Friends of Padre Steve’s World,
After a long day yesterday we went out and hung out with friends for quite a while at Gordon Biersch. Then we came home and just watched television and read. I waited until this morning to check the election results and was quite pleased for the State that I will officially be a citizen of once I retire from the Navy, the Commonwealth of Virginia. So I didn’t write anything.
Tonight is kind of a reflection on the words and actions of President Trump, his family, and his cult like followers have been conducting themselves as public impeachment hearings loom in the wake of very unfavorable results for Trump and the GOP. I began to think of Historian Timothy Snyder’s words from his book On Tyranny which was published not long after President Trump’s election in 2016. Snyder wrote:
”The mistake is to assume that rulers who came to power through institutions cannot change or destroy those very institutions—even when that is exactly what they have announced that they will do.”
Dissent is not disloyalty, opposing the President’s policies, obeying one’s oath of office when seeing criminal or potential criminal actions being undertaken is not being a communist or enemy of the state. Asking such questions is not treason. Our founders wrestle with this. Thomas Jefferson wrote: “Experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms of government those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny.“
In spite of the Democrat victories in 2018 and 2019 and the upcoming impeachment hearings, neither the President, nor his supporters in Congress, nor his propaganda department or his cult led by charlatan preachers like Paula White, the new spiritual advisor at the White House will stop the lies and will stoop to no low in order to retain power. For them neither the law or the Constitution have any meaning. Trump is the law, and what he says is coming directly from God according to Reichsbishofin Paula White.
Between White’s outright heresy and Trump’s lies, supported by those of his family, his partners in the GOP and the blind faith and belief of his propaganda network and cult the truth does not matter. Oaths of office don’t matter, only loyalty to Trump. Snyder wrote:
“To abandon facts is to abandon freedom. If nothing is true, then no one can criticize power, because there is no basis to do so. If nothing is truth, then all is spectacle. The biggest wallet pays for the most blinding lights.”
I figure that even if Trump is legally removed from office through impeachment or loses the 2020 election that the damage is done and that it will take a generation for the country, it’s laws, and institutions to recover. Thirty years ago when the Berlin Wall came down and the Soviet system fell apart it would bring forth universal democracy and freedom. I figured that the dictators were on their last legs, but I was wrong, even the United States is not immune to the lure of authoritarian rule. I believe that the next year will be very dangerous. Some of Trump’s preachers have promised that she he be turned out of office that they will kill those who opposed him.
So, until tomorrow,
Peace,
Padre Steve+
The Inglorius Padre Steve's World 