Tag Archives: president donald trump

November 9, 2020 · 19:08

Burning Down the Country to Save Himself: the Götterdämmerung of Trump’s Final Days

 

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

President-Elect Biden is continuing to prepare to assume the office he has been elected while President Trump refuses to concede and endangering national security, our economy, our lives, and our entire system of government in a desperate effort to retain power.

Today he “terminated” Secretary of Defense Mark Esper who refused to allow Trump to use Federal Troops under the Insurrection Act to attack demonstrators following the murder of George Floyd, and supports renaming Army Forts named after Confederate leaders.

Trump continues to utter falsehoods about the election process in order to undermine it and our faith in that process, sending out teams to create chaos in ever state that flipped to Biden.

He continues to flaunt the reality of the Coronavirus 19 Pandemic, and even with nearly a quarter of a million Americans dead from it holds parties and rallies, and conducts business so slovenly that many of his own closest supporters, cabinet members and staff are becoming infected.

In this campaign to burn down the United States in order to save himself he is being supported by Mitch McConnell, Lindsey Graham and a host of other elected Republicans and his cult like army of illegal militias, White Nationalist paramilitary groups, Christian theocrats, the QAnon cult, and more than likely with the help  Russian agents.

Vigilance is the watchword today for Trump’s Götterdämmerung, his Twilight of the Gods is upon us. Volker Ullrich in his second volume of his biography of Adolf Hitler wrote:

“I know the war is lost,” admitted a deeply depressed Hitler in early January 1945. “The [enemies’] superiority is too great…I would like to put a bullet in my head.” But he immediately pulled himself together: “We will not surrender, never ever. We may go down but we will take a world with us.”

Today Trump aide Jason Miller said “The word concede is not in our dictionary.” I think that they will hold onto that as long as they can. It is possible that eventually Trump will issue a grudging concession, but then it is possible that in his last days he will do everything he can to destroy the country on his way out.

Anyway, as another reminder, something I wrote on 18 May 2017 about Trump, his followers, and enablers in the GOP. It was originally given the title Trump’s True Believers: Why Removing Trump will be Harder than it Seems. 

On to working on the book,

Until next time,

Peace,

Padre Steve+

Trump’s True Believers: Why Removing Trump will be Harder than it Seems 18 May 2017 

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

For those rejoicing in the continued revelations of President Trump’s malfeasance and incompetence hoping that this will soon trigger his removal either by impeachment or the use of the 25th Amendment be assured that unless something totally unexpected occurs that this will not end soon, nor well.

Dona;d Trump is a unique creature in American politics, he has succeeded in establishing himself as the center of a political cult that has taken over the Republican Party. Despite his overall approval ratings consistently being below 40% with terrible numbers pertaining to his basic character and trustworthiness, well over 80% of Republicans in every poll continue to support him. They reject any fact that is contrary to what they believe about their leader, and they tend to support the most unconstitutional aspects of his ill-defined political ideology, which more resembles the Nazi Fuhrerprinzip than anything from the American political tradition. They abhor those who raise objections of any kind based on fact so much that they have gone resorted to repeating what they sometimes refer to as alternative facts or alternative truths.

Guided by an uncompromising propaganda network of talk radio and television hosts as well as internet based organizations they have little loyalty to anyone but the President. This mass movement supported by such propaganda is well described by the great American philosopher Eric Hoffer who wrote:

“All mass movements strive, therefore, to interpose a fact-proof screen between the faithful and the realities of the world. They do this by claiming that the ultimate and absolute truth is already embodied in their doctrine and that there is no truth nor certitude outside it. The facts on which the true believer bases his conclusions must not be derived from his experience or observation but from holy writ.”

This is the world of alternative facts, and the prelude to dictatorship if the trend is allowed to continue. Likewise the true believers, those who follow the President as if he were some sort of Messiah intent on destroying the old order and establishing a new will not stand easily aside. Their support for the President is much deeper than normal political attachment, he is an extension of them who gives voice to their innermost fears, passions, and insecurity. They are defiant in their stand against those that he is against. Historian Timothy Snyder wrote of how the language of their leader and his propaganda works in the minds of the followers:

“Victor Klemperer, a literary scholar of Jewish origin, turned his philological training against Nazi propaganda. He noticed how Hitler’s language rejected legitimate opposition: The people always meant some people and not others (the president uses the word in this way), encounters were always struggles (the president says winning), and any attempt by free people to understand the world in a different way was defamation of the leader (or, as the president puts it, libel).”  

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Thus they cannot be convinced by normal argument or fact. Hoffer noted:

“The leader personifies the certitude of the creed and the defiance and grandeur of power. He articulates and justifies the resentment damned up in the souls of the frustrated. He kindles the vision of a breath-taking future so as to justify the sacrifice of a transitory present. He stages a world of make-believe so indispensable for the realization of self-sacrifice and united action.”

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

With that kind of following in the GOP it will take a while before this is finished as most GOP leaders, even those who distrust or oppose Trump on some issues are too afraid of the Trump supporters who now control their party to attempt to remove him unless those supporters turn on him. This is unlikely at least in the near future, and there is always the possibility that early some morning Trump will tweet them into committing acts of violence to crush dissent, even against Republican leaders who have the courage to jump ship and turn on the President.

The man is not normal, he is not stable, and he knows nothing but conflict. His followers believe in him almost as a Messiah figure who cannot be wrong and must be defended to the last and experience has shown us that some of would resort to violence to silence his critics.

Like Hitler and his most loyal followers, he sees this as a fight to the finish which Trump which he must win or be defeated. It is a zero sum conflict, and I do not expect it to end well, even if Trump is eventually removed by impeachment or the 25th Amendment.

So until tomorrow,

Peace

Padre Steve+

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November 8, 2020 · 02:11

Chose Reconciliation over Rage: the Opportunity of 2020

President Trump Seeing the Celebrations as he Returns to the White House

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

Today the 2020 election was called based on irrefutable evidence of voters and the statistics compiled by State Attorneys General and Election Commissioners, of both parties, and rulings of state Supreme Courts either completely composed of or highly majority Republican majorities. Yes the certified results will not be complete until each state certifies them, but the fact is that this election was more highly scrutinized and transparent than any in modern history.

After the Supreme Court’s intervention to stop a recount authorized by the Florida Supreme Court in 2000, and the controversy of Russian (Read Soviet) interference and manipulation in the 2016 election, no state (Red or Blue) or reputable media organization (Conservative or Liberal) wanted to be put in the crosshairs of any electoral controversy because there was no good outcome of being partisan. Truth, law, and how they would be remembered appeared to matter more than ideology or power. Thus Fox News much to the chagrin of Trump and many of his followers (Even their prime time pundits: Hannity, Ingraham, and Carlson) and their viewers called Arizona long before anyone else. Regardless of ideology, truth and facts seemed to matter to the media more than ever this year.

I have many friends who voted for President Trump, but none of them are on the streets and only one has challenged me on social media. They are Republicans who like I used to, take the word of allegedly conservative or Christian preachers, politicians or pundits at face value. But then I don’t tend to attract extremist of any kind as friends, and I understand what years of listening to “conservative Christian or Republican” ideologues does to the soul of someone, because that was me for at least a decade between 1997-2008. But change and redemption are possible. For me it took seeing the effects of an unjust and illegal war against Iraq, and coming home to listen to the abject racism of Rush Limbaugh towards Barack Obama before I collapsed in tears behind the wheel of my car driving between my office and our unit’s headquarters.

I say this because for Trump followers who are not racist anti-semites, but actually retain a sense of decency and hold to the values of their faith or philosophy yet for whatever reason still believed that Democrats were like Communists, or even for than matter Socialists (the most hated enemy of Communists since 1917): I understand. I used to be you. Party loyalty and the teachings of churches and Christian leaders convinced me that I had to follow that path regardless of the cost, until I returned from Iraq in 2008.

I had my doubts long before that, but from 1997 until 2008 with the exception of when I was deployed I tried to listen to Limbaugh, and later Hannity every time they were on the air. I knew better, but they played on my emotions and I fell for them, until I came home from Iraq. When I heard them defending the war and calling people who did not agree with them “unpatriotic” after what I had seen provoked a surge of anger and the realization that all of us who served there had been betrayed, by the very people who helped convince us to go to war, and demonized its opponents, politicians, preachers and pundits alike.

I think that the hardest thing for decent people who follow ideologues to experience is to realize that they were betrayed trust by people, organizations and Parties they trusted the most. I think that is happening with some now, but for the real extremists only motivated by hate of people different than them and a sense of grievance too deep to fathom that defeat will make them more extreme.

As a historian who knows far too much about America and Germany I know how this plays out. Defeated people, especially true believers look for scapegoats and fall back on myths to defend their leader’s failures and mistakes. It happened after our Civil War, after World War One, and even after Vietnam. For Americans the ghosts of the Civil War, Vietnam, and maybe even our misguided adventures in the Middle East over the past three decades loom large. For some they are something to rage against, for others something to defend and find scapegoats.

The same is true of elections. President Trump masterfully used the politics of grievance to bring people he had no respect for to follow him. Since his policies only benefitted the richest of the rich he had to use diversionary tactics to get people how did not benefit from them to follow him. These policies where historically proven to be successful; racism, religious prejudice and hatred and anti-immigrant sentiment. President Trump played on these grievances never expecting to be President. For him it was another opportunity to promote himself, and since proving himself to be an unqualified and incompetent leader in real life crises he had to hold on using the same primal passions that got him elected.

But he lost. I will never forget the picture I saw of him returning to the White House with his mouth agape after golfing at Trump National today. He was stunned, and the real shock of his defeat was in evidence before his very eyes. I imagine that is the look on so many people who bet their lives, reputations and honor to defend. For those dealing with that reality the psychological trauma has to be considered. I am not talking the people who knew better and tried to use Trump to keep power, but those who honestly thought, despite all the evidence that he actually gave a damn about them. They might have been misguided but I do understand how that can have fallen for the con of Don. It is one of the oldest psychological, religious and political games ever played, especially in the democratic era unleashed by our own revolution in 1776.

Do I think that President Trump and those who collaborated with him to gain power and destroy the lives and futures of so many people in the United States and around the world need to be held accountable? Damn right. Does that include people with no power who were manipulated into following and believing all he said because he played to their grievances, not at all. Without talk radio hosts like Rush Limbaugh I would have probably left the GOP in 1998 or at least 2000. But 9-11-2001 delayed that until the truth hit me between the eyes when I went to Iraq in 2007 and returned home in 2008.

When people who know better follow ideologues and other leaders into the abyss and subsequently realize that they were used and betrayed by those they trusted, there are results. One of the most common is Moral Injury. I think that Moral Injury is even more difficult to deal with than PTSD because the victim goes into the situation believing that those they followed cared for them. The realization that they were used often comes as a hammer blow that shatters all faith and trust and either leads them in an opposite direction or to recommit to the cause that harmed them and become more strident opponents of those who abandoned them. I have seen it and I know to many people to which this has happened to ignore it and seek vengeance on all who voted for President Trump.

However, for Trump, his low class crime family who have lived high on taxpayer money, and his enablers in the GOP hierarchy, in the Senate, House of Representatives, the Courts, and in state and local government I have little such concern. Those who know more are accountable for more, and these leaders helped destroy Constitutional liberties, protections, guardrails, and norms are far more guilty than anyone who simply voted for Trump because they had been led to believe over the course of decades that Democrats were their mortal enemies.

But that is all for now. I need to sleep as today the pain in my jaw returned and after I took my medicines I was too wiped out to notice much other that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris won the 2020 election.  I am happy that they won and I hope that we as Americans are able to be reconciled to each other even as Trump and his enablers are held accountable by law for what they have done. I could go into detail about the latter but for now I have to get some sleep.

Until next time.

Peace,

Padre Steve+ 2016

 

 

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November 7, 2020 · 00:36

Dubious Records: The United States Hits New COVID-19 Highs

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

On 30 March 2020 as COVID-19 blew up with startling quickness I wrote an article called Very, Very, Very Dreadful: COVID-19 and Our Future:

Albert Marrin wrote in his book Very, Very, Very, Dreadful: The Influenza Pandemic of 1918: 

“No other disease, no war, no natural disaster, no famine comes close to the great pandemic. In the space of eighteen months in 1918–1919, about 500 million people, one-third of the human race at the time, came down with influenza. The exact total of lives lost will never be known. An early estimate, made in 1920, claimed 21.5 million died worldwide. Since then, researchers have been continually raising the number as they find new information. Today, the best estimate of flu deaths in 1918–1919 is between 50 million and 100 million worldwide, and probably closer to the latter figure.”

The current novel Coronavirus pandemic may not kill as many people as the Great Influenza pandemic did, but the numbers that it will kill will be catastrophic, not only in the number of lives lost, but in the unrest it causes in so many nations will lead to civil wars, usurpation of powers by authoritarian regimes of various ideologies, and subsequent wars that it helps spawn in the coming years. And frankly, after 75 years of relatively small wars, which admittedly have and tragically killed millions of people, the global order has remained relatively stable, until now.

The instability in the global markets, rising unemployment, shortages of so many items that we have come to rely upon, is just the beginning, and the virus has just begun. If it follows the course of the 1918-1919 pandemic, which most scientists believe that it will this is just the first phase. The second will be a slight lessening of infections and deaths in the summer followed by an explosion of it in the fall and winter, and the third wave will be far deadlier than today’s. It may even mutate into a far deadlier strain, as of now we know of two strains of it, and who knows how many there will be in the fall and winter? I cannot say, but I would put money on at least two or three, which even if we can produce a vaccine for the current ones, in record time, the mutations may be immune to it.

We were completely unprepared for this despite knowing that we were due for a pandemic. While industry can produce record numbers of ventilators and PPE, in a relatively short period of time, even which may not be deployed soon enough for this first phase of the pandemic; they cannot produce qualified ICU doctors, nurses and technicians that fast…

Even when we get the beds and ventilators, as well as additional rooms, we will have to staff them with doctors and nurses without or with minimal ICU experience, most gained during their medical or surgical residencies, or rotations through them during nursing school. It takes a special breed of physician or nurse to work in critical care, just as it does to be a cancer specialist, Emergency Medicine Doctor or nurse, or name the medical field. The fact is that you cannot make such specialists in a limited amount of time, and thanks to our managed care, for profit, system we don’t produce enough of them anyway. They are much more valuable than the equipment they have to use…

For brevity’s sake I left some out of the article but I covered what might happen in parts of the Third World. Also the infection and death rates up to that day, as well as the belated announcement of a shutdown by President Trump that was to continue to 31 April and we know what happened after that.

On 30 March there were 722,916 cases of the COVID-19 Virus worldwide, and 33,976 deaths and 536,454 active cases.  In the United States there were 142,178 cases, and 2,484 deaths with 135,135  active cases.

As of now the Worldwide count is 49,666,501 total infections, 1,248,779 deaths and 13,164,331 active cases. Daily deaths are higher than the spring peak, over 9,000 yesterday. In the United States we have 10,058,586 total infections, 242,230 deaths and 3,425,148 active cases and 1,248 new deaths.

In the past week the United States and many other countries records of new infections, deaths, hospitalizations and ICU bed utilization have skyrocketed. Many countries in Europe and in many American cities know that they are being overwhelmed. Many can create additional ICU beds but they don’t have the trained medical personnel to adequately staff them. I think I called that. One can manufacture amazingly beautiful ventilators but without the professionals  to treat the patients they are as good as useless.

I want a good vaccine that can be widely distributed as quickly as possible. I want a cure for those infected, but until that happens we need to do all we can to prevent infection. We have to be smart, but Friday we went over 10,000,000 infections, and Texas went over a million infections. The key is the leadership that President Trump and many other world leaders have not shown. John Barry in his book The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History, wrote:

“So the final lesson of 1918, a simple one yet one most difficult to execute, is that those who occupy positions of authority must lessen the panic that can alienate all within a society. Society cannot function if it is every man for himself. By definition, civilization cannot survive that. Those in authority must retain the public’s trust. The way to do that is to distort nothing, to put the best face on nothing, to try to manipulate no one. Lincoln said that first, and best. A leader must make whatever horror exists concrete. Only then will people be able to break it apart.”

There are many times that I wish I wasn’t right about so many things, but then I am a historian.

I could go on and throw out more statistics, historical references, and things I know having worked two pandemics before this in ICUs and ERs. The United States has recorded more daily infections than at any point in the pandemic, over 100,000 a day. This is only going to get worse, winter has yet to begin.

So until the next time,

Peace,

Padre Steve+

 

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November 6, 2020 · 01:06

Lies, Lawsuits, Threat of Domestic Terrorism and the 25th Amendment: Vice President Pence, Have You no Decency?

Trump, Bannon, Gosar, and the absent Pence

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

If Vice President Mike Pence had any decency, sense of right or wrong, or any hint that he was a Christian other than going to church and occasionally speaking in pious platitudes, he would invoke the 25th Amendment and with a majority of the Cabinet remove President Trump from office. It is the only way left for him to salvage any honor he has left and maybe save the country from bloodshed in the process. Unfortunately, I do not think that he has the moral courage to do so.

I say that because of the immense destructive potential remaining in Donald Trump. In addition to unleashing unsubstantiated lawsuits in states where the vote count is not yet final, he conducted a Press Conference in which he uttered so many lies and demonstrated falsehoods about the election that it was unreal. During it he also appeared to be urging his followers to violence.

Adding to that was his former 2016 campaign advisor and former White House Chief Strategist, Steve Bannon calling for the beheading of Dr. Anthony Fauci and FBI Director Christopher Wray, followed by putting their heads on pikes for public display. Bannon’s allegation was that they were traitors and deserved it.

Added to that was another conspiracy theory promoted by Trump, that of “Sharpiegate” which sent a mob to the Maricopa County vote counting center in Phoenix. Leading the charge was a Republican Arizona Congressman, Paul Goslar.

I am sorry but all of this is criminal behavior that President Trump is actively engaging.

When a President engages in such behavior it is an impeachable offense. Of course that will not happen right now, but Mitch McConnell and others need to push Vice President Pence to fulfill his duties under the Constitution. President Trump is incapable of leading the country in any crisis, and is leading the country to disaster. Today we had another 118,000 new infections of COVID-19 and over 1,100 deaths, we are close to 10 million infections, while many states are running out of ICU beds, hospital beds in general, and the doctors, nurses, clinicians and technicians. As for the President he ignores it, urges people to act in contradictory ways than anything that would protect them and speaks as if the virus will mysteriously just disappear. He is responsible for the deaths of 240,000 Americans. That my friends is criminal negligence or worse, I think crimes against humanity would be appropriate.

But enough is enough. It is time for this malfeasance to end. Right now Vice President Pence has it in his power to make it end. He is the only person who could legally do that right now. Unfortunately, he doesn’t have the moral courage to do it, nor does he have the character to do it.

So until whenever,

Peace,

Padre Steve+

 

 

 

 

 

 

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November 5, 2020 · 00:31

The Ugly Truth: What the Election Says about the United States

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

So much for being A City Set on a Hill, The Model Republic or an Exceptional Nation. At times we have been that, but many times we have not, especially in terms of our behavior towards own own citizens at home, especially Blacks and other racial, ethnic, or religious minorities. Whether it be the attacks of the Know Nothing’s on Irish and German immigrants between the 1830s to 1850s; the Genocide committed in the name of our Manifest Destiny; the invasion, Rape and conquest of Mexico in which we took 40% of Mexico’s territory, once again in the name of our God Ordained Manifest Destiny; the enslavement of Blacks that began in Colonial times, followed by our systematic persecution of Blacks following their emancipation, citizenship, and suffrage, during and after Reconstruction and in the Jim Crow Era. The conquest, annexation, and war against Filipino patriots following the Spanish American War, which caused Mark Twain to write:

“There must be two Americas: one that sets the captive free, and one that takes a once-captive’s new freedom away from him, and picks a quarrel with him with nothing to found it on; then kills him to get his land. . .”

Last night I was still too wiped out from my tooth extraction and jaw infection to do any writing of any kind. I was still pretty wiped out most of today but I am feeling well enough to write and probably go to work in the morning. As I was getting my wits about me today and looking over the election and COVID-19 numbers I came to realize that as a country and people that we Americans are not very good or exceptional.

While the race for President is yet to be called it looks like Democrat Joe Biden has a very good chance of winning it, but having his win stand the scrutiny of lawsuits, recounts, and court decisions to follow. That does not mean that our system of government, based on a Constitutional republic with three pillars of power, the Executive, Legislative, and Judicial, based on democratic principles and the understanding that All Men are Created Equal… is perfect, or capable of being destroyed by a man and party willing to sacrifice it for their political power. President Donald Trump and his cult of dearth, the Republican Party have proved that, even if he loses he will have succeeded in undermining every pillar of our Republic, and maybe even ensuring its destruction in the coming years.

Whether Trump loses or not, nearly half of Americans have showed that they no longer believe in our Constitution, system of government, or the rights of fellow citizens. We have found that a sizable number of people who call themselves Pro-life Christians are actually simply a party of death; yes they are against abortion, but they care not a wit about the lives of those already born. In fact the man they voted for stands against the principles that they supposedly believed in less than for years ago. The Republican Party is no longer the party life life, limited government, or individual freedom, it is the party of Trump, the party of dictatorship, tyranny, and death; even willing deaths of his followers, for 14 of the top 15 states with the highest COVID-19 infection rates per million people all voted for him, unless Georgia flips, then it will be 13 of 15.

In the early hours of the morning Trump declared victory and demanded that states stop counting legal votes. As his losses began to mount he filed suit against three states on very shaky charges to stop them counting votes already cast. But the President doesn’t care because he is nationalist, but his nationalism is worse than most nationalists, because he does it to enhance his own power. Historian Timothy Snyder wrote:

“The president is a nationalist, which is not at all the same thing as a patriot. A nationalist encourages us to be our worst, and then tells us that we are the best. A nationalist, ‘although endlessly brooding on power, victory, defeat, revenge,’ wrote Orwell, tends to be ‘uninterested in what happens in the real world.’ Nationalism is relativist, since the only truth is the resentment we feel when we contemplate others. As the novelist Danilo Kiš put it, nationalism ‘has no universal values, aesthetic or ethical.’ A patriot, by contrast, wants the nation to live up to its ideals, which means asking us to be our best selves. A patriot must be concerned with the real world, which is the only place where his country can be loved and sustained. A patriot has universal values, standards by which he judges his nation, always wishing it well—and wishing that it would do better.”

Hitler was also a Nationalist, but when his self anointed German Master Race lost the war he caused, he blamed his followers as being too weak, and unworthy.  Why do I not see Trump doing the same thing when all is said and done? I think his followers should worry about that more than me.

As I get ready to finish this article Biden leads the popular and electoral vote counts, and it is very possible that hi will win Nevada where he is ahead, as well as flip Pennsylvania and Georgia where Trump is narrowly leading but the lead is diminishing every hour. By the time I get up in the morning those races may have been called. Biden could end up with over 300 electoral votes, but the damage will already have been done, and I have no doubt that Trump and his supporters will continue to do, maybe using violence in pursuit of their goal. But I do think that the courts, and other institutions will stop him and them. I could be wrong, but I don’t think they will succeed in preventing Biden’s election. But based on Trump’s words of last week I wouldn’t discount an attempt on Biden’s life before he is sworn in.

But all of that is said in realization that over the past four years, Trump and his supporters have more to destroy the foundations of the American Experiment than anything before, even the Civil War. I believe that even if our better angels prevail, that it will take more than a generation to recover from the Trump Era, if he loses now, and probably never if he remains in office.

Russian exile, dissident, and Chess Grand Master Gary Kasparov who wrote:

“First of all people here should understand that nothing is for granted. There were many warnings in the past, you know, but every time, Americans and Europeans—they believe that it’s like bad weather. It comes and goes. But the danger is real. I always want to quote Ronald Reagan, who said, “Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction.” Now, probably, it’s not even one generation. Things can happen very quickly, because there’s so much power that comes in the hands of people who have very little affection for the values that make up the core of liberal democracy and the free world.”

Trump and his supporters are those of whom Kasparov wrote. They want nothing to to with the values of liberal democracy and the free world, it is all about their grudges, hatred, and need for absolute power, which they project onto their opponents.

While I think Biden will win I take nothing for granted, and must warn others of, even if they do not want hear that warning.

So tomorrow when we know more, I wish you a good night.

Peace,

Padre Steve+

 

 

 

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October 31, 2020 · 02:12

Lying and Dying: President Trump’s Responsibility for the Coronavirus Debacle

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

On February 7th President Trump was being interviewed by Bob Woodward for his upcoming book. The interview was done by telephone and Woodward recorded it. At that point Coronavirus 19 was ravaging the Chinese city of Wuhan and its surrounding province. Not long before Trump had spoken to China’s President Xi and said of Xi:  “I think he is going to have it in good shape. But it’s a very tricky situation. It goes through air, Bob,” … “You just breathe the air and that’s how it’s passed. And so that’s a very tricky one. That’s a very delicate one. It’s also more deadly than even your strenuous flus,” Trump said.

“This is deadly stuff,” the president repeated for emphasis.

At this point Woodward did not know that the President had been briefed by his National Security Adviser Robert O’Brien had told Trump in January 28th that “This will be the biggest national security threat you face in your presidency.” He was backed by his deputy, Matt Pottinger, was a China expert whose reports on China’s previous responses and lack of transparency on the 2003 SARS epidemic, and the factors that made this new virus worse than it, warning the President that he needed to think in terms of the 1918-1920 Great Influenza pandemic. The President was briefed by Alex Azar, Dr.Robert Redfield, and Dr. Tony Fauci about what he needed to do, everyone recommended shutting down travel to and from China and imposing a 14 day quarantine for Americans returning from China. This happened on January 31st and is something that the President has since claimed that he did despite the opposition of everyone else in the room. It was a lie, like almost everything the President says and does.

Three days after his interview with Woodward the President said at the White House, in a television interview, and in a campaign rally in New Hampshire, said “When it gets a little warmer, it miraculously goes away… I think it’s going to work out good. We only have 11 cases and they are all getting better.”

In the following months the President consistently undermined those who had warning him about the danger, and despite knowing the danger admitted that “he was being a cheerleader” and “trying to present an image of strength.” At the same time he repeated false information about the virus and the need for passive protection; masks, hand washing and social distancing.

It is now nine months since President Trump learned of how deadly the virus would be, and still claims that it is not a big deal and that he “defeated” it on the day that the nation recorded its highest number of infections, which has since been surpassed, yesterday there were over 101,000 newly diagnosed cases.

Today’s COVID-19 body count:

New Diagnosed Infections: 101,461
New Deaths: 988
Number of Active Cases: 3,056,626
Total Cases: 9,316,297
Total Number of Deaths: 235,159

Let us put these numbers in perspective. The United States has roughly four percent of the World’s population, but we have roughly 20% of the total cases worldwide, just under 27% of active cases, and just under 20% of total deaths. For a country as advanced as ours this is a debacle created by a President who though he knew the truth, went against all of his experts in infectious diseases, and national security advisors. Additionally he works every day with the GOP Senate, and his Supreme Court to deny healthcare coverage to Americans, guaranteeing that those who need healthcare, especially those with President-existing conditions, which anyone who survived COVID will be certain to have.

Additionally,  as I have said many times, behind every number is a name, a face, a man or woman, a father or mother, husband or wife, child or sibling, grandparent, aunt, uncle, cousin, friend, neighbor, or coworker. Every person infected or killed by this disease is or was a flesh and blood human being, not just a statistic.

His son, Donald Junior, openly mocks those infected and the dead by dismissing the virus as “no big deal,” even as the President continues to deride those who promote sensible public health policies that would save lives.

The President’s actions during this crisis did not reflect incompetence, he knew exactly what he was doing, he was playing to his re-election above all else. Instead they were actions of criminal malfeasance, and a direct violation of his Oath as President. He failed to meet the minimum obligations of his office by lying to the country about the virus and how deadly it would be, and by undermining the nation’s response to it, something he continues to do, even four days before an election that he is promising to undermine if he loses, including telling unconstitutional right wing And white nationalist  “militias” which are nothing more than terrorist groups with more in common to the Ku Klux Klan, the Red Shirts, White Leagues, White Liners, and Nazi Brownshirts than they have in common with actual patriots.

It is going to be a very dark Fall and Winter. ICU admissions are filling up the small hospitals in most of the states with the highest infection rates. Hospital admissions are rising, and unlike the Spring and Summer waves which were relatively localized, which made it possible shift medical resources to the danger zones, it is blowing up everywhere. There are no reserves to throw into the battle, soon there will be no room in the ICUs or the hospitals. Doctors are going to have to chose who gets treatment and who doesn’t. The spike in deaths is just down the road a bit. We are staking our hopes on vaccines that are yet unproven, and will likely not be available in significant numbers until next Summer or Fall. By all means I want them to be effective, safe, and given in enough quantities to stop this horrendous virus, but even the most promising vaccines are still problematic, some clinical trials have been halted because of unexpected complications. Likewise, we don’t know their efficacy, and we don’t know when they will be available.

But it didn’t have to be this way. Had President Trump told the truth to the American people and been like Winston Churchill when Britain stood alone, told the British people:

“In this crisis I hope I may be pardoned if I do not address the House at any length today. I hope that any of my friends and colleagues, or former colleagues, who are affected by the political reconstruction, will make allowance, all allowance, for any lack of ceremony with which it has been necessary to act. I would say to the House, as I said to those who have joined this government: “I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat.”

We have before us an ordeal of the most grievous kind. We have before us many, many long months of struggle and of suffering. You ask, what is our policy? I can say: It is to wage war…”

But he did not. He could have been a hero, an iconic figure who told the truth and used every resource of the nation and our allies to defeat a global pandemic of which kind has not been seen in history. Had he done those things he could have gone down in history as a hero despite all his other failings as President. I could have lived with that. But he didn’t, and by Election Day there will be approximately 240,000 COVID-19 deaths. Some models say that by Inauguration Day that number might double.

I wish there were some good news to report, sometimes telling the truth is not a job filled with warm fuzzy thoughts.

So until next time, stay safe, protect yourselves, make sure you vote, and look out for your neighbors.

Peace,

Padre Steve+

 

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October 30, 2020 · 00:48

The Lights are Going Out: The Orwellian Future if Trump Wins

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

I go to bed tonight with a sense of foreboding for our country and the world and I cannot shake it. I feel darkness enveloping the United States as the President creates the dystopian world that he enunciated in his inaugural address. As I observe events on I am reminded of Barbara Tuchman’s description of Sir Edward Gray on the eve of the First World War, “Watching with his failing eyes, the lamps being lit in St. James Park, Grey was heard to remark that “the lamps are going out all over Europe; we shall not see them again in our lifetime.”

Today, Blacks, Jews and other minorities are being targeted and killed by Right Wing domestic terrorists including Police Officers. In Trump’s world a free press that reports the truth is the enemy of the people, bombs are being sent to political opponents that he has targeted in his Twitter storms. Hundreds of children have been forcibly taken from their parents and no one knows if they will ever be reunited. Military officers who tell the truth are persecuted, relieved from their posts and forced out of the service, by a draft dodger who derides military personal as “suckers and losers.” The President told members of illegal militias who in reality are nothing more that Right Wing Racist Terrorists to “Stand by” if he does not win the election. These are the same thugs how have killed in his name, murdered Blacks, Jews, and other racial or religious minorities, invaded the Capital Building of Michigan, threaten legislators, judges, civil rights leaders, and journalists with death, including the Governor of Michigan who they planned to kidnap Michigan’s Governor, and then try and execute her. Sadly, these are not isolated instances. The same groups have killed law enforcement officers, attacked churches, synagogues, and mosques, and routinely attempt to threaten and intimidate anyone that disagrees with them. I have been targeted on several occasions. But I will not back down against hate filled racist , amoral, and violent supporters of President Trump. They claim to be “pro-life” and “pro-freedom” when they blatantly threaten the lives and freedoms of their political opponents. Abraham Lincoln said:

“We all declare for liberty” but “in using the same word we do not all mean the same thing. With some the word liberty may mean for each man to do as he pleases with himself and the product of his labor; while with others the same word may mean for some men to do as they please with other men and the product of other men’s labor.”

I cannot shake the deep sense of foreboding I have regarding the country and the world as President Trump’s continues to attack the character of all that oppose him or simply want to ferret out the truth plethora of allegations concerning what appears to be treasonous activities by his closest advisers and his apparent attempts quashed with the acquiescence of a large number of Republican members of Congress.  There is something very wrong going on and it almost feels that I can see the disaster unfolding before it happens.

Hannah Arendt wrote: “When evil is allowed to compete with good, evil has an emotional populist appeal that wins out unless good men and women stand as a vanguard against abuse.

She was right. We are seeing a populist appeal that is embracing evil and it is happening before our very eyes.

I am not the only one to notice, leading conservative writers, foreign policy experts, and constitutional scholars have pointed out the same things that I have been saying for over two years. I do try to be positive and to believe that things will work out for the best, but the more I observe the more my confidence in our leaders and for that purpose many of our people to do the right thing is diminished.

That being said I do not give in to the feelings of foreboding or intend give up without a fight. I want my country to live up to its ideals and I am concerned about the real world, our alliances, our environment, and especially the real threat to freedom posed by the unrestrained words and actions of our 45th President. He has proven that he has no regard for the Constitution, our laws, or simple human decency. With every tweet and remark he demonstrates that he believes that he is above the law. He demonstrates every trait of a sociopath incapable of empathy and capable of the greatest evil.

With every new day I become more convinced than ever that Mr. Trump will find a way to seize power absolute power and that he will get away with it. This may come in a Reichstag Fire moment where he, during a “national emergency” uses the powers given to the executive through standing Executive Orders, or legislated in the Patriot Act. Conversely he might do it with the help of his current GOP majority in Congress, even if it means that they doom themselves to irrelevance as a co-equal branch of government, and even if the GOP members of the House act as a lame duck body before the new Congress can be seated.

But even if that doesn’t happen, the poisonous and corrosive aspect of the President’s repeated lies, distortions, falsifications, and attacks on the Constitution, our laws, institutions, the free press, and individuals will doom us to years of conflict and strife even if he loses the election and is physically removed from the White House.

The President not only uses his spokespeople and twitter account to stoke fear and hatred, but he uses the pundits of Fox News to do so. As such Fox has become nothing more than Trump’s personal propaganda ministry indoctrinating millions of gullible and desperate people to do his bidding. Arendt wrote about such behavior and its effect on 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.”

I believe in a particular universal ideal enunciated in the Preamble of the Declaration of Independence that All men are created equal. Likewise I believe the words of the Constitution matter and that it is all of our obligation to labor to build “a more perfect union.” As such that I must continually stand for what is right, what is true, and what is enduring for that is the oath that I swore and have re-affirmed for over 37 years of military service.

I am more worried than ever about our democracy and I agree with Timothy Snyder who wrote:

“Democracy failed in Europe in the 1920s, ’30s, and ’40s, and it is failing not only in much of Europe but in many parts of the world today. It is that history and experience that reveals to us the dark range of our possible futures. A nationalist will say that “it can’t happen here,” which is the first step toward disaster. A patriot says that it could happen here, but that we will stop it.”  

We Americans do not like to think that what has happened to so many other countries can happen here; and in fact I never used to believe that it could. I believed that our system of checks and balances and the nature of our institutions could weather any threat. Today I question if they will hold. I agree with Russian exile and Chess Grand Master Gary Kasparov who wrote:

“First of all, people here should understand that nothing is for granted. There were many warnings in the past, you know, but every time, Americans and Europeans—they believe that it’s like bad weather. It comes and goes. But the danger is real. I always want to quote Ronald Reagan, who said, “Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction.” Now, probably, it’s not even one generation. Things can happen very quickly, because there’s so much power that comes in the hands of people who have very little affection for the values that make up the core of liberal democracy and the free world.” 

Because of that I believe that we must stand for principle and work for a new birth of freedom even as it seems that freedom itself is in danger due to the actions of the American President. We must stand or we will lose everything that generations of Americans as well as others have fought so hard to preserve, but it is difficult. As Max Boot wrote back in March of 2018:

“Trump is sucking a substantial portion of America into his Orwellian universe. The rest of us have to struggle simply to remember that war isn’t peace, freedom isn’t slavery, ignorance isn’t strength.”

The election that will decide the fate of our Constitutional Republic itself is at stake. Will we vote to establish the personal dictatorship of Donald Trump and his racist, fascist, and anti-democratic Party of thugs, or will we take a chance on freedom?

Timothy Snyder wrote:

“The president is a nationalist, which is not at all the same thing as a patriot. A nationalist encourages us to be our worst, and then tells us that we are the best. A nationalist, ‘although endlessly brooding on power, victory, defeat, revenge,’ wrote Orwell, tends to be ‘uninterested in what happens in the real world.’ Nationalism is relativist, since the only truth is the resentment we feel when we contemplate others. As the novelist Danilo Kiš put it, nationalism ‘has no universal values, aesthetic or ethical.’ A patriot, by contrast, wants the nation to live up to its ideals, which means asking us to be our best selves. A patriot must be concerned with the real world, which is the only place where his country can be loved and sustained. A patriot has universal values, standards by which he judges his nation, always wishing it well—and wishing that it would do better.”

So I ask, are you a Nationalist or a Patriot? There is a big difference. Nationalism ends up in Genocide and the destruction of the nation. Patriotism might result in martyrdom, but ends in freedom. The fact is that one has to actually think about the consequences of his or her vote and what it means in the long term. Timothy Snyder wrote:

“The hero of a David Lodge novel says that you don’t know, when you make love for the last time, that you are making love for the last time. Voting is like that. Some of the Germans who voted for the Nazi Party in 1932 no doubt understood that this might be the last meaningfully free election for some time, but most did not. Some of the Czechs and Slovaks who voted for the Czechoslovak Communist Party in 1946 probably realized that they were voting for the end of democracy, but most assumed they would have another chance. No doubt the Russians who voted in 1990 did not think that this would be the last free and fair election in their country’s history, which (thus far) it has been.

Your vote matters, and it might be the last meaningful vote you ever cast. If you have decided that the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution and it’s Amendments do not matter; that racism and the lives of Blacks and other minorities do not matter, and that the only rights that matter are those of the White Racist One percent who only benefit from their economic and political power.

Until tomorrow,

Peac

Padre Steve+

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October 27, 2020 · 01:57

The Trump Administration and COVID-19: The Ultimate Death Panel


Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

On Sunday President Trump’s Chief of Staff Mark Meadows made the comment that we could not defeat the Coronavirus 19 Pandemic. It was an open admission of defeat, the moral equivalent of surrender, to a virus that President knew was coming and knew would be worse than anything we have faced. He knew that it would be incredibly deadly, and knowing that ignored warnings from multiple American intelligence agencies, and withdrew the CDC’s investigators from China. He began a very porous shutdown of air travel from China to the United States, but took no other actions.

He talked about invoked invoking the Wartime Production Act to produce ventilators, and personal protective equipment He refused to do anything until the Stock Markets crashed at the end of March. Then he announced a shutdown of the country. Businesses were closed, as were schools for 30 days. The CDC announced a reasonable evidenced based plan for states to begin reopening, but as soon as the 30 days were up the President effectively ended the lockdown and pressured governors to re-open before they were ready, and far too many complied resulting in massive numbers of new infections and deaths.

In spite of that, many states enacted measures to mandate the wearing of masks, social distancing and hand washing, and some despite the President’s pressure as well as pressure from armed White Nationalist terrorist groups who assaulted their state houses, and threatened legislators, governors, public health, and law enforcement officials.

One relief bill passed by Congress and signed by the President in April. In May, realizing the crisis to the health and safety of Americans, and the economy, the House of Representatives passed another, but the Senate refused to pass it, and the President did nothing to twist the arms of his own defiant party members in the Senate to get anything done. Instead he bragged of his success during a second spike during the summer, and despite his Treasury Secretary’s negotiation with the House to pass another relief bill to help Americans, help the states, and bolster the economy. Instead he did nothing brag about his fake successes; massive unemployment, Nearly nine million infections, over 230,000 deaths, and even more economic disaster and weakening of our national security. With the infections spiking to record levels the President claimed that we were turning the corner, unfortunately that corner is a nation aside pandemic with no reserves to fight it.

Sarah Palin was the first nutcase liar and conspiracy theorist to say that The Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare had Death Panels which wold choose who would live or die. Of course that was a bold faced lie because there was nothing in the legislation to allow it, or was simply the spiteful rantings of a deranged theocratic Christian who believed so called prophecies that she would lead the nation.

But her ranting were believed by the increasingly Christian Nationalist ans White Supremacist GOP. When Mitt Romney, whose Heritage Foundation healthcare plan for Massachusetts was adopted by Obama to ensure that everyone paid something for their medical care, including those with President-existing medical conditions got care was attempting to defend it at a campaign rally he was shouted down by attendees who cried out “Let them die!” 

That my friends was the death of the Center-Right Republican Party that only existed before 1964 when Barry Goldwater followed by Richard Nixon in 1968 who gave the most radical White Racist and Neo-Confederates of the Democratic Party, Senator Strom Thurmond’s “Dixiecrats” a home in the GOP after passing of the Voting Rights Act of 1964, and the Civil Rights Act of 1965  bi-partisan majorities led by a Southern Democrat President, Lyndon Baines Johnson in the House and Senate, became the party of White Supremacy, though few realized it at the time. But ever since Richard Nixon swept the South in 1968, with the powerful assistance of the Dixiecrats, have become increasingly radicalized over the issues of race and religion. Now the GOP is for all practical reasons the embodiment of all the Dixiecrats could have ever hoped for, as it is no longer the party of Abraham Lincoln but that of Jefferson Davis.

And now in a time of crisis it falls back on a theories expounded on by the Southern Slave Owners, the Confederate States, the Jim Crow South and Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Party, that some races are subhuman, and other individuals because of age, pre-existing medical conditions, birth defects, or physical and mental disabilities are “Life Unworthy of Life.”

Now with an uncontrolled virus raging infecting millions and killing hundreds of thousands of Americans, the President and the GOP Senate majority do nothing to help Americans infected with or who have lost their jobs, and now are losing their homes because of their indifference for life.

President Trump and his Senate majority have become the party of death, and the ultimate Death Panel, ignoring ignoring the advice of well respected and world renowned virologists, contagious disease specialists, and public health experts at home and abroad.

Because it is late I will end with that.

Until whenever,

Peace,

Padre Stube+1

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October 24, 2020 · 03:15

Lying and Dying Every Single Day: Trump Continues at the Final Debate

Friends of Padre Steve’s

I reluctantly watched the train wreck of a debate between President Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden. To his credit the President pretty much to the debate format, a first in this election season, although he did try to steamroll the moderator more and more as the debate went on. He looked angry, for some reason, I thought his orange tint was a shade darker, it made his angry eyes stand out. But anyway, I digress.

As far as the debate went some issues were discussed and both men stuck to their script, Biden did nothing to harm his campaign and despite a few times where he to a lesser extent than the President uttered a few phrases of  word salad, but generally stayed on topic and hit Trump pretty hard a number of times. The President’s best line of attack was was near the end of the debate he attacked Biden on the transition to a non-fossil fuel driven economy and the push for zero emissions. Of course the Vice President’s ideas make sense and the United has to lead the world in this direction. But Trump used it to try to make his case as a friend of the oil industry, especially in Pennsylvania and Texas. I don’t know how many votes he swayed with the argument but it was really the only time that he might have got some people to not abandon him, but in doing so he also dehumanized poor and mostly black or Mexican people who live in the communities Just outside the fence lines of refineries and plants. He insinuated that they benefitted through jobs at them, but that is not the case. Most currently employed oil workers, are suburbanites who make enough money to live well away from the toxin spewing plants and refineries they work. As always the President lied about the effect on the economy, and the people who would be effected by the change, heck even the oil companies are beginning to diversify into wind, solar and other renewable energy sources.

Unfortunately lying is his baseline and he seldom deviated from it. Biden made some factual errors but they did not come across as outright lies. Likewise,

I had to start drinking early because the President lied continuously and with such warp speed that I could not keep track of all of them. His heartlessness was revealed so many times that as Priest and Christian I was overwhelmed at his repetition of so many disproved conspiracy theories, absolute lies, and the realization that Donald Trump does not care about the lives of any person than him, even his supporters based on his answers to the disaster that his administration had been regarding the Coronavirus 19 pandemic. The President claimed that cases were going down, that excess deaths were down, deaths were down, and that vaccines would soon be here and distributed by the military.

He told of his make believe world with a happy ending, when with COVID-19 there is no happy ending, no magical silver bullet that is going to make it go away. On the day of the debate the United States record its highest number of infections ever, and Friday the infections soared by almost 6,000 more than Thursday, 81,210 new infections and over 900 new deaths. The worst rates of infection were per million people were as follow: North Dakota, South Dakota, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, Iowa, Tennessee, Arkansas, Georgia, South Carolina, Wisconsin, Arizona, Nebraska, Idaho, Utah, Texas, Nevada, Illinois, and Oklahoma. Those are the top twenty. Sadly, most of the infections and deaths in these states were not in the initial surge, but after months of negligence and political malfeasance of the Trump Administration, and the mostly Republican governments of these states, many of which opened quickly, reopened schools, and for the most part have poor public health systems and few intensive care beds. The spike in deaths hasn’t begun yet, but they will and the President will again be shown to be a liar, whose refusal to deal with facts, attacks the scientist and doctors that tell the truth, and attempts to mislead every American.

During the debate he spoke like Hitler in the last months of World War II that said that Germany would be delivered from defeat by new miraculous weapons, and a split between the Allies, when every German military leader and industrial expert knew that Hitler’s Germany was doomed to defeat. Like Hitler, he blames those who were responsible for his early successes at fault for his defeat, and blames the professional military and intelligence officers, diplomats, scientists, and even long term followers for being disloyal not to the nation, but to him.

He promised an effective way vaccine that neither the drug companies or any experts will be available in sufficient numbers until next summer or fall. Then he promised that this miracle vaccine would be distributed by the military. That my friends is complete hogwash. Our military is not designed to distribute millions of vaccines across the country. Our medical departments have been cut to the bone by the Trump administration in order to provide more “trigger pullers” and our reserve and National Guard medical personnel have civilian jobs, most of which involve staffing medical centers, research institutions, hospitals, clinics, and private practices all of which are already engaged in the battle against COVID-19. and by the way the readiness and maintenance readiness of the transportation assets needed to get the vaccines to the places they can be used absolutely suck. Contrary to what President Trump says all the time, our military has not been rebuilt. It is broken by nearly two decades of incessant and unnecessary wars, and those wars broke our ability to sustain our military at the levels it needs to confront the Soviet, Chinese, North Korean, and Iranian threats, additionally he has undermined our alliances with long term allies and diminished the trust in the world of American leadership.

So a few more words about his claims of the military being able to distribute a yet to be proven and produced vaccine is a lie. Heck, we in the military are being told that we won’t have Flu vaccines available for military personnel until late December and being told to go to civilian providers to get our Flu shots. Neither do we have a full fledged COVID-19 testing program in the military. If you want to know why units are sequestered and cannot deploy, or ships have to disrupt deployments because of COVID-19 outbreaks We don’t have them, and even if a safe COVID 19 vaccine is developed the chance that it will be distributed quickly by a military logistics system that is under immense strain to supply our troops around the world is mindless jibber-jabber.

I have to ask how many million vaccines will be produced, how they will be distributed by a already stressed military supply system. The fact is that the virus is blowing up all over the country especially in Red States that resisted almost every aspect of the science and ensured that their citizens would be more exposed and more vulnerable to the virus, and this includes states who Governors might be Democrats but whose legislatures and courts are controlled by Republicans is a ridiculous defense of those states policies that put people at risk.

As of today there are over 8.575 million people who have been infected, almost 230,000 who have died, and if you count the number of over average deaths probably drives the death total to almost 300,000. Trump said that the numbers were down. It is not. Trump claimed that Virus infections were going down, as were deaths. But that is not the case, we are going into the third spike of the first wave of the pandemic because the Trump administration and its congressional, state, White Nationalist  and Christian Nationalist supporters ensured that any meaningful action to stop the virus would be undermined, because their political and Racist and religious political power demanded that it be so. Look at the statistics. Ethnic minorities, the elderly, and the poor are the majority of the deaths and infections. Those numbers are now beginning to include a lot of White people in states that have done the least to protect their citizens and have the least medical capabilities to handle the onslaught. Yes, the major metropolitan cities in the Northeast were hit hardest in the early days of the pandemic, but in comparison to the new areas, are doing well. That is not good enough but their preventative measures have been undermined by the President’s propaganda and an emotional and spiritual fatigue created by months of life disrupted by the virus.

Of course there was the propaganda put out by Trump on how children’s being separated and locked up by his administration were “being very well cared for” while locked in cages at the border.  I’m sorry, the Nazis said the same things of the Jews incarcerated at the “humanitarian” camp of Theresienstadt concentration camp, from which nearly 90% were sent to the death camp of  Auschwitz.  

When Biden brought up that over 545 children, forcibly separated from their parents at the border will likely never see their parents again because of Trump’s policies, Trump said “Good.” The fact is that the President has never, every condemned any violent acts, or previous illegal activities that international courts led by Americans would call Crimes Against Humanity, are not only tolerated, but encouraged, because the American President said so.

I am going to end for the night. I cannot be silent as a Christian, politics does not enter into my equation, but morality and human decency do matter, as do the best humanitarian aspect of my faith. The German martyr Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote:

“If I sit next to a madman as he drives a car into a group of innocent bystanders, I can’t, as a Christian, simply wait for the catastrophe, then comfort the wounded and bury the dead. I must try to wrestle the steering wheel out of the hands of the driver.” 

Likewise, if somehow I think that because I am a White Military Officer and remained silent that I will be spared because of that, I would be misguided and an imbecile. There is no safety for anyone today, even for those who most fervently believe what President Trump says. If you are one of them, and your really thing your liebes matter to him, they don’t and you are believing a lie.

The anti-Hitler martyr of the White Rose resistance Sophie Scholl wrote:

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

Thats a fact. We have a President who is lying while people are dying every day In increasing numbers because of his lies, especially his supporters. That my friends is not a lie. Ask yourself, do you really trust him, or have you subordinated you’re morality, ethics, and respect for yourself to him, for what?

i do not stand in judgement over anyone. I believe in justice tempered by mercy. But as for me I have to echo the words of German Major General Henning Von Tresckow, a key planner in the anti-Hitler plot who on learning of his failures killed himself if the face of Soviet forces:

“We have to show the world that not all of us are like him. Otherwise, this will always be Hitler’s Germany.” 

Trump by no means is Hitler, but he acts a lot like him in terms of behaviors, words, and attitudes, especially in regards to minorities, the poor, his opponents, and even his supporters.

So until next time When I go back to my Battle of Leyte Gulf series, have a good night and please be safe. Even if you agree with the President and plan on voting form him, matters less to me than your lives and safety. I am tired of death, especially deaths that are completely preventable by the simplest actions such as the proper wear of face masks, social distancing, and hand washing. Those are not tyrannical measures, they are simple common sense and proven by science.

So until next time,

Peace,

Padre Steve+

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October 6, 2020 · 03:02

No Sympathy for a President with No Empathy or Tose Who Follow Him Into the COVID19 Abyss


President Trump Defiantly Taking off His Mask after Returning to the White House Knowing his is Still Infectious 

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

I did not get online until couple of hours ago. I was a work, and then went to get gel injections in my knees and a steroid shot in my hip. I’m getting closer to Dr. House every day. That being said I spend most of this evening trying to trim down my Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory! manuscript to the 100,000 words for my publisher desires without cutting meat and not fat. I only have about 17,000 words left to get to the goal and then I can pick my photos from what is in the public domain or allowed with attribution by their authors, and then work on my index. In the meantime I am working on my retirement physical, waiting for the VA to decide my disability rating,  looking for a job for post retirement, and stressing out about preparing our townhouse for sale and getting ready to find a new home without stairs, unless it has an elevator. 

That being said I didn’t see any news except for pop up notifications on my iPad until a couple of hours ago. I was aghast at President Trump’s actions leaving Walter Reed, knowing that he is contagious and his life is at risk, and then immediately unmasked when he got to the claim that COVID19 was not to be feared at the White House angered me because of the lack of concern for His staff, those who volunteered to serve in his administration or those assigned by DOD, the Justice Department, the Secret Service, DIA, NSA, CIA, FBI, or any other department that assigned career personnel to the White House.

My God, Trump has friends like Herman Cain who died of COVID19 after attending one of his rallies unmasked. Now 11 people, including his wife are infected who travelled with or attended events with him. Some like Kellyanne Conway have infected family members. How many others have passed it to their family members and friends?

Even Hitler allowed friends, advisors, and officials to leave his bunker as he prepared for Götterdämmerung in Berlin, even as he left the majority of Germans to death, dislocation, destruction, and his military to Soviet POW Camps, from which few returned. Trump makes Hitler look good by comparison.

Gustave Gilbert, an American Army Psychologist who tended to the major Nazi War Criminals at Nuremberg said:

“In my work with the defendants (at the Nuremberg Trails 1945-1949) I was searching for the nature of evil and I now think I have come close to defining it. A lack of empathy. It’s the one characteristic that connects all the defendants, a genuine incapacity to feel with their fellow men. Evil, I think, is the absence of empathy.”

When I think of all the blood on Trumps hands due to his early knowledge of COVID19’s deadliness before the first reported case in our country and did nothing to stop it. He actively hindered the  CDC, FDA, and NIH; ignored the intelligence of the NSA, CIA and the head of his National Security Counsel about the national security risks; undermined public health officials at every turn by advocating for unsafe practices and proven testing and contact tracing methods.

As of yesterday his actions and inactions  have cost the lives of over 215,000 Americans as of yesterday, with 7.67 million infected, and 2.5 million current infections, with numbers going up in almost every state on a daily basis.

In doing so he doesn’t care if he kills all of us. I have lost any sense of personal sympathy or empathy for him, that being said I don’t want him to die, but be effectively leaving Walter Reed while still infected with his medical team shipping that he is not out of danger is irresponsible and needs to be condemned publicly by anyone with a grain of decency left in their soul.

To say he is not responsible, as he says himself is to say no one has died, and no one is guilty. Associate Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson, who prosecuted the Nazis Gilbert watched over said in his closing argument at Nuremberg:

“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.”

Trump claims no responsibility for the death and infections, just before his super-spreader event, he was asked about them, and said “It is what it is.” If any claims that Trump is not guilty of these death, then they are no better than those that defended the Nazi crimes. Likewise, if one person launches an ad hominem attack on me for this post, it will be their last here, and I will do my best to find them and shame them publicly, because they are willing accomplices in those deaths and infections.

Sophie Scholl, the 22 year old University of Munich Student leader of the White Rose Resistance against Hitler said:

“Nothing is so unworthy of a civilized nation as allowing itself to be governed without opposition by an irresponsible clique that has yielded to base instinct. It is certain that today every honest German is ashamed of his government. Who among us has any conception of the dimensions of shame that will befall us and our children when one day the veil has fallen from our eyes and the most horrible of crimes – crimes that infinitely outdistance every human measure – reach the light of day.”

I cannot imagine any honest American being ashamed of Trump and his clique’s actions during the COVID19 Pandemic. 

Finally, if you dear reader are a COVID19 Denier, refuse to were a mask properly, physically distance, do not wash your hands, or exhibit symptoms and willingly expose others you are guilty, just as Hitler’s followers who obeyed what they knew were illegal, immoral, and criminal orders and you deserve whatever happens to you. God help your families, friends, coworkers and associates, and may God or anyone save us from this madman. 

Thus ends the lesson,

Peace, if you can find it,

Padre Steve+ 

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Filed under Coronavirus, Coronavirus 19 Pandemic, COVID19, crimes against humanity, faith, History, leadership, nazi germany, News and current events, Political Commentary, war crimes, war crimes trials

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