One of the readers of this newsletter, Peter Keller, wrote me recently to tell me that his father had served in the American Field Service in Italy at the same time my grandfather commanded the VI Corps and Fifth Army during World War II.
How to put this in the vernacular? I wouldn't fuck past Nazi Ilse Koch (known as the "Bitch of Buchenwald") with Depraved Sexual Predator Donald Trump's dick. Pissing on her grave (she committed suicide in prison after WWII) with my own appendage? That's something else.
Speaking of which, didn't we all smile, sourly, when we learned that John Kelly told the Depraved Sexual Predator, at that time "President," that the public would piss on the DSP's grave if he didn't lower flags to honor John McCain. Which the DSP finally did.
Hm. Could it be *that's* why the DSP buried his former wife on one of his golf courses? Precedent, so he, too, can be buried on one of his properties, safely away from the full bladders of those who would irrigate his memory?
I will say one way or another he’ll be peed on plenty. Even if he’s interred next to Lenin in red square under guard. We’ll know where he’s buried by the smell.
I really thought I could take sole credit for coming up with the construction "I wouldn't fuck so-and-so with D***** T****'s dick."
could this be one of those instances of great minds working in parallel? you know, like Darwin and Wallace on Evolution or Newton and Leibniz on Calculus.
or maybe it was just more obvious than I originally thought...
Regrettably, because it says something very accurate about men, the phrase, "I wouldn't bonk [name of specific woman, or just 'her'] with your dick," degrading the woman, has been around for at least 50 years in the male-talk I've heard. Specifying the Deranged Sexual Predator's organ (although it sounds more like an out-of-tune spinet, according to expert witness Stormy Daniels), seems to me to be gilding the poor lily in cliche-ville with orange paint.
thanks Lawrence. I've known the phrase since I was about twelve. it's specifically inserting (as it were) the name of TFF I thought was original, since the original phrase (as I heard it back then) was "I wouldn't fuck her with YOUR dick."
and yes, it's probably pretty much off the table nowadays, but I honestly don't give a fuck. I figure the people who know me know me and if someone finds my language offensive...well, no one's forcing them to be friends. I already have plenty.
A subject that bears constant reminding because when calling human beings "vermin" becomes "normalized" as mere political speech then a repeat of this terrible history is not inconceivable.
Thankyou for your words. They have power and impacted me seriously. My father, long since passed, was a British officer who served in the 51st Highland Division under Montgomery. He was one of the first soldiers that entered and liberated Belsen, and though he very rarely talked about his wartime experience, he did mention that it was the only time in the war that he threw up. He said it was the smell more than anything else. When he returned to England he did what most men did in those days, he just kept it to himself. But every now and then it was clear how he felt about Germany and Germans. No German cars, no German nannies, no German food and definitely no holiday in Germany. As he said, “The only good German is a dead one!” Shocking words to my purist ears but having seen what he did who would have thought differently? And this was a man who fought in Africa against Rommel, was at D Day plus 1, and who entered Hitler’s bunker at the end of the war. He never forgot the horrors he had seen, and often thought that those who wage war are often those who have never experienced it.
i have thought and wondered if it could have been arranged at that time to make the german people have to see the dead and possibly serve to attend to the survivors, beyond the german doctors and nurses and soldiers.
they should all have been made to see what they and their countrymen encouraged or allowed to happen.
I read somewhere that in at least one instance the people of the nearby German village were brought to the concentration camp to see it. They had had no idea what was going on, as I recall.
I have spoken directly with only one concentration camp survivor, a Polish woman named Xenia, who knew me well enough to speak about the experience - without going into redundant details here, she did favor one weary phrase about the usual understanding of younger generations about the horrors of the death camps: "They know nothing. Nothing."
It was one of the most powerfully moving statements I've ever heard in my entire life. She had been a teacher before the war.
I watched a snippet of PBS News this evening. The segment was on the Iowa caucuses tomorrow. The brutal winter weather was featured, of course, as was the recent visit by tRump. They interviewed some of the Iowans who braved the Cold to wait in line for hours just for the chance to meet their savior. What can I say about seeing both young people (First Time Voters!), middle-aged people (who should know better), and older folk (my own demographic) who are just as pleased as punch at seeing this patently crazy man performing his insane antics in the flesh? Sadly, they have been so brainwashed by the non-stop 24/7 propaganda machine on Talk Radio, Fox, Newsmax, and all the myriad iterations in the interwebz, TikTok, Instagram, etc. stoked with misinformation and disinformation from bots, and foreign interests that they are absolutely impervious to the evidence unfolding in front of their eyes and ears. The last I heard is that tRump is expected to top his former UN Ambassador by 30% with the fascist governor of Florida a distant third. No matter. Both Haley and DeSantis have publicly sworn to support DJT if he wins the nomination. Let’s face it. Both of those soulless hacks are auditioning for a shot as Veep in the Fourth Reich.
The right wing knew exactly what they were doing when the evolved a plan to dominate the AM radio dial in states like Iowa, that's a key component of this, as well as many people being so busy and preoccupied with their own lives and daily struggles they barely spend any time at all in political reflection, much less with focused critical attention.
It is up to us to stop this. It is our duty to preserve the Constitution and our Country. It is the responsibility of all good Americans to defeat this cancer at the ballot box. Period.
Lucian, this is so painful to read, but it must be read. We must bear witness.
This was just one of dozens of extermination camps the Nazis built to get rid of the “vermin” - human beings who bleed the same red blood as everyone else on this planet.
I highly recommend the website of the Auschwitz Memorial and Museum:
The Museum does an unbelievable job at research and scholarship about the victims that came to that horrible place. More importantly, it posts on “X” each day (it’s account is @AuschwitzMemorial) photographs of a few individuals who were born on that day, where they were born, to whom, and what happened to them on arrival at Auschwitz. Each post is heart-breaking, especially because the photographs are usually of their pre-war selves, happier times, not knowing the cruel and horrific fate that awaits them. What is even more heart-breaking is that many of the posts are of children, the most innocent of all, and knowing what befell them is too much to bear.
Occasionally, one of the Museum’s posts reports that the individual survived, and it is such a relief to see that stated. But they are few and far between.
Follow @AuschwitzMemorial. It is the least we can do to read the posts, and to remember and honor the names of the victims, so their existence on this earth may live on, if only for a few seconds more in our memories.
I first saw photos like this when I was about 10 years old and found my dad's WWII trunk in a storage shed. The horror made an impression on me that has never faded.
Please remember also that such ends weren't restricted only to the Jewish, they were merely at the head of the list of Untermensch (subhumans). It also included any and all Roma (gypsies), Slavs (Russians, Poles, Czechs, Serbs, Ukrainians), black persons, "mischlings" (anyone suspected of having any such "non Aryan" mixed blood), homosexuals, the physical and mentally disabled, and political dissidents. The many death camps became a fully fledged industrial process fed by railways throughout occupied Europe.
There is a possibility that America risks a repeat of Germany's error on your own soil. No matter how slight that possibility, remember how few thought DJT would win in 2016. I think he was as surprised as any. I can still remember the immigrants seeking refuge at the border being held in cages, the parents and children separated. How very wrong it was. What could he do with a fully compliant administration and emergency powers rather than just Executive Orders?
Please remember also that such ends weren't restricted only to the Jewish, they were merely at the head of the list of Untermensch (subhumans). It also included any and all Roma (gypsies), Slavs (Russians, Poles, Czechs, Serbs, Ukrainians), black persons, "mischlings" (anyone suspected of having any such "non Aryan" mixed blood), homosexuals, the physical and mentally disabled, and political dissidents. The many death camps became a fully fledged industrial process fed by railways throughout occupied Europe.
There is a possibility that America risks a repeat of Germany's error on your own soil. No matter how slight that possibility, remember how few thought DJT would win in 2016. I think he was as surprised as any. I can still remember the immigrants seeking refuge at the border being held in cages, the parents and children separated. How very wrong it was. What could he do with a fully compliant administration and emergency powers rather than just Executive Orders?
It's not just a possibility. It IS being planned in the USA right now. Europe will need to invade if we don't have the intelligence and courage to stop Adolf Trump ourselves.
Ok, I'll bite: what are the odds that it's far more likely attempts to impose willy-nilly measures on the scale you imply would provoke civil disorder and outright riots that would verge on civil war? Accompanied by a host of demands for Temporary Restraining Orders, Permanent Injunctions, litigation to revoke Trump's inevitable misuse of executive fiats, etc.?
It isn't as if every shred of the popular and official forces in place who collectively oppose Trump and "Trumpism" would disappear on January 20, 2025, correct?
It's enough to forecast how dire a Trump win would be without sliding immediately into hyperbolic despair at that prospect, of course he's going to try every madcap authoritarian scheme he and his evil enablers and enthusiastic fellow fascists can think of, that's a given.
LOL, that's the precise fascist theory in a nutshell, thanks for clarifying it so well, no need to be sorry! They are incapable of dealing with their historic defeats by democratic movements, and explain those away as some form of "false consciousness" on the part of the citizenry, and insufficient planning on their side, etc. The January 6 bunch even blamed antifa and the FBI for the whole thing! Doesn't get any more delusional than that.
They - all fascists and authoritarians - are CONVINCED that their reliance on guns, threats, edicts with no basis in our laws, terrorism and violent mobilizations will lead everyone to surrender, again, LOL! et LOL encore!
They truly have NO IDEA what they would be in for - January 6, spawning the largest criminal investigation in United States history, has taught them nothing, it's astounding anyone outside their cult agrees with them, but evidently you share their preposterous hubris, or are perhaps a habitual ultra-pessimistic prognosticator?
Based on what, exactly? Are you really applying a static war of abstract categories ("The Democratic Opposition" versus "The Trump Neofascist Cult and their Allies") between political bases and the institutions they control or contest in a dynamic battle with many moving parts, as if when a momentous crisis occurs, no changes are likely to result in the previous activities and interactions of the players? I mean, I don't even comprehend what kind of empirical data that is supposed be based on - any citations? Hopefully not the Weimar Republic, with its recent history of hyperinflation, mass unemployment, and little experience with any kind of democracy.
So what paradigm cases can you cite? This should be interesting.
Another summary of similar disdain for democracy is Mao Zedong's dictum:
No role for organized debate and reflection, not even Magna Carta rights against the state,
or any subsequent spreading of political power through shires, counties, the Bay Colony's town meetings, nope!
See also, Lenin in State and Revolution, translated as "The State is a body of armed men."
No wonder Steve Bannon said he is a "Leninist"!
EDIT: I just now looked at your profile statement, one sentence: "Democrat against republican and world fascism," it doesn't make much sense to me, to effectively surrender
in advance vicariously for all the "Democrats and democrats against world fascism," Marcia, does it? Or am I missing something - your prediction seems incredibly forceful and with no caveats inserted to let you wiggle out of it, either.
As if, well, once the fascists declare they are in charge, it's over, done, no resistance is possible.
I harbor a crazy (?) hope that a cabal of key tenured government people—- not political appointees— is secretly and methodically readying a plan to complicate and defy everything that the stinking (literally) orange one wants to do. Even at the risk of defying the law.
But, Lucian, that was the Nazis. That could never happen here. Sure, Trump is prone to overstatement but he is no Hitler. Good God fearing Christians would never allow a President to go that far. We are too civilized for that. Was probably being held in many a household of “good Germans” in the 1930s when Hitler was extolling the benefits of German nationalism and his Social Democratic movement which was coincidently an appeal to nationalism with a promise of economic prosperity at the cost of “the others.” Sound familiar? MAGA in a dirndl.
“It could never happen here,right? Millions of “good Germans” thought the same thing and ended up being enabler because of their indifference and nice all in everyone became the proverbial “good German.”
I am of the opinion the aforementioned can happen here because too many of us are detached from reality and indifferent to how easily the power of government can be turned against the people. Come November we all need to be afraid, very afraid.
"Those who ignore history are condemned to repeat it." "I love the uneducated", says Po1135890...and that is why! We are living in a country now where 30+% of the population thinks it is sinister to be educated. What the hell has happened to US???
The usual suspects realized unsound, unhinged dogmas can't perpetually survive sustained critical scrutiny - and rather than abandon the dogmas, alter the sweeping claims, compromise whenever possible, why not attack critical thinking instead?
Who do these damn thinkers think they are, anyway?
Po1135890... He should have it tattooed on his forearm. I grew up around many people who had that ink. I also worked a summer in The Jewish Community Home for the Aged during college. In the psych ward. Eight hours a day of the land of the lost and dispossessed. Moaning and crying out in Yiddish, other languages. Vermin is projection on Trump's part. He is the vermin.
i had just a few days ago finished reading Ken Follett's Century Trilogy (took me a while cruising used bookstores to acquire the last trilogy).
timely, he gives his wonderful storyteller's view of how people on the street and in their homes lived and died, resisted and abetted changes in their day to day lives as authoritarian powers brought out the worst in people, families and acquaintances.
most relevantly here, he writes of daily lives of even English and American characters and how their lives were pulled into the horrors of war both ww1 and ww2.
you can get a sense of how politicians' actions and words led people of one side or other to do what they did in fighting against or fighting for the wars.
a very timely read.
im redonating the sets to the free bookstalls in my city.
Well. As long as half of Americans think that paying a dollar "too much" for gas is their Big Problem, we can know that we are evolving into a very stupid people.
The depravity, mental illness, hatred and soullessness of trump is companion to Hitler. His own daughter and grandchildren are Jews. In his own words and actions he shows his real feelings, that he couldn’t care less if they are hated and eradicated.
Thank you for this, Mr. Truscott. We frail humans need reminding about the horrors we commit, as well as about the fragile, precious minds of our children. Imagine that frightening "empty place inside" Trump; imagine what a difference love, kindness, respect, and acceptance might have made in his childhood. We humans are capable of living up to our ideals - if only we would.
Thank you for posting this. I am somewhat of an expert on the Nazi Reich and its criminal racist policies that resulted in the Holocaust and the devastation of so many countries in Europe. I have been to Bergen-Belsen, Dachau, Flossenberg, and Buchenwald, as well as the T-4 Euthanasia center in Hardheim. Belsen is different. There are large mass graves that are marked with the number of people buried in them, 500, 1000, 5000, and so on. These are the graves shown in the pictures. It is sobering as almost all of the buildings had to be destroyed because of the disease infestation in them. It is a completely different experience than the other camps I have explored. To think that the description of other human beings as “vermin” by Hitler spurred the actions of the SS staffs of these camps, including doctors, nurses, and others whose ethics should have prevented them from assisting or participating in such atrocities is mind numbing and frightening. Without them, the judges, the railroad managers, the police and others who “did their jobs” without question the Holocaust could not have happened.
We cannot forget because Trump seems to want another term in order to execute the wildest excesses of violence against Americans by any President in history.
Lucian, thank you so much for this, which had to have been as disturbing to write as it was to read. This isn't new to me, yet the horror is as fresh as when I first learned about it. It has to be told and told and told. I hate to think about Trump's goose-stepping followers lapping up his vile "vermin" and "poisoned blood" spewing. He's a hate monger who I wish had "shuffled off [his] mortal coil" already. He is an obsequious sycophant to dictators, he obviously despises and denigrates democracy, and he's utterly contemptible and despicable in every way. I do not wish him well in any aspect of his remaining life.
My respectfully suggested edit to your blunt truth is "[A]llowed to function as a successful authoritarian or fascist president, relentlessly using every possible legal means to thwart his fiendish plans and those of his cult."
Meaning congressional opposition, legal injunctions, mass protests when they're well-organized and as peaceful but as raucous as possible, issue campaigns, donations, volunteering, running for office at any and all levels, letters to the editor, phone calls and emails to elected officials, blogs written by those talented and gifted enough to make it effective, with LKTIV as a stellar model to emulate, networking, and more.
I visited Dachau back in the early 1970s. It had been sanitized by then, but there was still sufficient horror attached that I can never forget. Trump is an evil, evil person.
Fuck Nazis. Past and present.
Sometimes vernacular profanity is the most suitable description for crimes too horrific to bear.
watching its resurrection elicits it.
How to put this in the vernacular? I wouldn't fuck past Nazi Ilse Koch (known as the "Bitch of Buchenwald") with Depraved Sexual Predator Donald Trump's dick. Pissing on her grave (she committed suicide in prison after WWII) with my own appendage? That's something else.
Speaking of which, didn't we all smile, sourly, when we learned that John Kelly told the Depraved Sexual Predator, at that time "President," that the public would piss on the DSP's grave if he didn't lower flags to honor John McCain. Which the DSP finally did.
Hm. Could it be *that's* why the DSP buried his former wife on one of his golf courses? Precedent, so he, too, can be buried on one of his properties, safely away from the full bladders of those who would irrigate his memory?
I don’t blame you at all.
I will say one way or another he’ll be peed on plenty. Even if he’s interred next to Lenin in red square under guard. We’ll know where he’s buried by the smell.
I really thought I could take sole credit for coming up with the construction "I wouldn't fuck so-and-so with D***** T****'s dick."
could this be one of those instances of great minds working in parallel? you know, like Darwin and Wallace on Evolution or Newton and Leibniz on Calculus.
or maybe it was just more obvious than I originally thought...
Regrettably, because it says something very accurate about men, the phrase, "I wouldn't bonk [name of specific woman, or just 'her'] with your dick," degrading the woman, has been around for at least 50 years in the male-talk I've heard. Specifying the Deranged Sexual Predator's organ (although it sounds more like an out-of-tune spinet, according to expert witness Stormy Daniels), seems to me to be gilding the poor lily in cliche-ville with orange paint.
thanks Lawrence. I've known the phrase since I was about twelve. it's specifically inserting (as it were) the name of TFF I thought was original, since the original phrase (as I heard it back then) was "I wouldn't fuck her with YOUR dick."
and yes, it's probably pretty much off the table nowadays, but I honestly don't give a fuck. I figure the people who know me know me and if someone finds my language offensive...well, no one's forcing them to be friends. I already have plenty.
That was a take on a teenage insult of a perceived unattractive female in school...
A subject that bears constant reminding because when calling human beings "vermin" becomes "normalized" as mere political speech then a repeat of this terrible history is not inconceivable.
Thankyou for your words. They have power and impacted me seriously. My father, long since passed, was a British officer who served in the 51st Highland Division under Montgomery. He was one of the first soldiers that entered and liberated Belsen, and though he very rarely talked about his wartime experience, he did mention that it was the only time in the war that he threw up. He said it was the smell more than anything else. When he returned to England he did what most men did in those days, he just kept it to himself. But every now and then it was clear how he felt about Germany and Germans. No German cars, no German nannies, no German food and definitely no holiday in Germany. As he said, “The only good German is a dead one!” Shocking words to my purist ears but having seen what he did who would have thought differently? And this was a man who fought in Africa against Rommel, was at D Day plus 1, and who entered Hitler’s bunker at the end of the war. He never forgot the horrors he had seen, and often thought that those who wage war are often those who have never experienced it.
Thank you for bearing witness. Bless your Father.
i have thought and wondered if it could have been arranged at that time to make the german people have to see the dead and possibly serve to attend to the survivors, beyond the german doctors and nurses and soldiers.
they should all have been made to see what they and their countrymen encouraged or allowed to happen.
I read somewhere that in at least one instance the people of the nearby German village were brought to the concentration camp to see it. They had had no idea what was going on, as I recall.
I have spoken directly with only one concentration camp survivor, a Polish woman named Xenia, who knew me well enough to speak about the experience - without going into redundant details here, she did favor one weary phrase about the usual understanding of younger generations about the horrors of the death camps: "They know nothing. Nothing."
It was one of the most powerfully moving statements I've ever heard in my entire life. She had been a teacher before the war.
I watched a snippet of PBS News this evening. The segment was on the Iowa caucuses tomorrow. The brutal winter weather was featured, of course, as was the recent visit by tRump. They interviewed some of the Iowans who braved the Cold to wait in line for hours just for the chance to meet their savior. What can I say about seeing both young people (First Time Voters!), middle-aged people (who should know better), and older folk (my own demographic) who are just as pleased as punch at seeing this patently crazy man performing his insane antics in the flesh? Sadly, they have been so brainwashed by the non-stop 24/7 propaganda machine on Talk Radio, Fox, Newsmax, and all the myriad iterations in the interwebz, TikTok, Instagram, etc. stoked with misinformation and disinformation from bots, and foreign interests that they are absolutely impervious to the evidence unfolding in front of their eyes and ears. The last I heard is that tRump is expected to top his former UN Ambassador by 30% with the fascist governor of Florida a distant third. No matter. Both Haley and DeSantis have publicly sworn to support DJT if he wins the nomination. Let’s face it. Both of those soulless hacks are auditioning for a shot as Veep in the Fourth Reich.
God help us
AND They all would pardon him if they were elected..it's insanity....
The right wing knew exactly what they were doing when the evolved a plan to dominate the AM radio dial in states like Iowa, that's a key component of this, as well as many people being so busy and preoccupied with their own lives and daily struggles they barely spend any time at all in political reflection, much less with focused critical attention.
It is up to us to stop this. It is our duty to preserve the Constitution and our Country. It is the responsibility of all good Americans to defeat this cancer at the ballot box. Period.
Lucian, this is so painful to read, but it must be read. We must bear witness.
This was just one of dozens of extermination camps the Nazis built to get rid of the “vermin” - human beings who bleed the same red blood as everyone else on this planet.
I highly recommend the website of the Auschwitz Memorial and Museum:
https://www.auschwitz.org/en/
The Museum does an unbelievable job at research and scholarship about the victims that came to that horrible place. More importantly, it posts on “X” each day (it’s account is @AuschwitzMemorial) photographs of a few individuals who were born on that day, where they were born, to whom, and what happened to them on arrival at Auschwitz. Each post is heart-breaking, especially because the photographs are usually of their pre-war selves, happier times, not knowing the cruel and horrific fate that awaits them. What is even more heart-breaking is that many of the posts are of children, the most innocent of all, and knowing what befell them is too much to bear.
Occasionally, one of the Museum’s posts reports that the individual survived, and it is such a relief to see that stated. But they are few and far between.
Follow @AuschwitzMemorial. It is the least we can do to read the posts, and to remember and honor the names of the victims, so their existence on this earth may live on, if only for a few seconds more in our memories.
#NeverForget
I first saw photos like this when I was about 10 years old and found my dad's WWII trunk in a storage shed. The horror made an impression on me that has never faded.
For me it was episodes of The 20th Century hosted by Walter Cronkite. I am not sure that programming would survive the winnowing process today.
Imagine if Trump was elected president again and had absolute immunity? He'd morph into Hitler in about 2 seconds flat.
He said he would. So he will.
Make than two nanoseconds.
Please remember also that such ends weren't restricted only to the Jewish, they were merely at the head of the list of Untermensch (subhumans). It also included any and all Roma (gypsies), Slavs (Russians, Poles, Czechs, Serbs, Ukrainians), black persons, "mischlings" (anyone suspected of having any such "non Aryan" mixed blood), homosexuals, the physical and mentally disabled, and political dissidents. The many death camps became a fully fledged industrial process fed by railways throughout occupied Europe.
There is a possibility that America risks a repeat of Germany's error on your own soil. No matter how slight that possibility, remember how few thought DJT would win in 2016. I think he was as surprised as any. I can still remember the immigrants seeking refuge at the border being held in cages, the parents and children separated. How very wrong it was. What could he do with a fully compliant administration and emergency powers rather than just Executive Orders?
Reposted for Reason
Vague Craig
39 mins ago
Please remember also that such ends weren't restricted only to the Jewish, they were merely at the head of the list of Untermensch (subhumans). It also included any and all Roma (gypsies), Slavs (Russians, Poles, Czechs, Serbs, Ukrainians), black persons, "mischlings" (anyone suspected of having any such "non Aryan" mixed blood), homosexuals, the physical and mentally disabled, and political dissidents. The many death camps became a fully fledged industrial process fed by railways throughout occupied Europe.
There is a possibility that America risks a repeat of Germany's error on your own soil. No matter how slight that possibility, remember how few thought DJT would win in 2016. I think he was as surprised as any. I can still remember the immigrants seeking refuge at the border being held in cages, the parents and children separated. How very wrong it was. What could he do with a fully compliant administration and emergency powers rather than just Executive Orders?
It's not just a possibility. It IS being planned in the USA right now. Europe will need to invade if we don't have the intelligence and courage to stop Adolf Trump ourselves.
Ok, I'll bite: what are the odds that it's far more likely attempts to impose willy-nilly measures on the scale you imply would provoke civil disorder and outright riots that would verge on civil war? Accompanied by a host of demands for Temporary Restraining Orders, Permanent Injunctions, litigation to revoke Trump's inevitable misuse of executive fiats, etc.?
It isn't as if every shred of the popular and official forces in place who collectively oppose Trump and "Trumpism" would disappear on January 20, 2025, correct?
It's enough to forecast how dire a Trump win would be without sliding immediately into hyperbolic despair at that prospect, of course he's going to try every madcap authoritarian scheme he and his evil enablers and enthusiastic fellow fascists can think of, that's a given.
So as Biden asked last week, "who are we?"
Sorry, but yes. The Democratic opposition WOULD suddenly and quickly disappear. They'll be terrified, imprisoned, or dead.
LOL, that's the precise fascist theory in a nutshell, thanks for clarifying it so well, no need to be sorry! They are incapable of dealing with their historic defeats by democratic movements, and explain those away as some form of "false consciousness" on the part of the citizenry, and insufficient planning on their side, etc. The January 6 bunch even blamed antifa and the FBI for the whole thing! Doesn't get any more delusional than that.
They - all fascists and authoritarians - are CONVINCED that their reliance on guns, threats, edicts with no basis in our laws, terrorism and violent mobilizations will lead everyone to surrender, again, LOL! et LOL encore!
They truly have NO IDEA what they would be in for - January 6, spawning the largest criminal investigation in United States history, has taught them nothing, it's astounding anyone outside their cult agrees with them, but evidently you share their preposterous hubris, or are perhaps a habitual ultra-pessimistic prognosticator?
Based on what, exactly? Are you really applying a static war of abstract categories ("The Democratic Opposition" versus "The Trump Neofascist Cult and their Allies") between political bases and the institutions they control or contest in a dynamic battle with many moving parts, as if when a momentous crisis occurs, no changes are likely to result in the previous activities and interactions of the players? I mean, I don't even comprehend what kind of empirical data that is supposed be based on - any citations? Hopefully not the Weimar Republic, with its recent history of hyperinflation, mass unemployment, and little experience with any kind of democracy.
So what paradigm cases can you cite? This should be interesting.
Another summary of similar disdain for democracy is Mao Zedong's dictum:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_power_grows_out_of_the_barrel_of_a_gun
No role for organized debate and reflection, not even Magna Carta rights against the state,
or any subsequent spreading of political power through shires, counties, the Bay Colony's town meetings, nope!
See also, Lenin in State and Revolution, translated as "The State is a body of armed men."
No wonder Steve Bannon said he is a "Leninist"!
EDIT: I just now looked at your profile statement, one sentence: "Democrat against republican and world fascism," it doesn't make much sense to me, to effectively surrender
in advance vicariously for all the "Democrats and democrats against world fascism," Marcia, does it? Or am I missing something - your prediction seems incredibly forceful and with no caveats inserted to let you wiggle out of it, either.
As if, well, once the fascists declare they are in charge, it's over, done, no resistance is possible.
https://youtu.be/QExM4GdtXDI
yes infamous, let me see If I can locate Bill Bailey ripping down the Nazi flag from the '
German ship BREMEN in New York harbor - or just google it, it's also featured in the
documentary The Good Fight on the Lincoln Brigade in the Spanish Civil War, that's free online at you tube also.
I harbor a crazy (?) hope that a cabal of key tenured government people—- not political appointees— is secretly and methodically readying a plan to complicate and defy everything that the stinking (literally) orange one wants to do. Even at the risk of defying the law.
But, Lucian, that was the Nazis. That could never happen here. Sure, Trump is prone to overstatement but he is no Hitler. Good God fearing Christians would never allow a President to go that far. We are too civilized for that. Was probably being held in many a household of “good Germans” in the 1930s when Hitler was extolling the benefits of German nationalism and his Social Democratic movement which was coincidently an appeal to nationalism with a promise of economic prosperity at the cost of “the others.” Sound familiar? MAGA in a dirndl.
“It could never happen here,right? Millions of “good Germans” thought the same thing and ended up being enabler because of their indifference and nice all in everyone became the proverbial “good German.”
I am of the opinion the aforementioned can happen here because too many of us are detached from reality and indifferent to how easily the power of government can be turned against the people. Come November we all need to be afraid, very afraid.
"Those who ignore history are condemned to repeat it." "I love the uneducated", says Po1135890...and that is why! We are living in a country now where 30+% of the population thinks it is sinister to be educated. What the hell has happened to US???
The usual suspects realized unsound, unhinged dogmas can't perpetually survive sustained critical scrutiny - and rather than abandon the dogmas, alter the sweeping claims, compromise whenever possible, why not attack critical thinking instead?
Who do these damn thinkers think they are, anyway?
LOL!
Po1135890... He should have it tattooed on his forearm. I grew up around many people who had that ink. I also worked a summer in The Jewish Community Home for the Aged during college. In the psych ward. Eight hours a day of the land of the lost and dispossessed. Moaning and crying out in Yiddish, other languages. Vermin is projection on Trump's part. He is the vermin.
Projection is all he seems to know. He's never had an original thought in his life. Bless you for that work, sir.
i had just a few days ago finished reading Ken Follett's Century Trilogy (took me a while cruising used bookstores to acquire the last trilogy).
timely, he gives his wonderful storyteller's view of how people on the street and in their homes lived and died, resisted and abetted changes in their day to day lives as authoritarian powers brought out the worst in people, families and acquaintances.
most relevantly here, he writes of daily lives of even English and American characters and how their lives were pulled into the horrors of war both ww1 and ww2.
you can get a sense of how politicians' actions and words led people of one side or other to do what they did in fighting against or fighting for the wars.
a very timely read.
im redonating the sets to the free bookstalls in my city.
Well. As long as half of Americans think that paying a dollar "too much" for gas is their Big Problem, we can know that we are evolving into a very stupid people.
Not afraid, though, obdurate, obstinate as hell, absolutely determined to forge ahead resisting no matter what. There's a difference.
The depravity, mental illness, hatred and soullessness of trump is companion to Hitler. His own daughter and grandchildren are Jews. In his own words and actions he shows his real feelings, that he couldn’t care less if they are hated and eradicated.
Thank you for this, Mr. Truscott. We frail humans need reminding about the horrors we commit, as well as about the fragile, precious minds of our children. Imagine that frightening "empty place inside" Trump; imagine what a difference love, kindness, respect, and acceptance might have made in his childhood. We humans are capable of living up to our ideals - if only we would.
Lucian,
Thank you for posting this. I am somewhat of an expert on the Nazi Reich and its criminal racist policies that resulted in the Holocaust and the devastation of so many countries in Europe. I have been to Bergen-Belsen, Dachau, Flossenberg, and Buchenwald, as well as the T-4 Euthanasia center in Hardheim. Belsen is different. There are large mass graves that are marked with the number of people buried in them, 500, 1000, 5000, and so on. These are the graves shown in the pictures. It is sobering as almost all of the buildings had to be destroyed because of the disease infestation in them. It is a completely different experience than the other camps I have explored. To think that the description of other human beings as “vermin” by Hitler spurred the actions of the SS staffs of these camps, including doctors, nurses, and others whose ethics should have prevented them from assisting or participating in such atrocities is mind numbing and frightening. Without them, the judges, the railroad managers, the police and others who “did their jobs” without question the Holocaust could not have happened.
We cannot forget because Trump seems to want another term in order to execute the wildest excesses of violence against Americans by any President in history.
All the best and please stay safe,
Steve Dundas
And to save himself from going to prison!!!
Steven, did you ever go to Chelmno in Poland?
It’s so important that you posted this eyewitness account and the photographs. Thank you Lucian.
Lucian, thank you so much for this, which had to have been as disturbing to write as it was to read. This isn't new to me, yet the horror is as fresh as when I first learned about it. It has to be told and told and told. I hate to think about Trump's goose-stepping followers lapping up his vile "vermin" and "poisoned blood" spewing. He's a hate monger who I wish had "shuffled off [his] mortal coil" already. He is an obsequious sycophant to dictators, he obviously despises and denigrates democracy, and he's utterly contemptible and despicable in every way. I do not wish him well in any aspect of his remaining life.
Trump must not be allowed to be president no matter how he is stopped.
My respectfully suggested edit to your blunt truth is "[A]llowed to function as a successful authoritarian or fascist president, relentlessly using every possible legal means to thwart his fiendish plans and those of his cult."
Meaning congressional opposition, legal injunctions, mass protests when they're well-organized and as peaceful but as raucous as possible, issue campaigns, donations, volunteering, running for office at any and all levels, letters to the editor, phone calls and emails to elected officials, blogs written by those talented and gifted enough to make it effective, with LKTIV as a stellar model to emulate, networking, and more.
Otherwise, of course!
I visited Dachau back in the early 1970s. It had been sanitized by then, but there was still sufficient horror attached that I can never forget. Trump is an evil, evil person.