Enemy of the People

In order to be a successful authoritarian, totalitarian, dictator, or whatever you want to call it, you must have an enemy. Someone or something you define as evil for your supporters to focus on. That way, no matter what happens or how badly things might go, you can deflect them back to the real problem, the enemy.

For Hitler, it was the Jews. They were “outsiders", "an alien race", and "degenerates”. He added to their demonization by tossing in that they were the brains and the money behind the rise of Communism. Two enemies now rolled into one. It was the Jews who were to blame for Germany’s defeat in World War One, for the “stab in the back” to the German Army while in battle - by their government back in Berlin that ended the war, and for robbing the German people since the Jews supposedly controlled the nation’s financial institutions. First, it was just small attacks on Jews; bullies beating them up, smashing shop windows, and mocking the Jewish people thanks to a compliant press. Then, laws were passed to restrict where the Jews could work, shop, and live, synagogues were destroyed, and Jewish businesses burned down. Then the Jews were rounded up…it was for their own good, of course, to protect them from righteously angry Germans, put into work camps or banned from universities, hospitals, and any government function. And finally, when war came, which was again blamed on the Jews who now had no power at all in Germany, a Final Solution. At least six million paid with their lives.

For Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, it was teachers, college students, intellectuals, people who owned small businesses, anyone who was educated or successful. After the fall of the capital Phnom Penh, they wasted no time rounding them all up, putting them in horrific re-education camps that became killing grounds. By small groups, so as not to arouse suspicion, those prisoners were then taken out and executed. At least 2 million people, a quarter of Cambodia’s population, were slaughtered in this manner. That happened in the 1970s. The Khmer Rouge was forced into western Cambodia by the 1979 invasion by Vietnam and did not completely die out until 1999. Cambodia has STILL not recovered from it.

For Donald Trump, it is the American free press.

In a tweet he sent twice on Friday, February 17, 2017, Trump called the media “The enemy of the American people”. He is setting up the press so that criminal acts against them will be justified. Remember how easy it was for Trump to encourage violence against protesters at his rallies? Reporters at several rallies have already stated they have been harassed, pushed, spat upon, screamed at, and Trump supporters pointing their fingers like a gun and firing at them.Think it will be very long before someone actually carries that out?
          On February 16th, Trump had his first solo press conference. By all accounts, it was a wild, mind-boggling, grievance-filled rant. He spent his time justifying his election win…four months after winning, belittling the press over and over, making up statistics, showing his crass, bigoted side, and giving evidence that he has no understanding of what uranium is, the effects of nuclear weapons, or how government works. Others thought it was great entertainment and really put the press in its place. Right-wing radio commentators Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity sang his praises on the air. The media got what it deserved. (The irony was lost on both of them that they are the media too. It will only take a small point for them to run afoul of Trump and they will not be spared anything the other media is now suffering.) Less than a half an hour after the press conference ended, Trump tweeted out that he wanted his supporters to know how dishonest the press really was and that they would not tell the American people the truth about his press conference - even though anyone watching TV or listening to the radio could hear it live with no filter. How is that dishonest? 

The “dishonest media”, “the failing press”, “the fake news” "part of the problem" and "part of the corrupt system" are phrases Trump is using in his initial demonization of those who have a First Amendment right to ask him questions. Unless you agree with Trump 100%, you are the enemy. Trump has never read what one of our greatest presidents had to say about the press. "The basis of our governments being the opinion of the people, the very first object should be to keep that right; and were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter. But I should mean that every man should receive those papers and be capable of reading them." -The words of Thomas Jefferson to Edward Carrington in 1787.
         There will now be physical threats toward the media and violence is the next logical step. Trump will also pursue new and unique methods through the courts to close down or severely curtail the free press. And his supporters will willingly give up much of their First Amendment rights without a whimper.

The Wall              The Muslim Ban            Unregulated oil and gas pollution

Trump means what he says. He will do the things he has threatened to do. He is not concerned with other people's happiness or well-being, not even his supporters. He is concerned only with his own and to a lesser degree his family's. If his billionaire friends can enrich themselves off the corpse of the American economy, that’s okay too. But the lesson of Michael Flynn should give anyone who works for him pause. If someone makes Trump look bad, even if Trump is the cause of it, they will be thrown under the bus…or overboard with weights tied to their legs.

Those of you who don’t take Trump's words and actions seriously, keep in mind, in 1932, few people in Germany seriously thought that Adolf Hitler would become their chancellor. And when he did win constitutionally the next year, they deluded themselves into thinking various branches of government would keep him reigned in. Sound familiar?

When Trump Advisor Stephen Miller went on nationally televised shows last Sunday, and in his best Joseph Goebbels impersonation, warned the viewers that Trump’s authority “will not be questioned”, you can clearly see where things are headed.

Knowing what you know now - if you were Jewish in Germany in 1935, what would you do? 
         In 2017, what should Americans do?

We Hold These Truths to be Self-Evident: The US respects no border but its own

            

          In a brazen early morning assault, a special commando unit from what appears to be the PLA slipped into Silicon Valley, destroying a computer business employing several political refugees from the People’s Republic of China, killed over a dozen civilians in the building including six Americans, kidnapped one Taiwanese scientist, and stole high-tech hardware before withdrawing. The U.S. Western Military Command seemed unaware as to how the Special Forces-type group got into the country, although survivors of the attack state two large helicopters were seen lifting off shortly after the raid. The area has been cordoned off by Military Police while Army intelligence officers and FBI agents sift through the debris from the attack. One officer confirmed that two survivors heard Chinese commands being given to the soldiers involved in the assault.  

         In an unrelated report, a large Chinese Jin-class submarine was sighted yesterday 15 miles off the coast of California near Ano Nuevo State Park.

         China’s foreign minister Wang Yi said the U.S. was resorting to “alternative facts” in order to pin the blame on China. He also added that his country had the right to defend itself against American imperialism and intimidation wherever it occurs, and charged the U.S. with cyber-invasions of the PRC and conducting its own state-sponsored terrorism.     

Chinese Jin-Class Type 094 submarine

            If the above account had actually happened, what would be your reaction? Alright, then when is it okay for the United States to conduct Team America: World Police-like invasions of foreign countries?

           On January 25, 2017, President Trump, with son-in-law Jared Kushner and Steve Bannon urging him on, joined by Mike Pence, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, Michael Flynn, and Gen. Joseph Dunford Jr. at an informal dinner approved sending Navy SEAL Team 6 into Yemen on Sunday, the 29th, with a mission to seize cell phones and laptop computers used by Al Qaeda operatives. As it turned out, virtually everything that could go wrong did after inept planning and a series of misjudgments ended with the elite unit pinned down in a withering 50-minute gun battle that also wounded at least three other members of the squad and destroyed a $75 million dollar Osprey aircraft. Wednesday night the Pentagon acknowledged that the mission also killed over 20 Yemeni civilians, including many children. The account from Al Qaeda’s branch in Yemen, confirm the death of the 8-year-old daughter of Anwar al-Awlaki, the American-born Al Qaeda leader who was killed in a 2011 drone strike. Chief Petty Officer William Owens was killed in the raid, the first member of the military to die on Trump’s watch. Of course, Trump hailed his first counterterrorism operation a huge success, claiming the commandos captured “important intelligence that will assist the U.S. in preventing terrorism against its citizens and people around the world.” A statement by the military’s Central Command Wednesday night said that the recovered materials may provide some initial information helpful to counterterrorism analysts. But the statement did not provide details, and they declined to characterize any discussions with Mr. Trump prior to the mission.

I will not let George Bush or Barak Obama off the hook either because when in office they both ordered raids into sovereign nations, including Syria, Libya, and Pakistan. The U.S.routinely violates the airspace of nations all over the world with Reaper, Predator, and Global Hawk UAVs or drones as they are most commonly known. Hundreds of innocent people have been killed in missile strikes that our CIA and military blithely refer to as "collateral damage." In other words, their lives don't matter. Yet we are not at war with those people or with the nations where they live.

Who gave the U.S. permission to flaunt the rules of war? To treat other countries as though they were nothing more than our doormat? And to send U.S. combat troops into harm’s way when there is no declaration of war against those nations?
         Does China have the right to do the same thing to us? Does Russia? Does Mexico?

This raid was conducted under the authority of a man who avoided military service in the mid-1960s by claiming he had a bone spur in his foot and when asked in 2015 which foot, he stammered and then said “It’s in the records. You’ll look it up in the records.” I still vividly recall breaking my left hand playing football when I was 15, but Trump can’t remember which foot had such a painful bone spur that he was able to use it as a reason to stay out of the military? He is also on record as claiming those who are captured in wartime are not heroes. He likes "people who weren’t captured, okay", that his Military School background gave him better military training than men and women serving in Iraq and Afghanistan,  that “no one is better at the military” than he is, and – a slap in the face to all veterans - on the Howard Stern show in 1997, compared his sexual escapades of the 1980s to a war experience and made him “.feel like a great and very brave soldier.”

What if Owens had been captured instead of killed? What would have been Trump's response? 
         This is what happens when you don't read intelligence briefings.
         Remember him; Chief Petty Officer William Ryan Owens. He is just the first to die due to Trump’s bumbling, amateurish and dangerous mishandling of our military.