Tag Archives: Donald Trump crimes

How a Letter from a Trump Cultist Changed my Life and Threatened my Liberty: Reflections on Trump and his Christofacist Cult


Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

Sorry for not posting for a week but my ass has been kicked by the work involved in clearing our home of things in order for the painters after having more contractors in the past week. Add to this the new new teaching job and my ass is kicked. Everything hurts, 60 is definitely not the new 40.

As I was getting things cleaned out I found a letter. It was the letter that greeted me at my office a few days that I preached sermon at the JEB Little Creek Fort Story Chapel in July 2017. It was from a fanatical Trump supporter who was upset that I condemned the Trump administration’s policy of separating children from their parents and locking them up in cages on our border with Mexico. During the sermon I never said a word about Trump himself and stayed morality of his administration’s policies.

My accuser was a retired officer who never addressed me face to face and made heinous accusations against me. He sent a similar letter to my Commanding Officer demanding that I be relieved of my position as Command Chaplain and that I be tried by Court Martial. It was a seminal moment in my life. I discovered that the Trump movement was not simply about politics but it was a personality cult devoted to their “Leader” with profoundly racist motives bent on the personal destruction of anyone who opposed his policies.

My sermon actually had scriptural backing in that week’s lectionary readings and was based on the teachings of the Christian Church and backed by history. When I preach I do not deviate from the lectionary texts and seek to apply them to daily life, most of the time this was never about anything political.

The sermons of a chaplain are normally considered one of the most protected types of speech in the military and for that matter in the country, even if they stand against the policies of a President. In fact during my long career I have witnessed conservative Evangelical and Catholic Chaplains venture into politics on a regular basis, sometimes sitting through sermons that were much more partisan and disrespectful than anything I spoke that day, but I do not recall any to have been accused of crimes and investigated for what they said in a sermon preached as part of regularly scheduled religious services.

The official investigation of my “allegedly criminal conduct” in preaching the sermon was grueling. I was called into the investigating officer’s office and read my rights. I refused to answer questions without a lawyer. I had to retain legal counsel and went to Mikey Weinstein of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation who has become a close personal friend. He spoke at my retirement ceremony where his words were remarkably similar to two of my previous commanding officers emphasizing my personal integrity, moral courage and commitment to care for all in my charge, regardless of their beliefs.

The investigating officer interviewed over half of the people present in the service as well as every member of my staff. My attorney handled the situation and in the end I was exonerated and no charges filed. I still have the investigation filed away, but it is now boxed up. Sadly, some of the people who denied that I said the things I was accused of saying also threw in political barbs. All were White male retirees and none ever spoke to me again. I was shunned, but the Black members of the chapel congregation were very supportive, some still keep in touch with me. One said that my sermon was like “hearing the thunder of the voice of God.” Honestly I do miss preaching, but I want nothing to do with the politics of the church.

I elected never to preach in that chapel again, in fact it was the last time I stood in the pulpit for anything other than an official ceremony or memorial service.

The assault on me and my rights by this Trump supporter and my treatment afterwards by the older White members of the chapel made me much wiser about the nature of the Trump Cult. It transitioned from a personality cult to a profoundly religious cult in which any disagreement with the former President was considered heresy and  met by virulent attacks on the offenders, and if they were Republicans saw many expelled or driven from the Party, sometimes even threatened with violence.

The Trump Cult is deeply racist, openly White Nationalist and authoritarian in nature, and supported by violent Neo-Nazi groups, militias and Christian Nationalists, who are probably the most disreputable of the lot.

I get online threats on a fairly regular basis for what I write and truthfully I no longer feel safe in my country, a country I served for nearly 40 years in the military. Sadly, most claim to be “Christians” as if they even know what being a follower of Jesus means. It does not mean making death threats on behalf of a would be dictator, as a good number have done.

Less than a month after my sermon those White Supremacist groups conducted a violent demonstration in Charlottesville, Virginia. Trump said that there “were very good people” on both sides. Of course he and they only grew more threatening and violent and culminated in the 6 January insurrection and assault on the Capitol, but I digress…

The letter from that man reminded me just how personal this threat is for anyone who actually believes in truth, believes in the promise our Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. There are so many times that I resist the urge to spam my accuser’s name all over the world. That man is a despicable moral coward who refused to even follow the clear teachings of scripture of how to confront another Christian over a matter of faith, and instead attempted to use the power of military law in order to destroy me. Of course for him like most of these Christofacists, the teachings of Jesus, Scripture, or the testimony of the Church mean nothing, because the worship Trump uber Alles. They would kill for him, not die for Jesus. That my friends is idolatry and a denial of their Christian faith.

But for me this is a fight that I will not shirk. I cannot stomach supposed Christians who have a higher loyalty to Trump and his racist Cult than they do to Jesus. I quote General Henning Von Tresckow who helped lead the opposition to Hitler and died after the failed assassination attempt, “We have to show the world that not all of us are like him. Otherwise, this will always be Hitler’s Germany.”

Yes, I compared Trump to Hitler. This is because Trump has repeatedly shown that he wants to be like Hitler. True, he is not as smart and unlike Hitler never volunteered to serve his adopted country in wartime, and he has no one as gifted as Joseph Goebbels as his chief propagandist. Nor does he have anyone as Lani Riefenstahl  to promote him as a God as she did in the film The Triumph of the Will. 

That being said, Trump is both a demagogue and coward. He loves authoritarian government and hates the system of checks and balances created by our founders. Today he registered his disappointment that the Courts would not overturn the election, despite the fact nothing he and his lawyers could come up with that could win a single court case of over 60 they filed because they had no evidence and the facts did not support them. His continuous assault on facts and truth bodes ill for all of us, even his followers. Thus he and them and his followers remain a danger to anyone who actually believes that the Declaration or the Constitution. 

But had Trump won the election, or had his insurgents prevented Congress from fulfilling its obligations under the Constitution there is no doubt that he would have gone full Fuhrer.  Had he won or succeed in His coup attempt no opponent would be safe from his Neo-Nazi thugs backed by the full police power of the government and his Christian Theocratic base. The sad thing is that even though he is out of office the threat still remains, largely because of his Cult and a spineless Republican Party that sold its soul to Trump.

I’ll stop for now as it is late. However, it is a good thing that the man who tried to destroy me coming up on four years ago never properly introduced himself to me in person, thus I can’t match his face to my memories. It is a good thing for him because if I recognized him I might be tempted to beat him within an inch of his life if he did not admit his sin against me before my left jab right hook combination  struck his jaw. Of course if that ever happened that sonofabitch would be the victim and I would be in jail. So I won’t give him that as strong as the temptation might be. But to quote the Psalmist in Psalm 139:22 when it comes to men like Jack who tried to destroy my life to defend Trump, “I hate them with perfect hatred: I count them mine enemies.”

That they are so until next time,

Padre Steve+

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The Damning Opening of Trump’s Second Impeachment Trial: Will those Who Walked With Him Make “his life…excrement.”

 

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

Associate Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson who served as the Chief American Prosecutor at the Major War Crimes Trials of Nazi War Criminals at Nuremberg said:

“The wrongs which we seek to condemn and punish have been so calculated, so malignant, and so devastating that civilization cannot tolerate their being ignored because it cannot survive their being repeated.”

Those words were not just applicable to the war crimes of the Nazis but the unconstitutional and violent acts of former President Trump and his Cult to overthrow the Constitution, system of democratic government, and laws of the United States. The crimes, especially the attempt to assault the Capitol and the Congress as it was in the process of exorcising their sacred oath to certify the votes of the Electoral College, normally a largely ceremonial event.

Today the House Impeachment Managers led by Congressman Jamie Raskin introduced their case against Donald Trump, the now twice impeached former President. Their presentation on the question if it was constitutional to impeach a former President was decided by a vote of 56-44 in favor of the constitutionality of the impeachment trial. The managers used massive amounts of legal and historical precedents to lay out the case that the trial was indeed constitutional. The video was the most damning since the Allied prosecutors at the trial of the Major Nazi War Criminals at Nuremberg.

Trump’s hastily gathered and woefully unprepared defense team was painful to watch, something attested to by numerous GOP Senators, most of whom stilled voted against impeachment. They behaved like mob lawyers who knew that the fix was in. Their defenses conjured the specter of American mobsters who were acquitted of murder, racketeering, extortion, kidnapping, torture, grand theft, bribery of public officials, police and judges. But then Trump has always acted more as a mob boss than President.

The remarkable thing was that six Republican Senators, including one, Senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana who voted with Senator Rand Paul in a similar vote a week ago changed his mind based on the evidence presented and repeating that he was doing what an impartial juror was supposed to do. This is more members of the defendant’s party than in any impeachment trial in our history. Senator Cassidy’s words will hang over the heads of every Republican Senator.

The fact that the House Managers brought these charges and prepared such a remarkable opening in spite of knowing that the very real possibility if not probability that the fix was in regarding most GOP Senators voting for Trump’s acquittal was a profile in moral and political courage. It was courageous because it defied the wishes of many Americans, especially ones committed to violence and murder.

Mind you, unlike the President and members of the Cabinet, outside of the Capitol complex none of these men and women have any security protection from the government. No Secret Service, no Federal Marshals, nothing. This means that all of them are potential targets of the people who assaulted the Capitol on 6 January.

But before Congressman Raskin began the arguments based on legal, constitutional, and historical evidence he introduced a video that I can only say was second to the video presented by the Allied Prosecutors at the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg. The timeline of the House Managers video was damning, it was unprecedented and it put anyone who watched it in the building, for almost every Senator and Representative regardless of party was a witness and a potential victim of Trump’s mob. .

I cannot imagine how anyone with any personal or moral integrity cannot cringe when they view that footage. even the Nazis a Nuremberg were shattered by the video shown by the prosecution. I wonder if just 17 Republican Senators can find  enough moral courage and decency to convict Trump at the end of this trial. Mind you the only potential penalty the former President can face is not being able to hold public office again. There is no prison time, no financial penalty, no restrictions on any other freedoms he has. He can vote, he still receives his pension and Secret Service protection, and has no restrictions on his personal or business interests. Of course none of that will interfere with prosecution by various states where he is alleged to have committed crimes related and unrelated to the charge of the impeachment.

I have been in too many situations where people either armed and in person, or online threatened my life. I have been in combat situations where I was the only person unarmed in situations where even the good guys didn’t know who the bad guys were. At no time, even in combat situations was I unarmed, not that I didn’t insert myself into mobs of potentially murderous people to calm the situations.

I will continue to write about this throughout the impeachment trial but let no one misinterpret me; what happened on 6 January was an act that had it been successful would have upended the Constitution, overthrow the result of an election that the elections commissions of every state said was valid, and proclaimed the dictatorship of Donald Trump. There is no doubt about that.

We as Americans cannot allow a man who has done all that he could to overthrow our Constitution, Democracy, a legal election, and incite his cult to attack and kill at the Capitol which killed 6 people in the attack including Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick, was probably part of the reason two other Capitol Policemen committing suicide shortly after the attack. 140 more Capitol and Metropolitan Police were wounded including several critically injured losing limbs and eyesight. The insurgents called the police  “traitors” , this from people who claimed they supported police. The assailants used flagpoles bearing Trump ans American flags as weapons, used a fire extinguisher to kill Officer Sicknick, erected a gallows of front of the Capitol as attackers shouted “Hang Mike Pence.”  How anyone serving in the Senate can ignore these facts and instead bow down to Trump and the fear of his base shows they have no moral courage.

Since none of them have that it is imperative that regardless of its outcome, when this trial is over that any of the standing for re-election be hammered with this video and all of the documentation every day. There is no defense against the truth and every one of them need to be confronted on this with the assumption that most Americans, even those who at one time or another voted for Trump have not completely forgotten what they were taught in school, by parents and grandparents, political icons, pastors and Sunday School teachers.  Thus during the trial and after Democrats presented  these facts, this video documentary, and so much more at every one of them who vote to acquit the former President, a New York Sewer Rat, now Florida Swamp Rat.

But this was just day one. There will be more and it will be even more devastating to Trump and his Cult’s cause if only a few Republicans could vote their conscience and not the fear of what Trump’s cult might do to oppose their reelection. But then courage is a rare commodity in American politics, especially among Christians and alleged conservatives.

Jackson said in his opening at Nuremberg: “”The wrongs which we seek to condemn and punish have been so calculated, so malignant, and so devastating that civilization cannot tolerate their being ignored because it cannot survive their being repeated.”

Jackson’s words about the Nazi criminals are not morally different that the charge in the impeachment indictment of Donald Trump. If Republicans cannot see that then they are lost beyond redemption. In the Book of Genesis the Lord told Abraham if 100, then 50, then 10, then five people in Sodom who were righteous could be found the city would be spared. Today, the number for the GOP is 17 Senators. Will just 17 of 50 uphold their oath to the Constitution and the oath they swore to be impartial jurors in the impeachment trial? The question remains to be answered, but though I think between 6 and 15 might vote to convict, I doubt if most will follow conscience as they have none, precedent and history because they are ignorant, the evidence, because if they had the chance they would have taken part in the insurrection themselves, most have no honor and their only loyalty is to their personal power regardless of the moral, spiritual, legal, constitutional, personal and societal costs.

That is why no matter how this impeachment trial ends it will not be end of our troubles. Those of us who belief Trump guilty must apply every bit of pressure we can through letters, calls and emails to Republican Senators in the states we are registered to vote. If he survives we must use every bit of evidence against every House and Senate Member who swears their fealty to Trump and not the Constitution. We cannot quit regardless of the outcome. I will pen a letter to the one Republican Senator from my home of record until my residence is officially established in Virginia. In it I will do everything I can to shame her and throw up her heritage as the daughter of a former governor convicted of many crimes while in office and disbarred from the court. I hope if she has any sense of morality or shame that my letter will change her mind on impeachment. I hope that every opponent of Trump will write their Republican Senators to let them know that they will be help accountable by the electorate, not by violence or force for the rest of their political careers.

I only wonder if any Republican would dare to utter the  words spoken by Ernst Janning, played by Burt Lancaster in Judgment at Nuremberg:

“I am going to tell the truth if the whole world conspires against it. I am going to tell them the truth about their Ministry of Justice. Werner Lampe — an old man who cries into his Bible now. An old man who profited from the property expropriation of every man he sent to a concentration camp. Friedrich Hofstetter — the “good German” who knew how to take orders, who sent men before him to be sterilized like so many digits. Emil Hahn — the decayed, corrupt bigot, obsessed by the evil within himself. And Ernst Janning — worse than any of them, because he knew what they were, and he went along with them. Ernst Janning — who made his life…excrement… because he walked with them.”

Will anyone in the GOP consider their lives excrement because they walked with Trump and his cult? That is a question for now and the ages.

So until tomorrow,

Peace

Padre Steve+

 

 

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“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

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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Filed under Coronavirus 19 Pandemic, crime, crimes against humanity, History, holocaust, laws and legislation, News and current events, Political Commentary, US Presidents

The End of a Criminal Presidency

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

Today marks the end of the most malevolent, evil, and incompetent American Presidential administration in history and the worst President who ever served. James Buchanan, Andrew Johnson, Richard Nixon and Herbert Hoover must be breathing undead sighs of relief in their graves as Trump vaults over them all to claim the title of the worst, most malevolent, incompetent and evil man ever to hold the office. Their spirits might even be dancing on their graves in celebration tonight. I wonder what they are drinking, but I digress.

Even though he has less than twelve hours left in office he has been preparing a list of pardons, attempting to declassify documents related to the FBI’s investigation of his campaigns ties and connections with Russia in 2015 and 2016, and even discussing splitting the Republican Party by forming a new Party which he wants to name the Patriot Party. We cannot stop his pardons but they will further demonstrate his lack of respect for our laws by pardoning the worst of the worst: men and women who committed treason, others who defrauded millions of people of life savings, their properties, and finances, others whose crimes would only encourage others to do the same. Since he has already pardoned convicted war criminals I would not be surprised if he pardons more such people, as well as law enforcement officers convicted of crimes, and preventive pardons of political allies and White House staffers involved in illegal activities.

The number of crimes and criminal actives President Trump and henchmen is unsurpassed. Many of these have not yet been charged as the President used the powers of his office to protect himself from criminal prosecution and civil lawsuits.

He has not been charged with his manifold violations of the Hatch Act which was enacted to keep members of the Federal Government from enriching themselves or business interests at the expense of taxpayers. Federal funds from a multitude of agencies using Trump owned properties often paying far higher rates than allowed by the GSA or other Federal agencies.

He has not yet been fully charged or prosecuted for his collaboration with Russia, his support and instigation of Neo-Nazis and other White Supremacists at Charlottesville calling them “very fine people.”

He has not yet been charged with the actions of his administration against immigrants and refugees on the U.S. Mexican border where families were separated from their children with the whereabouts of hundreds, maybe thousands of children unaccounted for, while their parents were deported to countries that would not assist them with their applications for admission to the United States. Such actions by the Nazis were considered Crimes Against Humanity by the United States and the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg. How we can allow an American President and his administration to escape prosecution for crimes we prosecuted the Nazis is incomprehensible. The same is true regarding the Coronavirus 19 Pandemic where Trump, fully realizing the deadly nature of the virus ignored it, denied it, hampered the CDC, FDA, his own Task Force, and State Governments from making a coordinated effort to contain the spread of the virus for a year, resulting in the infections of nearly 25 million people and the deaths of over 400,000 Americans, which is more than the number of our World War Two dead. It took nearly four years of war to lose the 405,000 World War II dead, but just a year to allow more than that number to die of COVID-19 and that battle is not done. It is expected that by the end of February that number will be more than a half a million Americans. The negligence, denial, and malfeasance of his actions in regard to COVID should also rise to the level of Crimes Against Humanity.

The President’s frequent use of physical threats against the press, political opponents or American Blacks is unheard of by any American President. Even before his election he encouraged his supporters to physically attack opponents and that he would pay for their legal fees.

His thugs have made numerous attacks against individuals, and even State Governors and legislatures, including armed assault on the Michigan Statehouse in April, and one the United States Capitol, Congress, and his own Vice President on 6 January. His incitement of the 6 January attack was so heinous that he was impeached a second time for inciting an insurrection which killed people including a Capitol Police Officer and injuring over twenty five more Capitol Police and Washington D.C. Metro Police who were attempting to defend the Capitol and Congress. One officer was beaten with a Back the Blue flag on a flagpole, while other terrorists called the police who stood their ground traitors even as they threatened to find and kill Speaker Nancy Pelosi and hang Vice President Mike Pence. After delaying any comment for hours while watching the President issued a video statement asking the attackers to leave while praising them and expressing his “love” for them.

Since the failed Coup attempt Trump has always been uncharacteristically silent, but since he has been banned by almost every social media site, especially Twitter, he has lost his his voice. He can only make video statements which he can only hope are played by the media. Meanwhile some of his thugs still appear to be ready to disrupt the inauguration through violence, but if they do so he will not be in town. He will be in the air on his way to Mar El Largo after an anyone on his email list and their five best friends who wants to brave D.C. rush hour traffic for his departure ceremony at Joint Base Andrews-Anacostia. Anthony Scaramouche declined saying that he was having his fingernails pulled out and couldn’t attend. Vice President Pence and Mitch McConnell will be at the Capitol preparing for the inauguration of President Biden. While it appears that Trump will get some kind of relatively small military send off including an honor guard and color guard it is not yet known if he will get his military band or 21 gun salute. Evidently he also plans on making some kind of speech which if it is extemporaneous will be a disaster that may assist Federal and  State prosecutors and just might ensure his conviction in his impeachment trial.

In addition to Trump’s escape from D.C. and the inauguration of President Biden  we still have to be concerned about violent acts by Trump Cultists in, around and outside of Washington D.C. they will certainly fail if they try but one cannot take any chances with desperate and violent true believers, even after the inauguration. Any violence or attacks must be met with superior firepower and no quarter. Terrorists don’t get mercy when they attack the very foundations of our country, Constitution and democracy. Those who exchange their ballots for bullets in order to overthrow our Republic, Constitution and democracy deserve every bullet that hits them, especially the Neo-Nazis.

It may seem contradictory but I wish you peace,

Padre Steve+

 

 

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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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If They Act Like Nazis, Threaten Like Nazis, They Are Nazis and I Will Fight Them

 

The Nazi Desecration of the Anne Frank Memorial

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

it seems that every day I see acts committed by admitted Nazis such as the act against the only monument to Anne Frank, the Dutch Jewish teenager who with her family was betrayed to the Nazis and died at the Bergen-Belsen Concentration Camp. Her diary of hiding during the Nazi occupation was published after the war. It became one of the classics of Holocaust literature and taught at least a generation of Americans, Western Europeans, and others around the world of the inhumanity of the Nazis, and the humanity of the victims.

Instead of just being another number, young Anne Frank became the voice of those otherwise names faceless statistics of the Nazi war against the Jews and so many others, but the Jews were the special objects of their race hatred and genocide. It remains so today, but most of what I am talking about are Americans. Yes new-Nazis are making a comeback in Europe where the ancient hatred of the Jews never went away despite the Nazi extermination programs.

This week, the only memorial in the United States was defaced by Nazi leaflets with the Swastika and the words “we are everywhere” on it. I saw an email to a Jewish friend that was saturated with Nazi language and imagery, that was supposedly sent by a “Christian pastor.” During the Coronavirus, QAnon members displayed vile images of Jews being responsible for the virus. Likewise some wore placards, again using the imagery of the Nazis of “life unworthy of life” urging that the “weak be sacrificed for the strong.” The number of anti-Semitic crimes is rising in the United States. Synagogues have to have armed uniformed police guards just to worship. Barely two years ago the Tree of Life Synagogue was attacked in Pittsburgh with a new-Nazi killing numerous worshipers. Neo-Nazis and White Supremacists in the United States and around the world have committed mass murder against Jews, Muslims, Christians, and their own countrymen. They will not stop until they are crushed, without mercy.

To the Neo-Nazi supporters of President Trump who he has praised as “very good people” and ordered to Stand back and stand by” in terms of being ready to kill for him to ensure he remains in power, the Jews, especially the Hungarian Holocaust survivor George Soros are the enemy. Quite a few of the allegedly “Christian” members of these movements openly embrace Anti-Semitism, calling Jews “the Synagogue of Satan” misusing scripture to attack the people who are the direct relations of Christians, whose Scriptures we use as the basis of our beliefs.

JACKSONVILLE BEACH, FL – APRIL 17: People crowded the beaches in its first open hour on April 17, 2020 in Jacksonville Beach, Fl. Jacksonville Mayor Lenny Curry opened the beaches to residents for limited activities for the first time in weeks since closing them to the public due to the Coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak. Jacksonville Beach became the first beach in the country to reopen. (Photo by David Rosenblum/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)

In my books anyone who calls themself a Christian who attacks the Jews in such a matter is not a Christian but a son or daughter of Satan himself. That includes all of these Goddamned Nazis, no matter what hat they wear, even the red #MAGA hat.

If they were confined to past history and were not threatening and even killing people now.

As a Holocaust scholar I will stand against these barbarians who stand against everything our nation was founded upon, and embrace the perverted doctrines and race hatred of the Nazis and every Nazi type group that has ever existed, including President Trump’s Cult followers. Those people use the Constitution and Declaration ass wipe  while claiming to be “patriots.” I say expose them, shame them, deny the entrance into decent society, which obviously will not stop their corrupt and cultish Trump churches to keep welcoming them with open arms and open mouths, without masks.

 

 

I have spent a decade being threatened by them and as I retire from the military I will expose them and do everything I can to show their faces, names, and addresses to Americans quoting their words verbatim to show the depth of their evil and depravity. If it comes to a physical confrontation I will not back down. These Anti-Semites are no different than Hitler’s Brownshirts or SS, except they don’t have the snazzy uniforms. Instead they look like scruffy or fat rejects of any kind of reputable organization. Hitler’s Nazis would have not accepted a one of these shit for brains assholes. If they think they are a “Master Race” they better look at their DNA and IQ tests. They are mongrels without a clue. Few if any could pass the Nazi racial standards tests, which were exceedingly strict and only a few got around, with a lot of political help. Mind you, these losers don’t have that.

They hide behind pseudonyms, use spoofed email addresses, and when they do show their faces they do so from behind body armor and assault type weapons. They are nothing more than cowards and bullies reminiscent of the American No Nothing’s of the 1830s-1860s, the racist and murderous Ku Klux Klan, Red Shirts, White League, and White Liners who murdered thousands of Blacks and White civil rights supporters from the end of the Civil War until now. Sadly, they are to ignorant, just plain stupid, and blinded by race hatred to understand nothing but force. Since the day Terry McVeigh bombed the Murough Federal Building in Oklahoma City until today these terrorists have threatened, bullied, attacked and killed Americans of all races, ethnicity, and religions because at heart they are Nazis and their whole life is built upon hating and pushing down others to keep their place in society, tolerated by the rich and powerful who need their votes, but never respected and really accepted, by the men like Trump that they elect to office. No wonder they hate others and need to use violence and threaten revolution to be able to hold their limp weenies over the fire. I despise the Nazis and everyone who holds their views but deny being Nazis. Lying Nazis who hide in plain sight are worse than those who admit who and what they are and the murderous racism they promote.


There are times that as a Gentile I would like to be a real life version of Lieutenant Aldo Raine, played by Brad Pitt in the Quentin Tarantino classic Inglourious Basterds. I would like to use my K-Bar knife to carve Swastikas into their foreheads so they couldn’t hide who and what they are.

If we allow the Donald Trump’s, the Steve Bannon’s, the Stephen Miller’s, Rush Limbaugh’s, Tucker Carlson’s, Michael Flynn’s, the QAnon crowd, and others who promote race hatred, plant the seeds of genocide in others, and stoke the flames of civil war to get off with nothing more than a slap on the wrist then we plant the seeds of our demise, and that of our Republic. I would like to see all of them, from the greatest to the least marked on the forehead with a Swastika than cannot be erased.

That may seem harsh, but it is exactly what history shows must happen to such people, otherwise they blend back in to decent society and infect yet another generation with their race hatred and dreams of genocide. That cannot be allowed to happen. Killing them makes them martyrs, but marking them on the forehead with the symbol of hatred they wear in their hearts would be a great warning to others, and if well done an immense artistic and social statement. Nazis can’t be allowed to hide in order to conceal what they are. While I would be tempted to break out my K-Bar to do it, I won’t unless one of these gutless sons of bitches tries to harm me or my family, then that K-Bar will be used to paraphrase the words General George Patton, filet them and use their guts to grease the treads of American tanks. Nazis of whatever kind are the enemy.

Thant’s it for the night, but to all Nazis beware. Don’t fuck with me, or anyone that you think is subhuman, because I will find you and expose you. That is a promise. I will ensure that you that everything I can find out about you will be exposed. Nazis are not patriots. They are enemies, who deserve nothing but shame. People who desecrate monuments to children killed by the Nazis, people who believe that Jews and people of color are Untermenschen, and label anyone supporting civil rights and equality as Communists are as bad or even worse than Hitler and his henchmen, because they should know better.

As Major General Henning von Tresckow, who lost his life in the attempt to kill Hitler, wrote: “We have to show the world that not all of us are like him. Otherwise, this will always be Hitler’s Germany.” The same is true about Trump’s America. Any American worth his or her salt has to show that we are not like him or any of his henchmen, otherwise they are no different than those who killed millions in Hitler’s name and got away with their crimes.

So until tomorrow, have a good day, a better tomorrow and resolve to expose these American Nazis, no matter what label they wear.

Fight well, for today is a good day to die.

Padre Steve+

 

 

 

 

 

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Will Last Century’s Crimes Against Humanity Be This Century’s Too? Robert Jackson’s Closing Arguments at Nuremberg

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

I spent much of the past week, until I had my emotional and physical meltdown discussing the importance of the Nuremberg Trials to today’s world. To do so I went through the five parts of Supreme Court Justice and Chief American Prosecutor, Robert Jackson’s opening address to the Tribunal. Tonight I will begin to work through his closing arguments, which like his opening are considered to be among the most powerful and definitive legal addresses in history.

We cannot forget or we will be doomed to repeat them, for the Holocaust was not an anomaly, it is the ever present part of the dark part of humanity.

Historian Gerhard Weinberg wrote:

“It’s very, very important for people to get a sense of what the potentialities of people really are, what the dangers of ignorance can be. It is in this context, that a supposedly advanced society risks descending into the sewer, that the Holocaust is a warning to people who think of themselves as an advanced, modern society….”

Historian Timothy Snyder was even more forthcoming:

“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.”

After four decades of the hate preached by White Supremacists, their willing conservative radio, television, and internet enablers, some who still raking in the cash for spreading race hatred, not to forget the titanic role played by President Trump in encouraging race hatred and violence, even state sanctioned violence against American citizens has placed us again at a place where an American genocide could take place, or more likely, nations under authoritarian rule inspired by Trump could and do commit atrocities and even Genocide knowing that under Trump the word and leadership of the United States.

It will take years to rebuild so long as Trump remains his alive and his political enablers and personality is cult do what they can to destroy and undermine the United States.

Immediately after leaving office if not before, Trump and his cult will go to war with Biden and the part of the country that didn’t support him. Let me spell out my predictions of what he and they will do.

1. On the day of President Biden’s inauguration or shortly after Trump will announce his candidacy for the 2024 election. His current political allies will vow their obedience to his will.

2. Trump will write a book similar to Mein Kampf. It will be full of conspiracy theories how he was cheated out of the election, it will make brazen and false allegations against his opponents, it will have profound racist and xenophobic messages, and it will describe his plan for when he gains absolute power. Like Mein Kampf it will be nearly unreadable, but his followers will buy it and it will become required reading for them and members of churches pastored by his supporters.

3. He will continue his mass meetings and will forgo no chance to get television coverage, probably on Newsmax, or OAN which he will either purchase or begin his own network where he can be on every day for maximum exposure.

4. His lawyers will do all they can to prevent him from being tried in state or Federal Court. His followers will be subjected to constant harassment to give to pay his legal bills and maybe even his massive financial debts when they come do, since Fox News, with the exception of a few hosts is dead to them now. 

5. His loyal members of the House and Senate and their state counterparts will do all they can to oppose any legislation he proposes, even if it benefits their constituents. They will be like the Nazi members of the Reichstag who abandon their oath to the Constitution of the United States and swear a personal oath of loyalty to Trump. 

6. Many of the judges he appointed will seek to undermine, weaken, or overturn any executive orders based on spurious lawsuits filed by Trump supporters. Sadly, Christians and Christian Churches will be at the center of these efforts. Their actions will ensure that the Coronavirus Pandemic continues to escalate so they can blame Biden, regardless of how many American die. The are truly sociopaths an capable of any evil imaginable. One cannot forget that the most horrible genocide of the last 30 years was committed by Rwandan Christians against other Christians Just after Easter. American Christians have shown themselves to have little regard for the life and liberty of others under Trump, they just haven’t had the opportunity commit genocide, though with the Coronavirus 19 Pandemic they have made a pretty good start with over 270,000 deaths to date. Not bad when you don’t even have to shoot or gas them.

7. Trump will form a private army under his command, bound by an oath of loyalty to him from the bands of lawless, heavily armed, violent, White Racist, and conspiracy theorists similar to Hitler’s SA Stürmabteilung to intimidate people, and to commit murders and political assassinations. These groups will include The Oathkeepers, The III % Militia, and any number of the White Nationalist, Neo-Nazi, Ku Klux Klan, and other racist terrorist groups and self-appointed militias.

8. Some Trump supporting Sheriffs who believe that they are the ultimate law in their counties will bind their deputies with personal loyalty oaths to Trump will be part of this. Additionally, there will be some police who turn their heads in order to allow these people to operate safely.Likewise, some in the military, especially in the National Guard and Reserves of heavily Trump states will supply them with weapons, ammunition, and training, with or without the approval of their local superiors. There has already been evidence of this in the recently o covered plan to kidnap, try, and execute Michigan’s government. we have evidence of such behavior by police and military, or former military personnel in our country, especially in the Reconstruction and Jim Crow South, and Northern cities where local law enforcement worked in cahoots with Organized Crime, as well as how local, and state police violently attacked and even Civil Rights workers and protestors.

9. As Trump moves forward his supporters will conduct political assassinations and acts of terror. They will blame them on Antifa without proof and accuse the Biden Administration of being weak in crime.

10. He will work with members of Eric Prince’s and other paramilitary contractors for hire will to work with hostile foreign powers and terrorist groups in order to draw the United States into a disastrous war. 

Tell me in six months to a year if I am wrong, and I really hopefully, truthfully, pray that I am wrong, but I don’t tend be be that wrong about him. All you have to do is look up the articles that I first posted from 2105-2018 and then reposted in their entirety over the past couple of months to see that. I profile authoritarians based on history, psychology, sociology, and even religion. 

Hopefully  Trump and his henchmen will be indicted and imprisoned Before they can do worse. Hopefully, the spell between Trump and many of his Congressional enablers will be broken and they might return to placing the country, our people, and Constitution above their loyalty to Trump. The same might be true of Trump’s judges, but I cannot preclude the fact that many will place their loyalty to Trump for their appointment, their ideology and especially their religion and ideology override their loyalty to the Constitution, the same can be said for the Sheriff’s, other law enforcement officials and military personnel. Trump is playing Hitler in order to overthrow the his version of the Weimar Republic, which according to their conspiracy theories repeated by White Nationalists, Neo-Nazis, and QANON true believers, is controlled by Jews, Communists, and other racial inferiors. 

But enough of that, that future is not yet written, but when it comes to Trump I have a pretty good track record. Check back around July to see if I am right. Trump and his followers are lawless and bent on destroying the country in order that they might establish a dictatorship. It might take them a while, and they certainly won’t succeed in overthrowing Biden in the first year or two, but do not

But back to the Nuremberg Trials, which if there is any justice Trump and his henchmen will end up in the dock of justice charged with Crimes Against Humanity and countless violations of U.S. Law. It would take at least an hour to name all of them, without the multiple specifications Of each charge. Sadly, I don’t have a staff of hundreds of lawyers and legal staff to do what Jackson did in prosecuting the Nazis. 

Jackson’s closing occurred 178 days after his opening address, after nearly nine months of testimony and evidence was presented by the prosecutors and the defense. It was The Nazis own records provided massive amounts of damning evidence which the prosecution presented in such a manner that it couldn’t be denied by defendants or history.

Jackson was masterful as he made his synopsis of the evidence and testimony presented over those nine months. To do so he had to come back after a poor performance against the former Nazi Reichs Marshal Hermann Goering. It was a day that shook his confidence, but after Jackson’s performance, British prosecutor Maxwell Fyfe destroyed Goering on cross. Many in the media believed that Jackson could not come back, in fact he wanted to resign as Chief Prosecutor. But he remained and delivered his second masterpiece of the trial.

His words should give us all pause when we think that we view the events of the past in a patronizing manner, thinking that we are too advanced to be capable of such such behaviors. We trust in technological advances and affluence but human nature remains unchanged and the crimes of the Twentieth Century which Jackson detailed in his summation could be eclipsed by worse today. There are plenty of monsters in the United States and the world all too willing to reprise the crimes of the Nazis. Let the reader understand.

So we begin where Jackson began on the morning of Friday, July 27th 1946.

Mr. President and members of the Tribunal:

An advocate can be confronted with few more formidable tasks than to select his closing arguments where there is great disparity between his appropriate time and his available material. In eight months -a short time as State trials go -we have introduced evidence which embraces as vast and varied a panorama of events as has ever been compressed within the framework of a litigation. It is impossible in summation to do more than outline with bold strokes the vitals of this trial’s sad and melancholy record, which will live as the historical text of the twentieth century’s shame and depravity.

It is common to think of our own time as standing at the apex of civilisation, from which the deficiencies of preceding ages may patronisingly be viewed in the light of what is assumed to be “progress”. The reality is that in the long perspective of history the present century will not hold an admirable position, unless its second half is to redeem its first. These two-score years in this twentieth century will be recorded in the book of years as some of the most bloody in all annals. Two world wars have left a legacy of dead which number more than all the armies engaged in any war that made ancient or medieval history. No half-century ever witnessed slaughter on such a scale, such cruelties and inhumanities, such wholesale deportations of peoples into slavery, such annihilations of minorities. The terror of Torquemada pales before the Nazi Inquisition. These deeds are the overshadowing historical facts by which generations to come will remember this decade. If we cannot eliminate the causes and prevent the repetition of these barbaric events, it is not an irresponsible prophecy to say that this twentieth century may yet succeed in bringing the doom of civilisation.

Goaded by these facts, we were moved to redress the blight on the record of our era. The defendants complain that our pace is too fast. In drawing the Charter of this Tribunal, we thought we were recording an accomplished advance in International Law. But they say that we have outrun our times, that we have anticipated an advance that should be, but has not yet been made. The Agreement of London, whether it originates or merely records, at all events marks a transition in International Law which roughly corresponds to that in the evolution of local law when men ceased to punish crime by “hue and cry” and began to let reason and inquiry govern punishment. The society of nations has emerged from the primitive “hue and cry”, the law of “catch and kill”. It seeks to apply sanctions to enforce International Law, but to guide their application by evidence, law, and reason instead of outcry. The defendants denounce the law under which their accounting is asked. Their dislike for the law which condemns them is not original. It has been remarked before that:

“No thief e’er felt the halter draw with good opinion of the law.”

I shall not labour the law of this case. The position of the United States was explained in my opening statement. My distinguished colleague, the Attorney-General of Great Britain, will reply on behalf of all the Chief Prosecutors to the defendants’ legal attack. At this stage of the proceedings, I shall rest upon the law of these crimes as laid down in the Charter. The defendants, who except for the Charter would have no right to be heard at all, now ask that the legal basis of this trial be nullified. This Tribunal, of course, is given no power to set aside or modify the Agreement between the Four Powers, to which eighteen other nations have adhered. The terms of the Charter are conclusive upon every party to these proceedings.

In interpreting the Charter, however, we should not overlook the unique and emergent character of this body as an International Military Tribunal. It is no part of the constitutional mechanism of internal justice of any of the signatory nations. Germany has unconditionally surrendered, but no peace treaty has been signed or agreed upon. The Allies are still technically in a state of war with Germany, although the enemy’s political and military institutions have collapsed. As a Military Tribunal, this Tribunal is a continuation of the war effort of the Allied nations. As an International Tribunal, it is not bound by the procedural and substantive refinements of our respective judicial or constitutional systems, nor will its rulings introduce precedents into any country’s internal system of civil justice. As an International Military Tribunal, it rises above the provincial and transient, and seeks guidance not only from International Law but also from the basic principles of jurisprudence, which are assumptions of civilisation and which long have found embodiment in the codes of all nations.

Of one thing we may be sure. The future will never have to ask, with misgiving, what could the Nazis have said in their favour. History will know that whatever could be said, they were allowed to say. They have been given the kind of a trial which they, in the days of their pomp and power, never gave to any man.

But fairness is not weakness. The extraordinary fairness of these hearings is an attribute of our strength. The prosecution’s case, at its close, seemed inherently unassailable because it rested so heavily on German documents of unquestioned authenticity. But it was the weeks upon weeks of pecking at this case, by one after another of the defendants, that has demonstrated its true strength. The fact is that the testimony of the defendants has removed any doubt of guilt which, because of the extraordinary nature and magnitude of these crimes, may have existed before they spoke. They have helped to write their own judgement of condemnation.

But justice in this case has nothing to do with some of the arguments put forth by the defendants or their counsel. We have not previously and we need not now discuss the merits of all their obscure and tortuous philosophy. We are not trying them for the possession of obnoxious ideas. It is their right, if they choose, to renounce the Hebraic heritage in the civilisation of which Germany was once a part. Nor is it our affair that they repudiated the Hellenic influence as well. The intellectual bankruptcy and moral perversion of the Nazi regime might have been no concern of International Law had it not been utilised to goose-step the Herrenvolk across international frontiers. It is not their thoughts, it is their overt acts which we charge to be crimes. Their creed and teachings are important only as evidence of motive, purpose, knowledge and intent.

We charge unlawful aggression but we are not trying the motives, hopes, or frustrations which may have led Germany to resort to aggressive war as an instrument of policy. The law, unlike politics, does not concern itself with the good or evil in the status quo, nor with the merits of the grievances against it. It merely requires that the status quo be not attacked by violent means and that policies be not advanced by war. We may admit that overlapping ethnological and cultural groups, economic barriers, and conflicting national ambitions created in the 1930′ s, as they will continue to create, grave problems for Germany as well as for the other peoples of Europe. We may admit too that the world had failed to provide political or legal remedies which would be honourable and acceptable alternatives to war. We do not underwrite either the ethics or the wisdom of any country, including my own, in the face of these problems. But we do say that it is now, as it was for some time prior to 1939, illegal and criminal for Germany or any other nation to redress grievances or seek expansion by resort to aggressive war.

Let me emphasize one cardinal point. The United States has no interest which would be advanced by the conviction of any defendant if we have not proved him guilty on at least one of the counts charged against him in the Indictment. Any result that the calm and critical judgement of posterity would pronounce unjust would not be a victory for any of the countries associated in this prosecution. But in summation we now have before us the tested evidences of criminality and have heard the flimsy excuses and paltry evasions, of the defendants. The suspended judgement with which we opened this case is no longer appropriate. The time has come for final judgement, and if the case I present seems hard and uncompromising, it is because the evidence makes it so.

I perhaps can do no better service than to try to lift this case out of the morass of detail with which the record is full, and put before you only the bold outlines of a case that is impressive in its simplicity. True, its thousands of documents and more thousands of pages of testimony deal with an epoch and cover a continent, and touch almost every branch of human endeavour.

They illuminate specialities, such as diplomacy, naval development and warfare, land warfare, the genesis of air warfare, the politics of the Nazi rise to power, the finance and economics of totalitarian war, sociology, penology, mass psychology, and mass pathology. I must leave it to experts to comb the evidence and write volumes on their specialities, while I picture in broad strokes the offences whose acceptance as lawful would threaten the continuity of civilisation. I must, as Kipling put it, “splash at a ten-league canvas with brushes of camel’s hair”

Until tomorrow,

Peace,

Padre Steve+

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