“They want to take away my FREEDOM”
Former President Donald Trump responded with fury Tuesday after he was arraigned on dozens of charges over his handling of classified documents and his alleged efforts to obstruct officials trying to retrieve them.
The former president is expected to leverage his anger at the charges as he continues his bid for the Republican nomination in the 2024 presidential race. His campaign is already fundraising on the back of the indictment. (HuffPost.com).
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Although the Trump Circus is getting old – always the same acts, same slight-of-hand barkers, same clowns – we should not take for granted the current indictments and the ones to come will be the force that makes them fold up the big tent, finally convincing the circus to leave town for good.
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Yeah, it’s familiar. For example:
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History Is Our Teacher; We Learn or We Perish
2022-06-19 >>
Decisions, Decisions…
Near the end of 1923, an odd, self-absorbed little man was arrested and charged with sedition and treason for his part in what became known as the Beer Hall Putsch*.
The Austrian-born little man had enlisted in the German army, serving during WW1 rising to the rank of corporal but told he likely would go no further because he lacked the necessary character to be a leader.
When the war ended, the man insisted to anyone who would listen that his army superiors were wrong about him and in fact that it was he who knew more about leadership and the military than the generals.
He brought this insistence to the Munich beer hall where, with the help of a few followers, he pushed his way to a co-leadership position in a small(ish) movement towards a coup against the German government.
The coup failed and the odd, little man was tried and convicted. He was sentenced to just five years for his role but even more shocking served only eight and a half months.
Upon release from prison (and not deported), the little man was still pissed about being told he wasn’t a leader and promised to make those who had questioned his capabilities wrong.
On 30 January 1933, the little man, Adolph Hitler, became Hitler The Fuhrer; Leader of the Nazi Party, Leader of Germany.
*The Beer Hall Putsch took place in one of the many beer hall cellars in November, 1923, in Munich, a stronghold of right-wing German conservative movements. The meeting was intended to plan a coup to separate Bavaria from Germany but that was not Hitler’s goal, he insisted on a total national revolution.
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Yes, History Repeats; A Short Reading List
2021-12-08 >>
Sometimes, A Little Obsession Is A Good Thing
Received a couple of e-mails recently suggesting I might be obsessed with the idea today’s Republicans are a Nazi-like political party.
Well, I think ‘obsessed’ could be an incorrect criticism. I say, could be… .
What I have attempted over the past three years – over and over and over again – is to remind Americans how much the Republican Party increasingly over the last couple decades unmistakably resembles the Nazis of Germany and Fascists of Italy during the period between the World Wars right through the end of WWII. This ‘resemblance’ has been especially apparent since 2016.
So, today I offer a short reading list allowing for an easy comparison. And, yes, History does at times repeat itself – when we allow it. MORE
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Lies, Stupidity, Cowardice. Oh, The Irony.
2021-07-18 >>
Does History Repeat Itself? Well, Kinda
On 18 July 1925, part one of “Four and a Half Years (of Struggle) Against Lies, Stupidity and Cowardice” was published in Germany. The book did not see rewarding sales numbers.
The author was in prison when he composed this ‘autobiography’; it was the original title of the work published as Mein Kampf.
The author, failed artist Adolph Hitler, had been convicted of treason and sentenced to five years for his role in the Beer Hall Putsch.
The ‘Putsch’ was an attempted coup by Hitler and his assortment of allies to take control of the government in the southern state of Bavaria, a growing centre of the Nazi Party.
The coup did not go well. In fact, it was a disaster. Some of Hitler’s allies deserted, some were grabbed up by authorities – and some of those ‘allies’ sought to make deals.
While the five year sentence was nothing but symbolic, Hitler served only nine months of that. And it was not hard time; leaving him the freedom to dictate his political manifesto.
And realted: Manifestos, central to theories of repeating history
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History As Reminder: March Madness
2019-03-10 >>
When We The People Don’t Pay Attention
In the last parliamentary elections of the Weimar Republic in March 1933, the Nazis polled 44% of the vote – not enough for a majority but enough to put down any future political resistance. Within two weeks Adolph Hitler proposed the Enabling Act, a temporary dissolution of the constitution while he dealt with the ‘problems’ facing the nation. The Reichstag passed the proposal 441 to 84. There would be no more elections nor a constitution to keep Hitler in check. The Reichstag had, in effect, voted away its own power.
Capitalizing on the nation’s instability, the temporary became permanent. Hitler took the opportunity to purge anyone whom he disliked or had crossed him; within a matter of weeks it had become illegal to criticize the government. A new secret police force, the Gestapo, immediately began arresting ‘unreliable’ persons, and Dachau, the first concentration camp, was opened to imprison them. Trade unions were banned, freedom of the press curtailed, and all other political parties declared illegal. Germany had become a one-party state with Hitler its leader, and soon its dictator.
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