Fascism

Barack Obama And Kamala Harris Speeches Will Stand Out As Models In The Long Run Of American History!

When one feels despair at the horrific situation America is in during this crucial year of 2020, and when we look back in the future at this year, the Democratic National Convention speeches last night, on the third day of the convention, will stand out as among the greatest public oratory moments in the long run of American history!

Both the first African American President (Barack Obama), and the first African American and Indian American soon to be Vice President (Kamala Harris), demonstrated full command of the issues of this election for the nation in 2020, and for the long term survival of American democracy!

The fact that both Obama and Harris could rise to the pinnacle of power and leadership is testimonial to how far we have come in the journey for a “more perfect Union”, but also a reminder that there is is much work still to be accomplished!

The fight against Fascist authoritarianism and tyranny that Donald Trump and his ilk represent is the greatest crisis for the nation since 1940, when Franklin D. Roosevelt campaigned for a third term in office, in order to deal with the Fascist threat of Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany.

This was a time when the misnamed “America First Committee” was out to avoid the need for the ultimate confrontation with totalitarianism to keep American democracy alive and thriving.

A third of the nation was willing to accept Fascism’s takeover, and even had a charismatic leader who praised Hitler, the famous aviator Charles Lindbergh. So FDR, despite the strain of eight years in the Presidency, felt committed to steer the nation to the proper course in a time of danger.

The same now falls upon Joe Biden, who has devoted a half century of his life to the advancement of American democracy, and he has been called upon to lead the nation in the fight against the threat of the modern hero of the extreme right, Donald Trump!

Just as FDR prevailed, Joe Biden, with Kamala Harris by his side, and with Barack and Michelle Obama backing him up, will succeed in dealing with the most serious set of crises, both domestic and foreign, since the time of FDR!

Donald Trump Declares His Fascist Desires To Delay Presidential Election, Rejected Unanimously By Congress And Scholars

President Donald Trump is not hiding his dictatorial desires, having declared on Twitter yesterday his wish to delay or cancel the Presidential Election of 2020 until the legitimacy of the election can be insured.

That makes it very clear that Trump is a Fascist, trying to stay in office without accountability and responsibility for his multitude of crimes against his oath of office.

Trump was trying to take attention away from the escalation of the CoronaVirus Pandemic to all time highs in Florida, Texas, Arizona and California, and the growing number of cases erupting in the Midwest.

Trump is also trying to make us forget that the Gross Domestic Product dropped a shocking 33 percent in the second quarter of April, May and June 2020, the all time record since statistics were kept starting in 1947, after World War II. Five years of growth were wiped out all at once!

All this plus the illegal, unconstitutional sending of unidentified military forces to Portland, Seattle and threats to other Democratic run cities, over the fake threat to federal buildings conjured up by Trump. Who are the threats he suggests? Retired military veterans, housewives, and other decent Americans are taking a stand against racism and for freedom of assembly, while the unwanted and unconstitutional forces are provoking violence and detaining people, shoving them in cars, in a manner reminiscent of Nazi Storm Troopers!

For the first time, however, Republicans in Congress rebuked Trump on the idea of delaying or suspending the elections. This included Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and Republican House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy of California, as well as many others in a party that until now has bowed down to every whim of Donald Trump!

Trump’s suggestion that the results of the election might take months or years is truly delusional, as he forgets that Inauguration Day is 78 days after Election Day, and that the Electoral College meets in December.

It took 36 days in 2000 to resolve the winner in that election, and even in 1876-1877, while it took four months to decide the winner, it occurred with two days to go until the inauguration on the then later date of March 4!

The reason why Trump is acting hysterically is his realization that he will be indicted by a New York grand jury, which cannot be stopped by a Presidential pardon, and will, most likely, go to federal prison, where he belongs, along with a a whole group of family members and many major figures in his administration.

It is only Donald Trump who thinks there will be a “rigged” election, as he well knows that his election in 2016 was “rigged” by Russian collusion, pointed out in the report of Special Counsel Robert Mueller in 2019, but covered up by Attorney General William Barr, who will also end up in prison as the worst, most corrupt Attorney General in American history!

Absentee and mail balloting will go forth in this upcoming election, and the issue of corruption is a “red herring”, and Americans will have the right in much of the nation to vote, and not endanger their lives in this pandemic to do so!

Many major conservative groups, such as the Federalist Society, denounced Trump for the suggestion of delaying the election, and said he was acting like a Fascist, and should resign.

So finally, Republicans and conservatives are rising up against Trump!

Donald Trump, The Fascist Wannabe: Attacking Conservative Support Of States Rights, And First Amendment Right To Freedom Of Speech And Assembly

Donald Trump is demonstrating how he is a Fascist Wannabe, and in so doing, he is attacking conservatives who support states rights, and attacking all decent people who uphold the First Amendment right to freedom of speech and freedom of assembly.

Trump’s sending of military forces incognito to Portland, Oregon to use tear gas and rubber bullets against mostly peaceful demonstrators calling for change in race relations and for accountability of police, has not been called for by the Oregon state government or the Portland city government, but two night ago, even the Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler was personally tear gassed by these unaccountable forces unleashed by Trump! And Trump ridiculed Wheeler on Twitter, making fun of him, after he was assaulted with tear gas!

There is no breakdown of law and order, and there is no right of the President to send in what is best described as storm troopers, without name plates or identifying, to detain people and kidnap them from the scene. The local police are in charge of anything that has to be dealt with, not a secret, unaccountable force authorized by Attorney General William Barr, who is the most abusive and corrupt leader of the Justice Department in its history!

Conservatives with principles are up in arms about the violation of states rights on this matter, and it reminds many of the Nazi storm troopers who abused people and brought about Nazi absolutism under Adolf Hitler. Conservatives, but also anyone interested in promoting freedom, are alarmed by this going on in not just Portland, but now the threat of it also showing up in Albuquerque, New Mexico; Seattle; Chicago; Detroit; Philadelphia; New York and other cities.

Republican groups, such as the Lincoln Project, are condemning what Trump is authorizing, as unlawful!

The job of keeping order is up to local and state authorities, and only when they call for federal intervention, does the US government have authority to intervene.

And the right of freedom of speech and assembly, and ability to call for redress of grievances in a peaceful manner, is inscribed in the First Amendment of the Bill of Rights.

This alone, forgetting for the moment all of the other multitude of violations of law, would be enough to impeach and remove both Donald Trump and William Barr, for corruption and abuse of power in office!

The Department of Homeland Security and its subsidiary, Customs and Border Patrol, is breaking the Constitution, with the approval of Trump and Barr.

If this is not a move toward Fascism, then nothing is so!

Donald Trump: George Wallace, Strom Thurmond, Pat Buchanan On Steroids!

President Donald Trump is a true nightmare, as he has brought to ultimate power the viewpoints and policies of Alabama Governor George Wallace, who ran for President on a third party line in 1968, and won 13 percent of the national popular vote, and 46 electoral votes from five Southern states at the height of the Civil Rights movement in the 1960s.

Donald Trump has also brought to mind the then South Carolina Governor and later US Senator Strom Thurmond, who won four Southern states and 39 electoral votes in 1948, also on an anti civil rights platform.

Donald Trump reminds us also of Pat Buchanan, journalist, commentator, and advisor to Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan, who challenged President George H. W. Bush for renomination in 1992, and weakened his reelection campaign in that election year.

All three men were racists, hatemongers, Fascist oriented, and against civil rights.

Additionally, Buchanan was also a big time antisemite, who actually, indirectly, affected the Presidential Election of 2000. Four thousand Jewish voters in Palm Beach County, Florida, were confused by the so called “butterfly” ballot, and punched the hole for Buchanan, rather than Democratic nominee Al Gore, helping to influence the election result, with George W. Bush being declared the winner of Florida’s electoral vote by a margin of 537 popular votes statewide, and winning the Presidency!

All three of these candidates were obnoxious, disgraceful, and reprehensible, but while they all gained popular support to some extent, none was feared or became a dominant factor in leadership of the national government.

But now, we have a President who represents all of the evil and horrors promoted by Wallace, Thurmond, and Buchanan, but he was able to manipulate votes with Russian interference in 2016. Despite losing the national popular vote by a massive nearly three million to Hillary Clinton, he was able to win three states in popular vote combined of 78,000 (Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania) and become President.

He has unleashed one horror and disgraceful action and utterance after another, doing massive damage to American domestic and foreign policy, and attempting to do everything he can to make himself an authoritarian leader on a level unimaginable in American history.

Donald Trump makes George Wallace, Strom Thurmond, and Pat Buchanan look like choir boys by comparison. He raises the historical profile of the President most reviled for his actions and behavior before now—Richard Nixon–to a higher level, with at least Nixon having accomplished some really significant goals that are seen as positive in historical retrospect.

But many of the accomplishments of Nixon are now either gone or being destroyed by this maniac, who if he is somehow reelected by manipulation and fraud, is a clear threat to the Constitution and Bill of Rights!

Donald Trump Uses Independence Day To Promote A Culture War Rather Than Unite Us!

President Donald Trump spent Independence Day promoting a culture war, rather than uniting us on our national patriotic holiday.

He demonstrated that promoting the retention of Confederate statues, monuments and symbols is more important than convincing Americans of the need to wear masks and promote public health and safety.

He applauds the law enforcement community and the military, while ignoring the horrible record of law enforcement toward racial minorities. He also claims that evidence of Russian payments to the Taliban in Afghanistan to kill American soldiers is a hoax, rather than stand up to Vladmir Putin as part of promoting national security and protection of Americans fighting overseas.

As with his Inaugural in 2017, Trump promotes darkness, pessimism, fear, conspiracy theories, and demonstrates his total lack of understanding of totalitarian leaders who undermine American democracy.

He does not even know what Fascism is, when he speaks about “left wing Fascism”, when any expert who is not a right wing extremist knows that Fascism refers to right wing totalitarianism, such as Benito Mussolini of Italy, Adolf Hitler of Germany, Juan Peron of Argentina, and Francisco Franco of Spain, among others. While all of them might at some point seemed to appeal to so called “Socialists”, all worked to undermine, persecute, and torture and kill those groups on the Left, all of which vehemently opposed them.

Donald Trump’s aim is only to divide and conquer, and to spread lies and deceit, including making his 2016 opponent Hillary Clinton out to be a monster, a crook, an extremely corrupt and tainted person, much like he is now attempting to portray Joe Biden as the same. And the reason for this is that both Clinton and Biden are connected to Barack Obama, which brings out the total, maniacal, and racist hatred of Trump for his predecessor.

D-Day Plus 76: America Fought Fascism, But Now Has Fascist President Who Wants To Destroy The Constitution, And Must Be Stopped!

Tomorrow is the 76th Anniversary of D-Day, the invasion of France in 1944, as the beginning of the final defeat of Fascism, as represented by Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany, and to a lesser extent, Benito Mussolini, who had lost control of Fascist Italy in 1943, but was under Hitler’s protection.

We commemorate the sacrifice of Americans, Canadians and British on that day, often called “The Longest Day”.

Now, there are only a small percentage alive who invaded on that morning three quarters of a century ago plus one, as they are all in their 90s or are centenarians.

Part of the honor of celebrating D-Day is to fight the new Fascism, that of President Donald Trump, on display this week in Washington, DC, and his threat of the use of force in the states, with the US military being unleashed upon the American people and their right to demonstrate for redress of grievances.

The use of tear gas, pepper spray, and a low lying helicopter, and the President holding a Bible at the Episcopal Church next to the White House after the routing of the demonstrators, is a sickening image, that has made many former military leaders condemn Trump for his words and actions.

This is the biggest constitutional crisis since the Civil War, and yet we have reluctance of Republicans to speak up and resist, and we have Trump having praised foreign dictators and autocrats, including the leaders of Russia, China, North Korea and other nations.

There is no more significant event that will occur in 2020, than the quest to remove Donald Trump from office, as our constitutional system is in danger, and we cannot afford a second term of Donald Trump, who instead, belongs in federal prison for his crimes in office!

Donald Trump Unleashes Rubber Bullets And Tear Gas On Legal Protesters: When Will Elected Republicans Speak Up?

Donald Trump is an authoritarian Fascist, and it showed through last night when he ordered the unleashing of rubber bullets and tear gas on legal protesters, so he could walk to a church and hold a Bible. He was trying to show how “religious” and “tough” he is, after threatening, illegally, that he would send military forces into the states, against the wishes of their governors, to quell the demonstrations related to the George Floyd murder in Minneapolis.

And in the midst of this outrage, not one Republican Senator or Governor, other than Lisa Murkowski to some extent, has spoken up in denunciation of Trump’s dictatorial bent.

The party has lost all credibility, and yet, at the same time, conservatives who are not in the government, have come out against Trump in large numbers, including most recently those in the Lincoln Project headed by George Conway, husband of Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway!

Hopefully, most of the elected Republicans who are coming up for election this fall will be retired by voters!

Donald Trump Botched His Last Attempt To Show Concern For The American People, In His Atrocious Reaction To Covid-19 Pandemic!

Donald Trump, the extreme narcissist, and mentally very unstable, and more dangerous every day for the nation, botched his last attempt to show concern and empathy for the American people, by his atrocious reaction to the CoronaVirus Pandemic!

Any chance he had to redeem himself to the American people and his historic reputation is lost, as he has refused to promote contact tracing or testing, and is very willing to accept mass loss of life without any guilt or conscience!

All that matters to Donald Trump is to be reelected, with the thought that if somehow, through foreign collusion, voter suppression, or gerrymandering combination, he is reelected, the nightmare we are living through will become much worse!

This is not just about massive loss of life, but also the abuse of power by a reenergized President who will go further in destroying the Constitution and Bill of Rights, setting up a Fascist dictatorship that his Republican Party will abide by. This will be instead of promoting the principles enunciated by Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, and other historic Republicans of principle and common decency over the 166 years of the party’s history!

Once we lose our basic civil liberties and civil rights, how can we ever regain them? How can we protect the vulnerable among us, including the disabled, the elderly, the young, and racial and ethnic minorities, which will suffer more than the general population?

That is why, as stated in my History News Network article of April 29, the Election of 2020 is the most significant one since 1940, in that our whole way of life is in danger, as it was in the four previous elections discussed in the article—1860, 1864, 1932, and 1940!

50 Years Since Kent State Massacre, And Now Open Carrying Of Firearms On Government Property In Michigan–Both Outrageous!

Yesterday, May 4, was the 50th anniversary of the horrific massacre at Kent State University in Ohio, where the National Guard fired live ammunition at anti Vietnam War demonstrators, killing 4 and wounding 10 students.

Many of the victims had not even been engaged in the rock throwing demonstration, but there has never been any justification for using live ammunition against students.

The Ohio Governor, James Rhodes, and the individual National Guardsmen were never held accountable legally.

Now, we have a situation in which gun toting Trumpites stormed the Michigan Legislature to protest the lockdown ordered by Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, in reaction to the CoronaVirus Pandemic, which is still surging in that state.

Apparently, it is legal for people in Michigan to come into government buildings with firearms, and that should be changed.

Are we going to allow hoodlums to invade government buildings and terrorize government officials doing their duty to protect citizens from a pandemic?

Rightfully, the law enforcement authorities should have prevented the invasion, and ordered everyone out, and if they did not comply , then use force against those who have firearms.

One can be certain that if the gun toting terrorists had been African American or Latino, they would likely have been shot dead.

This is another example of the ongoing racism going on in America, and the growth of Fascist Trumpite followers, who endanger public safety!

Six And A Half Months To Most Crucial Presidential Election Since 1940

We are facing this November the fifth most crucial Presidential election in American history.

Every Presidential election matters, of course, and in the midst of each campaign, there are those who will think it is the most important event ever to occur.

But in reality, the number of times that an election has been truly “crucial” is limited to what this author and blogger believes are only a few times.

Those few elections that have been crucial to the extreme would include, chronologically the following:

Election of 1860, a four way race, with the Civil War seen as on the horizon, and Abraham Lincoln winning with only 39.8 percent of the vote, over Stephen Douglas, John C. Breckinridge, and John Bell.

Election of 1864, in which Lincoln defeated former General George McClellan, at a crucial time in the Civil War.

Election of 1932, in which the nation was at its lowest economic point in history, with the failure of Herbert Hoover, and the alternative of Franklin D. Roosevelt and his New Deal.

Election of 1940, when America faced the danger of Fascism in the world, but isolationism reigned, and Franklin D. Roosevelt faced a businessman with no government experience, Wendell Willkie, as the world was engaged in World War II.

Now, in 2020, we face a CoronaVirus Pandemic; a collapsed economy worse than any time since the Great Depression; and a crazed, dangerous President who should have been removed from office for abuse of power, and instead is, effectively, taking the nation over the brink of the cliff that it is facing at this time!

So just as Abraham Lincoln and Franklin D. Roosevelt came to the rescue, each of them twice, now Joe Biden and his female running mate face the challenge of the greatest crisis in 80 years, and we have to hope he can gather the strength, courage, and decisiveness of Lincoln, FDR, and other great Presidents, including Harry Truman, John F. Kennedy, and Barack Obama in difficult moments in their Presidencies!