Category Archives: holocaust

June 21, 2022 · 02:00

The MAGA Violence Yet to Come


Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

I have not written anything here for months, but the last few months have been so busy with teaching, and the finishing touches on Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory. Likewise I am dealing with a number of physical issues which still continue. I think I mentioned the Kidney stone, and maybe the Carpal Tunnel syndrome. I have follow ups coming for both. I had a CT scan of the Kidney this morning in preparation for the follow up appointment with the Urologist. I am concerned that they might not gotten all of it as I still suffer from pain there. The follow up with the hand surgeon next month to determine the next steps in dealing with it which will likely involve a more complicated surgery. But enough excuses, the fact is that my mind and body were fried, I have taken the ten days since school ended to rest and recuperate, make changes to the website, and work with the publicity team at Potomac Books and University of Nebraska Press.

I have wanted to write but have not had the time or energy to do it, but that changes tonight. After taking the time to watch the January 6th hearings, and with everyone else watching relived that attack and listened to compelling evidence from members of the Trump administration and his re-election team revealing damning information on Trump’s egging on of the attack and the encouragement of the Proud Boys and other insurgents to kill Vice President Pence because ”deserved it.” In fact, an informant from the Proud Boys told the FBI that they intended to kill the Vice President that day, and they got within 40 feet of Pence and his family as they fled.

Then there were the mass murders, one specifically targeting Blacks in a predominantly Black neighborhood in Buffalo, New York by a exceptionally racist 18 year old man armed with an AR-15 type weapon, he murdered 11 people, mostly senior citizens. He picked the store because he knew it was the most heavily Black neighborhood he could reach, and he travelled almost 200 miles to get there. Also the killing of 19 fourth graders and two teachers in Uvalde, Texas, also by an 18 year old with an AR-15 type weapon. There have also been two church shootings by older men, one a gun dealer.

But these are but symptoms of an increasingly violent, gun worshipping culture, with leaders of the MAGA GOP leading the charge. Eric Greitens, the disgraced former governor of Missouri, now running for the GOP nomination for the Senate released a campaign ad with him armed with a pump action shotgun and a group of men dressed as soldiers, all heavily armed and in full combat gear breaking into an ordinary home. Greitens encouraged supporters to get their ”RINO hunting license” which has no limits. A RINO is what used to describe Republicans who were not full in with the party’s agenda. Most of the time it referred to centrists, or those slightly left of center. the first target of this was New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller during the 1964 GOP nominating convention in San Francisco. At that convention, supporters of Senator Barry Goldwater treated Rockefeller as an apostate, and too gain the support of Southern Democrats and the Dixiecrats of South Carolina Senator Strom Thurman who were livid over the Civil and Voting Rights Acts supported by President Lyndon Johnson and a coalition of Democrats and pro-Civil Rights Republicans including future President George H.W. Bush. No matter how one looks at it the 1964 GOP Convention was the watershed moment that led us to today. Baseball great, Jackie Robinson, a special delegate, and friend and supporter of Rockefeller described the fanatical racist crowd in San Francisco’s Cow Palace, in his book I Never Had it Made:

Robinson wrote of his experience at the 1964 Convention:

“I wasn’t altogether caught of guard by the victory of the reactionary forces in the Republican party, but I was appalled by the tactics they used to stifle their liberal opposition. I was a special delegate to the convention through an arrangement made by the Rockefeller office. That convention was one of the most unforgettable and frightening experiences of my life. The hatred I saw was unique to me because it was hatred directed against a white man. It embodied a revulsion for all he stood for, including his enlightened attitude toward black people.

A new breed of Republicans had taken over the GOP. As I watched this steamroller operation in San Francisco, I had a better understanding of how it must have felt to be a Jew in Hitler’s Germany.

The same high-handed methods had been there.

The same belief in the superiority of one religious or racial group over another was here. Liberals who fought so hard and so vainly were afraid not only of what would happen to the GOP but of what would happen to America. The Goldwaterites were afraid – afraid not to hew strictly to the line they had been spoon-fed, afraid to listen to logic and reason if it was not in their script.

I will never forget the fantastic scene of Governor Rockefeller’s ordeal as he endured what must have been three minutes of hysterical abuse and booing which interrupted his fighting statement which the convention managers had managed to delay until the wee hours of the morning. Since the telecast was coming from the West Coast, that meant that many people in other sections of the country, because of the time differential, would be in their beds. I don’t think he has ever stood taller than that night when he refused to be silenced until he had had his say.”

Likewise Belva Davis, then a young African American journalist wrote of her experiences at that convention:

While the Goldwater organization tried to keep its delegates in check on the floor, snarling Goldwater fans in the galleries around us were off the leash. The mood turned unmistakably menacing…

Suddenly Louis and I heard a voice yell, “Hey, look at those two up there!” The accuser pointed us out, and several spectators swarmed beneath us. “Hey niggers!” they yelled. “What the hell are you niggers doing in here?’”

I could feel the hair rising on the back of my neck as I looked into faces turned scarlet and sweaty by heat and hostility. Louis, in suit and tie and perpetually dignified, turned to me and said with all the nonchalance he could muster, “Well, I think that’s enough for today.” Methodically we began wrapping up our equipment into suitcases.

As we began our descent down the ramps of the Cow Palace, a self-appointed posse dangled over the railings, taunting. “Niggers!” “Get out of here, boy!” “You too, nigger bitch!” “Go on, get out!” “I’m gonna kill your ass!”

I stared straight ahead, putting one foot in front of the other like a soldier who would not be deterred from a mission. The throng began tossing garbage at us: wadded up convention programs, mustard-soaked hot dogs, half-eaten Snickers bars. My goal was to appear deceptively serene, mastering the mask of dispassion I had perfected since childhood to steel myself against any insults the outside world hurled my way.

Then a glass soda bottle whizzed within inches of my skull. I heard it whack against the concrete and shatter. I didn’t look back, but I glanced sideways at Louis and felt my lower lip began to quiver. He was determined we would give our tormentors no satisfaction.

“If you start to cry,” he muttered, “I’ll break your leg.” 

It took another fifty two years for this evil wing of the GOP under the leadership of former President Trump to take control of the Republican Party. From the beginning Trump promoted violence against his opponents and was delighted to have the muscle of White Nationalist and Christian Nationalist paramilitaries like the Proud Boys, the Oath Keepers, the III Percenters, the Prayer Patriots, and others including Neo-Nazis, and the KKK. When Trump told the Proud Boys in 2020, ”Stand back and stand by“ they knew what he meant. On January 6th they were in position at the Capitol to breach the outer police lines before Trump urged the masses to march to the Capitol and called Mike Pence out as a coward and stated his disappointment with Pence. The threats made toward Pence, Speaker of the House Pelosi, and Senate Majority Leader Schumer, and others in Congress, of both parties were so malignant that they beggar the imagination.

These threats have not stopped. Congressman Adam Kitzinger, a very conservative Republican who voted with Trump 90% of the time finally voted to impeach Trump in the Second Impeachment proceeding and is now one of two Republicans on the January 6th Commission received a hand written death threat targeting him and his family. Many GOP members have either shut up and become complicit through their silence, others who have actively aided him, and still more like Greitens who are not only aiding him but are encouraging violence and killing of all their opponents, Republican or Democrats. They are being aided and abetted by the propagandists of Fox News, Newsmax, One America News, Infowars, and other toxic spreaders of lies and disinformation. Of course there is the Dark Web where the mind numbing conspiracy theories of QAnon and other groups provide an endless supply of misinformation and lies through sites like 4Chan and 8Chan, and many others. Many of these sites aid in the targeting of opponents, and in abetting threats against them.

In light of how violent the GOP has become it is hard not to to believe that it will not get worse. Every indicator, the words and actions of GOP leaders, the targeting of racial, religious, and gender minorities by the GOP, especially in states like Texas and Florida in highly orchestrated campaigns to disenfranchise people, threaten them, or actively legislate punitive laws that target the civil rights, voting rights, and religious rights of racial, religious, or gender identity of citizens.

Since I am a historian of American racism, slavery, Jim Crow, as well as the Nazi crimes of the Holocaust, I cannot not see where this violent, authoritarian, theocratic and venomous MAGA is going. Since I believe that assassinations, mass killings, bombings and targeted killings of those opposed to Trump and MAGA will become commonplace in the next few months leading to the 2022 and 2024 elections, I will leave those who actively or passively support such violence with the words of Spencer Tracy playing Judge Dan Haygood in Judgement at Nuremberg:

“Any person who sways another to commit murder, any person who furnishes the lethal weapon for the purpose of the crime, any person who is an accessory to the crime — is guilty.”

That will be all for tonight but expect more, and more often.

Peace,

Padre Steve+


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February 1, 2021 · 04:03

“A country isn’t a rock. It’s not an extension of one’s self. It’s what it stands for. It’s what it stands for when standing for something is the most difficult!” The Second Trump Impeachment Trial and Judgement at Nuremberg

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Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

I am returning to an old article about the Holocaust, the Nuremberg Trials, the film Judgement at Nuremberg in the wake of the attempted Trump Coup of 6 January 2021 where his Cult, led by White Supremacists, Neo-Nazis, Neo-Confederates, Evangelical Christian Theocrats, unconstitutional and illegal “self-proclaimed militias,” True Believers of the QAnon Conspiracy Cult, were urged on by the former President, members of Congress, his family, and his personal lawyer to attack the Capitol. At the time Congress was meeting in its solemn task to finalize and certify the Electoral College Vote to certify President Elect Joe Biden, and Vice President-Elect Kamala Harris as the next President and Vice President of the United States. The assault was the grossest violation of our Republic, Democracy, and Constitution in history, and it was done by Americans, many of whom were military or former military or law enforcement officers. Likewise, elected officials from several states took part in it while Republican members of the House are believed to have aided them from the inside. Despite the fact that Trump is out of office he still controls the GOP which at state and local levels is already conducting a Stalin like Purge of GOP officials from the party and are even threatening well respected elected and appointed officials including the number three Republican in the House of Representative, Liz Cheney. These are not Republicans, they little different than former German Conservatives who joined the Nazis following Hitler’s appointment as Chancellor. They have surrendered any principles they once held and have become swore their unconditional loyalty to Adolf Hitler, only now that loyalty is to Trump and Trump alone.

That means that the danger is not over and in the week leading up to Trump’s Second Impeachment Trial, during and after it means that our Republic and anyone who actually supports and defends the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic is in danger for their lives. This judgement is not some figment of my imagination but based on the words and actions of Trump and his Cult over the last five and a half years.

With that I take you back to a different time and different lan, but one not  so different of cultural and political distress. As I said this is an older article, now somewhat edited, which should send chills up the spine of anyone of any party who still believes in the American Experiment and those words of our Declaration “all men are created equal and endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights including life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness…” and that this founding principle is the basis of an ever expanding definition of liberty for all people of all times who are blessed to live after Thomas Jefferson penned those words.

So until tomorrow,

Peace,

Pasre Steve+

I read and write a lot about Weimar and Nazi Germany as well as the Holocaust. They were the focus of my undergraduate major working under Dr. Helmut Heussler who served as a translator and interrogator at Nuremberg while I was a student at California State University at Northridge and later in my Masters of Arts in Military History. I read the documents, the histories, the narratives, and the reports both in English and German. I study the perpetrators, the victims, and yes the bystanders as well and there is not enough time in one man’s life to read all of them, but I will try.

Likewise I visit the sites where things happened in Germany, and every time that I make a trip to those places I learn more and believe me it is not comfortable.  When I visited the Palace of Justice in Nuremberg a few years ago I saw a picture of Dr. Heussler doing his work. Back then he was very young and it would be a number of years before he finished college and went on to his doctorate. When I saw his picture I remembered just how important he was in opening my eyes to the dark side of humanity; even those people that are not truly evil; those like most of us who exist between the shades of gray between sainthood and the devil.

The histories, the documents, the narratives paint a dark picture of humanity and the fallibility of people. The portrait that they paint a disturbing picture of the true nature of what is in all of us. When I look at the pictures and see the films I can see that the lessons of that time have not been learned. Dr. Timothy Snyder wrote:

“The world is now changing, reviving fears that were familiar in Hitler’s time, and to which Hitler responded. The history of the Holocaust is not over. Its precedent is eternal, and its lessons have not yet been learned.”

In the age where men who admire tyrants and authoritarians like Trump, Putin, Farage, Erdrogan, Assad, and so many others it is important that we try to learn the lessons lest we fall into the same trap as our ancestors and become perpetrators, victims, or bystanders. I often find myself wondering what will be said we Americans of our time in say fifty years or so. I have a feeling that it will not be favorable or sympathetic.

Such a fascination with the thoughts of others years after I am likely to be dead may seem unusually circumspect. But my call as a priest and a historian doesn’t allow me not to care about the future, or ignore present realities. The fact is that totalitarian regimes and events like the Holocaust are all too common in human history, one of those is the connection of humanity with its past and future, and that humanity being the constant in our history. Yehuda Bauer wrote:

“The horror of the Holocaust is not that it deviated from human norms; the horror is that it didn’t. What happened may happen again, to others not necessarily Jews, perpetrated by others, not necessarily Germans. We are all possible victims, possible perpetrators, possible bystanders.”

The fact is that there are very few true saints and likewise very few truly evil people. Quite obviously Adolf Hitler and many of his associates fell in the latter category. The rest of us, and for that matter most of the people on all sides during from the Nazi seizure of power until the Gotterdammerung of the Third Reich in in the flames of Berlin in 1945 fall somewhere in the gray area between the truly evil and sainthood. Yet, truthfully all of us given the right conditions are capable of becoming perpetrators, victims, or the worst, bystanders who turn their backs on evil because it doesn’t seem to affect us; but it does.

Admittedly this is a dark subject and as I always reminded my students “the one constant in history are fallible human beings.” 

During our recent blizzard and snow event my wife Judy was away, so one of the nights that I was alone I re-watched the film Judgment at Nuremberg. The film is profoundly disturbing not only because of the subjects that it deals with but also when we look at the great uncertainty time that we live and how similar it is to the world of the late 1920s and early 1930s. In one of the more disturbing scenes of the film, Maximillian Schell, who played Hans Rolfe, the defense counsel for Ernst Janning, played by Burt Lancaster gives a summation in the final defense of his client who has already admitted his guilt which is remarkable because he tells the truth about the guilt of everyone.

Rolfe’s summation of his defense following his client’s admission of guilt is damning. It is something that almost all of us do. It is how we look at the atrocities of genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing, the willful starvation of millions by criminal regimes; and then stand by saying little or nothing and doing nothing, sometimes even supporting the leaders or the regimes that commit these actions.

So please, no matter what your political point of view, take the time to watch clip or the whole film, and read the transcript of Schell’s speech below. It’s far easier than trying to do all the reading, study, and research that I have done.

“Your Honor, it is my duty to defend Ernst Janning, and yet Ernst Janning has said he is guilty. There’s no doubt, he feels his guilt. He made a great error in going along with the Nazi movement, hoping it would be good for his country. But, if he is to be found guilty, there are others who also went along, who also must be found guilty. Ernst Janning said, “We succeeded beyond our wildest dreams.” Why did we succeed, Your Honor? What about the rest of the world? Did it not know the intentions of the Third Reich? Did it not hear the words of Hitler’s broadcast all over the world? Did it not read his intentions in Mein Kampf, published in every corner of the world? Where’s the responsibility of the Soviet Union, who signed in 1939 the pact with Hitler, enabled him to make war? Are we not to find Russia guilty? Where’s the responsibility of the Vatican, who signed in 1933 the Concordat with Hitler, giving him his first tremendous prestige? Are we not to find the Vatican guilty? Where’s the responsibility of the world leader, Winston Churchill, who said in an open letter to the London Times in 1938 – 1938! Your Honor – “were England to suffer national disaster should pray to God to send a man of the strength of mind and will of an Adolf Hitler!” Are we not to find Winston Churchill guilty? Where is the responsibility of those American industrialists, who helped Hitler to rebuild his armaments and profited by that rebuilding? Are we not to find the American industrialists guilty? No, Your Honor. No! Germany alone is not guilty: The whole world is as responsible for Hitler’s Germany. It is an easy thing to condemn one man in the dock. It is easy to condemn the German people to speak of the basic flaw in the German character that allowed Hitler to rise to power and at the same time positively ignore the basic flaw of character that made the Russians sign pacts with him, Winston Churchill praise him, American industrialists profit by him! Ernst Janning said he is guilty. If he is, Ernst Janning’s guilt is the world’s guilt – no more and no less.”

Spencer Tracy who played Judge Dan Haygood in the film pronounced the guilty verdict in these words and in this film clip.

“The trial conducted before this Tribunal began over eight months ago. The record of evidence is more than ten thousand pages long, and final arguments of counsel have been concluded.

Simple murders and atrocities do not constitute the gravamen of the charges in this indictment. Rather, the charge is that of conscious participation in a nationwide, government organized system of cruelty and injustice in violation of every moral and legal principle known to all civilized nations. The Tribunal has carefully studied the record and found therein abundant evidence to support beyond a reasonable doubt the charges against these defendants.

Herr Rolfe, in his very skillful defense, has asserted that there are others who must share the ultimate responsibility for what happened here in Germany. There is truth in this. The real complaining party at the bar in this courtroom is civilization. But the Tribunal does say that the men in the dock are responsible for their actions, men who sat in black robes in judgment on other men, men who took part in the enactment of laws and decrees, the purpose of which was the extermination of humans beings, men who in executive positions actively participated in the enforcement of these laws — illegal even under German law. The principle of criminal law in every civilized society has this in common: Any person who sways another to commit murder, any person who furnishes the lethal weapon for the purpose of the crime, any person who is an accessory to the crime — is guilty.

Herr Rolfe further asserts that the defendant, Janning, was an extraordinary jurist and acted in what he thought was the best interest of this country. There is truth in this also. Janning, to be sure, is a tragic figure. We believe he loathed the evil he did. But compassion for the present torture of his soul must not beget forgetfulness of the torture and the death of millions by the Government of which he was a part. Janning’s record and his fate illuminate the most shattering truth that has emerged from this trial: If he and all of the other defendants had been degraded perverts, if all of the leaders of the Third Reich had been sadistic monsters and maniacs, then these events would have no more moral significance than an earthquake, or any other natural catastrophe. But this trial has shown that under a national crisis, ordinary — even able and extraordinary — men can delude themselves into the commission of crimes so vast and heinous that they beggar the imagination. No one who has sat at through trial can ever forget them: men sterilized because of political belief; a mockery made of friendship and faith; the murder of children. How easily it can happen.

There are those in our own country too who today speak of the “protection of country” — of “survival.” A decision must be made in the life of every nation at the very moment when the grasp of the enemy is at its throat. Then, it seems that the only way to survive is to use the means of the enemy, to rest survival upon what is expedient — to look the other way.

Well, the answer to that is “survival as what?” A country isn’t a rock. It’s not an extension of one’s self. It’s what it stands for. It’s what it stands for when standing for something is the most difficult!

Before the people of the world, let it now be noted that here, in our decision, this is what we stand for: justice, truth, and the value of a single human being.”

Sadly, little has changed in the character of humanity. If we do or say nothing, if we support those who do such things, if we close our eyes and pretend that it is not our problem, then we too are the guilty party.  As Hannah Arendt wrote: “The sad truth is that most evil is done by people who never make up their minds to be good or evil.”

Sophie Scholl, a young university student who died at the hands of the Nazis for daring to distribute leaflets telling the truth about Hitler’s regime wrote:

“The real damage is done by those millions who want to ‘survive.’ The honest men who just want to be left in peace. Those who don’t want their little lives disturbed by anything bigger than themselves. Those with no sides and no causes. Those who won’t take measure of their own strength, for fear of antagonizing their own weakness. Those who don’t like to make waves—or enemies. Those for whom freedom, honour, truth, and principles are only literature. Those who live small, mate small, die small. It’s the reductionist approach to life: if you keep it small, you’ll keep it under control. If you don’t make any noise, the bogeyman won’t find you. But it’s all an illusion, because they die too, those people who roll up their spirits into tiny little balls so as to be safe. Safe?! From what? Life is always on the edge of death; narrow streets lead to the same place as wide avenues, and a little candle burns itself out just like a flaming torch does. I choose my own way to burn.”

Whether I live one day, or another fifty years, I do not want to be a person who wants to be remembered as one who “just wants to survive,” or “left in peace,” or as Arendt said one “who never makes up their mind to be good or evil.” Nor can I be one who just goes along with things as Janning did, carrying out the orders of Hitler and the Nazi Regime in Judgment at Nuremberg, even though personally disgusted by them or be one for “whom freedom, honour, truth, and principles are only literature.” 

How many Republican officials and Trump appointed judges are doing just what Jannina did without any feeling of remorse of conscience? I would dare say more than any of us would think possible.

That being said, I will never stop speaking the truth regardless of the cost. That is the only way I know how to live. Life has taught me that not to do so is to countenance unspeakable crimes, and surrender to the whims of those of whom the words of the Declaration, the Preamble of the Constitution, the Gettysburg Address, Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s First Inaugural Address and Four Freedoms, Dr. Martin Luther King’s Letter from a Birmingham Jail, John F. Kennedy’s Inaugural Address, and speech at the Berlin Wall, King’s I Have a Dream and I Have Been to the Mountaintop speeches, Frederick Douglass’s Fourth of July Speech, and so many others have called us to. Will will follow in their step’s or those of Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, Laval, Petain, and so many other tyrants or would by tyrants like Trump?

That my friends is the question we all must ask ourselves today. It is actually a simple but potential soul rending question. The answer to it determines who you chose to serve and what you will defend, our Declaration, Constitution, Republic,  Democracy and Freedom, or the tyranny of “liberty for the few, slavery for the masses.”

That is the question. As Bob Dylan sang “It might be the Devil, it might be the Lord, but you gotta serve somebody…”

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January 28, 2021 · 18:55

Trump’s Christian Theocrats, Neo-Nazis and White Supremacists will Bring About another Holocaust


Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

The day after the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz and three weeks after the attack on the Capitol by conspiracy theory believing, Neo-Nazis, White Nationalists, QAnon believers and run of the mill racists, Christian theocrats and others determined to overthrow an election, usurp the Constitution and kill the Vice President, the Speaker of the House, and any member of the House or Senate who upheld the Constitution I have decided to continue my counter-attack against these who are guilty of the murder of a Capitol Police Officer and the wounding of two dozen officers by fighting back.

Robert Heinlein wrote:

“Almost any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.”

Over the past year or so I have received emails from a well known Jewish friend who represents the religious rights of many, mostly Christians in the military Those emails have been some of the most despicable Anti-Semitic, racist, and Nazi-like screeds that I have read in a long time and every week he shares at least one for me to investigate, reply, and expose.

Unfortunately my friend gets many of these emails, usually from self-proclaimed Christians who are so cowardly that they use pseudonyms and fake email addresses, but some are foolish enough to use their real names and email addresses which makes them incredibly easy to track down. Many actually are real live Neo-Nazis who I actually find entertaining to expose. Sometimes the ones who use pseudonyms and false email addresses sometimes make mistakes that allow me to identify them, but I digress…

These emails often use the language of Joseph Goebbels and other Nazis referring to my friend’s “Jewish looks,” other blatantly racist and religious comments that might appear in Julius Streicher’s Der Stürmer, nearly pornographic in their descriptions and attacks on him.  On occasion they make some very disturbing theocratic Christian views and referred to my friend as a Christ Killer and member of the Tribe, both terms used widely among the German Nazis.

The historian Yehuda Bauer wrote:

“The horror of the Holocaust is not that it deviated from human norms; the horror is that it didn’t. What happened may happen again, to others not necessarily Jews, perpetrated by others, not necessarily Germans. We are all possible victims, possible perpetrators, possible bystanders.”

The sad thing is that many of the most active Anti-Semites are Christians, or people who label themselves as Christians. Before he was banned from social media platforms these people often echoe the words and Tweets of former President Trump and many of his conservative Christian supporters, including prominent preacher like Franklin Graham, Robert Jeffress, Paula White, James Dobson, Kenneth Copeland and others too numerous to list.

These preachers beat their chest and loudly proclaim their support for the State of Israel, but such support is only to usher in Armageddon, the annihilation of two thirds of living Jews, and the conversion of the survivors to Christianity. Their theology is one of genocide. It is a theology that has allowed Christians since the time of Constantine to use the police power of the state, its courts, police and military organizations to exterminate Jews, or any heretical sect of Christians, Pagans, or other traditional Greek, Roman, or Persian religions.

Likewise, the late arriving but incredibly militarily successful and religiously persuasive Muslims who overran most of the Christian Middle East, North Africa, and Southern Europe were the enemy. This was only possible because the Byzantine Empire was corrupt to the core, and the Roman Church had become the de facto government in much of Western Europe because civil authority had collapsed.  The Roman and the Orthodox Churches which grew apart in culture and doctrine finally split by mutually excommunicating each other in 1451. But both persecuted any sect that opposed them to great acts of systematic murder in the name of Jesus. To steal a quote from a very bad Baptist preacher, the Roman and Orthodox Christians blazed a “Trail of Blood.”  across Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa.

It is no wonder to me that a man like my friend who actually stands for the principles of the Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights, and the actual beliefs of the Founders who did not create a “Christian nation,”  is targeted by such people.  The great Virginia Baptist, John Leland, who was in large part responsible for the Bill of Rights, the religious liberty clauses of the First Amendment and the Virginia Statute on Religious Liberty wrote:

“Is conformity of sentiments in matters of religion essential to the happiness of civil government? Not at all. Government has no more to do with the religious opinions of men than it has with the principles of mathematics. Let every man speak freely without fear–maintain the principles that he believes–worship according to his own faith, either one God, three Gods, no God, or twenty Gods; and let government protect him in so doing, i.e., see that he meets with no personal abuse or loss of property for his religious opinions. Instead of discouraging him with proscriptions, fines, confiscation or death, let him be encouraged, as a free man, to bring forth his arguments and maintain his points with all boldness; then if his doctrine is false it will be confuted, and if it is true (though ever so novel) let others credit it. When every man has this liberty what can he wish for more? A liberal man asks for nothing more of government.”

My friend is constantly threatened by supposed Christians, who are no doubt more nationalist and members of the Trump Cult than they are Christians, as were the German Christians, the official Christianity of Naziism. They are not oppressed but use their political power, especially at State and local level to deprive anyone they disapprove, of the civil, political, religious, and basic human rights.

But the Nazis weren’t the only ones to have such visions of religious superiority aided by the police power of the state.

Gary North, one of the most eloquent expositors of the Christian Dominionist movement and a long time adviser to Ron and the now infamous inciter of sedition, violence, and rebellion, Senator Rand Paul who believes that it is okay for a President to incite sedition and an attack on the Capitol that came within seconds of claiming the life of his Vice President and others Senators and Congressmen and women in the act of doing their Constitutional duty to approve the results of the Electoral College wrote:

“The long-term goal of Christians in politics should be to gain exclusive control over the franchise. Those who refuse to submit publicly to the eternal sanctions of God by submitting to His Church’s public marks of the covenant–baptism and holy communion–must be denied citizenship, just as they were in ancient Israel.

That is not a criticism of the former President, for he was and remains an opportunist who understands the insatiable needs of his supporters better than they do. The former President really doesn’t believe a word of Christian doctrine, or exhibit one iota of Christian morality or ethics. As a businessman he just realizes an easy mark, a gullible customer, willing to believe whatever he says because he tickles their ears with what they want to hear. He found that in theocratic Christians, Neo-Nazis, White Supremacists is being what he is, while they are denying their faith and God, while at the same time aiding and abetting the persecution of American Jews.

This occurred in spite of the fact that his son-in-law Jarod Kusher and most racist of advisors Stephen Miller are Jews, who advocated Nazi like policies against American minorities, immigrants and Muslims. One cannot say that either stood for the rights of Jews except Kushner working to build political and military alliances with Sunni Muslims and Israel to fight Shia Iran and its Proxies in a Muslim civil war.  The involvement of Christians and Jews in in such a religious civil war that could kill millions of people is simply stupid. If the Iranians were to succeed in hitting Israel with more than one nuclear weapon it would be another Holocaust brought on by American Christians and the complicated political and theological web they have wove across the Middle East.

It is late, I am tired, but believe me, the Anti-Semitism of the Holocaust was not abnormal, but an ever present reality, even and maybe especially in the United States and Europe because we so easily forget the truth and believe the lies of Holocaust deniers.

Oh, I forget to mention, as Yehuda Bauer did so well, that these people not only despise Jews, they are equal opportunity haters, willing to exterminate anyone who does not agree with them, including Christians.

Former President Trump has enough of his own crimes to be tried and convicted of not to be blamed for a more than a millennium of Anti-Semitism and the hatred and persecution of supposed heretics by Christians who wield the sword of the state in one hand and their particular versions of the Bible in the other. Trump was just shrewd enough of a con-man to scam the religious con-men.  If the stakes weren’t freedom and life itself I would think it amusing.

But hopefully they will turn on each other before they can destroy the ever expanding idea of liberty that our flawed founders believed in. Unfortunately we have have drifted so far that 90% of Senate Republicans voted to attempt to table the impeachment trial of former President Trump. The fact that Trump as President endanger their lives, those of the staff, colleagues, and others is extraordinary in the banality of evil they practice. But obviously what they claim as Christian faith and ethics forgives insurrection, murder, the attempted overthrow of the Constitution and our Republic for a dictatorship. I am sorry, those are crimes that are not forgivable on this earth. If God in his or her mercy decides to give it to them, that’s on God.

But as for me I will be God-damned if I let these people escape justice for their crimes especially when the claim innocence or deny any responsibility at all. I cannot judge what God does with them, but I can shout out loud that by any measure of the imagination these people are guilty of such crimes against our Constitution and Republic that they are guilty and should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law in our land.

If others chose to follow their path of violent sedition, treason and rebellion over the next few weeks they should be met with the strongest police and military force needed to end it once and for all.

As for me until they confess and repent there can be no forgiveness and I will not let Neo-Nazis, White Supremacists, and other racist antisemites willing to overthrow our democracy have the final say. The best thing about being retired from the military is that I can speak the truth even more boldly than I could ever do while on active duty, not that I ever did not tell the truth.

So, until tomorrow, I wish you the best,

Peace,

Padre Steve+

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January 27, 2021 · 00:08

“To Forget a Holocaust is to Kill Twice” The Liberation of Auschwitz at 76

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

Seventy-six years ago today the Soviet Red Army’s 100th Division liberated the Auschwitz Concentration Camp. There were somewhere between 7000 and 9000 prisoners left in the camp when the Soviet soldiers liberated it. The camp’s crematoria had been destroyed as well as most of the gas chambers. The SS had evacuated most of the surviving inmates and slave laborers by forced march to railhead miles away from the camp, in order to take them to other Concentration Camps deeper in Germany; Buchenwald, Bergen-Belsen, Ravensbruck, and others.

Even though Auschwitz was liberated, the Nazis continued to exterminate Jews at other camps. Likewise in vain attempts to cover up their crimes and keep killing Jews through forced labor conducted forced marches in freezing winter weather to keep them from being liberated. These marches were both deadly and inhuman. Even Heinrich Himmler the supreme architect of the policy of annihilation had forbidden them in order to escape justice at the hands of the Allies who he was already attempting clandestine contact. Many of these actions were the work of SS Lieutenant Colonel Adolf Eichmann who supervised the Holocaust after the death of his chief, Reinhard Heydrich. Even though the Third Reich was collapsing under the hammer blows of the Western Allies and Soviets, and the defection of critical allies like Finland, Hungary, Romania, and Bulgaria from the Axis fold.

Even Rudolf Höss the former Commandant of Auschwitz, who admitted to killing over one and a half-million Jews, was appalled by the senseless brutality of what he saw. Höss, the meticulous killer of millions, was shocked by the columns of emaciated and Jews, with no winter clothing or in many cases not even shoes that that he witnessed.  These were the people Eichmann marched from Budapest and other cities and camps to Austria and Czechoslovakia in late 1944 and 1945. to keep the Russians from liberating them, even against the orders of Heinrich Himmler himself.  But Eichmann felt the heartbeat of Adolf Hitler who remained determined to kill every last Jew in German held Europe as he led Germany into its Götterdämmerung.

There have been many episodes of genocide in human history, but none were more pointedly directed at a single group of people based on race hatred than the Holocaust of the Nazis and their allies against the Jews. While it is true that the Nazis exterminated millions of other people than the nearly six million Jews they dispatched during the Holocaust, but they were secondary targets of his race hatred. This is important, as the late Christopher Hitchens noted:

“We should not at all allow ourselves to forget the millions of non-Jewish citizens of Belarus, Russia, Ukraine, and other Slav territories who were also massacred. But for me the salient fact remains that anti-Semitism was the regnant, essential, organizing principle of all the other National Socialist race theories. It is thus not to be thought of as just one prejudice among many.” 

Hitchens was right, without the primary Nazi hatred and determination to obliterate the Jews from the face of the earth, their other atrocities would never occurred. Today, that rabid anti-semitism is again raising its evil head in Eastern and Western Europe, the Middle East, and even in the United States. We have seen it in the resurgence of heavily armed and violent Neo-Nazi and White Supremacist groups in the United States whose ranks include current and former military personnel and law enforcement officers. The same is true in Europe. In the United States many members of these Anti-Semitic militant groups led the attack on the United States Capitol after being incited to do so by for ex-President Donald Trump.

Red Army officers and soldiers who had seen the worst of Nazi atrocities committed in Russia, the Belarus, the Ukraine and the Baltic states were unprepared for what they witnesses when the liberated Auschwitz:

Battle-hardened soldiers who were used to death were shocked by the Nazis’ treatment of prisoners. Red Army general Vasily Petrenko, commander of the 107th Infantry Division, remarked, “I who saw people dying every day was shocked by the Nazis’ indescribable hatred toward the inmates who had turned into living skeletons. I read about the Nazis’ treatment of Jews in various leaflets, but there was nothing about the Nazis’ treatment of women, children, and old men. It was in Auschwitz that I found out about the fate of the Jews.” 

Ivan Martynushkin, then a 21-year-old lieutenant recounted his experience at Auschwitz in 2015: 

“We saw emaciated, tortured, impoverished people…. Those were the people I first encountered. … We could tell from their eyes that they were happy to be saved from this hell. Happy that now they weren’t threatened by death in a crematorium. Happy to be freed. And we had the feeling of doing a good deed — liberating these people from this hell.” He told the Daily Mail: “I had seen towns destroyed…. I had seen the destruction of villages. I had seen the suffering of our own people. I had seen small children maimed. There was not one village which had not experienced this horror, this tragedy, these sufferings.”

He was not alone.

Commander Vasily Gromadsky was one of the first to enter the “death camp”:

There was a lock on the gate. I didn’t know if it was the main entrance or what. I ordered men to break the lock. There wasn’t anyone there. We walked another 200 meters and saw prisoners in striped shirts running towards us, about 300 of them.

We became wary, since we had been warned that the Germans could be in disguise. But they were real prisoners. They were crying, embracing us. They told us that millions of people had been killed there. I can still remember them telling us how the Germans had sent 12 wagons of baby carriages from Auschwitz.

Journalists from the 38th army Usher Margulis and Gennady Savin entered the camp after the soldiers. This what they remember:

We entered the brick building and looked inside the rooms. The doors weren’t closed. In the first room there was a huge pile of children’s clothes: little coats, jackets, sweaters, many of them with bloodstains. In the next room there were boxes filled with dental crowns and golden dentures. In the third room there were boxes with woman’s hair. And then a woman [a prisoner – Russia Beyond] brought us to a room filled with boxes with women’s bags, lampshades, wallets, purses and other leather items. She said: “All this is made from human skin.”

After Auschwitz was liberated, the Soviets appointed a new commandant was to administer the town, Grigory Yelisavetinsky. On Feb. 4, 1945 he wrote to his wife:

“There’s a children’s barrack in the camp. Jewish children of all ages (twins) were taken there. The Germans carried out experiments on them as if they were rabbits. I saw a 14-year-old boy whose veins had been injected with kerosene for some “scientific” purpose.

Then a piece of his body was cut off and sent to a laboratory in Berlin, while it was replaced with another piece of the body. Now he lies in a hospital all covered with deep rotting ulcers and nothing can be done to help him. There’s a beautiful girl walking around the camp. She’s mad. I’m surprised that not all the people here have gone mad.”

Eva Mozes Kor was 10 years old when she spotted the soldiers. She was one of a group of hundreds of children who had been left behind, and she had endured medical experiments during her imprisonment. She remembered how the soldiers gave her “hugs, cookies and chocolate….We were not only starved for food but we were starved for human kindness.”

The human kindness of the Soviet Soldiers characterized the liberation. The shocked soldiers helped set up hospitals on site, and townspeople volunteered to help. For months, Polish Red Cross workers labored to save the dying and treat the living, working without adequate food or supplies and helping prisoners get in touch with their loved ones. About 7,500 of those liberated on 27 January 1945 survived.

It is impossible for an objective person to deny these facts. Hate crimes against Jews are blossoming around the world like toxic mushrooms. The new perpetrators are the descendants of the former perpetrators, Protestant, Catholic, and Orthodox Christians, Muslims, and secularists who embrace the same social Darwinism that motivated many of the Nazis and many are central to the ever growing core or Holocaust Deniers.

Or course the non-Muslim opponents of the Jews today also despise dark skinned minorities, non-Christians, not to mention atheists. secularists, and political liberals and progressives, even if they are White and Christian,  thus what Hitchens says is still as accurate as it was when he wrote those words.

So here we are, Holocaust Remembrance Day, 2021. The question is, will we allow it to happen again? The late Iris Chang, who documented the Rape Of Nanking noted: “to forget a holocaust is to kill twice.” Sadly, I believe that without a sea change in public opinion and knowledge about the Holocaust, genocide, and anti-semitism we will see it happen again. The attack on the Capitol was just a foretaste of what they would do if they even succeed in taking power.

But will we allow it to happen again? I would hope not, but I have to say that human nature and the course of events is leading me to believe that it will happen again, maybe even in our lifetime.

That may be difficult to accept, but it is reality. What is the alternative to telling the truth? Except to perpetuate a lie, except to take the side of the perpetrators, and those who would do the same today. That includes many of former President Trump’s most loyal supporters, Evangelical Christians who while outwardly allying with Israel, only do so in that their interpretation of Biblical prophecy might be fulfilled. That interpretation is that Christians will be raptured from the earth, and during a seven year Great Tribulation the Anti-Christ will conquer his foes and that in the end over two-thirds of all Jews will be killed, while the surviving Jews convert to follow Christ. Evangelical Christianity’s beliefs about Israel are not out of love or concern for Jews, the nation of Israel, but to use them to promote their own political and theological agendas. If I was a Jew of any kind I would reject any of their offers.

Honestly, I cannot deem such politicized and racist theology to be Christian, or respectful and considerate of the elder brother of the Christian faith, Judaism, without which Christianity wouldn’t exist. Let me repeat that. Without Judaism Christianity would not exist, and the treatment of the Jews by the Christian Church has been shameful for the majority of its existence. I say that as a Christian.

In the 1930s and 1940s the Nazis created the euphemism the Jewish Question in order to remove the aspect of humanity from their policy. It wasn’t about human beings, it was about people that they considered sub-human minority that they were able to demonize to expedite their elimination. Hitchens wrote:

“Die Judenfrage,’ it used to be called, even by Jews. ‘The Jewish Question.’ I find I quite like this interrogative formulation, since the question—as Gertrude Stein once famously if terminally put it—may be more absorbing than the answer. Of course one is flirting with calamity in phrasing things this way, as I learned in school when the Irish question was discussed by some masters as the Irish ‘problem.’ Again, the word ‘solution’ can be as neutral as the words ‘question’ or ‘problem,’ but once one has defined a people or a nation as such, the search for a resolution can become a yearning for the conclusive. Endlösung: the final solution.”

Thus, once one labels the Jews, or for that matter any other despised minority a question, or a problem, we place ourselves on the path to to Genocide. But the Trump administration and his followers did that since 2015 regarding Mexicans and other Hispanics, Arabs, Haitians, Sub-Saharan Africans, and too many others. Many died, women were forcibly sterilized by physicians employed or contracted by the our Border and Emigration departments.

That is why I cannot be silent. I have to proclaim the words of Ellie Wiesel:

“I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.”

Silence it no longer an option, and to again quote Wiesel: “For the dead and the living, we must bear witness.”

We must bear witness, for if we do not it will happen again. Humanity is the one constant in history, and there are no exceptions once one begins down the path to labeling the fate of races, nations, and peoples a question or a problem which they can resolve with a solution, the more comprehensive, total, or final, the better. There are certainly plenty of people, including Trump’s closest advisors who would make draconian laws in order to enable the government to commit genocide.

Historian Yehuda Bauer wrote:

“The horror of the Holocaust is not that it deviated from human norms; the horror is that it didn’t. What happened may happen again, to others not necessarily Jews, perpetrated by others, not necessarily Germans. We are all possible victims, possible perpetrators, possible bystanders.”

In the wake of an number of situations that I have seen and have watched in morbid fascination be debated on my Facebook, and Twitter timelines, as well a potential Holocaust Denier who commented on my blog a year ago, I realize that with the prevailing attitudes being stoked by men like former President Trump, his media supporters, and sadly, far too many Conservative Christians, that a Holocaust not unlike Hitler’s will quite probably happen again, and the Jews, followed by the Trump Cult’s  liberal political opponents, American Blacks, Muslims, Mexican and Central American immigrants and refugees and a multitude of others find themselves the targets of first political and economic isolation followed by legal or extralegal means of political persecution, imprisonment, and extermination. Just read and listen to what members of the GOP, political pundits, and yes right wing political preachers say, preach, or write.

I will fight it, butI have no doubt of the power, passion, and petulance of people consumed by race hatred under the guise of patriotism. They are going to undercut any Constitutional liberties of their opponents and will misused the Constitution, our laws, or even Christian theology to bring on another Holocaust.

27 January is important, but the work of preventing even worse still remains. There are no “good Nazis or White Supremacists” today. I will be damned if I do not fight them by any means fair or unfair. I will identify them, show their faces and make them defend themselves and their beliefs in public, because they are indefensible. Such people should be publicly identified and shamed. If they commit crimes as they did on 6 January they should be prosecuted to the maximum extent of the law, and I include the former President, the Senators, and Representatives, state office holders, military personnel active, reserve, and retired, and law enforcement officers who aided and abetted that assault on our country, democracy, and Constitution. They are insurrectionists who are guilty of inciting sedition and rebellion against the United States, who are still intent on their revolution to overturn our government, a valid election, and our Constitution. They are worse than the Confederate rebels, they are no different than the Nazis, and any American of any political party, religious affiliation, or race should disavow them and oppose them at every opportunity.

This is a time to stand against these criminals masquerading as Senators and Congressmen, and oppose their attempts to destroy the American experiment for an authoritarian, fascist, racist, and theocratic dictatorship which will certainly bring forth another Holocaust, and yes, Jews will be the primary target before anyone else.

I do battle with Holocaust deniers and Neo-Nazis on an almost daily basis. Some have threatened my life and that of my family for over a decade and most of them also call themselves Christians. That I cannot allow to go unrevealed and I will expose them for who and what they are. I will not resort to violence, but if need be I will defend myself with whatever means necessary as I will my Jewish friends and anyone else’s whose lives are threatened by the current Neo-Nazi and White  Supremacist and others committed to perpetuating the lies and violence of America’s leading Fascist, former President Donald John Trump.

Until tomorrow,

Peace,

Padre Steve+

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January 26, 2021 · 02:44

“Truth Matters or we are Lost” If You are to Say that Trump is Not Guilty it Would be True to Say that there are no Slain and there Has Been No Crime: the Second Trump Impeachment

Representative Jamie Raskin, Chief House Impeachment Manager

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

Today the House of Representatives Impeachment Managers delivered the Impeachment Article against former President Donald John Trump to the United States Senate. It was a historic moment for it was the first time a President has been impeached twice, and the first time that one has had the impeachment charge was filed after a President left office, unfortunately it was necessary and an unnecessary unfolding of events brought about by Trump himself.

In his last words at the first impeachment trial of President Trump Congressman Adam Schiff stated:

“If the truth doesn’t matter, we’re lost. Framers couldn’t protect us from ourselves, if right and truth don’t matter. And you know that what he did was not right. That’s what they do in the old country, that Colonel Vindman’s father came from. Or the old country that my great grandfather came from, or the old countries that your ancestors came from, or maybe you came from. But here, right is supposed to matter. It’s what’s made us the greatest nation on earth. No constitution can protect us, right doesn’t matter any more. And you know you can’t trust this President to do what’s right for this country. You can trust he will do what’s right for Donald Trump. He’ll do it now. He’s done it before. He’ll do it for the next several months. He’ll do it in the election if he’s allowed to. This is why if you find him guilty, you must find that he should be removed. Because right matters. Because right matters and the truth matters. Otherwise, we are lost.” 

Schiff was not only correct but prophetic in what Donald Trump and his supporters would do if he was not convicted. Schiff’s words in those closing arguments could not have been more correct and Donald Trump nearly succeeded in overthrowing the election and maintaining power on 6 January 2021. This was not a one off, it was not a last minute “Hail Mary” it was the culmination of a plan that existed before Election Day to discredit the election and every action after it from challenging vote counts, demanding recounts, making over 60 legal challenges all of which were shot down in flames because they lacked any factual evidence. Despite every failure President Trump called his supporters to the Capitol weeks ago to come to Washington to use force and violence to change the result of the election and in the process threaten the lives and urge the assassination of Vice President Pence, Speaker Pelosi, Representative Alexandra Ocosio-Cortez, and numerous other Senators and Representatives of both parties who they believed had committed the Cardinal sin of opposing Donald Trump.

Trump, his son Donald Jr., Representative Mo Brooks or Alabama, Rudy Giuliani, and others made impassioned speeches in order charge up the mob to attack the Capitol. The speeches were one thing, but the way they were received exactly as Trump intended it. The people who made the assault attacked, killed and wounded police officers and others as was the intent. Those who breeched the Capitol went looking to kill Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, Representative Alexandr Ocosio-Cortez, and even Vice President Mike Pence. Truthfully no one was safe and ever member of the Senate sitting in judgement  Most of those targeted escaped with under a minute to spare. Had just a few Capitol Police and Washington D.C. Metropolitan Police officers not done their duty and stood their ground the bloodshed would have been much worse, and every drop of it would be on Donald Trump’s already bloodstained hands which have over 425,000 dead from the Coronavirus Pandemic that he and his administration so malevolently made light of and ultimately condemned all of those people to death and left over twenty five million more infected, hundreds of thousands of whom are dealing with long term effects of the virus: respiratory, neurological, pulmonary, psychological and more.

No matter who you are if you can fairly evaluate facts and evidence then you can admit that Donald Trump is a sociopath who values himself, his wealth and power more than any other human being. So after over 70 days of fighting the inevitable, lying, filing unsupported lawsuits, intimidating elected state officials, and even his own Justice Department to overturn election results in Georgia, all of which failed he resorted to the last desperate measure of a would be dictator, attempting a coup and using violence to overthrow the government and Constitution with the help of much of his party including Senators Hawley, Cruz, Paul, Cornyn, Cotton, and others in the Senate and House too numerous to name.

That my friends is sedition and treason. It is a fundamental break with their Constitutional oaths. All of them are in some manner guilty for what happened and in large part of why former President Trump must by impeached again and this time convicted.

No President has ever been impeached for a more heinous event. His crime was one display before the entire nation and every member of the Senate who will sit in judgement of him are witnesses. It would have been easy for those who planted bombs at the headquarters of the Republican and Democratic National Committees almost within throwing distance of the Capitol building complex to take them into it killing untold numbers of people including political allies and complete innocents. This is the most dastardly and heinous crime ever perpetuated on the American people and government by a President. If justice ever mattered. If adherence to the law and Constitution ever mattered Trump cannot be allowed to escape without a conviction. If 17 Republicans cannot find the inner fortitude and courage to vote to convict then our democracy is finished.

The single article of impeachment reads:

H. Res. 24

In the House of Representatives, U. S.,

January 13, 2021.  

Resolved, That Donald John Trump, President of the United States, is impeached for high crimes and misdemeanors and that the following article of impeachment be exhibited to the United States Senate:

Article of impeachment exhibited by the House of Representatives of the United States of America in the name of itself and of the people of the United States of America, against Donald John Trump, President of the United States of America, in maintenance and support of its impeachment against him for high crimes and misdemeanors.

ARTICLE I: INCITEMENT OF INSURRECTION

The Constitution provides that the House of Representatives “shall have the sole Power of Impeachment” and that the President “shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors”. Further, section 3 of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution prohibits any person who has “engaged in insurrection or rebellion against” the United States from “hold[ing] any office … under the United States”. In his conduct while President of the United States—and in violation of his constitutional oath faithfully to execute the office of President of the United States and, to the best of his ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States, and in violation of his constitutional duty to take care that the laws be faithfully executed—Donald John Trump engaged in high Crimes and Misdemeanors by inciting violence against the Government of the United States, in that:

On January 6, 2021, pursuant to the 12th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, the Vice President of the United States, the House of Representatives, and the Senate met at the United States Capitol for a Joint Session of Congress to count the votes of the Electoral College. In the months preceding the Joint Session, President Trump repeatedly issued false statements asserting that the Presidential election results were the product of widespread fraud and should not be accepted by the American people or certified by State or Federal officials. Shortly before the Joint Session commenced, President Trump, addressed a crowd at the Ellipse in Washington, DC. There, he reiterated false claims that “we won this election, and we won it by a landslide”. He also willfully made statements that, in context, encouraged—and foreseeably resulted in—lawless action at the Capitol, such as: “if you don’t fight like hell you’re not going to have a country anymore”. Thus incited by President Trump, members of the crowd he had addressed, in an attempt to, among other objectives, interfere with the Joint Session’s solemn constitutional duty to certify the results of the 2020 Presidential election, unlawfully breached and vandalized the Capitol, injured and killed law enforcement personnel, menaced Members of Congress, the Vice President, and Congressional personnel, and engaged in other violent, deadly, destructive, and seditious acts.

President Trump’s conduct on January 6, 2021, followed his prior efforts to subvert and obstruct the certification of the results of the 2020 Presidential election. Those prior efforts included a phone call on January 2, 2021, during which President Trump urged the secretary of state of Georgia, Brad Raffensperger, to “find” enough votes to overturn the Georgia Presidential election results and threatened Secretary Raffensperger if he failed to do so.

In all this, President Trump gravely endangered the security of the United States and its institutions of Government. He threatened the integrity of the democratic system, interfered with the peaceful transition of power, and imperiled a coequal branch of Government. He thereby betrayed his trust as President, to the manifest injury of the people of the United States.

Wherefore, Donald John Trump, by such conduct, has demonstrated that he will remain a threat to national security, democracy, and the Constitution if allowed to remain in office, and has acted in a manner grossly incompatible with self-governance and the rule of law. Donald John Trump thus warrants impeachment and trial, removal from office, and disqualification to hold and enjoy any office of honor, trust, or profit under the United States.

Insurrection is the most dishonorable, dastardly, criminal and evil charge ever leveled against any American President. The evidence is damning. It is on video, audio, on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Parlor feeds, not to mention the anti-government sites that proliferate the internet and apps for smartphones and tablets.

The crime is the most documented political crime in American history perpetrated by an American President. He called his cult to Washington, he incited them to violence and they responded by assaulting the Capitol, killing and wounding police officers, and attempting to find and kill the Vice President, the Speaker of the House and any other opponent of Trump they could find.

If any Republican votes to acquit Trump it can be said that they are no better than the Nazis elected to the Reichstag, and have so little integrity and honesty that they cannot be trusted in the most minor matters, or for that matter the offices and Constitution that they swore to uphold and protect against all enemies foreign and domestic.

With the evidence so obvious, the crimes so open, the testimony so damning how can we not ignore for regardless of our political affiliation our Constitution and Republican demand we hold former Trump accountable or lose everything, for after that there will be no incentive for any malevolent leader of any party to follow the law, and the one Constitutional means of reigning in tyranny will mean nothing.

As Justice Robert Jackson closed his argument against the Nazi war criminals said:

“It is against such a background that these defendants now ask this Tribunal to say that they are not guilty of planning, executing, or conspiring to commit this long list of crimes and wrongs. They stand before the record of this trial as bloodstained Gloucester stood by the body of his slain King. He begged of the widow, as they beg of you: “Say I slew them not.” And the Queen replied, “Then say they were not slain. But dead they are ….” If you were to say of these men that they are not guilty, it would be as true to say that there has been no war, there are no slain, there has been no crime.”

In the impeachment trial of President Trump that applies to the entire Trump Cult and any Senator who votes to acquit him.

There can be no middle ground on this. There can be no forgiveness without repentance. There can be no unity without individual and collective admissions of guilt for the crimes of a leader committed with their fully approval and complicity. Simply, you cannot fake unity when the GOP, which I was a member of for 32 years refuses to respect honor or obey our laws, Constitution, political norms and guardrails but instead bulldozes them with sycophantic loyalty to a many who despises all of them. How they cannot wake up and see that I cannot understand, except that they have abandoned all pretense of loyalty to the country and Constitution in favor of a personality cult around a would be dictator who used his last two and a half months in office to overthrow the Constitution, overturn an election, and finally incite a physical assault on members of the House, Senate, and his own Vice President doing their Constitutional duty to certify the votes of the Electoral College.

If just 34 members of  Republican Senate representing under 30 percent of the American population vote to acquit Trump they will drive the stake through the heart of our democracy, burn the Constitution and ensure that at some point a more competent and malevolent leader will be elected President and proclaim himself a dictator. Because after that there will be no Constitutional way to hold him accountable for his actions and crimes. It would be the equivalent of a murder-suicide, they would not only condemn the nation, but themselves and their descendants to tyranny. They would be like the Vichy collaborator Marshal Weygand of France who after France had fallen to the Nazis said “I didn’t get the Boches, but I got the regime.” 

This is a big deal and we as Americans need to take it seriously.

Peace,

Padre Steve+

 

 

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January 25, 2021 · 03:39

“ The principle of criminal law in every civilized society has this in common: Any person who sways another to commit murder, any person who furnishes the lethal weapon for the purpose of the crime, any person who is an accessory to the crime — is guilty.” A Lesson from Judgment at Nuremberg Applicable to Trump and his Defenders


Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

Tonight I have just a short thought in light of the growing number of elected Republicans insisting that former President Trump not be tried for the charge of Incitement to Insurrection in which a mob of tens of thousands of his followers assaulted the United States Capitol Building which resulted in the murder of a Capitol Police Officer the wounding of two score more, and the attempted assassinations of Vice President Mike Pence, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, Congresswoman Alexandria Ocosio-Cortez, and as many Senators or Representatives they could, with the likely inside help of members of the House, Senate and Capitol Police Officers.

Senators Marco Rubio, John Cronyn, Rand Paul, and Tom Cotton  were among at least a half a dozen GOP Senators to oppose an impeachment trial. Their opposition speaks volumes about their lack of character, honor, integrity, or respect for the Constitution and law. This is despite the fact that even Senator Mitch McConnell stated that the actions of the President were clearly impeachable offenses. So far hundreds have been arrested or charged for their part in the assault but none of the people who stoked the fires of their anger for months or incited the attack 6 January has yet to be charged despite they are all were recorded on video, spoke on the House and Senate floor, in speeches, media and Twitter, Facebook, Parlor and a host of other platforms.

Since it is late I am going to end with one of my favorites monologues from the film Judgement at Nuremberg. In it Spencer Tracy sitting in judgement of Nazi Judges made these comments, which I think are rather pertinent to the men and women who incited the insurrection but never took a physical part in it.

You see in Nazi Germany there were many men who ever killed a Jew or political opponent, participated in killing the physically and mentally disabled in the T4 Euthanasia program, or the forced sterilization of such people. But nonetheless their words, speeches, and court judgements contributed to murder and genocide on a scale never seen before or since.

But there is no moral difference between those who assaulted the Capitol with the intent of overthrowing the Constitution and Republic, killing their opponents, those who incited them including former President Trump, Congressman Mo Brooks, Rudy Giuliani, Donald Trump Jr., and others cheered them on, the former President even saying that he would be there with them. However, unlike Hitler how actually led his stormtroopers in the Bier Hall Putsch until they were met by a company of Munich Police who stood their ground at Odeonsplatz, Trump went to a tent with his family to watch the attack rather than lead it. 

But, Donald Trump, Cadet Bones Spurs who dodged the draft five times would never put himself in any physical danger to support the people he sent into battle to support his illegal, unconstitutional, and used seditious acts to overthrow the government and remain in power, is now being defended by Senators who are more afraid of his cult than they are courageous enough to risk Trump and the cult’s fury by being honest and forthright.

In Justice at Nuremberg, Spencer Tracy’s character Judge Dan Haygood made the following statement regarding the Judges who sentenced people to sterilization, euthanasia, or imprisonment for their political, religious or social standing. Haygood spoke words that should send chills down the spines of Trump and his defenders today:

“The trial conducted before this Tribunal began over eight months ago. The record of evidence is more than ten thousand pages long, and final arguments of counsel have been concluded.

Simple murders and atrocities do not constitute the gravamen of the charges in this indictment. Rather, the charge is that of conscious participation in a nationwide, government organized system of cruelty and injustice in violation of every moral and legal principle known to all civilized nations. The Tribunal has carefully studied the record and found therein abundant evidence to support beyond a reasonable doubt the charges against these defendants.

Herr Rolfe, in his very skillful defense, has asserted that there are others who must share the ultimate responsibility for what happened here in Germany. There is truth in this. The real complaining party at the bar in this courtroom is civilization. But the Tribunal does say that the men in the dock are responsible for their actions, men who sat in black robes in judgment on other men, men who took part in the enactment of laws and decrees, the purpose of which was the extermination of humans beings, men who in executive positions actively participated in the enforcement of these laws — illegal even under German law. The principle of criminal law in every civilized society has this in common: Any person who sways another to commit murder, any person who furnishes the lethal weapon for the purpose of the crime, any person who is an accessory to the crime — is guilty.

Herr Rolfe further asserts that the defendant, Janning, was an extraordinary jurist and acted in what he thought was the best interest of this country. There is truth in this also. Janning, to be sure, is a tragic figure. We believe he loathed the evil he did. But compassion for the present torture of his soul must not beget forgetfulness of the torture and the death of millions by the Government of which he was a part. Janning’s record and his fate illuminate the most shattering truth that has emerged from this trial: If he and all of the other defendants had been degraded perverts, if all of the leaders of the Third Reich had been sadistic monsters and maniacs, then these events would have no more moral significance than an earthquake, or any other natural catastrophe. But this trial has shown that under a national crisis, ordinary — even able and extraordinary — men can delude themselves into the commission of crimes so vast and heinous that they beggar the imagination. No one who has sat at through trial can ever forget them: men sterilized because of political belief; a mockery made of friendship and faith; the murder of children. How easily it can happen.

There are those in our own country too who today speak of the “protection of country” — of “survival.” A decision must be made in the life of every nation at the very moment when the grasp of the enemy is at its throat. Then, it seems that the only way to survive is to use the means of the enemy, to rest survival upon what is expedient — to look the other way.

Well, the answer to that is “survival as what?” A country isn’t a rock. It’s not an extension of one’s self. It’s what it stands for. It’s what it stands for when standing for something is the most difficult!

Before the people of the world, let it now be noted that here, in our decision, this is what we stand for: justice, truth, and the value of a single human being.”

That my friends is what this boils down to, the simple matter of the law being supreme and no one, no matter how high their position is above it. The question is what do we stand for today? The Republican defenders of Trump have made their case clear. The former President and his actions are above the law and they will dishonor themselves by doing all in their power to prevent his trial or acquit him. The fact is they are co-conspirators in an attempt to overthrow our Republic, its Constitution, and who over a process of four years did all that they could to bulldoze the Constitutional guardrails that prevented the tyranny that our founders believed could happen if a man like Trump ever became President. They too through the processes of the Constitution governing the behavior or Senators and Representatives should be censured and removed from office by their respective houses.

That is all for now. I have a busy day that begins early tomorrow. So until next time.

Peace,

Padre Steve+

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January 13, 2021 · 02:28

Resist the Continuing Threat of Terrorist Insurrection by President Trump and His Cult


Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

I am deciding to repeat and amplify the warning of the FBI that Trump’s violent cult of supporters including heavily armed illegal militia groups, the Proud Boys, other White Supremacist groups including Klansmen, Neo-Confederates, Neo-Nazis, Racist Skinheads, Militant Christian Theocrats, QAnon Conspiracy Theorists, and a host of other militant groups and individuals. Members of these groups include elected members of the Senate and Congress, elected members of various state legislatures, law enforcement officers, and most terrifying for me active and retired military officers, and active, reserve, former, or retired military enlisted personnel.

The FBI field office in Norfolk Virginia alerted law enforcement across the nation that they expected massive armed protests and violence against the Captitol and Congress on 6 January, but their warnings went ignored.

Now the FBI is issuing warning for more armed “protests” in Washington D.C., but let’s cut to the chase and call them what they really are, sedition and rebellion. The FBI has predicted a massive armed “protest” in Washington D.C. for which on 20 January for which as many as 15,000 National Guard personnel will deployed in addition to thousands of Metro Police, Park Police, Capitol Police, Secret Service, U.S. Marshalls, U.S. Coast Guard personnel, and other Homeland Security personnel.

That is just in Washington D.C. However, the threat the FBI warns us about is bigger than just what might happen on January 20th on Inauguration Day. They have warned that threat and attacks against all State Capitols, statehouses, Federal and State offices across the country beginning on January 16th, although in my considered estimation some attacks might begin before that.

I fully expect that the terrorists will attempt to seize National Guard armories and Army or Marine Corps Reserve Centers that are not on actual military bases in order to steal large numbers of M-4 and M-16 automatic rifles, Squad Assault Weapons (SAWs), Sniper rifles, M-240 series and .50 caliber machine guns and probably up-armored HUMMVS and any any other vehicles they can commandeer.  Likewise the could get large numbers of Kevlar helmets and military grade body armor, and even uniforms that could be used to deceive defenders into thinking they were actual Guard units.

To do so they will probably have inside help. Based on the numbers of police and military personnel who participated in the 6 January Coup attempt I imagine that they won’t have a difficult time finding at least a few willing Guardsmen or Reservists to help them. If they cannot get their cooperation they will capture, threaten, and maybe torture uncooperative personnel to try to get security codes or keys into the arms rooms and motor pools. The good thing is that very little ammunition is kept in the armories and ammunition for tanks or artillery pieces, even mortars are kept in ammunition depots on actual bases. However, the thought of these terrorists getting their hands on hundreds or even thousands of weapons for which ammunition is readily available on the commercial market is frightening, not to mention gaining control of vehicles resistent to most small arms carried by law enforcement, or even the M-4s and M-16s carried by Guardsmen. I hope that the Guard deploys Light Armored Vehicles armed with the 20mm and 30mm bushmaster rapid fire cannons to take out any commandeered up armored vehicles or even for that matter M-113 series Armored Personnel Carriers that could be stolen.

What I am saying is not far-fetched based on the facts. These people want to overthrow the government to keep Trump in office, and they have friends, allies and co-conspirators in most law enforcement agencies and sadly in the military.

I implore you not to dismiss my argument because I am a Priest. I am also a historian with an advanced degree. I am former Platoon leader, Company Executive Officer, and Company Commander in Cold War Germany. I am a school trained Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical Defense Officer. I also served as brigade, group, and battalion staff officer before I ever became a Chaplain. I spent almost 40 years in the military including in combat.

Likewise I am a graduate of the Marine Command and Staff College, the Joint and Combined Warfighting School, and the Joint Forces Staff College Homeland Security Planners Course. My bachelors and masters level history focused on the social, political, and military dynamics at play in the Weimar Republic which Hitler capitalized on when he seized complete power following his appointment a Chancellor on 30 January 1933. I am a student of the relationship between the German military and Police before and after the Nazi takeover, the war crimes they participated, Holocaust and the involvement of almost every German government agency in it, as well as the bankers, businessmen, Churches and doctors, not only in Germany but the help given by collaborators in countries they conquered.

Thanks to Dr. Helmut Haeussler, my primary Professor at California State University Northridge who served throughout the Nuremberg Trials as an interrogator and interpreter, I came to know more about the Nazi Crimes against humanity, the Holocaust, the relationships of German civilian and military agencies with the Nazis and the problem of Holocaust Denial.

So, that being said I hate being pigeonholed as just another ignorant Bible wanking clergyman.  Besides I have never wanked my Bible, I am sure it might be a sin. But I hate to think of all those Right Wing preachers who wank their Bibles in public or in the darkness of their dimply lit studies, or bedrooms. The thought of it turns my stomach, especially if they are wanking to the Song of Solomon. King Solomon was supposedly the wisest ass who ever lived. He had so many wives and concubines , over 300, that he couldn’t keep up his Libido up all the time, and Viagra wasn’t out yet, so in order to catch his breath had to take some time to write about them. His literary allusions to love making in that tiny book of love poems could even raise President Trump’s penis from the dead, since everything he touches dies.

There has to be a law against wanking on the Bible somewhere, think of the honor and decency of the Sacred Scriptures that don’t want to be wanked. At least the Jews and Muslims have rules against wanking the Talmud and Koran.

But I digress, where was I? Since I retired and don’t yet have a job it is hard to tell what day it is. Never mind, I remembered. It was terrorism, sedition, revolt and the attempted violent overthrow of the United States by Trump’s cultist Nazi Wankers which which angers me a great deal and doesn’t titillate me in the least.

These seditionists and traitors need to be exposed, fought and defeated. Their plans have to be disrupted before they can even be set in motion. Their tentacles extend into the heart of Federal, State, and Local governments, and deep into law enforcement and even the military.

if you wonder how that happened It is the result of systematic propaganda that has been going on since we lost Vietnam, and that was not because of domestic protest, but because four Presidential Administrations decided that we needed to fight a war that we could not win militarily unless we were willing to completely mobilize the nation and all of its resources to do it. None would. Eisenhower who decided to take over the French debacle in Indochina, Kennedy who expanded it, Johnson who deepened our involvement until he realized it could not be won in the process crippling his plans for the Great Society.

Johnson was deceived by his military Chief’s and Defense Secretary into thinking that we could win militarily in Vietnam. See the late Neil Sheehan’s book A Great and Shining Lie, and General H.R. McMaster’s book “Dereliction of Duty: Lyndon Johnson, Robert McNamara, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Lies That Led to Vietnam.” Maybe they read the French journalist Bernard Fall’s books “Hell in a Very Small Place” and “Street Without Joy.” 

The answer in Vietnam wasn’t military, it was societal, completely reforming the South Vietnamese government because most of its people, even if they feared the Communists, feared their corrupt government far worse. Actual reformers in the Vietnamese government, military or police never held positions of influence, and were prevented from doing so.

During his presidential campaign Nixon torpedoed Johnson’s peace initiative in 1968. Nixon promised “peace with honor” and then extended the war into Cambodia and sold out the South Vietnamese government during the Paris peace talks brokered by Henry Kissinger. If you take out those killed during the Test Offensive and it’s aftermath in 1968, those killed after Nixon took office exceeded those killed from 1954 to 1967.

But afterward conservatives spread the lie of the stab in the back blaming those who opposed or protested the war at home for our defeat. It was exactly what German Nationalists did after the First World War. It was a lie that we are still saddled with today by the Republican Party, and the lie that continues to motivate veterans, especially Christians to destroy the very system of government that offers the most protections for them of any country in the world. Our system isn’t perfect by any means, but those who attempt to overthrow it by force and violence are either completely insane or criminally stupid and evil. Personally my money is on criminally stupid and evil.

This is a very dangerous moment in our nation’s history and some veterans and current military members are acting under the delusions of decades of propaganda dating back to Vietnam.

This seditious rebellion is being led by the President of the United States and many elected Republican leaders at the local, state, and federal level assisted by law enforcement, veterans, and sadly currently active and reserve military personnel.

Please do not dismiss what I say. I know many people who feel exactly like these terrorist insurgents. Sadly they are not bad people, but they tend to be men and women who have limited education, especially in history, philosophy, American government, and ethics who believe the unceasing bombardment of right wing politicians, pundits, and especially preachers more motivated by political and monetary power than they are in the tenants of their faith. I understand that because from about 1990 until 2008 I listened to Limbaugh, then Hannity, Fox News and others hours on end every day except when deployed or traveling to support the Sailors, Marines, Soldiers, Airmen, and other Federal officials assigned in harms way.

But when I returned from Iraq having seen what I had seen, listened to the news coverage of the war, and listened to politicians that I once respected I realized the big lie that I had bought since I was in Junior High School was bigger than I could have imagined. I believed it for almost thirty years. I ignored the evidence that the politicians whomI had voted for were waging war that under the conditions of the Nuremberg Trials were criminal and many of our actions could be classified as war crimes. My problem was that I ignored my education and my knowledge about propaganda and war crimes. Beyond that I was willing to call the opponents of our criminal war against Iraq traitors, communists, and worse. They were right and I was wrong and it took seeing the destruction and getting to know Iraqis up close and personal to realize it, but I digress.

Over the next few days and weeks our nation will endure a crisis that could bring about the fall of all of our founder’s dreams, hopes and aspirations for Liberty that would be ever increasing and available for all Americans and for people around the world. They warned of authoritarians and religious extremists trying to impose religious and ideological tests for citizenship and political rights.

That liberty is what we must fight for today, even of its opponents insist on violence and armed confrontation. If the opponents of liberty bent on overthrowing the Constitution, the Republic and a legal election resort to violence, then they deserve whatever consequences that flow from that, even their deaths. They won’t be martyrs they will be dead criminal terrorists, worthy of no honor, dignity, or respect. If they die in the battle they provoke, their ashes should be scattered over a toxic waste dump with no memorial to them. Those who survive should have Swastika’s carved into their foreheads to show exactly what they are.

My friends this is the moment of truth. Will we remain a nation devoted to the ideals of the Declaration of Independence, the Preamble of the Constitution, the Gettysburg Address, the Four Freedoms, and Dr. King’s “I have a Dream” and “I have been to the Mountain speeches, or will we become the country of John C. Calhoun, Jefferson Davis, Benjamine Tillman, Strom Thurmond, Bull Connor, Charles Lindberg and the countless others who fought against liberty and espoused racist, fascist and authoritarian government.

President Trump and his cultist followers are the enemy regardless of who they are, and if more violence breaks out they alone are responsible and if they die in the attempt to overthrow the government, the Constitution and Republic they will deserve it.

So until the next time, be ready to resist even to the death. This is no simple political disagreement where compromise is possible. These people will not compromise. As Colonel Strong Vincent, who was mortally wounded  on Little Round Top on the Second day of the Battle of Gettysburg wrote after Chancellorsville:

“We must fight them more vindictively, or we shall be foiled at every step.  We must desolate the country as we pass through it, and not leave a trace of a doubtful friend or foe behind us; make them believe that we are in earnest, terribly in earnest; that to break this band in twain is monstrous and impossible; that the life of every man, yea, of every weak woman or child in the entire South, is of no value whatever compared with the integrity of the Union.”

His subordinate Colonel Joshua Chamberlain condemned those in the North who supported the Rebels during and after the war. Before he entered the Army he wrote:

“We have this war upon is & we want to stop it. It has cost us already too much precious blood. It has carried stagnation, starvation & grief in to too many villages of our fair land – brought death to too many noble hearts that we could ill afford to lose. But the only way to stop this war, is first to show that we are strongest…I feel that we are fighting for our country – for our flag- not as so many Stars and Stripes, but as the emblem of a good &  powerful nation – fighting to settle the question whether we are a nation or a basket of chips. Whether we shall leave our children the country we have inherited – or leave them without a country – without a name – without a citizenship among the great nations of the earth – take the chief city of the rebels. They will have no respect for us unless we whip them & and I say it in all earnestness….” 

That is what we face in the next week. Are we willing to fight for our Nation’s highest laws, values and ideals; or will we surrender to tyranny. There are times that the defense of the nation depends on being willing to fight for it to the death, even against fellow citizens who have abandoned and rejected those principles.

So until tomorrow or the next day I wish you health and safety, but be prepared to resist the terrorists. I am. My continuing Oath to the Constitution and Republic demands it.

Hope for the best but expect and prepare for the worst. If we are not ready to fight for our Constitution and Republic then we will lose it. That is a fact. It is undeniable and the threat remains, and our enemies around the world including Putin’s Soviet, Communist China, Iran, North Korea, ISIS, Al Qaida, and others rejoice. They want nothing more than the collapse of our nation being perpetrated by President Trump and his violent cult.

Peace,

Padre Steve+

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January 11, 2021 · 02:31

“Any person who sways another to commit murder, any person who furnishes the lethal weapon for the purpose of the crime, any person who is an accessory to the crime — is guilty.” Bring Justice to Trump and all Connected with his Coup

 

 

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

It is time for justice in the matter of America’s most lawless, amoral, and savage President. For years I have warned about him. For years I was told that I was overreacting, being an alarmist or being histrionic. And for years I have been threatened even with death by his cultists, as well as White Nationalists and Neo-Nazis, not that there is that much difference between them. I have had his cultists in a Navy Chapel try to have me tried by Court Martial for preaching the Gospel, straight out of the Bible and undisputed Christian teaching.

I would like to say that my heart was big enough that I had grace enough to love and forgive them. Honestly, I did try but was met with rejection and further threats. Now I have to quote the Psalmist who wrote in Psalm 139:22 who wrote:

“I hate them with perfect hatred; I count them my enemies.”

There was a time I could have not said that, or even quoted it out of fear of losing any sense of grace, mercy or humanity. I have not lost those, but Imam angry and I cry out for justice as did the prophets of the Old Testament, especially when the people committing and supporting the acts or terror are supposedly Christians. Their flags and banners were on prominent display throughout the assault. They were among the people shouting “hang Pence!” 

Many of them as well as Neo-Nazis, White Supremacists and others have attacked me personally and threatened me with death for a decade.  They attack my country and the Constitution for 40 years I swore to defend against all enemies foreign and domestic. They are domestic terrorists and enemies of our Republic, it’s Constitution and form of government and they have become my personal enemies.

Our system is not perfect and can be improved. Many of our elected officials use their offices for their political power and financial gain. But we have dealt with such issues since our founding. The answer is the ballot box and reforming the system. Many people have ideas of how to do that. I don’t presume to have the answer, but the answer is not mob violence committed by radical terrorist insurgents.

Yet, President Trump, Senators Mo Brooks, Josh Hawley, Ted Cruz, over 140 members of the House and Senate, members of the President’s family, his lawyer Rudy Giuliani, at least 13 state representatives, and god knows how many more traitors attempted to overthrow our Republic and Constitution, endorsing their violent overthrow. That my friends fits the definition of sedition, and to being accessories to a terrorist attack and murder of a police officer in the performance of his duties. Do the math.

In the classic film about the Nuremberg Judges Trial, Judgement at Nuremberg, Spencer Tracy, playing Judge Dan Haygood made this comment in the declaration of guilt concerning the Nazi Judges in the trial: “The principle of criminal law in every civilized society has this in common: Any person who sways another to commit murder, any person who furnishes the lethal weapon for the purpose of the crime, any person who is an accessory to the crime — is guilty.”

In the context of our time this includes Trump, his son Donald Jr., Rudy Giuliani, Mo Brooks, Lin Wood, Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley, and over 140 other members of the Republican House and Senate. They all invested themselves in this attack which resulted in multiple deaths and injuries. The people who made the actual attack included elected officials, law enforcement personnel, as well as former or active military personnel. Every single one of them swore an oath to the Constitution which they not only broke, but trampled.  One cannot forget what Trump said on March 14th of 2020:

“I can tell you I have the support of the police, the support of the military, the support of the Bikers for Trump – I have the tough people, but they don’t play it tough — until they go to a certain point, and then it would be very bad, very bad,”

Trump’s words were an open declaration of war on our people and political system. He spoke the words every true tyrant believes, and last week he acted on it as part of the Götterdämmerung of his final days, and his cult like followers followed his orders to the letter and will do so again.

These terrorists aided and abetted by the President Trump and many others  successfully attacked the largest symbol of our nation’s democracy, something nobody has done since the British burned it in 1814 during the War of 1812. Even the Confederate Army during the Civil War could not seize or damage it.

These traitors attacked the Capitol building with the intent of killing Vice President Pence, Leader McConnell, Senator Schumer, and Speaker Pelosi, not to mention others. The insurgents and terrorists included elected political officials, law enforcement officers from various states, and former or retired members of the military. They not only seized the Capitol after being exhorted by Trump, his son Donald Jr., Rudy Giuliani, and Mo Brooks to name a few, but planned to arrest and kill Vice President Pence, Majority Leader McConnell, Senator Schumer, and Speaker Pelosi. They even erected a gallows outside the Capitol. this was no spontaneous demonstration, it was a coordinated attack against our democracy for which the perpetrators deserve no forgiveness or mercy.

Even now these terrorists do not care about the lives that were lost, even those of their supporters. Those deluded individuals will probably be canonized like Horst Wesel, the Nazi thug killed in a street battle with German Communists. Likewise they murdered a Capitol Police Officer, who actually was a Trump supporter. However, regardless of his political beliefs he took his duty seriously enough to die in the pursuit of his duties. He is dead because people who defiantly claim to support police killed him just as they promised they would when they issues their call to arms weeks ago, they promised to “kill cops and security guards.” 

You see, to me someone’s political beliefs do not define them when they obey their oath and die in pursuit of their duty, in his case, defending the Senators, Congressmen, staff members, and the Vice President. You see so long as men and women obey their oaths and discharge their duties in the manner prescribed I don’t care what their political beliefs happen to be. Loyalty to the Constitution and country are more important in the long run than one’s particular political beliefs. The officer died in the line of duty, while many of his attackers and their propagandist enablers are free right now, including the President, Senators, and Congressmen who urged on this violence. Those who died in the attack from whatever cause brought on their deaths. The officer did not deserve to die, but his killers and their supporters do deserve to die for their crimes.

So, let us have the courage call these people from President Trump on down to the lowest of the thugs who attacked the Capitol what they are, terrorists, criminals, and insurrectionists. They are the most reprehensible form of humanity to exist. If they had been Frenchmen in 1940, they would have cheered the Nazi conquest of France and collaborated with the Nazis. As General Weygand the last commander of the French Army before France’s defeat in 1940 hated the French Republic and its democracy stated: “I didn’t get the Boches, but I got the regime.” No military commander could ever make such a treasonous comment. But this is exactly how Trump’s most bloodthirsty supporters think, it is who they are. They have no loyalty to the United States, their only loyalty is to Trump and as such nothing they do is illegal, as many rank and file Nazis proclaimed “Der Führerbefhle, wir folgen.” Or in English, “The Leader commands, we follow.”

These people honestly believe that Trump is above the law and those no matter what they do is legal. This is why they are and will remain dangerous whether Trump is in or out of office. That is the power of a death cult.

As such all of us need to shake off the shackles the blind us into not believing that what people, even pathological liars are capable of telling the truth. Hitler did, as did Donald Trump.

Dr. Timothy Snyder wrote something in 2016 that is completely valid in our present crisis:

Even when everything comes apart around them and their leader collapses they cannot admit that he was deceiving them. At the end of the war a German soldier told Victor Klemperer that “Hitler has never lied, I believe the Fuhrer.” Snyder writes: “The final mode is misplaced faith. It involves the sort of self-deifying claims the president made when he said that “I alone can solve it” or “I am your voice.” When faith descends from heaven to earth in this way, no room remains for the small truths of our individual discernment and experience. What terrified Klemperer was the way that this transition seemed permanent. Once truth had become oracular rather than factual, evidence was irrelevant.”

Snyder also warned us in 2016:

“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.”

Two weeks before Trump’s election in 2016 I wrote on this blog:

As I watched and listened to Donald Trump before and after the third and thankfully final debate of the 2016 Presidential election, I was struck with just how viscous, vulgar, and venomous this man is. I cannot remember anyone in American politics at the national level, Republican or Democrat, or for that matter even Whig, who ever managed to immerse himself so deeply into the amoral, unethical, and undemocratic sewer that Trump has bathed himself, the Republican Party and this nation.

Trump’s toxicity is unparalleled in American politics. Everything and everyone who has ever had anything to do with him is poisoned by his touch. Wives, business partners, contractors, employees, political advisors, and supporters have all been stained by the Mustard Gas that Trump emits on a minute to minute basis. Maybe the most stained are the Evangelical Christian church leaders who have not only endorsed and defended Trump, but  who positively described his character as Christian and said nothing about Trump’s words and actions, which if an opponent had uttered, or had been accused, they would have excoriated with a particularly “Christian” self-righteousness.  Their actions have stained the witness of the church for at least the next generation and it is no wonder that young people are fleeing the church. I specifically use the imagery of Mustard Gas, not just because of its toxicity, but because of its persistence. The battlefields of World War One France and Belgium are still contaminated by it, and the toxic residue still injures people today. 

That my friends is the poisonous and corrosive effect of Donald Trump on this country.  He is a toxic and persistent threat to everyone, even his most devout followers. Race baiting, misogynistic, narcissistic, vulgar, and ignorant, Trump spews his vile venom of conspiracy theories wrapped in fiction, and coated in lies, and buttressed with near pornograpic misogyny in every direction. He has given his supporters in the heavily armed Alt-Right, the neo-Nazis, Klansmen, and White Supremacists the boldness to come out of hiding because he has normalized their hate, something that no Western statesman or politician has done since before the verdicts at Nuremberg. 

I have long felt that Trump reminded me of Nazi leaders, but frankly most of them, while every bit as toxic as Trump were both more intelligent and were better able to cover the darkness of their amoral souls with a modicum of respectability, with the exception of one; the publisher of the infamous newspaper Der Sturmer, and Gauleiter of Nuremberg, Julius Streicher. 

Robert Jackson, the Associate Justice of the Supreme Court who served as the Chief American Prosecutor at Nuremberg referred to Streicher in his summation:

“Streicher, the venomous vulgarian, manufactured and distributed obscene racial libels which incited the populace to accept and assist the progressively savage operations of “race purification.” 

Is that not exactly what Trump has done during his seventeen month campaign to stir up race hatred against Mexicans and Arabs, not to mention Asians and Blacks? Of course it is, which is exactly why the leaders of the Alt-Right claim him as their candidate, the man who in their perverted minds has made them respectable again and ready to assume their place in Trump’s new order. Anti-Semitism and racism runs rampant in the words of his closest collaborators such as the Breitbart News chief Steve Bannon, as well as Alt-Right Neo-Nazi and KKK leaders like David Duke, Richard Spencer, Jared Taylor, and Peter Brimalow. 

My friends, what you see in Trump is what you get. Unlike Hitler and Goering, but much like Streicher, Trump has no capability of maintaining any sort of respectability. He has been stoking the fires of violence by claiming that the election is rigged and pumping up his followers for violence if he loses.”  The link to that article for doubters is here: https://padresteve.com/2016/10/21/the-venomous-vulgarian-donald-trump-and-the-alt-right/

That will be all for tonight because we do not presume what tomorrow will bring from Trump and his Cult. It is the time of every American who believes in our Constitution, democracy, and the founding principles of our Declaration of Independence, the Preamble of the Constitution, the Gettysburg Address, Franklin Roosevelt’s “Four Freedoms” speech, and Dr. Martin Luther King’s “I have a Dream” and “I have been to the Mountain” speeches.

I spent almost forty years in uniform supporting and defending the Constitution of the United States against all enemies foreign and domestic, and though now retired I will not abandon that oath. As the German General Ludwig Beck, an opponent of Hitler who died in the attempt to kill that genocidal dictator said:

“Final decisions about the nation’s existence are at stake here; history will incriminate these leaders with bloodguilt if they do not act in accordance with their specialist political knowledge and conscience. Their soldierly obedience reaches its limit when their knowledge, their conscience, and their responsibility forbid carrying out an order.” 

Every man and woman who has sworn the Oath of Office of our country, especially those in positions of authority in the military, police, homeland security, or Justice Department need to remember and do over the next few weeks.

So, until tomorrow stay safe, remain vigilant and resist all who desire to overthrow our Republic and Constitution. They cannot be allowed to run free. They need to face justice and we cannot fear them, or they will win and we cannot allow that to happen. J

Peace,

Padre Steve+

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January 7, 2021 · 02:29

The Beginning of the Trump Coup and Insurgency: It is Not Going Away

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

I have longed warned that President Trump and his supporters would not go quietly. I have lost count of the number of warnings I have given since Trump announced his candidacy in 2015 and how he described the loyalty of his supporters when he said “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose any voters, okay? It’s, like, incredible…” 

At the time many thought that he was joking. I knew he wasn’t  joking because I had run ins with those supporters long before he ever announced his candidacy. They were a ready made constituency. Since the late 1980s frustrated conservatives led by pundits like Rush Limbaugh and dozens of others, Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, hundreds of right wing radical pastors, and an increasingly radicalized Republican Party with the Tea Party Movement, and the Congressional Freedom Council.

Over the past three decades the Republican Party, once a mainline Conservative party was transformed into an anti-democratic, theocratic, racist and authoritarian party completely devoted to overthrowing the Constitution and Republic all because Trump lost the election and incited them to violence. That violence culminated today after Trump and Rudy Giuliani encouraged them to violence at a rally. Trump told them to continue to fight, Giuliani told them to prepare for combat, further inflaming the mob which charged down Pennsylvania Avenue to the Capitol Building.

Following that rally the crowds marched on the Capitol Building, where they were met by Senator Josh Hawley who encouraged them from the beginning and then threw up a clenched fist as if he was leading a revolution. The insurgents overwhelmed the few Capitol Police who were manning the barricades giving little resistance to the insurgents. Some actually appeared to be friendly and supportive of the insurgents. After breaking through the lines broke into the building and took over both chambers of Congress, occupied Senate and Congressional offices, and vandalized the building, causing a great deal of damage. During their rampage those outside the buildings they attacked reporters and bystanders. Inside the building they planted Improvised Explosive Devices, and and someone shot and killed a woman, while the insurgents trampled her body as they advanced.

They flew many flags with the name of their leader on them, Donald Trump. They flew numerous variations of the Confederate Battle Flag, the Gadsen Flag, White Nationalist flags, Christian Flags including one that had a Jesus Fish with the name Jesus in black, in a white oval surrounded by a red banner. I have never imagined that the most ancient symbol of the Christian faith would be turned into a Nazi symbol. By the way, Wal-Mart sells it and it is out of stock.

Vice President Pence and the members of the Senate and House had to be evacuated to safe areas where they holed up for hours as the building was cleared.

Trump and his Fascist thugs are trying to overthrow the election and the Constitution. Don’t call them “conservatives” because they are radical, anti-democratic, insurrectionists bent on sedition and treason. How they were so easily breach security at the Capitol is beyond me. This attack was telegraphed by Trump, Giuliani, Cruz, Hawley, and others. Trump is still even this moment inciting them on Twitter justifying their actions. One woman was shot and killed, circumstances still unknown, numerous others injured, IEDs inside the Capitol disarmed, much of the Capitol damaged, further threats of violence and worse is to come.

In June the crushing police and military assault on the peaceful protesters of the George Floyd Murder, begs me to ask how come peaceful protestors, mostly Black were the subject of an unprovoked violent assault while mostly White Trump supporters who violently attacked the US Capitol were treated with kid gloves. There are two systems of justice. One for the violent Trump Cult and one for others, especially Blacks.

In the wake of this very few of the insurgents were arrested or charged. Can you imagine if Black Lives Matter protesters had done the same how law enforcement would have reacted. They would have opened fire, beaten, arrested, and maybe killed the protestors. The protestors would not gotten past the plaza in front of the Capitol before their protest would have been crushed. You and I know it. The evidence from Charlottesville, Lafayette Park, and so many other cities  is irrefutable. The racist tenor of how Whites and Blacks are treated under the law has not changed since Dred Scott, or Plessy v. Ferguson.

President Trump and his allies and enablers have ensured that the stain of racism, nationalism, and Trump’s cult will remain free to infect our country for the foreseeable future. In the next few weeks I believe that these insurgents will attack various state houses. After President Elect Biden and Vice President Elect Harris I expect the insurgents to take a lower profile but engage in targeted assassinations of Trump’s opponents regardless of their party. They are domestic terrorists and should be treated as such. They need to be hunted down arrested and brought to justice. While we want them to be arrested and brought to justice, if they decide to resort to violence in that they deserve whatever happens to them. Though I am against the death penalty I believe that those who assault our Constitution and Republic are deserving of death, and I hope that these people are brought to justice, and if these choose to resort to violence then they deserve whatever happens to them. If we cannot depend on Trump’s Department of Justice to do the job then we will have to depend on Attorney General nominee Merrick Gerland to prosecute them To the full extent of the law.

Tonight the Senate and House are going through what used to be a ceremonial vote to approve the results of the Electoral College vote. The violent coup attempt shook up many Republicans including those who were willing before to to support the objections. It appears that they now lack the fortitude to support Trump’s Coup attempt. It is amazing to see what happens to people when they are threatened by violence, especially by the people of your political party.

“There are only two sides to the question. Every man must be for the United States or against it. There can be no neutrals in this war, only patriots – or traitors”


That being said Senator Hawley, Senator Cruz, and the four others who supported the move to invalidate Arizona’s Electoral vote still did so without censure by their party. Not only that but Senator Pat Toomey who excoriated Trump as a demagogue but said in rejecting further objections said that he wanted Trump to win. I cannot understand how someone can call a man a “violent demagogue” could say they wanted him to win. Really, what kind of morality and ethics allows that?

Their votes are still going on but Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are going to be the President and Vice President of the United States with a House and Senate Majority that would not have occurred without Trump’s hubris. He has destroyed his presidency, he has destroyed the GOP Senate majority, and he has done everything he could to destroy the foundations of our nation. The man is a criminal, a traitor, a seditionist, and a serial liar, except for one tiny thing: he has promised to overthrow the election, he has promised not to give up his fight, and not to leave power peacefully. In those things he was telling the truth, proving that a serial liar can on occasion tell the truth, and many people will fight and die for his illegal actions.

That is why I said that this is the beginning of the Trump Coup and Insurgency. He and his followers will begin a campaign of violence like the KKK, the Red Shirts, the White Leagues, White Liners, and Nazis. They are a doomsday cult led by an unbalanced, unhinged, unstable and unimaginably evil and demented President who still has two weeks to do his worst.

He needs to be removed from office by Vice President Pence and the Cabinet by the 25th Amendment or by an immediate move to impeach him. Military commanders need to be ready to disobey any unconstitutional actions by Trump in the country or attempts to send the nation to war.

In the next few hours the Senate and House will certify the election of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, but that will enrage these insurgents, elected or not to more violence.

I fully expect the situation to get worse before it ever gets better. Our nation’s reputation and honor is stained with the blood of Trump and his Cult. Over half of the GOP House still supports Trump and his illegal actions. That shows that the GOP is hopelessly corrupt and unable to reverse the decades or rot that it has cultivated and encouraged.

That is not the worst. The fact is, unless Trump is removed through the action of Vice President Pence and the cabinet by removing Trump from by the 25th Amendment, or the House fast tracking impeachment chargers and the Senate trying and convicting him, he retains the control of the Presidency and could even launch us into war or further attempts to overthrow the Constitution and Republic. The next two weeks are going to be incredibly dangerous and violent as Trump and his Cult, including those in elected office or law enforcement work to throw the country into chaos. Such people are domestic terrorists but our laws don’t treat them as such. Laws on terrorism need to be changed to include such people.

Sadly, I fully expect that these people will resort to further violence before Trump leaves office. If they do commit further violence they deserve no mercy. Hopefully they can be arrested and tried, but I do not believe that many will submit to that. I expect them to commit violent acts including murder of law enforcement officers attempting to arrest them, as well as assassinating those they believe are their political enemies. If they do so law enforcement officials should be able to resort to deadly force to put down their insurrection.

Hope for the best and prepare for the worst. Be ready for anything. I know these people, many are decent people but others are lawless, racist, authoritarian, and theocratic and they do believe that their so called “God” is one their side. That is what the Taliban, Al Qaida, the Nazis, and others believed. Should they commit any more violent acts I believe that our only recourse is force, and if the situation requires, the lifting of Posse Comitatus and use of the active duty military to crush them. This is no longer about the election, it is about an insurrection to overthrow our government.

The President is committing criminal acts, inciting insurrection and needs to be removed from office before he can destroy the country and Constitution.

This is not some histrionic prediction, it is based on his words and actions since 2015. The man is certifiably insane and willing to commit violence to keep power. What happened today was an attempted coup and what happens next will be violent insurrection and assassinations, as well as possible war against foreign enemies.

Donald Trump, his enablers and the violent actors who attack Congress today have to be brought to justice. Senators Cruz and Hawley need to be removed from office as well as 130 house members who have completely disregarded their oaths of office to fight for Trump. Senator Mitt Romney offered a devastating critique of Republican objections. My respect for Romney has risen incredibly since 2012. Romney has become a voice of conscience for conservatives but far too many supposedly “conservative” Trump supporters don’t get it.  That is because they are cultists, and one cannot convince cultists, be they religious or political.

So until tomorrow this now retired Navy Chaplain, veteran of nearly 40 years of military service, and historian of both the Weimar, Nazi, and post-war Nuremberg trials, as well as American slavery, the Civil War, and Jim Crow Eras will settle into bed. However, I will never stop exposing these criminals for what they are. How can I not as a Priest sworn to my vows, a military officer sworn to uphold the Constitution, and a historian who is committed to speaking and writing the the truth.

The President and his violent supporters attempted a coup, the began an insurrection and they are not done. They will kill many more people before they are done. Any American regardless of their party needs to stand against them. As Stephen Douglas said after he lost the election of 1860 and his former friends attacked Fort Sumter in 1861:

“There are only two sides to the question. Every man must be for the United States or against it. There can be no neutrals in this war, only patriots – or traitors”

That my friends is the the crux of the question. Trump encouraged yesterday’s violence and failed. That doesn’t mean that this amoral narcissistic sociopath is done and neither are his supporters.

If Americans of all political types do not resist the damage will take decades to repair if ever. All over the world allies are weeping and enemies rejoicing over what happened yesterday. Some things cannot be unseen or undone, and those events will forever redound against the United States. Honestly, with so many Trump supporters now fighting an insurgency against our legally elected government what nation or people could ever trust us regardless of how hard President Biden tries to repair the damage to our Republic?

If you can answer that with any positive response you are much more optimistic than me. However, we are now facing a long term violent insurgency with right wing death squads similar those we have condemned in other nations or the insurgencies in Iraq or Afghanistan.

This is all on us, our President and his cult. The threat is real because you can bet that Russia, China, Iran, and many other adversaries are now wondering and planning how they well take advantage of the unpatriotic chaos unleashed by Trump and his goddamned cult are done. This is far more than a domestic political crisis, it has ramifications for our national security and peace around the world.

This was an attempted Coup no different that the Kapp Putsch or Bier Hall Putsch in Weimar Germany. We need to be vigilant and very concerned. In an hour or so Joe Biden and Kamala Harris will be the undisputed President and Vice President elect and nothing apart from a violent revolution and insurgency can stop it. If that happens all bets are off.

So until tomorrow,

Peace,

Padre Steve+

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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January 5, 2021 · 02:17

A Time to Stand against the Coming Coup of the Trump Cult

Munich Police Defeat Hitler’s Bier Hall Putsch at Odeonsplatz

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

As the evidence continues to mount that President Trump and his nefarious Cult which encompasses most of the GOP minority in the House of Representatives and many Senators, as well as thousands of violent heavily armed Neo-Nazis, White Supremacists, Fascists, and conspiracy theorists are plotting a Coup to keep Trump in power it is time for every American who stands for our Constitution and Republic to resist them.

Even a few weeks ago most people brushed off the words of Trump and the words and violent actions of his Cult members including the Proud Boys, the Bugaloo Boys, QAnon followers, Christian theocrats, so called self proclaimed Militia outfits, Neo-Nazis, Klansmen, Anti-Semites and other authoritarians with a grain of salt.

But our Founders were always concerned about such movements. Historian Timothy Snyder noted in an interview with Sean Illing: “We think that because we’re America, everything will work itself out. This is exactly what the founders refused to believe. They thought human nature is such that you have to constrain it by institutions. They preferred rule of law and checks and balances.”

That is not the way of President Trump and his violent Cult. On  March 14th of 2020 Trump proclaimed:

“I can tell you I have the support of the police, the support of the military, the support of the Bikers for Trump – I have the tough people, but they don’t play it tough — until they go to a certain point, and then it would be very bad, very bad,”

However, since Trump’s  indisputable loss in the election by over 7 million popular votes and a wide majority in the Electoral College he has become ever more desperate. His legal team filed over 60 lawsuits to challenge election results all of which were shot down in flames with prejudice because there was no evidence of voter fraud. While those lawsuits were going on and recounts were being conducted Trump supporters threatened election officials, and even Republican judges in the contested states. Even after the recounts, in the case of Georgia three of the, still showed that Joe Biden won, the results were certified, and the electors voted, the threats kept coming.

In her book The Origins of Totalitarianism Hannah Arendt wrote something that is completely descriptive of Trump and his followers: “The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists.” 

Each day they got more menacing. Now the President has issued a call to his followers to gather and disrupt the ceremonial count of the electors in Congress on Wednesday. At least 12 Senators and over 100 GOP Congressmen and women have said that they would object to the count, which at best will delay the final certification by a few hours. However, there is nothing in the Constitution that allows Congress to overturn elections held in the various states. That is a fact. It is part of our Federalist structure of government which gives states certain powers not ascribed to the Federal Government. Congress cannot overturn certified election results in any state.

The German pastor, theologian and martyr, Dietrich Bonhoeffer who was killed on the express order of Adolf Hitler wrote:

“The fearful danger of the present time is that above the cry for authority, be it of a Leader or of an office, we forget that man stands alone before the ultimate authority and that anyone who lays violent hands on man here is infringing eternal laws and taking upon himself superhuman authority which will eventually crush him. The eternal law that the individual  stands alone before God takes fearful vengeance where it is attacked and distorted. Thus the Leader points to the office, but Leader and office together point to the final authority itself, before which Reich or state are penultimate authorities. Leaders or offices which set themselves up as gods mock God and the individual who stands alone before him, and must perish.”

The fact that so many GOP Senators and Representatives are willing to follow Trump into the abyss of his Götterdämmerung shows that they stand against the Constitution and are willing to violate their oaths all in the service of a criminal President. The President’s criminality was on full display last weekend as he was exposed as he attempted to browbeat, bludgeon, and threaten the Georgia Secretary of State and his Chief Counsel to change the votes cast in the election. That is a felony and the men he was threatening were Republicans who voted for him and wanted him to win, but have the integrity and honor to remain faithful to their oaths and obey the law. The same is true in Arizona, Nevada, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin. In all those states elected officials upholding the law and their oaths were and are continuing to be threatened with violence.

Arendt also wrote about the Germans of the Nazi era words that are frightening when one takes a look at the hold that Trump and his propagandists on Fox News, Newsmax Television, OAN, talk radio, and on thousands of fake news conspiracy theory websites and podcasts proclaim:

“In an ever-changing, incomprehensible world the masses had reached the point where they would, at the same time, believe everything and nothing, think that everything was possible and that nothing was true. … Mass propaganda discovered that its audience was ready at all times to believe the worst, no matter how absurd, and did not particularly object to being deceived because it held every statement to be a lie anyhow. The totalitarian mass leaders based their propaganda on the correct psychological assumption that, under such conditions, one could make people believe the most fantastic statements one day, and trust that if the next day they were given irrefutable proof of their falsehood, they would take refuge in cynicism; instead of deserting the leaders who had lied to them, they would protest that they had known all along that the statement was a lie and would admire the leaders for their superior tactical cleverness.”


Over the past five years the President has made multiple threats to unleash his followers on opponents. Trump’s statements to that effect are so numerous that I have lost count of them. They began during his campaign and haven’t stopped, in fact they have only gotten worse and on June 1st 2020 he led a violent attack on peaceful protesters by officers of a number of Federal police agencies in Lafayette Park and the historical Saint John’s Church for a photo opportunity outside the Church. It was one of the most lawless acts ever committed by an American President against the American people.

Now we stand at the precipice of violence and insurrection incited by a lame duck President. If Vice President Pence whose life has been threatened by these people had a single working testicle or a couple of solid vertebrae in his back he would move to invoke the 25th Amendment and remove Trump from power, but Pence is not a man of courage or honor. Since Pence claims to be a Christian that is even more damning. Not only does he defy his duties under the Constitution, but his obligations to the truth as a Christian. Unfortunately, the Christian faith he represents is theocratic, authoritarian and undemocratic. In fact his version of Christianity is little different than the German Christian movement that wholeheartedly threw itself into supporting Hitler. Jesus Christ is not their God, just a slogan to make them feel good, their God is Trump which is the very definition of idolatry.

Yesterday, the ten living former Secretaries of Defense including former Vice President Dick Cheney all published and signed a letter about the existential threat of Trump to the Republic. That demonstrates the seriousness of what they see on the horizon.

Supporters of President Donald Trump rally outside the Maricopa County Recorder’s Office Friday, Nov. 6, 2020, in Phoenix. (AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin)

A coup to overthrow the Constitution of the United States, overturn a free and fair election that Donald Trump lost, and to overthrow the Republic is gaining momentum. It is no different than 1860 when eleven Southern States seceded from the Union and brought about the most deadly war in American history. Senator Stephan A. Douglas who lost the election to Abraham Lincoln when the Democratic Party split into a pro-slavery Southern faction worked as hard as he could to prevent secession after his loss. He could not stop secession and went  back to Illinois where he proclaimed:

“There are only two sides to the question. Every man must be for the United States or against it. There can be no neutrals in this war, only patriots – or traitors”

Armed pro-trump militia members demonstrate in Louisville Kentucky on the day of the famous Kentucky Derby, which is held in the city.

Today the Party of traitors are not Jefferson Davis’s Southern Democrats, but the Dixiecrats and theocrats who took over the Republican Party and sold their souls to Donald Trump. Trump didn’t start this, he merely took advantage of a party that grew more unhinged by the decade beginning in the 1960s. Today the Republican Party is not the party of principled conservatism, it is a radical authoritarian party with dreams of dictatorship and most of Trump’s followers imbibe of the falsehoods proclaimed by him, his administration, supporters in Congress and media propagandists proclaim. William Shirer was one of the few American news correspondents in Hitler’s Germany following the Nazi takeover to the German declaration of war against the United States wrote of his experiences with the German Press, propagandists, and people:

“In an ever-changing, incomprehensible world the masses had reached the point where they would, at the same time, believe everything and nothing, think that everything was possible and that nothing was true. … Mass propaganda discovered that its audience was ready at all times to believe the worst, no matter how absurd, and did not particularly object to being deceived because it held every statement to be a lie anyhow. The totalitarian mass leaders based their propaganda on the correct psychological assumption that, under such conditions, one could make people believe the most fantastic statements one day, and trust that if the next day they were given irrefutable proof of their falsehood, they would take refuge in cynicism; instead of deserting the leaders who had lied to them, they would protest that they had known all along that the statement was a lie and would admire the leaders for their superior tactical cleverness.”

After January 20th the blood orgy of the Trump Cult will continue as they work to destroy the remaining conservatives in the GOP and probably destroy the Party in the process. It will be like the Night of the Long Knives, but they won’t have help from the military.

Make no mistake. There can be no more sitting on the fence hoping that things will blow over and return to normal as much as all of us, including me would like them to be. The next few days and the days leading to January 20th will be critical to the survival of the country our Framers painstakingly crafted together. What they created wasn’t perfect, the Union had flaws, especially in regards to slavery and our treatment of the peoples of our First Nations, but it was an experiment meant to see the continued increase of liberty for all.

If Trump and his Cult succeed in their plans the country we know is dead. In 1933 old line German Conservatives led by former Chancellor Franz Von Papen had President Hindenburg appoint Adolf Hitler as Chancellor of Germany. In less than five months all of their political parties were dissolved and Hitler’s Nazis took sole power. A year later, Hitler turned on his former allies in the Night of the Long Knives, killing hundreds of his most loyal supporters, as well a German conservative leaders and some senior military officers.

I am now convinced that between January 6th and 20th we will see a wave of political violence and unrest we have never known in this country. I dearly want to be wrong, but when I look at Trump’s actions and statements, the violence already being committed by his followers, and the proliferation of threats by them against all opponents or those they suspect of not being loyal enough to Trump, I know worse is to come.

Yale Historian Dr. Timothy Snyder wrote:

“The European history of the twentieth century shows us that societies can break, democracies can fall, ethics can collapse, and ordinary men can find themselves standing over death pits with guns in their hands. It would serve us well today to understand why.”

That warning is now becoming a reality unless real patriots be the liberal or conservative are willing to stand up and be counted. That especially matters for police and military leaders. General Ludwig Beck the Chief of Staff of the German Army in 1938 resigned in protest over Hitler’s decision to invade Czechoslovakia. In retirement he became part of the resistance against Hitler and on the night of July 20th 1944 when the attempt to kill Hitler and take over Germany failed he was faced with immediate execution or the chance to kill himself. He attempted to kill himself but was just badly wounded and was finished off by an executioner. However before the attempt was made he sounded a warning to military and police personnel about duty to their country against a dictator. He wrote:

“Final decisions about the nation’s existence are at stake here; history will incriminate these leaders with bloodguilt if they do not act in accordance with their specialist political knowledge and conscience. Their soldierly obedience reaches its limit when their knowledge, their conscience, and their responsibility forbid carrying out an order.”

I pray that over the next 15 days that true patriotism and loyalty to the Constitution prevails. If it doesn’t our country is doomed.

So until tomorrow,

Peace,

Padre Steve+

 

 

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