Friends of Padre Steve’s Word,
Thomas Paine wrote: “Character is much easier kept than recovered.”Those words apply to nations and government as much as they do to individuals.
As you might have noticed I have been spending much time writing about the corrosive effect of what the Trump administration’s strategy of willful deceit, the denial of factual truth, and the creation of so-called alternate facts, truth, and reality, on our life as a nation. I am going to return to that because it appears that the strategy is continuing to be used, and that the administration is now scrambling to hide inconvenient facts from the FBI and Congressional committees investigating the possibility of the collusion of Russian officials with Trump campaign and administration officials.
This effort spread to Representative Devin Nunes who is the committee chairman of the House committee investigating the allegations and who closed down that investigation claiming that he found no evidence of collusion with Russia despite the testimony of Republican and Democrats on that committee that Nunes had not investigate or interviewed many of the principles involved and who maintained that there indeed was collusion between members of the Trump organization, campaign, and administration with the Russians. This action was followed by the firing of former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe and a fusillade of attacks on Robert Muller, James Comey, Ron Rosenstein, others involved with the investigation, and even Attorney General Sessions whose head is believed to be on the Trump chopping block.
Every day more evidence is revealed that there is a very good chance that the Russians have compromised the President and some of his closest advisors and family members. That being said there are so many people in the administration that appear to be connected to Russian officials, including former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort and former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn, both who have been indicted by Robert Muller; Flynn even taking a plea deal in which he plead guilty to the charges against him. Likewise, others may have received large amounts of money from Russia sources to influence United States policy on the behalf of the Russian government and business oligarchy, particularly in regard to the Ukraine which Russia invaded and seized the Crimean Peninsula. Manafort appears to possibly be connected to Russian actions that led to the death of Ukrainians and quite possibly the shoot down of Malaysian Airline Flight 17.
The President’s attacks on American allies which have culminated in imposing tariffs on steel and aluminum that hurt our allies more than our enemies are weakening the United States. Likewise his refusal to take action against Russian attacks on the American election system and electorate, and the vast number of outright lies and distortions that he tells on a daily basis give anyone with cause to believe that his word is not to be trusted.
Such actions are quite dangerous, and one only has to look to the example of France in 1938 during the Czech crisis where conservative politicians, military officers, and the French right wing media allowed themselves to fall under the spell of Hitler, abandon Czechoslovakia, and with it their only chance of stopping the Nazi advance in Europe. But to them it did not matter. William Shirer recounts those days in his book The Collapse of the Third Republic: An Inquiry into the Fall of France 1940:
“Nor did the public realize how it was being poisoned and misled, not only by Fascist-minded leaders and newspapers, small in number but growing in influence, who on ideological grounds wished to accommodate Hitler and Mussolini, but also by Frenchmen who were being manipulated by German agents and money. It was at this time that Otto Abertz, the genial “Francophile” Nazi agent in Paris, became most effective. Easily penetrating political, business, social and cultural circles he worked tirelessly at winning their sympathies for Nazi Germany. He engineered trips with all expenses paid, for numerous politicians, intellectuals, industrialists, and leaders of the war veterans’ groups to Germany, where they were wined, dined, and otherwise feted, and fed with Nazi propaganda. He obtained lucrative contracts for French writers to have their books translated and published in Germany. He arranged interviews for French journalists with Hitler so that the Fuehrer could reiterate that he wished only peace and friendly relations with France. He was believed by the French secret police, which constantly shadowed him, to be the chief source of Nazi funds for buying French journals, journalists, and others of influence. Doriot’s openly Fascist daily, La Liberte, was almost entirely subsidized by Berlin. This was probably an exception. As Pierre Comert., chief of the Press Service at the Quai d’Orsay, testified to the Parliamentary Investigating Committee later: “The German agents at the time didn’t buy newspapers. They bought journalists. It was cheaper. And it was more effective.
Aside from the cheapening of moral values which followed inevitably from the abandoning of Czechoslovakia, the Munich settlement further deepened and complicated the already calamitous divisions among the French…”
When a nation abandons its allies. When its leaders give every impression of siding with an age old hostile power while insulting and demeaning its closest allies. When it reneges on deals made in good faith with other countries on issues that are important to the whole world, such as global warming, when it abandons economic pacts that worked to balance power and maintain peace, it harms more than its physical, military, and economic power: it damages its credibility. As one newspaper wrote of France after the Munich agreement that destroyed Czechoslovakia:
“Who will again believe the word of France? Who will remain her ally? Why would the French government, which has just annulled “of her own accord” her pact with Czechoslovakia, respect the Franco-Soviet Pact?”
What will be said of the United States if its leaders betray its ideals, and its promises? That trust, if lost, will take a generation or more to regain, but the cost of that loss of trust will harm us all in ways that we cannot even begin to fathom.
Until tomorrow,
Peace
Padre Steve+
The Inglorius Padre Steve's World 