The Munich Security Conference may as well have been held in the infamous Berlin suburb of Wannsee given the way that our sterling Vice President stepped into the shoes of Reinhardt Heydrich as he told the assembled European security officials that his boss Donald Trump had come up with a solution to what he might as well have called the Ukraine Question: sell 40 million people off to Trump's murderous pal, Vladimir Putin, let him order a great big Bucha and be done with them.
Let's hope it doesn't come to that, but I feel similarly. We may be asked to do things that are not okay. Which is our line in the sand will differ for each of us. For one of my lgbtq friends it's if her marriage isn't legal any more
Agreed. I say this as the Brown-skinned offspring of a German woman who was born the year after Hitler came to power, and it affected her entire childhood and life to be first under Nazi rule, and then the aftermath. She came to the USA, where she is now. I have reverse migrated upon retirement. I grew up with the stories. I grew up learning about resistance.
I am here in Germany. My American or German-American friends in Democrats Abroad and I have been discussing preparing to be living in a country under war, in a continent beset by war and the person causing this concern is one man, Donald Trump! We are also not going to be defeated without fighting and defending ourselves against our fellow countryman, and those who are willing to follow his bidding. It took a while of war for Nazis in the military to start rebelling, but the mystique of Hitler wore off fast during war. By then most people were resigned to their fate.
This morning I saw a good interview that made me hopeful for Americans to resist.
This video embedded in the Substack INK from Anand Giridharadas called "WATCH: An *actual* plan to beat fascism. A masterclass from political sage Anat Shenker-Osorio on how you can fight back against Trump II, create "social proof," mobilize your community, stop waiting for Democrats, and start getting it DONE"
Anand's guest Anat Shenker-Osorio is talking about what is going on and who is getting it right and who is getting it wrong and what it takes to get to understanding what is going on, mentions the update from the project 2025 tracker, says actions speak louder than words. I think what she is saying makes a lot of sense. She also tells us to forget getting the DEMS to do anything except for those who are.
Anat really getsto the meat of how things work. From my lifelong activism what she is saying is ringing true. Also, please share this with other people.
I’ve been around for 75 years. Over those years I’ve agreed and disagreed with our leaders. I’ve been proud to be an American and occasionally embarrassed. But for the first time, I now feel ashamed. Trump, Musk, Vance and Hegseth are not only destroying our country, but also its reputation around the world. 😥
I'm 81 and I am also devastated. The Convicted Felon, Shady JD, the Drunk at the DoD, President Muskrat and all the rest of the sycophants, toadies, flunkies, and hangers-on are a disgrace. That's the mildest way I can put it.
Tune in on YouTube and see what IllinoisGov Pritzker had to say at the end of his state of the state address about Nazis etc…
I cannot tell you how angry I am at what is going on … makes me feel that my service in the military is going to be tossed out on the ash heap… I swore an oath to defend the Constitution and these soulless bastards are doing their damned best to scuttle the republic. Just found out I can message any congressperson to tell them I agree or disagree with them
Find a Republican doing the right thing and tell them you agree. Senator Wicker excoriated Putin, Rounds of North Dakota praised Zelensky. I messaged them both and thanked them.
Telling the truth isn’t always preaching. Don’t apologize. I was in grad school during the Skokie trials. Pritzker’s remarks resonated with me. I despise so much of what passes for politics in our country right now.
What a great speech! One of the best I have ever heard. Illinois is fortunate to have such a thoughtful man as Governor in this terrible Trump time for America.
I wish every American could hear this segment of his speech.
Why isn't CNN covering things like this? Why haven't I seen a broadcast about the protests that have taken place over the last few weeks? Why is The NY Times not reporting this stuff? Why wasn't there a picture on the front page of the tears described in your essay tonight? I feel so betrayed...by everyone at this point. Journalists and newspapers are now complicit. And all this turmoil because of one man - a greedy bully that will surely go down in history as an evil dictator....not to mention his sidekick!
I believe that CNN is now owned like most of Ted Turner’s companies by his old nemesis John Malone of Liberty Media, Malone is a big donor to the insipid orange turd. CNN is doing what it’s told to do. 🤬 I stopped watching it a long time ago.
Dick: yes. It does become difficult some days to figure out which large conglomerate owns "what" (and then which merger is on the horizon, working to curry favor).
We stopped watching CNN a long time ago, too.
Full disclosure: we have friends and family members who are actual journalists - some retired, some still trying to work. It's quite the environment to both work in and try to find coverage of news.
We were happy here to have found Lucian and others on substacks and Bluesky.
Brilliantly devastating, devastatingly brilliant, many many thanks. If we - our country, our countrymen our fellow Americans - forget history we are condemned. Not just to repeat ihistory but condemned on all fronts and by all who come after as having destroyed something sacred.
My father's MOS was as a clerk in the Quartermaster Department, but he shipped out to Europe and did his job to help defeat fascism and the Nazi evil. He would be enraged at this selling out by trump, vontz (my spelling of his name, which is a Yiddish word for pest or bedbug), and the whole Putin-loving party that used to be the GOP. The whole group of them are such sniveling, devious, venal, traitorous dictator-loving turncoats. Fuck them all
Let's make it a thing! There's a season 5 episode of MASH called 38 Across where Hawkeye needed a crossword answer so he calls a buddy in the Navy for help. The clue is a 5 letter Yiddish word for bedbug. Guess what the answer was
The Trump/Vance/Musk regime is so odious that we must show what we think of them. I suggest that just as they have turned their backs on Ukraine and our NATO/European allies, so should we, including government officials, turn our backs on them whenever we happen to be in their presence.
Beautiful and tragic post Lucian. I felt like I was there again. I visited Normandy in H.S. and I'll never forget it. I am sickened beyond belief at what is happening with Ukraine along with everything else. I live for the day Trump is gone from this planet. I just pray America and the rest of the world can recover.🙏
When I was a kid, in the early days of Cold War, I had a recurring nightmare that I was at the entrance of a huge bomb shelter obviously built for a whole town. I could see the sky through the large hanger like doorway and the whole horizon was blood red. I knew it was a nuclear attack and I had no idea where my parents were or if they would make it to the shelter. Then the steel door was shut. I never saw my parents. I had that dream at least three times over the years.
You made me cry, Lucian. I think of my parents often more times than not now, realizing their plight to get away from the Nazis was so dangerous, so perilous. They made it to freedom. I cannot give up the fight although I am scared.
It’s alright to be frightened Marlene, that’s a natural reaction to the threat we all face. Not giving up in the fight is our only hope for a change we will want to live with, so courage Marlene you are not alone. 🙏
In the late 1940's I was just a little kid in a Chicago suburb, but I can remember being scared at night when I heard plane engines. I'd run to my parents and ask if they were Russian bombers.
I remember my father showing me a globe and explaining that we were too far from
Rich, when JFK was murdered, I was 12 years old. School let out early and I ran home and locked myself in the bathroom for 2 1/2 hours. I was sure that Khrushev was going to invade the US. Now I am worried that the Russians are already here along with the Nazis who have been underground for so long.
Horrifying, Lucien. I too spent my childhood in postwar Europe, as my dad (Bataan Death March survivor and 3-1/2yrs POW) was first with the occupation forces in Austria in ‘54 and then, when the four powers withdrew from Austria (the only country the Soviets withdrew from before the fall of the USSR); and then posted Army Attaché at the embassy in Vienna ‘55-‘58. Those US and Allied military/diplomats stood against the Soviets as they built the Iron Curtain and took over country after country in Eastern Europe. As a child, I remember vividly the displaced persons camps on our street, the destroyed buildings, the fear in the children’s eyes fleeing the Hungarian Revolution into Vienna in ‘56, the lingering haunting stories of the concentration camps. Horrifying to think we’re turning our backs on these brave people who have stood by us, and now we’re embracing the enemy? Beyond words …..
One does not have to have been a victim of the Nazis or a survivor of that period to appreciate how seriously off the rails our country has gone in just one month. The people you wrote about gave their lives so that fascism would be defeated - forever. We then formed NATO together with our European allies to fight another threat to democracy and freedom. We have stood shoulder to shoulder with those allies for 85 years only to now spit in their face while our President and Vice President, as well as our Secretary of Defense, are now actively working on behalf of our enemy to despoil and then betray a fledgling democracy that emerged from the ashes of the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Is everything just about money? What happened to principle, justice, and morality?
Witnesses and the children of witnesses. There - or here. Two of our playmates mothers had numbers tattooed on their arms. We knew because our fathers and uncles were in it, what that meant. In Athens in the 1969s there were still houses pocked with gunfire. Our aunts and uncles told us first person accounts of the Nazi occupation. My mother-in-law watched from a balcony as Nazi soldiers lined up the men and boys over 12 into lines and executed every tenth one, in reprisal for attacks on a German patrol.
NATO exists for a reason. Which is why Putin yearns to destroy it, and Trump & his fellow travelers in Nazitown, are happy to do it.
You have brought me to tears. My rage against these home-grown Nazis will never cease and I will never bend the knee to them. I would rather die.
Same here.
Brava, sister. We must be strong.
Let's hope it doesn't come to that, but I feel similarly. We may be asked to do things that are not okay. Which is our line in the sand will differ for each of us. For one of my lgbtq friends it's if her marriage isn't legal any more
Or if the military is used as police
Agreed. I say this as the Brown-skinned offspring of a German woman who was born the year after Hitler came to power, and it affected her entire childhood and life to be first under Nazi rule, and then the aftermath. She came to the USA, where she is now. I have reverse migrated upon retirement. I grew up with the stories. I grew up learning about resistance.
I am here in Germany. My American or German-American friends in Democrats Abroad and I have been discussing preparing to be living in a country under war, in a continent beset by war and the person causing this concern is one man, Donald Trump! We are also not going to be defeated without fighting and defending ourselves against our fellow countryman, and those who are willing to follow his bidding. It took a while of war for Nazis in the military to start rebelling, but the mystique of Hitler wore off fast during war. By then most people were resigned to their fate.
This morning I saw a good interview that made me hopeful for Americans to resist.
This video embedded in the Substack INK from Anand Giridharadas called "WATCH: An *actual* plan to beat fascism. A masterclass from political sage Anat Shenker-Osorio on how you can fight back against Trump II, create "social proof," mobilize your community, stop waiting for Democrats, and start getting it DONE"
https://the.ink/p/watch-an-actual-plan-to-beat-fascism?r=f0qfn&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=false
Anand's guest Anat Shenker-Osorio is talking about what is going on and who is getting it right and who is getting it wrong and what it takes to get to understanding what is going on, mentions the update from the project 2025 tracker, says actions speak louder than words. I think what she is saying makes a lot of sense. She also tells us to forget getting the DEMS to do anything except for those who are.
Anat really getsto the meat of how things work. From my lifelong activism what she is saying is ringing true. Also, please share this with other people.
I'll watch this, thank you so much.
I came to say the same thing. Tears of pride because of what we once were, and of rage at what we've become.
Include me in sharing your rage!
I’ve been around for 75 years. Over those years I’ve agreed and disagreed with our leaders. I’ve been proud to be an American and occasionally embarrassed. But for the first time, I now feel ashamed. Trump, Musk, Vance and Hegseth are not only destroying our country, but also its reputation around the world. 😥
Shame is exactly what I feel. How could we be led by such cruelty?
I've been around for 92 years and I've been ashamed but neve more devastated.
I'm 81 and I am also devastated. The Convicted Felon, Shady JD, the Drunk at the DoD, President Muskrat and all the rest of the sycophants, toadies, flunkies, and hangers-on are a disgrace. That's the mildest way I can put it.
I feel your pain!
Yes, American exceptionalism is no more except when it comes to cruelty. The entire planet would be far better off if this one man did not inhabit it.
Tune in on YouTube and see what IllinoisGov Pritzker had to say at the end of his state of the state address about Nazis etc…
I cannot tell you how angry I am at what is going on … makes me feel that my service in the military is going to be tossed out on the ash heap… I swore an oath to defend the Constitution and these soulless bastards are doing their damned best to scuttle the republic. Just found out I can message any congressperson to tell them I agree or disagree with them
Find a Republican doing the right thing and tell them you agree. Senator Wicker excoriated Putin, Rounds of North Dakota praised Zelensky. I messaged them both and thanked them.
We need to take any action to help push back
Sorry .. didn’t mean to preach
Telling the truth isn’t always preaching. Don’t apologize. I was in grad school during the Skokie trials. Pritzker’s remarks resonated with me. I despise so much of what passes for politics in our country right now.
I watched Pritzker's remarks yesterday, and I have become one of his biggest fans. There is a man who speaks the truth, not lie after lie, after lie!
Amen; not a bit of preaching--just truth-telling 🤗🥰❤️
Not preaching, you are right to be angry. Vets are being screwed, too.
It's a good speech overall, and the part LTC Riley refers to begins about 25 minutes in. Here's a link to the pithiest bit:
https://youtu.be/KBOJhU2pLMo?si=k-jPR9WYYQ1o1uD-&t=1800
What a great speech! One of the best I have ever heard. Illinois is fortunate to have such a thoughtful man as Governor in this terrible Trump time for America.
I wish every American could hear this segment of his speech.
I am going to pass it along to others.
Thanks, Sam and the Colonel.
That was a great speech. I wish he were our governor instead of the Trump toady we have in office. I would vote for Governor Pritzker in a heartbeat.
There is a choir here, so don’t worry.
Why isn't CNN covering things like this? Why haven't I seen a broadcast about the protests that have taken place over the last few weeks? Why is The NY Times not reporting this stuff? Why wasn't there a picture on the front page of the tears described in your essay tonight? I feel so betrayed...by everyone at this point. Journalists and newspapers are now complicit. And all this turmoil because of one man - a greedy bully that will surely go down in history as an evil dictator....not to mention his sidekick!
MSNBC!
I have it on all day, have for years since the Orange Foolius first infestation!
Agree with this comment. Thank you as ever, Lucian.
CNN seems fully in the tank for the regime at this point.
Another State TV outlet for Dear Leader.
The NYT has been broken for a long time.
So - here we are on Substacks and looking at other sources for information.
I believe that CNN is now owned like most of Ted Turner’s companies by his old nemesis John Malone of Liberty Media, Malone is a big donor to the insipid orange turd. CNN is doing what it’s told to do. 🤬 I stopped watching it a long time ago.
Dick: yes. It does become difficult some days to figure out which large conglomerate owns "what" (and then which merger is on the horizon, working to curry favor).
We stopped watching CNN a long time ago, too.
Full disclosure: we have friends and family members who are actual journalists - some retired, some still trying to work. It's quite the environment to both work in and try to find coverage of news.
We were happy here to have found Lucian and others on substacks and Bluesky.
I have not watched either CNN or MSNBC since the election. I don't plan to at any time in the immediate future, either.
Watch Rachel Maddow who is now on the air 5 nights a week during Trump's first 100 days.
Excellent programming!!
MSNBC, best guests!
$$$$$$$$$$$$ that's why. That is always the answer. Almost.
BOTH of his "sidekicks"...if Elmo is in fact a sidekick and not Trump's handler.
Brilliantly devastating, devastatingly brilliant, many many thanks. If we - our country, our countrymen our fellow Americans - forget history we are condemned. Not just to repeat ihistory but condemned on all fronts and by all who come after as having destroyed something sacred.
Merci, M. Truscott. I am in tears once again after reading your column.
My father's MOS was as a clerk in the Quartermaster Department, but he shipped out to Europe and did his job to help defeat fascism and the Nazi evil. He would be enraged at this selling out by trump, vontz (my spelling of his name, which is a Yiddish word for pest or bedbug), and the whole Putin-loving party that used to be the GOP. The whole group of them are such sniveling, devious, venal, traitorous dictator-loving turncoats. Fuck them all
I love vontz & will use it whenever I can!
Let's make it a thing! There's a season 5 episode of MASH called 38 Across where Hawkeye needed a crossword answer so he calls a buddy in the Navy for help. The clue is a 5 letter Yiddish word for bedbug. Guess what the answer was
As Napoleon said, "An army marches on its stomach" --thanks to the clerks and quarermasters.
It's not glamorous, but it's necessary and a hell of a lot safer than infantry.
The Trump/Vance/Musk regime is so odious that we must show what we think of them. I suggest that just as they have turned their backs on Ukraine and our NATO/European allies, so should we, including government officials, turn our backs on them whenever we happen to be in their presence.
Excellent idea.
I was in Normandy in 2012 and saw a sign, in French, at a gas station that said “Thank you to our liberators.” Fuck Trump. Fuck Vance. Fuck Musk.
I can add to that list
Beautiful and tragic post Lucian. I felt like I was there again. I visited Normandy in H.S. and I'll never forget it. I am sickened beyond belief at what is happening with Ukraine along with everything else. I live for the day Trump is gone from this planet. I just pray America and the rest of the world can recover.🙏
My tears are flowing. Devastatingly beautiful piece, Lucian.
Thank you Lucian. Knocked it out of the park. Again.
When I was a kid, in the early days of Cold War, I had a recurring nightmare that I was at the entrance of a huge bomb shelter obviously built for a whole town. I could see the sky through the large hanger like doorway and the whole horizon was blood red. I knew it was a nuclear attack and I had no idea where my parents were or if they would make it to the shelter. Then the steel door was shut. I never saw my parents. I had that dream at least three times over the years.
I had a very similar nightmare. It recurred for several years when I was 5 or 6. All the drop and cover etc. Now here we are...
Your dream has been reality for millions of people.
I knot and it breaks my heart. My terror was temporary and never ended in death. I hate what President Bonespurs is damning the people of Ukraine to.
You made me cry, Lucian. I think of my parents often more times than not now, realizing their plight to get away from the Nazis was so dangerous, so perilous. They made it to freedom. I cannot give up the fight although I am scared.
It’s alright to be frightened Marlene, that’s a natural reaction to the threat we all face. Not giving up in the fight is our only hope for a change we will want to live with, so courage Marlene you are not alone. 🙏
Thank you, Dick. I needed that. 💕
Draw ‘strength and courage’ - the very slogan we chanted in Hashomer Hatzair,
the youth movement that sustained me. It’s origins began in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising!
I had a similar nightmare where the bomb went off and I was disintegrating in the atmosphere. Was surprised to wake up and was deeply frightened.
That’s awful!
In the late 1940's I was just a little kid in a Chicago suburb, but I can remember being scared at night when I heard plane engines. I'd run to my parents and ask if they were Russian bombers.
I remember my father showing me a globe and explaining that we were too far from
Russia for their bombers to reach us.
Rich, when JFK was murdered, I was 12 years old. School let out early and I ran home and locked myself in the bathroom for 2 1/2 hours. I was sure that Khrushev was going to invade the US. Now I am worried that the Russians are already here along with the Nazis who have been underground for so long.
One of them is in the White House. And another is the head of DOGE. Yet another is pretending to be Vice-President.
Horrifying, Lucien. I too spent my childhood in postwar Europe, as my dad (Bataan Death March survivor and 3-1/2yrs POW) was first with the occupation forces in Austria in ‘54 and then, when the four powers withdrew from Austria (the only country the Soviets withdrew from before the fall of the USSR); and then posted Army Attaché at the embassy in Vienna ‘55-‘58. Those US and Allied military/diplomats stood against the Soviets as they built the Iron Curtain and took over country after country in Eastern Europe. As a child, I remember vividly the displaced persons camps on our street, the destroyed buildings, the fear in the children’s eyes fleeing the Hungarian Revolution into Vienna in ‘56, the lingering haunting stories of the concentration camps. Horrifying to think we’re turning our backs on these brave people who have stood by us, and now we’re embracing the enemy? Beyond words …..
One does not have to have been a victim of the Nazis or a survivor of that period to appreciate how seriously off the rails our country has gone in just one month. The people you wrote about gave their lives so that fascism would be defeated - forever. We then formed NATO together with our European allies to fight another threat to democracy and freedom. We have stood shoulder to shoulder with those allies for 85 years only to now spit in their face while our President and Vice President, as well as our Secretary of Defense, are now actively working on behalf of our enemy to despoil and then betray a fledgling democracy that emerged from the ashes of the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Is everything just about money? What happened to principle, justice, and morality?
"What happened to principle, justice, and morality?" They were in the way.
Exactly!!
Witnesses and the children of witnesses. There - or here. Two of our playmates mothers had numbers tattooed on their arms. We knew because our fathers and uncles were in it, what that meant. In Athens in the 1969s there were still houses pocked with gunfire. Our aunts and uncles told us first person accounts of the Nazi occupation. My mother-in-law watched from a balcony as Nazi soldiers lined up the men and boys over 12 into lines and executed every tenth one, in reprisal for attacks on a German patrol.
NATO exists for a reason. Which is why Putin yearns to destroy it, and Trump & his fellow travelers in Nazitown, are happy to do it.