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Friends of Padre Steve’s World,
I apologize for the long delay in getting this article online. I began it Wednesday but had a number of interruptions which culminated last night when most of the article was lost when it did not automatically save. I was almost ready to hit the publish button when I noticed so much was missing.
Wednesday I felt a tremendous sense of relief as President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris were sworn into office. It felt like the threat of dictatorship, a violent coup, and the destruction of our Republic by President Trump and his violent supporters led by Neo-Nazis, White Supremacists, and self-proclaimed anti-government “militias” had receded into the background, at least for the moment. It also felt incredibly hopeful as an incoming administration guided by what is best for the lives, health, and security of all Americans was taking charge. Watching the President and Vice President begin work shortly after the inauguration to begin to tear down the legacy of destructive tyranny and lawlessness built by Trump over the last four years was heartening.
i have to admit that I cried a lot on Wednesday, tears of joy and relief, tears that helped remind me that somehow we as a nation and our Constitution had survived the most malevolent President and his cult followers attempt to destroy it by every means possible including violence and murder.
The setting of the ceremony was almost surreal. Just two weeks before thousands of violent protesters, many armed stormed the Capitol, smashing windows and battering down the very doors that the new President, Vice President and members of Congress were now entering the West side of the building for the inauguration.
There was also the absence of millions of people who would have attended had the Coronavirus disaster been managed effectively by the outgoing Trump Administration. As of today over 25 million infections, many suffering long term dehabilitating medical conditions, and 420,000 deaths, millions of lost jobs, tens of thousands of businesses closed forever, shutdowns of schools, businesses and mass transportation systems that people depend on. I have to also mention how overwhelmed our hospitals, medical system, and the physicians, nurses and technicians who are worn out from trying to save the lives of dying COVID-19 patients, many becoming sick or dying of COVID as they try to save their patients.
Likewise the threat of violence which had been promised by those who executed an insurrectionist assault on the Capitol building just two weeks before forced the deployment of Secret Service, FBI, Capitol Police, Washington Metro Police and 25,000 National Guard troops backed by specialized active duty troops to deter those threatened attacks. In addition to the unprecedented number of National Guard and police officer, there were the barriers, the blocking of major thoroughfares, and dividing the Capitol into Red and Green Zones.
That was unsettling but necessary. The seditious and treasonous mob which had been incited and encouraged on by President Trump, his son Donald Jr., his personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, Congressman Mo Brooks of Alabama, and a number of others were ready to strike again, The terrorists who assaulted and breached the Capitol Police security killing and wounding police officers who they called “traitors” as they beat them with baseball bats, flagpoles with American, Trump, MAGA, Christian Flags, and of course the Confederate Battle , but most ironically the “back the blue” versions of the American flag.
I am sure that the massive show of force for the inauguration at the Capitol and in various State Capitols deterred another assault, but I don’t think the threat is over. The many disillusioned followers of the QAnon conspiracy theory movement are being actively recruited by anti-government, Neo-Nazi, White Supremacy groups for radicalization into violent for soldiers of a revolutionary movement that has much more in common with Hitler’s SA, or Stürmabteilung Brownshirts, than with the American patriots who fought for our independence in 1776. There is no comparison between those Trump’s Cult and their Neo-Nazi thugs and our founders. The ideology of the Nazis and our founders were and are polar opposites, and anyone who believes that the violent overthrow of the ongoing American experiment is a domestic enemy, and a supporter of terrorism. They are no better than Al Qaida, ISIS, MS-13, or any foreign enemy. Despite the return to normalcy their threat remains and decent people must oppose them to identify them for who and what they are.
Likewise the ignorance that helped fan the flames of radicalism that led to Trump’s election still remains. The comments on Facebook by rabid Trump supporters are worryingly absurd. They claim “the left and mainstream media bowing down to Biden” without any self reflection how they formed a personality cult around Trump in which they abandoned all the principles that they had once stood for, except perhaps White Supremacy. While they condemn actual media sources and reporters be they on television or print, they don’t actually read them or watch them. They simple take the carefully edited snippets given to them by the Fox News nightmare, or nighttime lineup, those of Newsmax or OAN, or radio hosts like Rush Limbaugh as gospel. They never do their own research in fact they are actively doing that. Basically they are like the Germans who unquestionably took the words of me like Joseph Goebbels and Julius Streicher as truth, especially after the Nazis shut down all opposition newspapers.
It was they who wanted to overthrow the Constitution, its protections, and the guardrails which provided the guarantees that regardless of which party won the Presidency or controlled Congress in order to make Trump a President for life and in the process crush any opposition to him or them. They were the ones who used executive orders and passed laws to disenfranchise people of color, to roll back the rights of women, LTBTQ people, immigrants, religious minorities, and political opponents. The aided and abetted antisemitism including attacks on Synagogues and Jewish community centers resulting in mass murder. They gave their blessing to attacks on Black churches, and those who peaceably protested the violence committed against and the murder of black men and women, the Black Lives Matter movement.
After the agonizing eight minute and 46 second long public murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer they cheered on brutal attacks by police, and armed white Supremacists on protestors, including one led by President Trump and a heavily militarized police and National Guard attack on peace protestors in Lafayette Park and St. James Church to the President could get a photo-op outside the Church with a Bible in hand. When Right Wing terrorists murdered police officers they said nothing. They said nothing when immigrant families and refugees were separated from their children at the U.S. Mexican border, when children were locked in cages without beds, toilets, and nothing by aluminum blankets. They said nothing when at least 500 children were separated from their families, sent to countries not their own, and cannot be found. They said nothing when contracted doctors at border detention facilities forcibly sterilized immigrant and refugee women. This makes me doubt the pro-life credentials of Right Wing Christians who voted, supported and marched against the Capitol because Trump was allegedly anti-abortion.
Finally his supporters overlook his incompetent and criminally malicious Non-response to the Coronavirus 19 pandemic which has infected two and a half million Americans and killed over 420,000. Those numbers are probably an undercount because of inconsistent accounting measures and the lack of transparency of the Trump administration and many GOP led state governments in providing the information, counting the numbers, and lack of attention in providing PPE, building up supplies of what medical personnel and first responders needed, and their willingness to let people die certainly qualifies as a Crime Against Humanity, and needs to be prosecuted as such.
Despite all of this and the urgency of the situation with COVID-19, the economy in massive crisis with so many businesses barely hanging on, some in a death circle that will create even more economic disaster, more job losses, more business failures, more Coronavirus infections and deaths, and maybe even the collapse of our medical system. This is a national emergency and National Security Crisis. Yet many in the Republican leadership, including members who actively supported and incited sedition and the overthrow of a valid election by force and violence, are fighting President Biden’s efforts to protect Americans, save the economy and protect our national security. In the process they are seeking to break our democracy, destroy the Constitution and bring about an authoritarian government based on minority rule. Even though Donald Trump is gone there are alt least two score Republican members of the Senate and House trying to be the next Trump. That doesn’t count many in state office who would like to do the same. These are all Mussolini’s in the making or worse embryonic Hitlers. Trump was to incompetent to fulfill their vision and many who still support him are very angry and ready to follow anyone who is more violent, radical and competent than him.
Senator Ted Cruz who Helped Incite the attack on the Capitol wearing a highly disrespectful “Come and take it” mask at the inauguration of Joe Biden. If he had any sense he would know that there was no correlation between the Goliad Flag and his treasonous attempt to overthrow the government and Constitution of the United States.
Since they are now in the minority they must be defeated and the actions needed to save our country and help all Americans must be passed with or without their help. Senator Schumer the new Senate Majority Leader can end the filibuster, which due to the GOP is a filibuster in name only, a member on has to say he or she is filibustering a measure to stop action. It is not like the old days where Senators had to either make arguments against it or just keep talking, like the late Senator Robert Byrd who could do would simply begin reading a book, or even a phone book to keep the filibuster going. But it was the racist Dixiecrat turned Republican Strom Thurmond who set the record for the longest single speaker filibuster in the history of the United States in opposing the Civil Rights Act of 1957 speaking for 24 hours and 18 minutes. Trust me there is no one in the Republican Senate capable of speaking that long for anywhere close to that.
If enough Republicans fail to support bills that help their constituents that has been endorsed and is fully supported by the National Chamber of Commerce, perhaps the most conservative business organizations, as well as President Trump’s former top economic advisor, the House and Senate can resort to a process called reconciliation to pass the the Coronavirus and economic relief bills with a simple majority. The Republicans themselves have done this on more than one occasion.
President Biden and Democrats in the House and Senate should not repeat the mistake of President Obama who waited on key legislation, or modified it with conservative Republican ideas, such as the Hermitage Foundation’s health care plan used by Mitt Romney that became the Affordable Health Care Act or as it is better known “Obamacare” hoping for Republican support which never came. If the Republicans attempt to thwart the legislation, shut down the filibuster and move to reconciliation. To paraphrase Mitch McConnell, “elections have consequences, winners rule and losers go home.”
It is not enough to sit back and feel good. Democrats have to show that they care about all Americans by pushing these laws through against the reticence of Republicans and the histrionic and vitriolic pundits like Sean Hannity and others like him. The GOP is not the party of the little guy, the small business owner, the worker who works for barely enough money to house and feed their families, without affordable health care, or any real pension or savings plans. They are the party of the rich and whenever they do a tax cut the majority always goes to the most wealthy as well as corporations that already use existing tax laws to pay nothing in taxes.
They are not the party of people trying to ensure that their kids have a solid education that provides a way to either get into college and afford it, or rediscover the necessity of public schools teaching vocational education for kids that prepares them for high paying technical jobs. We had those programs when I was in high school in the 1970s. Kids had educations that either prepared them for college or good paying jobs. That can be done again, but it means that local, state, and the federal government must invest in that education. It sure the hell is a lot more affordable than for profit colleges that take students for every dollar they can under federally backed student loans which are nearly impossible to pay back, for students who did not get those skills in high school or in public community colleges.
They are not the party of Public Health and basic preventive care that could prevent the need for expensive health care to treat conditions that could have been treated early. Under Republicans at all levels of government those services have been gutted. There is no safety net for healthcare, just as there is no safety net for the poor, those who lose their employment, those who cannot afford housing, or for that matter anything and mind you most of these people live in the poor rural regions of Republican governed states.
They are not the party that wants to invest in the infrastructure needed to ensure or economic and military security. That includes roads, bridges, power plants, electric and gas distribution networks, dams for hydroelectric power, wind farms, and solar power, and the hardening of the cast computer networks to protect us from hacking or even electromagnetic pulse attacks. They refuse to deal with sea rise which threatens our critical seaports, coastal communities, farmlands which are inundated when levees fail, and even major military installations along the coast and in hurricane zones. This isn’t fantasy, it is a reality that for more than a decade the Pentagon, the CIA, the NSA, and many other Federal agencies have warned us about for years.
I could go on, but unless the GOP and its leadership is willing to divorce itself from the conspiracy theorists, the anti-Constitutional terrorists, the science and climate deniers, the believers in voodoo economics, and be willing to go back to its roots as a party that promoted emancipation, suffrage, and equal rights. At one time they were the party of free labor and free land, the party that established the National Parks and Wildlife refuges, the party that invested in interstate highways and world class international airports. But they are not that anymore. They are a party of ideological nutcases, conspiracy theorists, religious theocrats who want to enforce their minority views of the Christian faith on all Americans using the police power of the state to do it, and a party without a platform which merely believes in the seizure of power and the willingness never to surrender it.
The beliefs of today’s Republicans were clearly enunciated by none other than Hermann Goering, Hitler’s number two man until April of 1945. Goering said:
“It was understood by all of us that as soon as we had once come into power we must keep that power under all circumstances. We did not want power and governmental authority for power’s sake, but we needed power and governmental authority in order to make Germany free and great. We did not want to leave this any longer to chance, elections and Parliamentary majorities, but we wanted to carry out the task to which we considered ourselves called. In order to consolidate this power now, it was necessary to reorganise the political relationships of power. That was carried out in such a manner that, shortly after the seizure of governmental authority in the Reich and in Prussia, the other States followed automatically and more or less strong National Socialist Governments were formed everywhere. Secondly, the so-called political officials, who according to the Reich Constitution could be recalled at any time – that is, could be dismissed – would naturally have to be replaced now according to custom by people from the strongest Party – as is everywhere customary…”
However, Goering lied about the situation, even in a subsequent election following the Reichstag Fire the Nazi Party never had an absolute majority. It was their outlawing of the German Communist Party and temporary alliances with German conservatives that they later broke that gave them a majority in the Reichstag. A minority succeeded in overthrowing a divided majority. As the various German conservative and nationalist parties folded their tents and allowed themselves to be absorbed by the Nazis, the Catholic Center Party, also threw in the towel. The only party in Germany to go out with its honor intact was the Social Democratic Party which voted against the Enabling Act that gave the Nazis unlimited dictatorial power. Shortly after that final vote of protest the Nazis outlawed them, shut up down their newspapers, their affiliated labor unions, and murdered or placed their leaders in concentration camps. Given the chance and opportunity Trump’s radicalized supporters and those more violent than them would do exactly what the Nazis did, the 6 January assault was their attempt to do exactly what the Nazis did to their opposition.
Let me reassert that this is a time to be joyful that President Biden, Vice President Harris and their incoming team are in office and taking actions to try to save all of us from the steaming pile of rat feces that Trump has left them to deal with, and we cannot rest on the laurels of a hardy inauguration if the task before us it to be fulfilled.
You see to bring this article back to a more American setting let us go back to the inspiration for Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, which in the light of the recent assault by seditious, treasonous rebels is more appropriate than his Second Inaugural Address because while one assault was turned back, the battle is not over because those who orchestrated it, including the former President and Republican members of the House and Senate embraced and supported the overthrow of the legally elected government remain at large, as do the leaders of the groups that served as their foot soldiers. So the battle cannot be considered won until these people return to the Constitutional norms and laws of how we govern. If they cannot do that, especially those who swore an oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies foreign and domestic, they have betrayed their oath and are traitors who need to be prosecuted to the full extent of the law or if they chose bullets over ballots, cartridges over the Constitution, or lethality over law then they must be fought to the death.
As Senator Stephen A. Douglas said when the new Confederacy fired on Fort Sumter “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.” The Senator’s words are as correct now as he when he spoke them. He then pledged his loyalty to the Union and his former opponent President Abraham Lincoln. He understood that he had policy differences with the new administration but placed his loyalty to the Republic and Constitution above party loyalty or his personal friendships with the men now leading the insurrection against the Union.
All of us have the responsibility, especially anyone who has sworn the oath to the Constitution to oppose such enemies of it, even if they are friends, family, or politicians we support. If we do not we betray our oaths despite the statements of the self proclaimed Oath Keepers terrorist group. Each of us has the choice to uphold the Constitution or to betray it by attempting to toppled our Republic and democracy.
Our Union means more to me than most people can imagine. My ancestors of both sides of my family fought to overthrow it in the War of the Slaveholders Rebellion, which I think is a far more honest name for the American Civil War. In reality that war was an internal rebellion conducted by men who determined to destroy the Union in order to maintain and expand the institution of slavery even into the Free States which had outlawed it, to all United States territories, and even into the Caribbean and Central America. For me those are unfathomable reasons to destroy the Union and fight the bloodiest war in American history. I will be damned if I allow such people to get away with sedition and treason killing police officers and attempting to kill the former Vice President, the Speaker of the House, and many other Republican and Democrat members of the House and Senate.
But getting back to the inspiration for Lincoln’s few remarks at Gettysburg we have to remember both the Declaration of Independence and the words of prominent thinkers who influenced his choice of words, for they call come down to the fundamental principle of all of American government, “we hold these truths to be self evident that all men are created equal and endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, including life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” Jefferson who wrote these words was a flawed man, he own slaves, but on the other hand he saw his words as an ever expanding principle of liberty for all people in all nations and in all times.
The Unitarian pastor, abolitionist, and leading Transcendentalist thinker, Theodore Parker wrote:
“Our national ideal out-travels our experience, and all experience. We began our national career by setting all history at defiance – for that said, “A republic on a large scale cannot exist.” Our progress since that has shown that we were right in refusing to be limited by the past. The practical ideas of the nation are transcendent, not empirical. Human history could not justify the Declaration of Independence and its large statements of the new idea: the nation went beyond human history and appealed to human nature.”
Parker’s words also prefigured an idea that Lincoln used in his address. Parker, like Lincoln believed that: “the American Revolution, with American history since, is an attempt to prove by experience this transcendental proposition, to organize the transcendental idea of politics. The ideal demands for its organization a democracy- a government of all, for all, and by all…”
Likewise, George Bancroft the great American historian wrote words that also echoed in Lincoln’s address:
“The bill of rights which it promulgates is of rights that are older than human institutions, and spring from the eternal justice…. The heart of Jefferson in writing the Declaration, and of Congress in adopting it, beat for all humanity; the assertion of right was made for the entire world of mankind and all coming generations, without any exceptions whatsoever.”
Barley five months after the battle, when less than a third of the dead had yet been buried and much of Cemetery Hill was marked with the physical scars of the battle Lincoln spoke these words following the nearly two hour long primary address by the eminent scholar, professor, and orator Edward Everett. Lincoln gave these brief remarks:
Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate — we can not consecrate — we can not hallow — this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us — that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion — that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain — that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.[6]
We must continue the fight and we cannot abandon the principles of the Declaration, the Preamble to the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, the Gettysburg Address, the Four Freedoms, and Dr. King’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” his “I have been to the mountaintop” and “I have a dream” speeches.
President Biden echoed those words in his inaugural speech. It was not the dystopian fear presented by President Trump in his inaugural address, but a message of hope and unity tempered by reality. Since his inaugural address is available in full on the White House and other news sites I will not repeat it here.
Believe it or not I began this post on Wednesday night but got involved in editing and expanding it to put it in the context of history. I was about ready to post it last night when half of it disappeared as my system updated unexpectedly. So I decided to finish it Saturday, which became early Sunday morning. But before I sign off for the night let me express my opinion about those who attacked the Capitol and those who supported, encouraged, incited, or enabled them. To that end I will quote the words of Colonel Strong Vincent who led his bridge and died in the defense of Little Round Top on the afternoon of 2 July 1863 at Gettysburg. Not long before the battle he wrote his wife words that I think that every man and woman who values our Union, our Declaration, and our Constitution:
“We must fight them more vindictively, or we shall be foiled at every step. We must desolate the country as we pass through it, and not leave a trace of a doubtful friend or foe behind us; make them believe that we are in earnest, terribly in earnest; that to break this band in twain is monstrous and impossible; that the life of every man, yea, of every weak woman or child in the entire South, is of no value whatever compared with the integrity of the Union.”
Likewise his subordinate, Colonel Joshua Chamberlain, who repelled the Rebel advance at the end of the Union line, and later rose to great fame wrote:
“We have this war upon is & we want to stop it. It has cost us already too much precious blood. It has carried stagnation, starvation & grief in to too many villages of our fair land – brought death to too many noble hearts that we could ill afford to lose. But the only way to stop this war, is first to show that we are strongest…I feel that we are fighting for our country – for our flag- not as so many Stars and Stripes, but as the emblem of a good & powerful nation – fighting to settle the question whether we are a nation or a basket of chips. Whether we shall leave our children the country we have inherited – or leave them without a country – without a name – without a citizenship among the great nations of the earth – take the chief city of the rebels. They will have no respect for us unless we whip them & and I say it in all earnestness….”
The words of all of these men need to be take to heart today against the men and women who fought then and now for the principle of rending our Union asunder and proclaiming a White Supremacist theocratic autocracy.
So until next time, ready to fight the good fight against seditious traitors, murderers, and rebels who attempt to hijack the words of the Declaration and the Constitution to justify their crimes against those documents, our Republic and their fellow citizens, for they will not give up until they are completely whipped.
Peace,
Padre Steve+
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