor of Massacres (and Incompetence)

Yesterday the Pentagon's Chief Disinformation News Anchor and, apparently, Secretary of Defense Peter Hegseth announced that the 20 soldiers awarded the Medal of Honor for participating in the Wounded Knee Massacre in 1890 would get to keep their medals, after more than a century of controversy.

Wounded Knee was a massacre - so obviously so that it has not been excised or moderated in history books.  Nearly three hundred Lakota - men, women and children - were killed.  About 25 Army soldiers were also killed, almost exclusively by friendly fire (the massacre started when, deployed in a full circle around some of the Lakota, they started firing).  The Medals of Honor were handed out to disguise the rampant corruption and incompetence of the Indian Agents and the US Army officer who lead the troops, James Forsythe, and the equally corrupt Harrison Administration in Washington, which was trying to manipulate the people of South Dakota, where the massacre took place, to elect a state legislature who would send a Republican Senator to Washington to support higher tariffs.

I'm not making that up.  The Wounded Knee massacre was about higher tariffs.

But, says Peter Hegseth, the men were “brave soldiers... we’re making it clear that they deserve those medals.”  So... medals for massacres.  A chilling glimpse of the future.  Even the My Lai murderers weren't given medals, although one did go to jail.  Medals were given to the helicopter crew who finally intervened and stopped the massacre.

But we can't, I guess, expect the Secretary of Defense (soon to be Secretary of War) to know much history.  Maybe that big meeting of the entire US military command staff he's scheduled for next week is going to be about the Final Solution.  Medals all around.

More about Wounded Knee and the political context here and here.

Rubicon

 Can I say something else about the Roman Republic/Empire?  I'll be short.  Feel free to move on if you're not into it.  

The fall of the Republic and the establishment of the Empire happened over a span of many years.  Rules were bent; favors were given, political boundaries crossed.  The very structural and cultural foundations of the Republic were disassembled and discarded, little by little.  The guardrails were removed.

And then, in BC 49, Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon.

This was the one clear, defining moment when the Republic died and the Empire was born (that's why the phrase "crossing the Rubicorn" still has significant meaning today).  Caesar was the Governor of Cisalpine Gaul, and had just finished a military campaign with a standing army.  No Governor was allowed to bring a standing army beyond the borders of his province.  Caesar did, against the orders of the Roman Senate, for a number of interesting reasons, and began his campaign to take Rome by crossing the river, the southern boundary of his province.  Once installed in Rome, he became dictator for life, appointed his adopted son Octavian (later Caesar Augustus) as the first true Emperor, and the Republic was dead.

So all of this is to ask the question:  What will be Trump's Rubicon?  His administration, like the late-stage Roman Republic, is ignoring rules and law, encouraging corruption, and dismantling the guardrails.  What will it look like when he drags the unwilling American people past the point of no return?  

I believe that he will see the river, stride cockily up to its banks, strike its surface with his staff, and declare himself the master of the river and promise that he will lay waste to the other side.  Then he'll turn around, wander off and do something else.

You heard it here first.

True Things 3

You probably know that there been at least one example - a famous one - of a republic with term-limited leaders becoming an empire with emperors for life.  This example is, of course, the decline of the Roman Republic, in the first century AD, and the rise of the Roman Empire, ruled over absolutely by emperors who were more likely than not to act in bizarre and unhinged ways.

It didn't help that the Roman Republic was rigged so that a small number of wealthy men got to make all the decisions.

Those of us who will not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.

Put Forward Without Comment

 

True Things 2

In April of this year, Republican Representative Keith Self, from Texas's 3rd Congressional District, quoted Joseph Goebbels regarding freedom of thought in America.  The quote?  Who cares.  I mean, he quoted Joseph Goebbels - chief propogandist for the Nazi Party - in public!  But here it is anyway:

It is the absolute right of the state to supervise the formation of public opinion.

Self credited Goebbels during his statement. 

True Things 1 (a new feature of New World II)

Charlie Kirk's wife Erika competed in the 2012 Miss America pageant, a pageant owned at the time by Donald Trump.

Gary Becomes a Terrorist

Boy, I did not have this on my Golden Years bingo card.  But here it is:  I am, and I am proud to be, a terrorist.  A domestic terrorist, no less.

Yesterday, King Donald the Absurd and his Clown Car from Hell declared that Antifa is a domestic terrorist organization.  You can look elsewhere for analysis regarding the difference between an organization and an ideology, the fantastical accusations smeared all over the declaration, and the troubling manipulation involved in this kind of calling names and throwing stones at one more thing you want your ignorant followers to be afraid of.

So opposing fascism in America is now a terrorist activity.  Fine.  I am opposed to fascism, and at this point the best thing I can do to join the fight against fascism is to write the truth, plus things I believe, in this blog.  As I've said before - come at me, bro.

By the way, my father was Antifa too.  He and millions of his comrades kicked fascist butt all over Europe in the 1940s.  He didn't want to go, but he did, because he thought it was the right thing to do.

Me too.

Let's Move On

One thing that Donald Trump and I agree on - let's move on from the Epstein Files.

And that's where our agreement ends.  He is afraid of what might happen to him if the files are released.  I don't think anything substantial will happen to him if the files are released.

Possible scenarios:

1. The files are never released.  Everyone argues and is outraged for a while, and slowly, the whole thing disappears.
2. The files are released and they don't provide much more information than we have now.
3. The files are released and they exonerate everyone.
4. The files are released and they make it clear that Trump committed felony sexual abuse on minors.
5. The files include actionable evidence that Donald Trump raped minors.
6. The files are released and, no matter what they say, everyone has had so long to calcify their opinions on Trump and underaged girls that no significant changes are observed.

Given that the Trump administration has had six months or more to fiddle with these files, #s 4 and 5 are not likely.  #s 1, 2, and 3, or some combination will no doubt be what happens.  When/if the files are released, nobody with half a brain will see them as valid.  This is heartbreaking, because the women who were victimized will not find justice.

#6 will, regardless of any other outcome, be the only important thing that happens.  And it's only important because it's the final outcome of a scandal which has lasted longer than almost any one of the almost daily scandals that Trump has generated.  Nothing will change.

I happen to believe that he is guilty, and the release or non-release will not change that.   

So let's move on.  Trump's a pedophile, in addition to everything else.  Knowing that, knowing all the rest, has never made any difference.  The release of the Epstein files will not change a thing.

Three and a half years to go.

A Reminder

In October of 1415, France suffered a military defeat at the Battle of Agincourt which is legendary among the great military disasters in human history.  A large portion of the French governing elite was wiped out, by a dysentery-plagued smaller force of Englishmen under Henry V (Shakespeare's "band of brothers") who had brought along their longbows.  

The King of France, Charles VI, also known as "Charles the Mad," did not participate in the battle, staying home in Rouen, because he was afraid that he might break.  Charles was mentally ill, and thought he was made of glass.

And yet France survived, remaining a European power of the first order during the intervening six hundred years.  

We will survive Donald the Mad, who thinks he is made of beautiful gold.  

After the Bears

I got a note from a friend recently.  We write each other sporadically, and have done for most of our lives.  Right now, we're trying to help each other understand and survive the current political nightmare.   

His story astounded me, because it was so closely aligned with my new vision of that current nightmare, a vision that helped me get back on the horse here at New World II, and a vision that I tried (awkwardly, in my opinion) to lay out here.  

Here's the story:

It was many years ago, Richard and I were in Glacier National Park on one of our every two years most excellent backpacking trips, and we were anxious about bears.

We were quite anxious about bears.

The ranger was explaining to us that the huckleberries were scant that year and the bears were hungry and irritated - this was October - and he was underscoring bear safety stuff, and then spoke briefly and clearly about bear encounters, and said, "Remember, you cannot outrun a Grizzly bear" to which Richard, standing right next to me, said "I don't have to outrun a Grizzly bear - I just have to outrun Keith."

So we leave the ranger, we are excited for our trek, alert to significant danger, and we  drive a long way, both time and distance - - there is one dirt road and it goes north to Canada, and Canada isn't so far.  We were somewhere near Polebridge, Montana, woods to our left with a lot of leaf fall, and flat boggy land to our right, and that's all we were seeing for a long time, and then there was all at once a big Grizzly stepping out of the woods and onto the road, followed by a young one.  These are magnificent animals.  They stopped on the road and hung for a bit -- we were forty feet away in a car but it was intense and extraordinary and thrilling, and the bears stepped off the road and moved on into the wet lands to our right.  We sat for a while, quietly, then drove on and parked, hiked a very long way and set up basecamp, and on that hike and for the days and nights we were there we were still concerned about bears, we were careful, we were paying attention, but we were not frightened, there was no longer a short shadow of something like terror, of something dark and dangerous and unseen.  

We'd seen it.

So with Trump's troops in Washington what I hear over and over, almost dismissively, is that it's optics, it's a distraction, it's a grand photo op.

I believe they are showing us the bears.

Yes - and now that we've seen them - the whole shambling, powerful, incoherent, dangerous, flailing and damaging mess that is the current administration - we are still careful, still paying attention, but are no longer afraid.  There is danger, and outrage, and things will be destroyed, but eventually we will get it back, and rebuild, mourn and carry on.

I was missing that.  But now that I've seen the bears, I'm ready to go on. 

Six-Fingered Man

So we have to figure out how to feel about Charlie Kirk's assassination.  

I'm not going to go into the reasons why this is such a conflicted situation.  Charlie Kirk was an extreme right wing "influencer," well-known, and someone who advocated - and publicly professed - very extreme views.  You could look him up.  Hint:  He suggested mass incarceration as a fix for the housing crisis, and advocated for public, televised executions even for children to watch.  So we're not talking about one more conservative pundit, and there's certainly no room for both-sider-ism.

As I consider his brutal assassination, I will certainly rise to the level of civilization that is expected of me, as Johnathan Last has done:

So the assassination of Charlie Kirk is not just a human tragedy for his family. It is not just an affront to society. It is an attack on our civic compact. It should be confronted as such, with no qualifications or equivocations.*

But I'm also a flawed human being, and a politically active one at that, and a big part of me wants to say something like "good riddance to bad rubbish."  How can we celebrate a murder?  I guess the same way I celebrated the murder of Count Rugen.  You remember Count Rugen.  The last thing he heard before he died was Inigo Montoya saying "Hello.  My name Inigo Montoya.  You killed my father.  Prepare to die."**  No regrets.  

So how is this different?  I understand that Charlie Kirk was a real human being and Rugen was a fictional character, but that distinction doesn't carry a lot of weight.  Both were evil people, both were killed by determined people who (we would assume in re: Kirk's killer) were injured by them.

I've got no answer to this question - I'll feel the way I feel, and so will everyone else.  However, two things Kirk has said are relevant as we consider his brutal assassination:   

"It's worth to have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the Second Amendment to protect our other God-given rights". (4/23)

"I think empathy is a made up New Age term that has done a lot of damage" (10/22)

The irony is, I suppose, that we honor Kirk's humanity by expressing - in word and action - our strong opposition to what he has said. 

* - From today's Bulwark Triad e-mail newsletter; no link available

** - [Update]  I just remembered that the last thing Rugen heard before being skewered was "I want my father back, you son of a bitch!"  But you get the point.

Not Nuremburg

Yes it's been a long time.  A long river cruise across Europe, and then intense work on a demanding part in a local community theater play.  A long visit by our son, daughter and law and granddaughter, joined often by our other son who lives in town - really wonderful to have everyone together.  

But those are just excuses.  It's been a long time because I gave up again, just gave in to horror and despair with no hope - not a single spark - on the horizon.  As the catchphrase of the September 1 protests notes:  "No one is coming to save us."  Unfortunately, we ourselves have no tools whatsoever to even begin making things right.  

I'm so tired of being an American.  There's so much to cope with, to endure, and there's no end in sight.

What it took was a different perspective, which has to do with that river cruise noted above.

We traveled by river through the heart of Europe, or one of the hearts of Europe - in our case, mostly through Germany except at the beginning and end.  I was looking forward to a journey through medieval Europe, which is what I got.  But I also got another journey I wasn't expecting - a journey through the horror and devastation of World War II and the Nazi atrocities that we are so afraid of seeing again.

As I note in the trip journal, the German people have acknowledged their past, set themselves against the Nazi legacy and honored those who were victimized by the horror of the Holocaust:  "Over and over we are reminded by guides of the atrocities of the Nazis and the horror felt by the German people today. Their response... is almost always measured, solemn, authentic and intense. They do not shy away from their history; they acknowledge it head-on and in doing so, set the stage for a better future."

While preparing the post on our stop in Nuremburg the other day, I had reason to do some research on the Nuremburg Rallies, which you can read about in the post.  I was actually looking for a photo of the speaker's platform used at the rallies, that so many of us have seen (perhaps not knowing exactly where it was) in WWII documentaries, many of which used footage from Hitler's documentarian, Leni Riefenstahl.  

I looked through those pictures, of the rallies, the massed troops, the hundreds of thousands of Germans, the huge swastika, and the man at the center of it all.  I recently finished an online course - taught and recorded in 2008 - about modern Europe, and one of the lectures focused on describing Adolph Hitler and the fascists.  It was hard to avoid the parallels; in fact, it was chilling.  This lecture was a low point for me, reinforcing the despair and hopelessness that had been consuming me - with its ups and downs - since November.

But as I looked at the pictures of the rallies, and of Hitler, it struck me that we - the US in this moment - are not in a position to repeat the exceptional cruelty and destruction of 1930s and 40s in Europe under the Nazis.  We are, in fact, a pale shadow of the Third Reich.

Although the similarities between Hitler and Trump are chilling, the stark differences are, I am beginning to believe, more significant.  Although both came to power by creating widespread fear and warping a democratic infrastructure, Hitler backed all that up with brutal violence, while Trump ranted at rallies (much smaller than Nuremberg) without making any of the fears tangible.  Although both came to power primarily by appealing directly to a disaffected populace, Hitler's message was much truer than Trump's:  Germany had been demolished by the Allies, while Trump's message is to people whose disaffection has been carefully constructed over time, and is not justified.  Although each controlled a great war machine, none of Trump's goals can be accomplished by going to war with another country, while Hitler's core message was the vision of a Third Reich which stretched from France and England to Russia (Vladimir Putin is, at present, much more like Hitler on this point than is Trump).  Although both have created secret police to weed out undesirables, the SS acted quickly and ruthlessly, while ICE is harassed daily by significant resistance and Trump does not seem to know what to do about it.  And, of course, while Hitler may have had a personality disorder - which may have actually forwarded his pursuit of the Third Reich vision - Trump is uninterested in policy or vision, probably suffering from dementia, widely ignorant, and clearly - demonstrably - descending into babble, narcissism, randomness, and dissociation, as well as increasingly becoming distanced from reality.  

If the Emperor has no clothes, Hitler was clothed and armed and put words into actions.  Trump is naked, and it is getting harder and harder to ignore that every day.

So the upshot of all this is that, after steeping myself in Nazi politics, I've realized that it's not likely to happen here.  Trump is no Hitler.  And, to be fair, the US is no 1930s Germany:  here, we have a governing structure that has worked, essentially unchanged, for almost a quarter of a millennium.  And, ironically, Trump depends on the very democratic structure that he is trying to destroy (that's why he's trying to destroy it).  Court decisions still matter.  He is only a handful of Congressional seats away from a successful impeachment and, unlike Hitler when his aides exploded a bomb meant to kill him, Trump will have to go if impeached, and it would all be over.  And, unlike 1930's Germany, there is a substantial and widespread opposition movement which - and this is important - has not been suppressed.  There will be no American Tiananmen  Square.

So what I have realized, I guess, is that the Emperor really does not have any clothes.  He is the Emperor, which means that there's a system keeping him in charge.  But the system has its limits, and he's approaching those limits.  We'll see what that means.

Whatever the monster is, the monster is insane and getting careless.  

That means it's out of control, and that's our only hope.

John Lennon. 1971