Calling out the grotesqueness of Hitler’s rhetoric

Chrump is doing the only thing he knows how to do, doubling down, this time with the violent-sounding fascist talk, channeling everyone’s favorite führer.  He’s apparently at it again with the inflammatory Hitler quotes, immigrants poisoning of the blood and soil of the Fatherland, the lügenpresse (fake news,) enemy of the people, and his usual fawning tributes to Putin, Kim, Xi and Orbán. ,

Non-Nazi readers of history tend to get alarmed By Hitlerian rhetoric, which is used, with trolling delight, to divide a democratic nation into Us and Them and create a villain class of Other that can be assailed with violent hatred, with the government’s blessing. The meat and potatoes of any good fascist movement, the appeal to gang violence and hatred of homosexuals, strong-minded women, immigrants, moderates, the opposition, intellectuals, minority religions and ethnic groups, principled members of the clergy, the media etc. The White House put out a good statement in reply to this naked Hitler talk. It has to be reiterated every time this sick fuck sings Hitler to his cheering fans.

The White House today responded to Trump’s speech. White House deputy press secretary Andrew Bates said: “Echoing the grotesque rhetoric of fascists and violent white supremacists and threatening to oppress those who disagree with the government are dangerous attacks on the dignity and rights of all Americans, on our democracy, and on public safety…. It’s the opposite of everything we stand for as Americans.”

Heather

A very, very stable genius of geniuses

“They’ve taken a President who’s very popular, I got 75 million votes, much more than that I believe.  No president’s ever got that many votes, and they’ve taken that number of people, and I think you can double it or almost you can triple it in terms of the real, the feeling.”

The same instinctual bravura as a mathematician goes into calculating his ever-multiplying net worth, the value of his properties (when using them as collateral for low cost loans) or, inversely, for valuing his properties (for purposes of avoiding taxes), for the calculation of his incalculable IQ, which is over 180, probably ten or five thousand times that, if you think about it, really, the feeling.

You might be a writer

It could be that the reason you write every day, the reason you need to write and edit what you write every single day, is because you are actually a writer. This is a quirk of personality in some people, they need to clearly set things out in front of themselves, set them in front of other people once in a while.  Not everyone feels this need, you know.  You might really be a writer if you can’t stop, if you have to write every goddamned day.

On the other hand, you might just be a narcissistic jackass who thinks the same kind of things that everybody sometimes wrestles with in their lives, thinking these common thoughts are particularly interesting in your own case. Something that strikes you as an insight makes you feel a sudden need to put into words and share because doing this makes you feel focused and important for a moment, this fleeting thrill of self-revelation.

There are plenty of other hands, too. You might’ve really stumbled on something truly interesting. You might actually be an introspective, receptive person who thinks interesting thoughts, expresses them in a personal way that other people might actually be interested in, but who the fuck knows?  Unless, of course, you get paid for your words, in which case, there is no doubt.

If I were writing a book, and that’s not to say that I’m not, I would be steadily assembling all these pieces of a perplexing puzzle, a puzzle that vexes me, anyway, and struggling to tell the story in a way that might shed some light on somebody else’s similar struggle. How many asshole parents have left their adult children with partial puzzles, most of the pieces missing, set them into a dark, cold room and said, often from the grave “I always told you you were a clueless piece of shit.” 

Personally, I have no idea how many people need to write every day, there are no doubt statistics that can be pulled out of the collective anus, but that is a story for another day, and one that wearieth me too much at the moment to wrestle with and render in feeble, tottering words.

Until tomorrow, my friend, I salute you.

What would the führer do? (Part 3)

A party wholly in service to the damaged ego of one man does shit like this (described with uncharacteristic lack of squeamish ambiguity by the Grey Lady):

Neguse: What is the specific constitutional crime that you’re investigating?

Reschenthaler: Well, we’re having an inquiry so we can do an investigation and compel the production of witnesses and documents. 

Neguse: And what is the crime you’re investigating?

Reschenthaler: High crimes, misdemeanors and bribery.

Neguse: What high crimes and misdemeanors are you investigating? 

Reschenthaler: Once I get time, I will explain what we’re looking at and I will make the equivalency of the last impeachment. 

Transcript from House Rules Committee “debate” from MediasTouch

Just ask yourself, would the führer, before he had the legal power to kill anyone he hated, have had his myrmidons do anything differently?

Semi-comical

But also serious as yer proverbial heart attack

DOJ has defendant Trump’s personal phone from January 6, 2021, after its disappearance and years of concealment (can you say obstruction, boys and girls?) along with all relevant Secret Service and White House, Homeland Security and Department of Defense phone calls and text messages from before, during and after the permitless parade to, and deadly riot at, the Capitol.

And here’s the big guy himself, calm and credible as can be, in his most reasonable and persuasive tones, from a month ago. He was asked about the propriety of weaponizing the government against his enemies.

They’ve taken a President who’s very popular, I got 75 million votes, much more than that I believe.  No president’s ever got that many votes, and they’ve taken that number of people, and I think you can double it or almost you can triple it in terms of the real, the feeling.

“But we’ve watched it for a long time and it’s not unique, but it’s unique for the United States.  Yeah  If they do this, they’ve already done it, but if they want to follow through on this, yeah, it could certainly happen in reverse. It could certainly happen in reverse.

What they’ve done is they’ve released the genie out of the box, you understand that. They’ve done something that nobody thought would happen. They’ve taken a President who’s very popular, I got 75 million votes, much more than that I believe.  No president’s ever got that many votes, and they’ve taken that number of people, and I think you can double it or almost you can triple it in terms of the real, the feeling. You can’t do that, you can’t go after people.

You know when you’re President, and you’ve done a good job and you’re popular, you don’t go after them, so you can win an election. They’ve done indictments in order to win an election. They call it weaponization and the people aren’t going to stand for it. But yeah, they have done something that allows the next party, I mean if somebody, if I happen to be President and I see somebody who’s doing well and beating me very badly I say “go down and indite them”. 

What would the führer do? (Part 2)

It’s not hard to imagine what a an autocrat would do in any given situation, just ask yourself “what would the führer do?”

Picture meeting the führer, someone given to extreme temper tantrums when opposed, prepared to throw himself on the floor, shriek, kick his feet, bite the legs of the chairs, the carpet, sob, threaten, perform a terrifying, disorienting display of insane need for total dominance. Not to mention a violent vindictive streak and deep personal pleasure taken in the fatal suffering of his enemies.  

Then picture ever disagreeing with or contradicting that titan of will. Imagine that kind of shameless, insane, vengeful, murderous asshole, that personality, in charge of an entire nation.  It’s very easy to imagine what the führer would do in any given situation just as it’s easy to imagine what Jesus would do, or Buddha, or any prophet or person of righteousness you’d like.

Fascism is the dream state of the powerful narcissist, because under fascism, the will of the leader, and those who benefit from the leader’s will, is the only law of society and society’s only value. Charles Koch’s dream world, the dream of his loveless father fucking Fred Koch, who, as he created his psychopath sons, built the oil refineries for Hitler’s Luftwaffe, and Frederick Christ Trump, the highly successful psychopath who exploited government incentives after World War II to build middle-class housing, and then along with his filthy ilk, forced the creation of the Fair Housing Rights Act in 1965, which he fought with all his might using the Devil’s own Roy Kohn, alternately humiliating and supporting his own second choice idiot son Donald, all the while. 

Fascism is the dream state of any psychopath who dreams, joylessly, of bending the world to his insane will.

Happy 75th, Universal Declaration of Human Rights

Seventy-five years ago today, on December 10, 1948, the United Nations General Assembly announced the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). 

At a time when the world was still reeling from the death and destruction of World War II, the Soviet Union was blockading Berlin, Italy and France were convulsed with communist-backed labor agitation, Arabs opposed the new state of Israel, communists and nationalists battled in China, and segregationists in the U.S. were forming their own political party to stop the government from protecting civil rights for Black Americans, the member countries of the United Nations nonetheless came together to adopt a landmark document: a common standard of fundamental rights for all human beings.

The United Nations itself was only three years old, having been formed in 1945 as a key part of an international order based on rules on which nations agreed, rather than the idea that might makes right, which had twice in just over twenty years brought wars that involved the globe. In early 1946 the United Nations Economic and Social Council organized a nine-person commission on human rights to set up the mission of a permanent Human Rights Commission. Unlike other U.N. commissions, though, the selection of its members would be based not on their national affiliations but on their personal merit. . .

. . . The U.N. official noted that the commission must figure out how to define the violation of human rights not only internationally but also within a nation, and must suggest how to protect “the rights of man all over the world.” If a procedure for identifying and addressing violations “had existed a few years ago,” he said, “the human community would have been able to stop those who started the war at the moment when they were still weak and the world catastrophe would have been avoided.”

Drafted over the next two years, the final document began with a preamble explaining that a UDHR was necessary because “recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world,” and because “disregard and contempt for human rights have resulted in barbarous acts which have outraged the conscience of mankind.” Because “the advent of a world in which human beings shall enjoy freedom of speech and belief and freedom from fear and want has been proclaimed as the highest aspiration of the common people,” the preamble said, “human rights should be protected by the rule of law.”

Heather Cox Richardson

Truth and Reconciliation

Reconciliation is a beautiful thing. After a bitter struggle, if the two sides can regain trust in each other, reconcile and live in peace, it is the greatest example of redemption imaginable.

What makes reconciliation so difficult is the necessity for truth, the requirement that what causes the pain between the parties is addressed, so that there can be real resolution of the bitter conflict.  Without truth, reconciliation is one side agreeing that anything bad that caused the strife is better forgotten than actually addressed and rectified.

Certain things can’t be rectified without tremendous willingness to forgive on the side of the person wronged. No matter how great the willingness, truth is always an essential ingredient of real reconciliation.  Without an honest back and forth there can be no real meeting of the minds, no chance for true redemption.

If I lynched your brother, no matter how badly I felt about it afterwards, I still lynched your brother.   If we want to have reconciliation and I insist that at the time I lynched your brother I was completely right to do it, that story will never be reconciled with what you need after I lynch your brother.  

If I tell you to get over that unfortunate thing that happened to your brother, (distancing myself from my actions with the passive voice, as first year law students are taught to do when they have to admit an inconvenient fact), we have nothing: no truth, no reconciliation.

We can’t heal from an injury inflicted by someone else unless that injury is addressed, unless we have some assurance going forward that the same actions that caused the injury won’t be repeated. Humans usually get very defensive after they lose control and do something atrocious, they would rather not look squarely at something terrible they may have done when they lost control. 

Much easier to forget, justify, split hairs about it, tell you to get over it, blame you for being unforgiving if you don’t get over their little mistake or their long pattern of consistently similar little mistakes.

When the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa worked, former apartheid torturers cried in guilt for what they publicly acknowledged they’d done to their victims. Sometimes the victims would be so moved by the showing of remorse that there would be tears all around and actual reconciliation in the face of deep, deep regret, after honesty that had to be painful as hell, but no real peace comes without truth. 

The harder that truth is to admit, the more essential it is that it be sincerely acknowledged aloud for peace to follow.  Without truth, reconciliation is as empty as any political slogan you can think of.

Criminal co-conspirator Speaker of the House tries again for the boss

[Yesterday], Johnson supported Trump’s message about January 6 when he said that he was making sure the faces of rioters are blurred in the surveillance footage. “We have to blur some of the faces of persons who participated in the events of that day because we don’t want them to be retaliated against and to be charged by the DOJ [Department of Justice] and to have other, you know, concerns and problems,”  he said. Johnson’s spokesperson quickly walked back the comment, saying Johnson meant to say that faces were blurred to prevent “all forms of retaliation against private citizens from any non-governmental actors.” 

(Heather Cox Richardson)

This cherub-faced little extremist asshole was running around the Capitol days before the January 6th riot/insurrection, urging his colleagues to sign on to an amicus brief to support corrupt Texas tough guy AG Ken Paxton’s grotesquely unconstitutional ploy to the Supreme Court to deny the right of several states Biden won to send their legally certified electors to Congress on January 6th.

Here’s just a reminder, from the evidence–based world, of what the insane former president is charged with in relation to disrupting Congress on January sixth.

It’s no wonder incendiary lies, threats of violence and retribution and cheap theatrics are the staple of Chrump’s 2024 campaign. It’s all he’s got, it’s all he’s ever had, and along with daddy’s fortune, it’s all he’s ever needed.