Should the Name of the GOP Be Changed to the DTP, the Domestic Terrorism Party? Or is Creating the Sense of a Nation Divided in Two the Biggest Threat?

No political party in any democracy should make domestic terrorism or undermining democracy a large part of its governing method, but that just might be the best description of what we’re experiencing now. On the other hand, maybe the country is less polarized than we’ve been led to believe we are, by DJT, the GOP, etc. and the way different media have been covering violent events and politics?

 

According to Reuters, the level of political violence has been drastically on the rise since DJT’s run for President in 2016. Some of these threats were subtle and not recognized for what they were. Others were grossly obvious, like Jan 6, when DJT worked the crowd with statements like, “We fight like hell. And if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.” Maybe the rhetoric of DJT, and several other members of the GOP, that has inspired violence should be considered a form of domestic terrorism?

 

The latest example are his threats against judges, probable witnesses, and possible jury members in the Jack Smith Jan 6 case, which have led to a request for a narrow gag order to stop “inflammatory” and “intimidating” comments. DJT also said, in another of the cases he now faces for alleged crimes against the nation, “If you go after me, I will go after you.” He has a history of threatening judges, threatening the rule of law, democracy itself, over and over again.

 

What fueled his power was pushing hate, fear, and grievance. Creating in our nation a sense that everything was about to tip over. Or that there were two sides, his and the sinners against him. And these “others,” mostly non-white, non-Christian people, or “left-wing extremists,” must be stopped at any cost.

 

He added to this by making extreme, shocking statements that were either untrue or exaggerated. Ones that fit his purposes and narrow perspective in that moment, to promote himself above all others. According to Slate, lying about the actual threat posed by COVID, not so much to protect us from panicking but more to avoid rattling the stock market. Suggesting injecting bleach might be a helpful treatment for COVID. Lying that “caravans of immigrants” of hardened criminals were invading our nation, when no such thing was happening. He continuously lied about and attacked President Obama.

 

This shock doctrine activity is a threat to all of us. On 9/11/2023 I was listening to MSNBC Deadline Whitehouse. This program was frightening in making this threat clear. The host, Nicole Wallace, posed the question, “If 9/11 happened today, would the nation come together as it did back in 2001? Are we capable of national unity today?”

 

The guests on MSNBC talked about the May DHS bulletin saying the US remains in a heightened threat environment, and that threat is not from foreign terrorists but domestic ones. News analyst Mary McCord discussed how 9/11 was an attack on national infrastructure to sow fear and discord. And the political violence happening today has this same goal. To increase the fear and division, to increase doubts about the government and ourselves, and democracy.

 

Politico reports 60 incidents of attacks on major grid infrastructure happened just this year. And these attacks are mostly inspired by hate and politics. For example, the recent attacks on the power grid in Baltimore, a majority black population, were carried out by people aiming their virulence at black people. How do we deal with this threat?…

 

*To read the whole article, please go to The Good Men Project.

 

**Photo from Museum of Natural History in New York City.

Since DJT was in Office, the Political Universe Has Felt Unhinged. Maybe, Now, this is Changing: Dusk Now Has Its Sibling, A New Morning, Back

Not being able to watch DJT’s arraignment on tv, moment-by-moment, was a bummer. His legal team argued news cameras in the courtroom would create a “circus-like” atmosphere. It’s a circus-like atmosphere whenever DJT is speaking. Media organizations counter-argued that the gravity of the situation warranted full public access. The judge did allow five news-pool still photographers to snap pictures.

 

I would’ve liked to see images of him fingerprinted, for example⎼ although I could also see the value in a different viewpoint, that maybe the best thing to do is to sideline the event, sideline him, as Dahlia Lithwick argues in an article in Slate. Let him whither from lack of attention and let most of the rest of us focus on taking constructive actions to advance democracy.

 

The violence that some predicted, and that DJT himself tried to incite with calls of death and destruction, gladly did not happen. The pro-DJT morning rally was maybe 100 – 150 people, not anything in size or intent as what happened on Jan. 6. MSNBC reported that Marjorie Taylor Greene and George Santos briefly attended the rally. Greene had helped plan the rally but left quickly due to the loud noise and protests that mostly drowned out the few comments or lies she was able to utter.

 

But indicting DJT for crimes a preponderance of evidence demonstrates he allegedly committed was itself an action that advanced democracy. It had a profound effect on me, and maybe on much of the human world. It was emotional and political, but also something else; cosmological, maybe. Certainly ethical. It was about resurrecting a sense that the earth itself is spinning as it should. That cause and effect still work together.

 

Some would claim what I feel is just a yearning for revenge, but I don’t feel that very much. I feel that what DJT did, repeatedly, is shock us. To shock and use against us our sense of rightness, justice, and truth; empathy, and compassion.

 

He’s tried to shock us into seeing the world as a duality of good and evil and then rip away one side of it, so we feel the world unbalanced, unhinged, and ourselves powerless, or that no power in us can stop him. Or that he is the absolute power, not only above the law but above the very workings of nature. He used lies not just to hide the truth but to make truth impossible to argue. Or to focus so strongly on one side of the coin, one side of humanity, the back, so all we see is the backside of humanity.

 

So, when he was led to the courthouse, the unbalanced world was returned to some sense of balance. What was unhinged was now hinged to a sense of order. Dusk now had its sibling, a new morning, back. He wasn’t put in handcuffs or subjected to mugshots. But power had, in our eyes, been somewhat restored, not only to the legal system but to our sense of rightness.

 

The trial will be about DJT trying to cover up and mis-characterize in his business and tax records his payoffs to two women he had affairs with (and to one doorman who had knowledge of a secret DJT child) so news of the affairs and other negative information would not de-rail the 2016 election. In other words, he engaged in an illegal conspiracy to aid his campaign and undermine the integrity of the election⎼ and he did this in October, right before the election.

 

DJT and his GOP followers claim this indictment is a political action, created by Democrats. But Michael Cohen, DJT’s fixer, was charged by DJT’s own Department of Justice in 2018 for making these payments and falsifying his actions. Cohen pleaded guilty, the DOJ and judge accepted the plea and sentenced him to jail time. The Justice Department did not, however, charge DJT himself but showed that he had directed Cohen’s actions. So, it’s not George Soros or President Biden who initiated this case, but DJT’s own people.

 

What I and so many others are concerned about is that this is one of the lesser of his many crimes, and possibly the most difficult to prove. It would be better for advancing democracy and the rule of law if the results of the investigation into DJT’s efforts to steal the 2020 election and proclaim himself dictator, by Fulton County, Georgia, DA, Fani Willis, for example, (or the DOJ or special counsel Jack Smith) are released soon and possible charges made public. That is a clearly potent charge. And, hopefully, other indictments, a veritable avalanche of charges and evidence would soon follow.

 

Democracy is not efficient. Rule by law is not instantaneous. Fascist Dictator Mussolini claims to have made the trains of Italy run on time, but this is not totally true. Most of the changes to the Italian rail industry took place before he was in power. Mob rule can make instantaneous decisions, but few of us would like to be around when they do so.

 

We need to be glad democracy takes time to mete out justice⎼ although in this case, taking too much time might allow the GOP to further undermine the institutions of democracy itself and replace fair trials with political shows. So, we need not only a fair trial and conviction, if warranted, but one conviction after another, and this year: one example after another of justice and the power of “we the people”.

 

Now, if only the judge, Juan Merchan, would admonish DJT more fully, and hold him responsible for the threats and attacks⎼ not only against himself, but the Manhattan DA, Alvin Bragg, Democrats everywhere, and even against DJT’s former followers, like Bill Barr, who have spoken against him.

 

Over the last two election cycles, we, and so many others, have become sick of the chaos and hate DJT and the GOP manipulate, the threats to our rights and democracy. And we’re more motivated than ever to take action to stop the establishment of autocracy⎼ and to promote a fair democracy. This and the other trials to come will hopefully continue that effort.

 

 

 

The GOP Are Not Just Trying to Suppress the Vote. They Are Trying to Control the Count.

When DT took office in 2017, the novel 1984 by George Orwell became a popular read. With DT in the White House, the fictional portrait of our future was moving closer to becoming reality. The GOP are, today, trying to keep that movement alive.

 

As journalist George Packer wrote in The Atlantic in 2019: “The week of DT’s inauguration, when the president’s adviser Kellyanne Conway justified his false crowd estimate by using the phrase alternative facts, the novel returned to the best-seller lists. A theatrical adaptation was rushed to Broadway. The vocabulary of Newspeak went viral. An authoritarian president who stood the term fake news on its head, who once said, ‘What you’re seeing and what you’re reading is not what’s happening,’ has given 1984 a whole new life.”

 

And it is so blatant. The GOP are not a political party as we have known such for most of our history. They are more like a camp of oligarchic terrorists, employing techniques used by Fascists and other authoritarian regimes, and excoriated in 1984, to attempt a slow-moving coup, whose aim is the destruction of voting rights and constitutional democracy, and the creation of a one-party state.

 

In the novel, the threat of invasion by other nations was used to maintain a state of permanent emergency, create a totalitarian regime, and control all aspects of life, even people’s thoughts. In our nation, for four plus years DT tried to keep us in constant shock, not through lies about invasions by other countries but lies about almost everything, for example, about invasions of immigrants, even children of color. They used doublethink, and newspeak to portray what could reveal truths or save lives, like masks, and turn them into assaults on community and freedom.

 

Many GOP claim to value freedom, but the only freedom they value is to agree with them. They attack, try to frighten, basically try to unperson those who oppose them (Liz Cheney, Jay Raffensperger, Marie Yovanovitch, and Democrats) or who they want to hide, deny and show no empathy for their suffering (thousands who died from COVID-19). And then there’s DT’s Big Brother DOJ illegally seizing emails of Democrats and their staff.

 

Political strategist David Plouffe said on MSNBC last week, “They`re not hiding what they`re doing. …they`re not only trying to make it harder to register to vote, they want to change …who gets to decide who wins elections….” “[T]his is existential. If you think that this Republican won`t go to the …furthest extremes to hold on to power, to steal power, to deny voters their franchise, I don`t know what you`re watching.”

 

The New York Times reports that, for example, the GOP in Georgia are eliminating people of color, especially Democrats of color, from local election boards. In Arizona, not only did they create an audit of the 2020 vote based on a false narrative; they also introduced a bill to strip the Democratic Secretary of State, Katie Hobbs, of her authority over election lawsuits, for her term in office only.

 

The aim of the GOP is to control not only the teaching of history but how each moment is remembered. They continue the “Big Lie,” to divide the nation and falsely claim DT was the winner of the 2020 election despite losing by 7 million plus votes, despite having no evidence and losing in any court where they tried to fraudulently claim the election was fraudulent. Doublespeak. They try to steal an election by claiming democrats are trying to steal it.

 

Many GOP are still denying the reality of the Jan. 6 attempt to steal the election, even though millions saw it happen on live tv. GOP Rep. Paul Gosar, R-Ariz., said federal law enforcement was “harassing peaceful patriots.” And Rep. Jody Hice, R-Ga., added: “It was Trump supporters who lost their lives that day, not Trump supporters who were taking the lives of others.”

 

But we know about the lies. We know the GOP are trying to create their own version of a Ministry of Truth so we the people cannot get accurate information, and not only about January 6.  During the DT administration, they hid information on the coronavirus, which led to possibly thousands of deaths, and on global warming, which threatens all our lives.

 

Historian Kellie Carter Jackson wrote in the Atlantic that, as of last Thursday, Juneteenth is now a national holiday, which honors the “history and memory of emancipation, liberation, and advancement” of Black People in this country. Yet the GOP in control of the legislatures of many states are trying to hide the history of slavery while banning the teaching of critical race theory, despite the fact that no public schools now teach it, and ban curricula focused on the lasting effects of slavery and racism.

 

On June 16, NPR had a wonderful program on the Alamo, revealing not only that Texas was born out of a movement to protect slavery. But even today, the Governor wants to make sure no one knows it.

 

The aim of the GOP is to make daily life so burdensome to most Americans that we go along just to survive. They have shifted the tax burden, for example, so the rich now pay such a small percentage of their earnings in taxes. When the rich and corporations pay less, the cost to the rest of us goes up⎼ the costs for education, health insurance, electricity, bridges, roads, water, protection from pandemics, etc. will all rise.

 

Once we lose the vote, and constitutional protections, the right to speak out, and protest, the right to a fair trial, can be eliminated. The GOP could also more freely sell off or mis-use our natural resources, land, air, water to sate their greed, ignore the effects of such use on the health of citizens, and ignore increasing natural disasters from climate change.

 

Now, with a Democratic administration, we have the opportunity to pressure Congress to protect the vote. Let’s take it. Speak out. Join about 70 groups and hundreds of activists working to get a voting rights bill like the For the People Act made into law. The GOP won’t even allow the bill to be debated in the Senate and will use the filibuster to stop it from being passed. Call Democrats like Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema. Urge them to honor their oath to protect the constitution, get rid of the filibuster, and stop the GOP attempt at a coup to end democracy⎼ stop them from making their fiction our reality.

 

*You can also read this post on The Good Men Project, which syndicated it.

 

Open Warfare Between T and the Constitution

For the last few weeks, if not the whole of his administration, T has been standing in front of the American people and tearing up the constitution. His lawlessness, public obstruction of justice and efforts to undermine this nation have reached new levels of affront. If we don’t respond with a tidal wave of pressure on Congress to begin an impeachment investigation, then I fear a would-be dictator would become a dictator in fact.

 

Democrats are calling for more investigations. Certainly, public testimony in congress about T’s corruption, obstruction, and back and front-door negotiating with Russians would be helpful to create this tidal wave. But I disagree with the argument that “we should focus only on legislation on bread and butter issues.” Such legislation would be wonderful. But any legislation that truly serves the interests of the majority of American people concerning health care, economic reform, education, environmental protections, voting, women’s, workers and children’s rights, or even protecting our election infrastructure will not pass the Senate and be signed by the President as long as Mr. T is President.

 

I likewise disagree with those who say we should “let the ballot box speak.” We have already seen Russia interfere in the last Presidential election. Can we wait for the next one? And as Watergate reporter Elizabeth Drew said to the New York Times and on MSNBC last Thursday, can we afford not to impeach him? The biggest danger, she said, might be in not impeaching him. What precedent would be created by not holding a president accountable for dangerous misdeeds? What if T thought his misdeeds were in fact condoned? Wouldn’t he feel emboldened to take even more dangerous actions?

 

Mueller neglected to call for charging the President with obstruction of justice, despite overwhelming evidence for the charge, partly because there is a DOJ policy not to indict a sitting President. Mueller concluded that “as an operative of the Department of Justice (DOJ), he was bound to follow that guideline…” The problem is, as Martin London in an article in Time Magazine and Rachel Maddow on MSNBC show, this policy is certainly questionable. It is not in the constitution and clearly places the President in a position above the law, while he is President. The policy therefore makes Mr. T even more desperate to do anything he can to remain President. Remaining President might be the only way he stays out of jail.

 

T has been acting more vehement and lawless, if that is possible, since just before and certainly after the Mueller Report, or the Barr Report, was made public. The Barr summary, news conference, and decision to redact the report were clear attempts by Barr to obstruct justice and obstruct any further investigations by distorting or lying about what Mueller had to say.

 

Barr told the American public the President was exonerated from any charge of obstructing justice when, in fact, the report clearly stated T was not exonerated. Barr said the President did not conspire with Russia to attack the 2016 election despite the fact the Mueller Report detailed clear attempts by the President, or his campaign and advisers, to meet with Russians to release information to undermine Hillary Clinton’s campaign, establish back channel avenues of communication, and hide economic ties to Russia. His campaign manager, Paul Manafort, gave the Russians essential polling data that might have helped them in their social media attacks. These are not the actions of an innocent man.

 

Since the release of the Mueller Report, T said he would fight “all the subpoenas” issued by the House. For example, he has refused to let a White House official respond to a subpoena regarding security clearances and said he would prevent his former lawyer, Don McGahn, from testifying before the House.

 

The Mueller Report, according to VOX, amounts to a “devastating indictment of Trump’s approach to politics.” Even if T was not, as many claim, an agent of Putin, he clearly has been doing all he can to weaken our nation.

 

For example, he did not act to secure our own electoral integrity after Russia hacked and shared Hillary’s emails and manipulated social media during the 2016 election. USAToday reported that Senate Republicans recently voted to block $250 million to beef up election security. The New York Times recently reported that Kirstjen Nielsen, before resigning as head of the Department of Homeland Security, became increasingly concerned about Russian activity in the US. But she was told by White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney not to bring this up with Mr. T. As a consequence, she never met with the different cabinet secretaries to coordinate a strategy to protect our elections, nor did she inform Americans of the latest version of Russian attacks on our nation.

 

Last Friday, FBI director Christopher Wray announced he has shifted resources to counter the Russian threat, largely without any White House support.

 

Instead of going after the Russians who attacked us, the Mueller Report reveals T tried to get the Department of Justice to prosecute political rivals in the U. S., most notably Hillary Clinton ⎼ to avenge or protect himself, not the nation.

 

Mr. T has driven wedges between the US and our NATO allies. He has provided sanctions relief to Russian oligarchs, lowered the standing of the US in international affairs, failed to adequately staff and support the state department and other non-military agencies meant to protect our national security, etc. He has also granted security clearances to people with compromised histories despite being warned of the danger these clearances could pose to national security.

 

T also has been acting to undermine the rule of law in ways not related to the Mueller investigation. For example, T told Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Kevin McAleenan that if he violated the law by blocking asylum seekers from entering the US and was arrested, he, T, would pardon him. T also threatened to release imprisoned immigrants into sanctuary cities in order to get back at Democrats.

 

We could go on and on, with assaults on the truth, on those who oppose him, on the free press, and on our very humanity.

 

Those of us who are lucky can turn off the news and get lost in our homes, jobs, family and in the beauty of the spring. And we all need moments of quiet and reflection. But we can’t deceive ourselves into thinking we can forget what T is doing and expect to keep any semblance of a democracy, or our homes, jobs, and the beauty of the earth.

 

No matter how sick we are of hearing his name or seeing his face, or how upsetting the news, actions must be taken to create a wave of pressure on Congress to investigate and impeach the President (and Vice President). Whether it be in new and creative ways, or making calls, protesting, writing emails or letters to the editor, working for Democratic candidates, or contributing money to organizations fighting T’s policies, it is time to act.

 

**And the time is right. T has never had the support of even half of the nation. His overall approval rating since being elected is lower than any President, certainly any since World War II. And since the release of the redacted Mueller Report, according to the Politico/Morning Consult survey, his support has dropped to 39% of the surveyed public.

 

**This post has been syndicated by The Good Men Project.

 

 

 

The President of Lies and Corruption Strikes Again

Did you listen to the President of lies and corruption last night? I couldn’t listen to him for even five minutes in a row. It just made me too angry. I heard the bulk of the speech this morning.

As Lawrence O’Donnell reported, this was a fundraiser for his re-election funded by the tv networks. Both before and after the speech, T sent out requests to his base for contributions to raise $500,000 in one day for a fund to secure the border. However, the checks were to be sent to T’s re-election campaign, to the Make America Great Again site. O’Donnell called it T’s first re-election speech. T says these funds will go to build a wall, when they have apparently been earmarked to pay for his re-election campaign.

As for other lies and deceptions: T called the border a humanitarian and security crisis. The humanitarian crisis is one created or worsened by T’s policies and those of other nations south of the border. As for security, he said “every week, 300 citizens are killed by heroin alone, 90% of it floods across the southern border.” As the New York Times fact-checked, most heroin comes through legal points of entry so a wall would do nothing to stop it.

As for the opioid crisis, this has little to do with Mexico, as most of the opioids come from China. And the crisis was not created by immigrants. It was created by policies internal to the US, by doctors over-prescription and such.

According to the Washington Post, apprehensions of people at the southern border peaked in the year 2000 at 1.6 million and have been in decline ever since. In 2017, Customs and Border Protection reported 303,916 apprehensions. There is no crisis except in who we have as president.

One of his biggest claims regarding security was that US officials have blocked nearly 4000 known or suspected terrorists from entering the country through the southern border. This, too, is false. T’s own government statistics show that almost all terrorists known to have entered the US recently did so through air flights. There can be no wall through the airwaves. There is no credible evidence of terrorists coming across this land border.

During the 2016 campaign, T said Mexico would pay for the wall. Now he says the US-Mexico-Canada trade agreement will pay for it. This, too, is deceptive. The trade agreement has not been ratified by Congress. Although T said he has already started building the wall, in fact only bollard fencing has been built, and this is from a bill passed in 2009.

So, this speech of T’s is more of the same thing. More statements lacking evidence, more racism, more corruption, more lack of respect for the rule of law, more putting himself before the well-being of most Americans. Please make calls, write letters, read the NYT and Washington Post fact-checks or watch the MSNBC, BBC or other reliable reports. T is, as many have said, holding us hostage, shutting down part of the government, trying to waste our tax money in order to save face with his base. We must do what we can to stop him.

Who Leaked What and Why?

I find it funny when I hear people ask why Russia would want to interfere in our elections. Isn’t it obvious? It is not just to put Trumpf in power so he could honor an agreement with Putin to remove the sanctions the US placed on them. It is to crash our whole political system. To isolate us from other nations and undermine our power and what’s left of democracy. This is not the old cold war revivified. It is a new species of conflict. It’s not a battle so much of armies but of information, of insight versus self-deceit, or agency versus pacifity.

 

Right now, our government is broken. And what happened this past week has just highlighted the whole situation.

 

The New York Times article, about Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein speaking with members of the FBI and others about the possibility of wearing a hidden microphone to record the President, exemplifies what has happened to our government and news media. The information was leaked to the Times by unnamed sources. How do we hear that news?

 

The differences in coverage (of the NYT’s coverage) of this story are striking. When I first heard the story on CNN and other media, what was emphasized in the story, in my opinion, was that Rosenstein spoke to others about secretly recording the president. I thought their coverage (hopefully unintentionally) fed the Trump narrative of a there being conspiracy against him.

 

The Washington Post and David Corn of MSNBC and the Huffington Post discussed the news differently. They cited several sources, people who were actually in the room when Rosenstein’s comment was made, who said the comment was sarcastic. It was not something Rosenstein really intended to do (or ever did). People are allowed to talk with others about what action is appropriate. These sources go on to stress the whole context in which the comment was made—which was after Comey was fired. Their focus was on the chaos in the White House and people in government trying to figure out what to do about it. I focused in the article on what Rosenstein’s state of mind was working for the DOJ in this time.

 

According to the article in the NYT, Rosenstein said “The New York Times’s story is inaccurate and factually incorrect. …I will not further comment on a story based on anonymous sources who are obviously biased against the department and are advancing their own personal agenda.”

 

So, who leaked this information? And what was the purpose of the leak? Right wing media in general immediately called for the firing of Rosenstein (although even Fox News soon had some doubts about the facts of what Rosenstein did and if Trumpf should fire him).

 

The NYT which has, of late, been so crucial in the fight to hold Trumpf accountable, to reveal his lies and the dangers he represents, may have now given him and his allies the excuse they dreamed of (or conspired to achieve?) to fire Rosenstein, appoint a lackey to oversee or end the Mueller Investigation, and try to destroy what’s left of our democracy. It certainly has distracted many people from the revelations about Cohen and Manafort and the threat they present to Trumpf.

 

It almost distracted us, or maybe for a few minutes, from the GOP misogynistic response to Dr. Christine Blasey Ford and the threat Judge Kavanaugh and the GOP agenda poses to our nation. Almost. The opposition to Judge Kavanaugh and the revelations of GOP perfidy continues to grow.

 

The two main parties of our government are almost at arms with each other. Will Russia be the ultimate winner of the battle? Or will this newest conflict lead to the impeachment of the President for obstruction of justice, collusion, etc., etc.? I hope we all vote in November, as well as do all we can until then to fight for the resurrection of our rights and the protections that government should afford us instead of take from us. We can’t afford to lose.

 

**I called the NYT comment line and shared some of what I wrote above. Maybe you could call and do the same? (844-698-6397) In the past 2 years, The NYT has been crucial in terms of holding Trumpf accountable and limiting his attempts to undermine democracy. The article on the comments by Rosenstein does the opposite. It provides Trumpf with the excuse to fire Rosenstein and further undermine the rule of law in this country. Any possible good served by the value of the information, if accurate, was undermined by the possible consequences. I hope you can publish an article, by Thursday, that reveals something that will stay T’s hand—or maybe how you were duped. And how Rosenstein should not resign.