Slapping Civil Rights Champions in the Face

Slapping Civil Rights Champions in the Face

“The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude— The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.” 

Fifteenth Amendment to the US Constitution

“(a) No voting qualification or prerequisite to voting or standard, practice, or procedure shall be imposed or applied by any State or political subdivision in a manner which results in a denial or abridgement of the right of any citizen of the United States to vote on account of race or color, or in contravention of the guarantees set forth [below.]”

from SEC. 2. (52 U.S.C. 10301 Voting Rights Act of 1965, as amended)

Look at the map on the right above. Those red areas were counties and states which were the bastions of continued Jim Crow voting discrimination well into the 1950s and 60s, notwithstanding the admonition of the Fifteenth Amendment quoted above. The Supreme Court back then ruled against school segregation (Brown vs Board of Education, 1954), with powerful racist undercurrents still defining voting and other civil rights, all struggling to maintain separation of the races and heavily focused (via poll taxes, strict voter ID requirements, grandfather provisions and general intimidation of would-be Black voters) on keeping candidates and voters lily white. People of all races died or were falsely accused of crimes or just plain beaten while attempting to right that wrong. Civil rights volunteers just disappeared.

In 1965, Congress decided to act. The Voting Rights Act (VRA), amended several times since then, was intended to put teeth into the lax enforcement of the Fifteenth Amendment with a strong focus on those red jurisdictions above where voting discrimination was particularly rampant. Section 5 (enforced under Section 4(b) of the Act), named those jurisdictions, placing them under direct federal supervision over elections rules. Still, racism found its way into voting practices, a reality that Martin Luther King, Jr dedicated his life to change. But several of those named states (mostly in the South) resented not being able to restrict voting rights again. One Alabama county (Shelby), sensing a conservative change in the make-up of the Supreme Court 40 plus years later, thought it possible this panel just might find a way to neutralize or invalidate the statute, or at least release the named defendant states from federal election control. Surprise, Shelby Country sued the Department of Justice (naming Eric Holder, AG under Obama)… and won.

On June 25, 2013, the Court determined by a 5 to 4 vote that Section 4(b) of the VRA was unconstitutional because the coverage formula was based on data over 40 years old, making it no longer responsive to current needs and therefore an impermissible burden on the constitutional principles of federalism and equal sovereignty of the states. The Court did not strike down Section 5, but without Section 4(b), no jurisdiction would be subject to Section 5 preclearance unless Congress enacted a new coverage formula, which, given the rising polarization of the nation, was unlikely.

Interestingly enough and giving false hope to civil rights activists, the Court did not negate Section 2 of the VRA quoted above, but the message, that the Court found election-related judicial review was not likely to amount to much, was loud and clear. Indeed, most of the states released from federal election supervision almost immediately set about passing new replacement voting restrictions, aimed at keeping Blacks and other minorities of color from having much in the way of voting power. The vestiges of people’s belief that perhaps that Section 2 would actually be enough to protect minority voting rights died, with great justification.

On April 29th, the Supreme Court decimated Section 2, a statutory provision that was designed to prevent racial discrimination in elections, by banning references to race in voting laws designed to eliminate racial bias. Huh? Once you knew that Justice Samual Alito was charged with writing the majority opinion, the result from this highly biased Associate Justice was obvious. As David G. Savage and Ana Ceballos, writing for the April 30th Los Angeles Times, summarize: “In a 6-3 decision in Louisiana vs. Callais, the court ruled that creating these majority-minority districts may amount to racial discrimination that violates the 14th Amendment.

“When weighing what the Voting Rights Act requires, ‘we start with the general rule that the Constitution almost never permits the federal government or a state to discriminate on the basis of race,’ Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. wrote for the court… Alito said states may draw election districts for partisan advantage but may not use race as a basis for redistricting… The ruling in a Louisiana case appears to clear the way for Republican-led states across the South to redraw their election maps and eliminate voting districts that favor Black or Latino candidates for Congress, state legislatures and county boards [noting that a majority of Black voters support Democrats].

“UCLA law professor Rick Hasen said, ‘It is hard to overstate what an earthquake this will be for American politics,’ adding that the decision makes the Voting Rights Act a ‘much weaker, and potentially toothless law.’…Hasen said it’s unclear how the decision will affect the November election because in many states early voting has already started and primaries have already taken place… But the ruling’s long-term consequences for minority representation in Congress, state legislatures and local government are almost ‘certainly’ going to be felt in 2028, Hasen said.

”Republican leaders in states across the South have already signaled they intend to move quickly to redraw congressional maps in the wake of the ruling… Alabama Atty. Gen. Steve Marshall said the state will ‘act as quickly as possible’ to ensure its congressional maps ‘reflect the will of the people, not a racial quota system the Constitution forbids.’ Marshall called the decision a recognition of how much the South has changed since the civil rights era… ‘The court rightly acknowledged that the South has made extraordinary progress, and that laws designed for a different era do not reflect the present reality,’ he said in a statement…

“The three liberals dissented. The consequences of the ruling ‘are likely to be far-reaching and grave,’ said Justice Elena Kagan, adding that it will allow ‘racial vote dilution in its most classic form.’… She said the decision means ‘a state can, without legal consequence, systematically dilute minority citizens’ voting power. Of course, the majority does not announce today’s holding that way. Its opinion is understated, even antiseptic.” Simply put: Jim Crow has returned with a vengeance. A Black voter in Alabama under the proper application of Section of the Voting Rights Act will find his or her vote going forward to be meaningless.

I’m Peter Dekom, and the Supreme Court has added one more nail to the coffin where American democracy lies ready for a full burial.

After Claiming Greenland, Assessing Illegal Tariffs against Our Allies & Unilaterally Starting a War…

After Claiming Greenland, Assessing Illegal Tariffs against Our Allies & Unilaterally Starting a War…

Why are we surprised to see Europe and the rest of the world distancing themselves from all things American?

Donald Trump seeks to punish the UK – by rejecting their claim to the Falkland Islands (which Argentina still claims) – and Spain – by threatening to push them out of NATO – because neither will join the United States in its most illegal war against Iran, even going so far as to deny US attack aircraft flyover rights or use of our own local airbases in that war. Inasmuch as 80% of the oil that passed through the bottleneck Strait of Hormuz was destined for Asia, we have now pushed allies like India, the Philippines and Japan to seek alternative access for desperately needed oil and gas from Russia… which uses those newfound profits to escalate their annexation efforts in Ukraine. Hormuz has never been closed in modern history. That is our (Trump’s?) legacy.

Trump, with the help of Major Pete Hegseth’s Dept of Defense/War, has decimated our military’s senior command by firing almost 30 top-ranked generals and admirals. Inexperienced substitutes, fearing firing themselves, are running the most powerful military on Earth, claiming victory while unable to explain why a bombed out Iran still maintains (according to US military intelligence) most of its sophisticated missiles, its stash of enriched uranium, an extraordinary cache of cheap but very effective inventory of drones, fast-boats with mine-laying capacity and a seeming ability to outlast the United States in blocking off the Strait of Hormuz. And the Houthis remain Iran’s back-up. Sorry, Pete, God does not seem to be on our side.

With the WAR generating the most negative domestic polls of any presidential military action in half a century, a post-Vietnam law also puts a 60-day clock on the use of military force without congressional authorization. Will enough Republicans join Democrats in rejecting that authorization, along with budgetary demands to add half a trillion dollars to supplement our military in this perilous time? Or will Republicans vote to support Trump to maintain the President’s base (and control of primaries?)… perhaps, sealing their fate in the midterms? Which explains why Trump has mounted such a strong campaign to contain possible votes against the GOP candidates by exploring ways to exclude them from the ballot box.

Even leaders of Europe’s conservative or rightwing parties – from Italy’s Giorgia Meloni, Germany’s AfD, France’s Marie Le Pen, etc. – are distancing themselves from Trump. Virtually all of Europe are making long-term plans to live in a world where they no longer depend on the United States, defensively or economically. And since it is the only military and economic power that rivals the United States, China has become the go-to replacement. These European deals with China, clearly workarounds against the US, are long-term… destined to haunt global relations for decades.

With Netanyahu’s goading, an effort that failed to enlist all recent US presidents to join Israel in a direct war against Iran, until Trump succumbed to that plea with disastrous consequences. There is no question that the United States and Israel have very different objectives vis-à-vis Iran, but Trump’s lockstep link to all things Israel – a position that no longer reflects US mainstream thought, particularly among younger voters – has led him and our policymakers to interpret any opposition to Israel as “antisemitism.” That term is used to attack political opponents, universities and their vital medical research programs. However, it is no longer a majority American thought.

Hamed Aleaziz and Nicholas Nehamas, writing for the April 25th NY Times, also note: “In guidance to immigration officers, the administration describes participating in pro-Palestinian protests and criticizing Israel as ‘overwhelmingly negative’ factors, which can result in being denied or losing green card status”… and even disqualifying otherwise unblemished applicants from citizenship. Free speech has been evicted from the United States.

As if all of the above were not horrible enough, contrary to Trump’s erroneous statements, Iran has lurched significantly toward the most recalcitrant hardliners in Tehran. A badly disfigured Mojtaba Khamenei, the replacement for his slain father, is the new Ayatollah… who owes his elevation to this top spot entirely to the super-hardline Islamic Revolutionary Guards. Reports of dissension in Iran’s leadership has yet to lead to any softening of Tehran’s position in on-off negotiations with the US.

With great justification, Iran’s leadership is profoundly distrustful of Trump, and any thoughts that his pledges have meaning are in perilous jeopardy. In 2018, he pulled the US out of an otherwise effective UN- sponsored nuclear enrichment containment accord with Iran (and several major US allies). Trump began his latest WAR in the middle of negotiations with Iran, seemingly as Netanyahu’s puppet. Even if you hate your opponent in peace negotiations, if you do not trust that they will stand by their word, achieving peace is exceptionally difficult.

Trump’s belief that he can use the blockade of Iran’s ports and seizure of rogue ships filled with Iranian oil is based on the rather disproven assumption that our military force can outlast Iran’s resistance to key proposals that Trump demands. Iran’s drones have defined control of the Strait of Hormuz, and clearly Tehran does not see the increased suffering of its people as a sufficiently powerful such that Iran will bend to Trump’s demands.

We at least need to incentivize Iran to return to the negotiating table in earnest, based on reality and not Trump’s flawed assumptions. Perhaps a US offer to entertain ending the blockade of Iranian ports in exchange for Iran’s reopening the Strait of Hormuz might be a start, but Iran’s wariness of a US President, showing obvious signs of diminished capacity, remains a solid barrier to the trust needed to end this war-crime-ridden war.

I’m Peter Dekom, and that Trump and his most senior advisors have so seriously misread the obvious realities in global reactions and Iran’s strength to resist may not resonate with Trump’s MAGA faithful, but they have deeply weakened the United States at every level in the eyes of most of the world.

Trump Administration’s Weakest Skillsets: Governance & Diplomacy

Trump Administration’s Weakest Skillsets: Governance & Diplomacy

Take, for example, how shutting down the Forrest Service just might cost billions

As Trump’s Iran WAR spirals out of control, as Trump’s influence with even “allied” nations slips into “ignore the idiot” level, Trump is still the President of the United States and capable of wreaking inestimable additional damage to our nation even as his popularity seems to have made him the lamest of the lame ducks. Trump unfortunately does not read, has no cultural sensitivity, tends to shoot from the hip, often listens to the last person he spoke with and prefers conspiracy theories to facts. With arrogant certainty, Trump and his mouthpiece JD Vance made some very public statements to the Hungarian people in support of PM Victor Orban (above) whose party was on the verge of a national election. But Trump’s stature in the world had fallen so dramatically everywhere that Orban, after 16 years as an illiberal elected autocrat (and literally the “model” for US conservative governance), and his party, lost in an unprecedented landslide. As Tom Boggioni, writing for the April 14th Raw Story tells us:

“According to Politico's Nahal Toosi, Trump faces a wall of resistance from longtime U.S. allies who are actively forming new alliances and sidelining America as a diplomatic partner. In recent days, multiple global players have openly defied the president, exposing the severe limits of American influence… The core problem is philosophical. ‘Trump and his aides often appear to operate as if most other people on the planet are 'non-player characters' in a video game,’ and they believe that America can use ‘threats, economic muscle and military action to bend other capitals to its will,’ Toosi observed.

“But foreign policy doesn't work that way and the Politico analyst suggested the current administration is ‘not adjusting well’ to a changed world… Trump shows no signs of learning from this reality. Richard Haass, former president of the Council on Foreign Relations, observed: ‘If there were an appreciation that bullying was no longer a likely to succeed tactic you'd see a move away from it, but there's no real sign that Trump is doing so…The problem is structural. ‘He is surrounded by 'yes' people,’ one senior European diplomat fumed.’” The outside world no longer couches their criticisms of the President in polite terms, unlike GOP leaders, marching like lemmings to midterm disaster, who are struggling even with the most obvious descriptors of Trump’s litany of failures. As the utter failure of Trump’s War is pushing the world toward recession with prices soaring by the day, so too are his recent domestic policies which survive only because his international disasters have proven to be major distractions.

Indeed, so much of Trump’s foreign and domestic policy moves have ended in flames, that it most appropriate to look at recent inane policies imposed by an incompetent, totally dollars-and-cents transactional, President, incapable of dealing in human values, relegated to “money talks” and not much else: our fire-vulnerable national forests. As reported by FastCompany’s Kristin Toussaint (April 9th), “Last week, the U.S. Forest Service announced that it will be closing three-quarters of its research facilities as part of a reorganization. Now, experts are worried not only about the number of scientists who might be leaving the agency, but also about how the disruption could affect the gathering and dissemination of crucial wildfire and climate change data.

“The restructuring comes as parts of the U.S. face what is expected to be a catastrophic wildfire season. The most recent wildland fire outlook shows that wildfire activity is already “well above average,” with more than 16,000 wildfires reported this year… Under the reorganization plan, the Forest Service will close 57 of 77 research facilities, as well as move its headquarters from Washington, D.C. to Salt Lake City, Utah. … It will also close all nine of its regional offices; some states will then get their own offices, but others will be consolidated…

“Julian Reyes, chief of staff at the Union of Concerned Scientists and previously a federal government civil servant who worked directly with Forest Service R&D scientists on climate research, says the move doesn’t make any sense, given the wildfire season we’re heading into… “The Forest Service will essentially no longer be the world’s leading wildfire research agency,” he adds [Reyes]. ‘They will be hamstrung forever, because they won’t have the right people, the right research capability at the right research stations, and so we’ll always be feeling these effects, probably for multiple generations. That’s what’s really sad about this.’”

And as the rest of the world retreats from coal, a fossil fuel that is never “clean,” Trump clings to his notion that climate change is a hoax: “Before Donald Trump returned to the White House, the Biden administration and many electric utilities were building a future dominated by renewable energy. They aimed to replace coal, slashing greenhouse gases and reducing air pollution that kills more than a thousand people annually.

“Dozens of coal plants — emitting as much planet-warming pollution as 27 million cars — were expected to be retired during Trump’s second term. Now there may not be any more coal plants closing until after Trump leaves office, according to officials and the energy analysis company Enverus… The United States is undergoing a dramatic shift in energy policy as Trump wields the government’s sweeping powers to benefit coal and suppress cleaner alternatives. It could lead to more expensive electricity and dirtier air and set back efforts to curb climate change, according to an Associated Press review of government data and interviews with experts.

“Trump officials are using emergency powers to prevent five coal plants from closing. That’s raising ratepayer bills: Keeping one Michigan plant open for about seven months cost $135 million. The administration also is using millions of dollars of taxpayer money to make repairs and extend the lives of other coal plants, while weakening protections against air pollution and, most recently, toxic coal ash… Interior Secretary Doug Burgum has said the goal for coal plants ‘is 100% stay open, no more retirements, no more shutting down.’.. The actions far exceed Trump’s coal advocacy in his first term, when he relaxed some environmental regulations to give it a short-lived boost.” Trump does not mind killing people, even Americans, in an effort to convince his followers that he is never wrong… when in fact, he is seldom correct.

I’m Peter Dekom, and I think the national antipathy against all things Trump may have reached the point, even as he desperately tries to rig the midterms, that MAGA politicians face an unstoppable landslide against them… but it will take decades to undo the damage this failed human being has wreaked on the United States.

What Americans Have Never Been Able to Deal with Well: Equality & Differences

What Americans Have Never Been Able to Deal with Well: Equality & Differences

“Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three-fifths of all other Persons.” 

 Original Text of the US Constitution, Article 1, Section 2, Paragraph 3

In 1787, as our forefathers met, realizing that the existing Articles of Confederation needed a ground-up re-do, they soon knew they needed a bona fide Constitution. The battle between large (land mass) rural states with relatively sparse populations, driven by slavery-supported vast agricultural estates, and smaller states, with stronger trade and other commercial interests with no reliance on slavery, now had to establish representation in the new legislature and how taxes were allocated, which became a North/South differential. This note from the History Cooperative sets the issues:

“After the Great Compromise helped settle the debate between large and small states, it became clear that the differences that existed between the Northern and the Southern states would be just as difficult, if not more so, to overcome. And it was largely due to the issue of slavery. … In the North, most people had moved on from the use of slaves. Indentured servitude still existed as a way to pay debts, but wage labor was becoming more and more the norm, and with more opportunities for industry, the wealthy class saw this as the best way to move forward. .. Many Northern states still had slavery on the books, but this would change in the following decade, and by the early 1800s, all states north of the Mason-Dixon Line (the southern border of Pennsylvania) had banned human bondage.

“In the Southern states, slavery had been an important part of the economy since the early years of colonialism, and it was poised to become even more so… Southern plantation owners needed slaves to work their land and produce the cash crops they exported all over the world. They also needed the slave system to establish their power so that they could hold onto it — a move they hoped would help keep the institution of human bondage ‘safe.’” The 3/5 compromise still afforded the South proportional representatives in the new population-driven House of Representatives, and the two Senators per state regardless of population gave the South the comfort they needed to accept a new constitutional republic.

But colonialism still defined Europe, and it was the United States that built its global face on the notion of free navigation of international waters, even as slavery – hallmark of colonialism (Haiti defeated Napoleon and banned slavery in 1804) – continued its dark hold on the Americas. The Civil War and the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments notwithstanding, the biases of lighter-skinned people increasing against those with increasingly darker skin was a global phenomenon, adding religious and cultural bigotry along the way. The explosion of our post-WWII civil rights era, watching as the last vestiges of colonialism vaporized… it was America’s quest for equality, the emphasis on democratic values and freedom of movement, that hyper-accelerated the United States into the premiere position of economic and political success on Earth.

Unfortunately, political opportunism, the reality of the rest of the world’s catching up, and the rise of new foreign manufacturing plants competing against older US plants with roots in pre-WWII tech slammed into a nation that was increasingly relying on its past, willing to borrow heavily to maintain a standard of living, assuming its superiority would last without massive new investment. Even our reaction to the Soviet Sputnik success in 1957 – spurring education and investment in technology – was not enough to keep the post-WWII political witch hunts (like the McCarthy era or federal troops escorting children into schools) from redefining who we are and should be.

The post-Vietnam War era saw a fear-response in under-educated America, well past the GI-Bill educational spurt that was starting to rebuild our excellence… until racism, a powerful “domino theory” movement, and blame driven xenophobia became the tools of local, then national politicians to assure Americans that our greatness was maintenance free… that we could not fall. Instead of “we are more alike than we are unalike” (Maya Angelou’s famous “Human Family” verse), Americans eschewed the effort of rebuilding and opening opportunity… and elected politicians whose only skillset was vituperative-driven blame and self-aggrandizement.

We sit today foundering from an ill-advised WAR that will not end in a better world, one where we have reversed centuries of fighting for free navigation of international waterways and fighting efforts to maintain colonial rule, where blame and bias are the most powerful political tools in use by American political leadership. We have the weakest, least effective and most democracy averse President in our nation’s quarter of a millennium history, one who equates himself with Jesus Christ (see above 4/13 Truth Social post by Trump himself). The King of Divisiveness, the Ego of National Destruction and the most dangerous leader on the planet.

I’m Peter Dekom, it is bitter irony that Donald Trump’s model for a “desirable” illiberal democracy, a man Trump strongly supported openly and frequently – Hungary’s PM Viktor Mihály Orbán – went down to a landslide defeat after 16 years of imposing Trump’s dream set of policies that literally tore Hungary apart.

Cancelled Checks & Balances

 

Cancelled Checks & Balances

It began during the Reagan presidency, the American push-back against restrictions imposed on our head of state to prevent another undeclared Vietnam War. Congress, looking to rein in the President’s control over the military, passed restrictions on how far a president could declare and sustain military action without consulting Congress, the only body the Constitution empowered to declare war. We still have a law from that era that requires the president to seek authorization from Congress within 60 days of beginning an armed conflict.

But there was an underlying conservative theory, taken from ancient Roman law, where when a quick response and military action was required, the Roman Senate could and did issue emergency decrees (senatus consultum ultimum) it deemed necessary to protect the state and could appoint one of their own to lead, a “unitary executive,” who could react without returning to the Senate for approval along the way. Even during Imperial times, the Roman Senate retained extraordinary powers.

When 9/11/01 occurred, the United States faced a military attack on major targets (the Twin Towers, the Pentagon, etc.) for which it was fully unprepared. President George W Bush’s Vice-President, Dick Cheney, looked at those Vietnam era restrictions as inappropriate for the rapidly changing modern era. But as the horrors of 9/11 were sliding into history, Cheney, a strong believer in the Unitary Executive system of governance, realized that the only way to repeal those restrictions on the presidency was to declare a major threat to the Republic and pass legislation as a necessity to counter those threats. Cheney and his cohorts drafted a 300+ page statute that was ultimately to be the Patriot Act… but he needed a threat big enough to get Congress to pass that tome, releasing restrictions on the President.

That draft of the “Patriot Act” sat in a drawer as Bush/Cheney finally manufactured the need to counter Iraqi dictator, Saddam Hussein’s purported build-up of possible nuclear, biological and chemical “Weapons of Mass Destruction.” Th CIA was ordered to prove the existence of these “WMDs”… even if it meant fabricating the necessary evidence. As the administration demanded a freer hand being accorded in countering Hussein’s WMDs (never found), the Patriot Act was introduced to Congress as emergency legislation on a Friday, with a vote scheduled for the following Monday. It passed, mostly based on its title, with very few members of Congress having read the bill.

Conservatives continued pressing to enhance presidential power, some even to the extent of giving the president the power to act without Congress and, perhaps, to ignore contrary rulings by the Supreme Court. It was within this push for more presidential power that Donald Trump, a CEO who expected his corporate orders to be carried out without objection, became President and, in his second term for Project 2025 to become the new Patriot Act. The notion of constitutional checks and balances (defined in the first three articles of the Constitution) had been eroding for years, and Trump and his appointees turned quickly to solidify his power.

But Trump 2.0 has been a disaster at every level. His unilateral executive orders produced an illegal and costly system of tariffs, his immigration rapidly deteriorated into a cruel and indiscriminate purge of mostly innocent, hard working undocumented workers and his de facto unilaterally declared WAR on Iran produced economic disaster, rapidly rendering Trump one of the least popular presidents in modern history. Inflation returned, prices in every corner rose fast (the shutting of the Strait of Hormuz raised fuel and other costs dramatically), and Americans and the international community watched as Trump was backed into a corner with few off-ramps.

Was this a time when those checks and balances could be restored? Democrats were winning in most off-season elections. Trump’s efforts to cull the voter rolls were failing. It sure looked as if the GOP members who controlled Congress were heading for almost certain midterm defeat. But Trump’s election plans were gathering, perhaps from the use of ICE agents at polls or, perhaps more subtle efforts as reported in the April 26th Los Angeles Times by columnist Mark Barabak:

“There is, however, a looming threat causing nervousness among Democrats and their allies as they contemplate a celebratory fall, a landmine of sorts buried deep in the congressional election process… Let’s acquaint ourselves with Article 1, Section 5 of the Constitution… The pertinent language written by the Framers states, ‘Each House shall be the Judge of the Elections, Returns and Qualifications of its own Members.’…In other words, it’s up to the House and Senate to acknowledge and abide by the will of voters as expressed in the election returns… What could possibly go wrong?

“Well, if you let your paranoia run wild, quite a lot. If the election outcome is close — and probably it would have to be very close — Republican lawmakers could theoretically seize on phony claims of fraud and effectively nullify the results of enough contests to deny Democrats control of the House… There’s plenty of skepticism that would or could ever take place. But if it were to happen, hello, national crisis!...

“This president has amply demonstrated the lengths to which he’ll go to overturn an honest election, siccing a violent mob on lawmakers certifying his 2020 defeat, telling endless lies and using the Justice Department to confiscate ballots and intimidate innocent election officials and others Trump deems his enemies… He strong-armed Texas into a highly unusual, highly partisan redrawing of its congressional boundaries, an effort to net five seats and lengthen the odds against a Democratic takeover… The move appears to have backfired, spurring voters in California and, last week, Virginia to redraw their state’s political maps to more than offset Texas and boost Democrats in November. (The Virginia results are being contested in court.)

“That failure doesn’t take away Trump’s malign intent. And in the supine Speaker Mike Johnson, he has the perfect handmaiden to undermine the midterm vote… One theory goes like this: When the balloting is over, Johnson could appoint a House committee packed with Trump’s acolytes to investigate alleged voting irregularities. (And if you think Trump won’t be bellowing the words ‘rigged’ and ‘fraud’ in the face of defeat, you’ve either been in a coma or living on another planet for the last decade.)…

“Those hearings and the ‘evidence’ they turn up could then be cited by election officials in key states — collaborators, if you will — as a reason to delay the certification of election results and block the seating of majority-making Democrats in the next Congress.” Trump seems to know no bounds to rig election results.

I’m Peter Dekom, and whether Trump pursues any of the above election attacks or finds another way to retain control, unless those checks and balances are restored and work as intended by our forefathers, welcome to the end of the noble American experiment with democracy.

Trump’s New Blank Check to Eliminate Any Opposition – Label Opponents as "Antifa"

Trump’s New Blank Check to Eliminate Any Opposition – Label Opponents as “Antifa”

“Antifa” (short for “anti-fascist,” which sounds like the United States vs Mussolini’s Italy or Hitler’s Germany in WWII) has never had a membership list, a genuine website, a physical address, any identified leaders or spokespeople or any clear criteria for recruitment. Simply put, it is word that rightwing America uses to denigrate anyone or any group, left of center, they consider a political opponent. Yet, it is often referred to by MAGA Trumpers as if it were a real, identifiable radical leftist organization. It isn’t, but the label is often applied as if it was a tangible force that has existed for some time.

But if you want some names of prominent anti-fascists, let’s start with every member of the Allied Armed Forces in the European theater of WWII… and their civilian leaders. The list includes FDR, Harry Truman, Winston Churchill, Dwight Eisenhower, George Patton, Bernard Montgomery and a passel of Congressional Medal of Honor winners, etc., etc. Many thousands of brave American soldiers died to fight those fascists, so it is shocking that Trump has selected a word to insult those heroes, who were all anti-fascists. To those who believe that Donald Trump’s quest for total power, pursued with autocratic zeal, is a real time, modern reflection of a fascist state, stand back and standby. Everyone of the nearly nine million who attended a March 28th “No Kings” protest is reflecting the anti-fascist views and values of all those who, throughout history, have railed against brutal dictators. If there were ever a modern assembly of anti-fascists, those participating in that national protest meet that criteria.

Yet, the Donald Trump, at the nadir of his popularity and approval level, needs to unleash every conceivable weapon he can grasp – from culling voter rolls of Democrat-likely voters (banning vote-by-mail and pushing for the Save America Act), to arresting or otherwise making his opponents miserable… using taxpayer money and government agencies and personnel to advance his autocratic ambitions. So, if Donald Trump can enlist his anti-constitutional loyalists under a virtual blank check to purge or disempower his opponents, simply by attaching a distorted Trump/MAGA created label, and thus render his opponents as “genuine” enemies of the state, who should be shown no mercy. Writing for the March 31st Puck.com, Julia Ioffe offers this excellent description of Trump’s most recent attempt to eliminate all those who oppose him:

“Since 9/11, the U.S. intelligence community has relied on the National Intelligence Priorities Framework to determine where its constituent agencies focus their attention and resources. The classified document tells the C.I.A. which organizations to infiltrate, the N.S.A. which signals intelligence to intercept, and the National Reconnaissance Office where to point its spy satellites. It’s historically included targets like Al Qaeda, ISIS, and the Taliban. But in recent months, according to three sources with direct knowledge of the conversations, the Trump administration has been working to add a new top counterterrorism priority to the NIPF: antifa.

“This has been a dramatic and alarming development for many counterterrorism veterans, especially given that ‘antifa’ is not a coherent organization like Al Qaeda. The term has become a sort of MAGA catch-all for left-wing protesters—including domestically, where collecting intelligence on citizens is subject to a much stricter standard. The effort to shift focus to antifa has raised concerns among current and former counterterrorism officials that the administration aims to turn an intelligence apparatus built to combat foreign threats against domestic political opponents. ‘They’re putting antifa on the list and bumping them up in the queue in a way that doesn’t correspond to threats,’ one national security official told me. A recently retired counterterrorism official who was involved in the discussions confirmed this, saying, ‘The view from on high was that we had been ignoring this very dangerous threat and we needed to devote resources to confirm that.’ An administration official told me ‘it’s true’ that the process of adding antifa to the NIPF has begun. (The State Department did not respond to a detailed list of questions in time for publication.)

“Antifa has never been part of the NIPF before—and for good reason. The term, short for ‘anti-fascist,’ has its origins in the (woefully unsuccessful) German and Italian anti-fascist movements of the early 1930s. These days, it is a vague and mutable ideology, encompassing a broad range of far-left ideas—anarchism, communism, anti-capitalism—with no unified belief set. More importantly in the counterterrorism context, it’s not an actual organization with leaders, a command structure, or financing sources that can be targeted. What it is, however, is a central obsession of the second Trump administration.

“This tension was on stark display in December, when Michael Glasheen, the F.B.I.’s operations director for national security, testified in front of the House Homeland Security Committee that antifa is the bureau’s ‘primary concern right now’ and ‘the most immediate, violent threat’ domestically. But when questioned by Rep. Bennie Thompson, the committee’s top Democrat, about the location of antifa’s headquarters or how many members it has, Glasheen was visibly flummoxed and could not answer.” In short, our major intelligence and governmental law enforcement agencies are using government personnel and taxpayer money to use intimidation and the criminal justice system to crush legitimate and peaceful domestic opponents of King Donald John Trump, in an effort which, for decades, has been severely limited by law.

I’m Peter Dekom, and I am rather dramatically against Nazis, fascists, brutal dictators and anyone who wants to revoke the American experiment in democracy and end it after 250 years.

The Lost Boys

 

Cole Allen, Cal Tech grad and would-be assassin

The Lost Boys

20-30 million semiautomatic assault rifles, more guns that people, hate speech everywhere = political violence

Today’s blog is short and not exactly sweet. Political violence – particularly feeling justified in killing leaders that are associated with fostering agendas that the shooters have learned to hate (from healthcare to military figures to heads of state) – is hardly new. Assassination has been a part of history at least since recorded history began. And whether it is crass rivalry, anarchy, religious zeal, a search for fame or martyrdom or a belief “I must stop them,” killing what you hate or are taught to hate has accelerated as weaponry has increased in sophistication, volume killing capacity, range, lethality and effectiveness. Whether recruited fanatics, foreign operatives with defined targets or passionate lone wolves, in the modern world, every assassination attempt or success finds large cadres of supporters cheering, sometimes silently or to their core believers.

The April 25th Correspondents Dinner was cancelled after an alleged attacker and presidential wannabe assassin, 31-year-old parttime teacher, Cole Allen, failed to penetrate a very effective shield around President Trump and his political team. Even as he was a registered guest at the Hilton Hotel venue, Allen managed to bring a shotgun, a handgun, lots of ammunition and a passel of knives into his hotel room with assassination seemingly on his mind. But since most of these assassination attempts are by younger men, I feel justified calling them the “lost boys.”

Lumbering under a profoundly flawed interpretation of the Second Amendment (Antonin Scalia’s majority opinion in the 2008 Supreme Court ruling in Heller vs DC), the first Supreme Court decision in over two centuries to rule for an almost ubiquitous right of American citizens to own firearms, even military-grade assault weapons… was never the intent of James Madison who penned the Bill of Rights (which included the Second Amendment). We have since become the most violent developed nation on Earth, bringing a gun culture to dominate American life… and death.

We are now told that anyone opposing our leadership is the enemy, often deserving prosecution and execution, unpatriotic operatives that must be silenced. The nation has been divided into basically two camps, now identified with colorful red and blue markers. The mass and social media of each camp has demonized, marginalized and targeted the other side with a litany of hate and blame the United States has not witnessed at this scale since our Civil War. Vituperative rhetoric, the dehumanization of political opponents with hate-filled labels, has brought us to where we are today, often accompanied by warnings from other governments to their traveling citizens to beware of the dangers of traveling to the United States.

We did this to ourselves, and the language of hate and blame continues unabated, with some minimal signs that perhaps these labels are false, and that extremes on either side of this nasty debate are, simply, wrong and out-of-touch. We need to learn these lessons better, reject leaders who goad us to extremes. We need to stop outsourcing our political beliefs to extremists with simple and obviously undemocratic solutions… and learn to seek out facts vs conspiracy theories.

I’m Peter Dekom, and what we have before us is what happens when common sense is so vilified that it has simply left the building.