Friends of Padre Steve’s World,
I have watched every minute of the second impeachment trial. As one of the Deans of the Joint Forces Staff College once noted “Steve, you a a historian masquerading as a Chaplain.” Back in seminary I was asked by many classmates “why are you in seminary and not in law school?” As a historian I have spent a lot of time studying and writing about various criminal trials involving American politicians and International War Crimes Tribunals. If it would result in divorce I might at my late age go to law school, but I have put Judy through enough over our marriage. That being said I might take up a Legal Studies Masters degree on a part time basis. I think that would complement my History and Theology Masters Degrees. Since there are no History PhD. programs close to me that I would be interested in pursuing this might be the best.
I watch high profile legal cases with great interest, especially the lawyering and I have seen and read about some amazing lawyering resulting in convictions or acquittals of of the accused. These lawyers for former President put on an amazing display of ignorance coupled with incompetence, but then they are the only people willing to represent Trump and none of them have exactly great legal reputations to begin with.
The men representing the twice impeached and disgraced former President who besides impeachment is under investigation for multiple criminal charges including rape, attempting to pressure officials to change the results of the election and even more civil charges regarding gross financial and fraud charges.
These lawyers have embarrassed their profession. I know too many excellent attorneys military and civilian to count these jokers among them. David Schoen is best known for representing mob bosses, Trump’s ally Roger Stone during the Muller Investigation and most recently the late Jeffery Epstein. Interestingly Schoen began his career rathe nobly in civil rights cases, something he seems to have little interest in today. Schoen is the sharpest of the three but during the trial he has only spoken for about 45 minutes and will not be available for the closing. He is also said to have threatened to quit the defense Thursday night but Trump talked him out of it. If the impeachment trial ends tomorrow it won’t matter because he will be out of a job because he announced that he will not work on the Jewish Sabbath which ends at sundown Saturday.
This meant that the bulk of the defense was shouldered by Bruce Castor, a former prosecutor in Pennsylvania who most notably refused to charge O.J. Simpson while serving as District of Attorney for Montgomery County. He also promised Simpson that he would never would be convicted. He was wrong. Simpson was eventually convicted. In his initial statements on Tuesday regarding the constitutionality of the impeachment trial his representation was so bad that Trump Wanted to fire him and Senator John Cronyn said “”The president’s lawyer just rambled on and on.” “I’ve seen a lot of lawyers and a lot of arguments, and that was not one of the finest I’ve seen.”
Castor did nothing to help his defense of Trump or his lawyering reputation on Friday. The other member of Trump’s defense team is personal injury lawyer Michael Van Der Veen who has made a career of litigating car crashes, motorcycle and bicycle crashes and dog bites. Van Der Veen managed not only to be ineffective but insulted and potentially alienated Senators who might vote in favor of acquittal and was cautioned on his profane language by Senate President Pro-Tem Patrick Leahy.
The defense team used just two and a half hours of their sixteen allotted hours in which they repeatedly played the same out of context videos of Democrat politicians and entertainers using the word “fight” while saying that Trump’s “free speech rights under the First Amendment were being denied” and using the dog whistle of videos showing mostly Black, Brown, Jewish, and Women opponents of Trump using the word fight in civil rights cases, Black Lives Matter demonstrations, and debates on policy questions that never resulted in violence or assaults on the Congress of the United States. The videos were spiced together without any context, not in any chronological order, and enhanced with chilling ominous music. Almost everyone shown in the video now called the #FightClub video are Black and Brown Women of Color, Jews, and other Democratic politicians and entertainers.
Say what you want about the House Managers video presentations on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday they stuck to the facts at hand to document the insurrection minute by minute. They did not add music, and they put each video, statement and tweet in context. The counsels for the defense did not. They pieced together a vile and racist video worthy of Joseph Goebbels and Julius Streicher. The abject racism of Trump’s Counsel and Trump’s GOP in the Impeachment Trial are undeniable and irredeemable.
All arguments used by Trump’s Counsel were false equivalence arguments that would play well on the Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson propaganda shows, and possibly give GOP Senators an off ramp to acquit Trump. But none would stand in a real criminal trial which this is not, despite the facts that all of these attorneys have attempted to compare it to in order to deflect blame from Trump were nothing more than smoke and mirrors and not even very good ones, but good enough for 43 Republican Senators to vote to acquit.
After the traveling Trump clown attorneys finished on Friday the Senate went to the question and answer session where the Impeachment Managers and the former twice impeached President’s legal team answered written questions from the Senators. Once again the twice impeached, under criminal investigation former President’s bumbled their defense refusing to answer any factual questions from Republican or Democratic Senators. They never once actually answered a question but attempted to deflect and deny everything even questioning the actual evidence, saying that they were not permitted to see it though they had it on 9 February as a condition of the bipartisan agreement on the rules of the impeachment trial. They lied. They continued to lie in their closing statement repeating the same distortions, deflections and twisted arguments they made the previous day and went on to make unsupported and scandalous statements about Democrats who had supported the Black Lives Matter movement, and spoke out about the racist, unconstitutional, and criminal actions of Trump and his administration. Their defense on Friday and Closing arguments were difficult to watch, especially those of Counsel Van Der Veen who accused the Democrats of “trying to cancel culture, cancel the Constitution, and cancel the votes of 74 million Trump voters.”
This was despite the fact that for the past four years Trump and his administration have displayed contempt for the Constitution, and bulldozed the institutional guardrails designed to protect Americans from tyranny until the final day of his administration, issuing orders and appointing political hacks into sensitive jobs in the civil service, including the Departments of Defense, Homeland Security, Justice, and intelligence services. Nothing like this has every been attempted by any administration in American history. Likewise they attempted to cancel the votes and in some states are still attempting to cancel the votes of the 81 million Americans who voted for Joe Biden by trampling our laws and Constitution. If there is a Cancel Culture movement it is by Trump and his GOP cult who try to narrowly decline culture in its pre-Civil War White Protestant and White Supremacy context. Nothing else matters to them.
But overnight other evidence testified to by a Republican Senator and Representative came into play.
First there were the words of Senator Tommy Tuberville who testified that he told Trump about the break in at the Capitol and the threats to Vice President Pence wo was then fleeing for his life with his Secret Service detail, family, and his military aide who held his nuclear football. Minutes after being told by Tuberville that Pence was in danger and he had to flee, Trump tweeted a threatening message to his enraged and homicidal followers about how Pence had failed. Tuberville confirmed his comments Friday night, but voted to acquit today.
Republican House Member Jaime Herrera Beutler of Washington State who was with House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy who gave a statement undisputed by anyone, including McCarthy. Just before the gavel fell to open the Saturday session Lead Impeachment Manager Jamie Raskin decided that the Managers wanted to call Herrera Beutler as a witness and depose her via Zoom since she was in Washington. In an incredibly angry tirade the defense led by Van Der Veen. threatened to call “hundreds of witness” in response. The Senate the voted on the motion to call witness and agreed by a 55-45 vote to do so. Then it recessed to discuss the matter. After about an hour of negotiations the Senators, especially the Democratic leadership bowed to the pressure that a call for witnesses, depositions and testimony pressured the Managers to accept a compromise regarding Herrera Beutler’s statement. It was read into the record and admitted in written form. It read:
“In my January 12 statement in support of the article of impeachment, I referenced a conversation House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy relayed to me that he’d had with President Trump while the January 6 attack was ongoing. Here are the details:
“When McCarthy finally reached the president on January 6 and asked him to publicly and forcefully call off the riot, the president initially repeated the falsehood that it was antifa that had breached the Capitol. McCarthy refuted that and told the president that these were Trump supporters. That’s when, according to McCarthy, the president said: ‘Well, Kevin, I guess these people are more upset about the election than you are.’
“Since I publicly announced my decision to vote for impeachment, I have shared these details in countless conversations with constituents and colleagues, and multiple times through the media and other public forums.
“I told it to the Daily News of Longview on January 17. I’ve shared it with local county Republican executive board members, as well as other constituents who ask me to explain my vote. I shared it with thousands of residents on my telephone town hall on February 8.
“To the patriots who were standing next to the former president as these conversations were happening, or even to the former vice president: if you have something to add here, now would be the time.”
I am glad the statement became part of the record but wish she had testified in person, as well as the many insurgents who said that they “acted on the invitation and orders of President Trump.” The Managers said that they reached out to other Republican targets of the insurrection but none would come forward, and that to subpoena them would be an attempt to force potentially hostile witnesses into the dock. Thus they decided to compromise remembering that a witness subpoenaed during Trump’s first impeachment trial had not yet testified. I appreciate that reasoning but wish it had been different.
I think that the Senate should vote to suspend the proceedings as depositions of witnesses are taken was right but the pressure put on the Managers to compromise was ill-considered. But Raskin and other Managers were realistic and admitted that no amount of witnesses would have persuaded that they were already going to vote to acquit based on the technicality rejected by the Senate on Tuesday that a former office holder could be impeached and tried by the Senate.
Unfortunately all of the Democrats seemed to forget something that British Chief Prosecutor Sir David Maxwell-Fyfe told the American Chief Prosecutor Associate Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson as he wore out the trial judges reading documentary evidence into the record. Maxwell-Fyfe told Jackson:
“As legal strategy your documentary approach has been unassailable. But as drama, it is, I regret to say, absolutely stultifying. A trial is a show, Robert. Like it or not, it’s a show… And it’s ours to lose. A trial is a show, Robert. Like it or not, it’s a show. And those four learnt men sitting on the bench are as impressionable as any audience….
Witnesses will give this trial a human face. One compelling witness can outweigh a tonne of documentary evidence.”
Unfortunately I do not think any number of witnesses would have persuaded any number of the Republican Senators who voted to acquit.
A guilty verdict would have been true justice, despite the fact that as a private citizen Trump can be tried in multiple jurisdictions for criminal and civil actions. But the complaining party at the bar are not simply election officials Trump threatened, Republican and Democratic politicians who admitted that the results of the election were legitimate, but the 81 million people who voted for Joe Biden who Trump tried to cancel their votes and rights as citizens whose votes had been held as valid by every state and every one of over 60 courts from State Courts, up to the Supreme Court of the United States and multiple recounts in every contested state. In spite of that Trump persisted in proclaiming the Big Lie that he “won in a massive landslide, but that his victory was stolen.” Something he repeated on 6 January as some of his insurgents were breaching the Capitol as he encouraged those at the Ellipse to go to the Capitol. He promised to go with them but never did, instead laughing and reveling as the attack was broadcast on television, as was captured in a video taken by his son Donald Junior.
Not only this but the complaining party are free and Democratic societies around the world who look to the United States for leadership for what we were once considered, the best example of a successful pluralistic and multi-ethnic democracy. They have been disappointed and since Trump took office authoritarian governments back by groups like the Nazi Brownshirts and Mussolini’s Fascist paramilitaries have taken power in now former democracies in Eastern Europe, and are growing in influence around the world. This is in large part due to the distain for our Constitution, Republic and democracy.
This failed attempted insurrection or coup against the American Capitol to kill Vice President Pence, Senators and Representatives regardless of their political party in order to stop the ceremonial certification of the Electoral College Ballots, something that Pence had told Trump multiple times that he could not do under the Constitution and would not do.
Trump didn’t tell his private Army that Pence had promised to do his but instead let them hang on the hopes that Pence would stop the proceedings. When Pence opened the count and promised to do his Constitutional duty, Trump further inflamed his insurgents by telling them how Pence had failed them, this as they were racing through the Capitol building hunting for him and chanting “hang Mike Pence.”
I could go on but I am going to stop for the night. The House Managers put on an amazing case that proved beyond a reasonable doubt that Trump was guilty as charged.Though they failed to convict they convinced the largest number of Senators from the accused party to vote against him. The votes of Mitt Romney, Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, Ben Sasse, Richard Burr, Bill Cassidy, and Pat Toomey were courageous. Regardless of if they were coming up for re-election in 2022 or 2024, or if the were retiring every one of them put a target on their backs. It won’t be Antifa or anyone on the Left who tries to kill them, but Trump’s violent armed Cult goons.
But to finish I will close with a Robert Jackson’s quote from Shakespeare’s King Lear in his closing at the Major War Crimes Trial at Nuremberg to finish this article adapting it to Trump. Trump stands “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.
That is true of every Republican who voted to acquit Trump Saturday, and every one who voted in the House or Senate not to recognize the results of the Electoral College vote. But the lives of those lost on 6 January 2021, especially Capitol Hill Police Officers cries out “Say they are not slain. but dead they are.” Their blood forever stains the hands of Trump and his insurgents who attempted to overthrow the United States Government by force and violence but who were acquitted by 43 members of the Senate, both true believers and followers of Trump, or cowards desperate to remain in office through the votes of those of Trump’s Cult who fully approve of violence and murder in the pursuit of power.
For the moment Trump and his Cult appear to have escaped justice, but even now over 200 of the insurgents have been arrested and charged, and many others being investigated and sought out. Hopefully thousands will be rounded up and their terrorist organizations exposed and broken up so they cannot commit such violence again. Likewise, as previously noted, Trump himself and many of his close associates are under criminal investigation by Federal and State authorities for a multitude of crimes. Likewise Trump faces criminal action for sexual assault and rape accusations, and financial crimes which threaten the ruin of his personal financial, real estate and entertainment empire. There are also a host of civil lawsuits that he can no longer use his office to escape prosecution.
Even so Trump broke his silence of over a month since the attack claiming that he was innocent and this was only the beginning of his movement. This means that he has tacitly given the authorization to his murderous followers to begin a protracted insurgency against the United States Government, State Governments and political opponents.
If you have not served in a country undergoing an insurgency you have no idea of the brutality. One of my major areas of study before and after I went to Iraq to serve with our advisors was Counter Insurgency Operations.Trust me, from history, theory, and practice I do know what I am talking about, and no local or state, and very few federal police agencies, or emergency services agencies are trained or equipped to deal with what we are about to face and regardless of the outcome our democracy will never be the same, provide that our foreign enemies don’t inflict terrible damage on our country first.
On that happy note I say goodnight.
Until tomorrow,
Peace,
Padre Steve+
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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Tagged as adolf hitler, bugaloo boys, death squads, dietrich bonhoeffer, Donald Trump crimes, donald Trump cult, einsatzgruppen, franz von papen, general ludwig beck, Hanna Arendt, neo-nazis, night of the long knives, president donald trump, Proud boys, QAnon, stephen douglas, timothy snyder, white nationalist militias, white supremacists, William Shirer