Hurricanes, wildfires, floods & other natural disasters have become far more destructive and frequent thanks to what we benignly call “Climate Change.” In fact, the damage they leave behind is so cataclysmic that they are anything but natural. And like climate deniers, who deny the reality of our environment’s destruction, we also have election deniers who claim to have supernatural powers to detect conspiracies.

The reality of the Trump tornado & his reign of terror is denied vehemently even though he ran for office promising he would destroy the corrupt government in Washington D.C. The M.A.G.A. mental midgets dance with joy at all the harm Trump has caused & apparently respect Putin and his authoritarian (dictatorial) form of government even though their Twinkie-loving toadie Trump hasn’t a clue as to what to replace our government with.

 

I guess they imagine some new variation of the old west before law & order took over? So, everybody packs an automatic rifle & it’ll be survival of the fittest. Not exactly Disneyland or Leave it to Beaver. But hey, at least we’ll be free & not have any more rules or regulations protecting citizens from runaway corporate corruption. Yep! The M.A.G.A. morons think things were bad before their greedy buffoon came along, in the near future, we will return to the good old Dark Ages.

 

No, Trump didn’t swing the wrecking-ball all on his own, America was ripe for a demagogue, but Trump is like a demon on steroids in his insatiable greed & lust for power over others. This is why he goes weak in the knees whenever he shares the world stage or a room with Vlad the Impaler of Russia. The irony of our situation would be humorous if it were not so dishonorable. Trump’s walking dead & mentally and morally challenged traitors are spitting on the graves of their fathers & grandfathers who fought against communism & fascism. Yet they strut around in their fatigues waving the U.S. flag that represents the hard-won freedom & democracy that we supposedly still fight & die for around the globe?

 

Naturally, all the “Defense” contractors couldn’t be happier because their Weapons of Mass Destruction will not only be used against terrorists real & made up, but they can now be turned against American citizens as well.

 

How did we arrive at this dystopia? Well, Trump was just the final straw that broke America’s back & there are plenty of contributing factors. My goal in writing this essay is to simply highlight some of those Weapons of Mass Delusion & other destructive forces. This isn’t a comprehensive list & I’m presenting them in no particular order or rank in terms of their horrific consequences.

 

I believe a significant factor in America’s demise was the advent of “Reality T.V.” I think the “reality” series “Survivor” was one of the first of these absurd shows? I watched an episode with my wife & afterwards, I said, what is this teaching children & young people? It’s telling them that lying, cheating, in short, doing anything to win is okay because this is the reality of life. I never watched another episode or any of the spawns that grew out of this sad phenomenon. How appropriate that it was this kind of television that made Trump a celebrity & played such a large role in helping him to become our president. By-the-way, the producers of the show revealed that Trump demanded that every time his name was mentioned, they had to say, Trump the billionaire. In brief, the show, just like everything about Trump was a staged fraud or fake! And millions of viewers came to believe that Trump was indeed a successful businessman, never mind the facts that his casinos all failed, countless businesses he started, failed, and that his daddy gave him over $400 million dollars, not the measly $1 million he’s always claimed.

 

Equally significant in our slide down towards oblivion was the rise of the so-called “social media.” I really feel like a sucker when it comes to this massively harmful social phenomenon. For years, I wouldn’t join Facebook & thought it was more suited for teenage girls but a cousin of mine told me it was a way to connect with many relatives I didn’t know.

I soon learned that was a dead-end but came up with a pipedream that I could attract readers to my blog via Facebook. I wrote hundreds of posts, posted my essays, answered people’s questions or comments at great length, etc. but like an addict, I couldn’t walk away. Before emojis took over, I’d get an occasional sentence or two from “friends,” every great now & then. I’m not sure of exactly how long I wasted my time, energy, & love on this anti-social platform, probably seven or eight years in total?

 

You could say that it was no wonder that I fit in so well in the field of special education & worked in this area for most of my adult working career. In the context of this essay, it’s important to note that Facebook like other social media platforms is based on a business model that is “Toxic by Design.” In brief, they thrive i.e., prosper financially by sowing seeds of hate & fear and other negative emotions because this keeps people on their pages much longer. And Steve Bannon, one of Trump’s most sinister advisors before he took office, headed an organization called, “Cambridge Analytica.” Thanks to Zuckerberg’s unbridled greed, he gave Bannon access to something like 80,000 American Facebook users which also gave them access to every one of those 80,000’s friends.

And Bannon, being the Dr. Mengele that he is, created hundreds if not thousands of false stories about Hillary & false stories about how wonderful Trump is & they targeted all the Facebook users they knew were persuadable thanks to those “free & innocent looking quizzes” they plant in your Facebook feed. All the while, the DNC was obsessed with Russian trolls for over two years, but it didn’t matter whether they were Russian, Greek, French, Chinese, or whoever, the fact that Facebook allowed them in was basically ignored. So, this too was a significant nail in the coffin of American democracy.

 

Continuing on, consider all the self-righteous protests on the part of the White Supremacists or White Nationalists over what they laughingly call, “Critical Race Theory.” In a nutshell, this is a smokescreen the White Supremacists are hiding behind in their audacious claims that they are the victims & are being labeled as racists. And they hope to completely eliminate any mention of America’s ugly racist past in our public schools because it will soon become evident that racism is alive & well in America. There’s hardly a week that passes without some white cop shooting & killing a young, unarmed black man.

 

The venerable Howard Zinn must be rolling over in his grave because his classic, “A People’s History of the United States,” proved that American history has always been taught from the perspectives of the White elite & never from the perspective of the Black people who made the U.S. rich on their backs as slaves. The subjugation & theft from Mexico that created our great Southwest. American women’s role as second class citizens not even allowed to vote until fairly recently, etc.

I graduated high school in 1971 but it wasn’t until 1974 when I read “Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee” by Dee Brown that I’d ever heard a word about the so-called “Winning of the West,” from a native American’s perspective & this book absolutely blew my mind! The Christian Fascists (see Chris Hedges) & the White Fascists & Nazis have been so emboldened by their Fuhrer Donald that they have gone on the offensive against bleeding-heart liberals, etc. who have the temerity to believe that we should be taught about our entire history, not just the selective stories that paint America as the great, benign, superpower.

Moving along our path to destruction is the erosion of what used to be a proud & honorable profession, American journalism. For those of you who’d like a crash course on some of our most illustrious newsmen, look up George Seldes, I.F. Stone, & Edward R. Murrow. There are many good books on the fall & decline of American journalism but in my opinion, the most succinct & factual book ever written on the subject is “Manufacturing Consent,” by Edward Herman & Noam Chomsky. I have to interject here that Noam Chomsky is considered the greatest living intellectual by millions of people around the globe, including myself.

The American corporate media is such a complex issue that there’s no way I could do the subject justice in this essay but to greatly oversimplify it, when the media conglomerates betrayed their Constitutional duty as our founding fathers laid down i.e. to serve as a watchdog on the government, and realized that the news departments could generate profits, they became little more than whores for the political powers that be. This is when the term, “Infotainment,” was coined & it says it all, especially under Trump’s reign of error & blatant, non-stop, self-serving lies!

 

Some who read this essay may be tempted to dismiss me as simply a technophobe or Luddite, but they couldn’t be more wrong. I acknowledge that technology has brought many wonderful advances to mankind, but my criticism of certain modern, technological gadgets is an honest appraisal of the things dragging us down in a death-spiral & can’t be ignored.

 

In several respects, the introduction of television has played a large role in the overall “dumbing-down” of America. In the beginning, in what was called “The Golden Age of Television,” there were several excellent programs that presented serious issues that enlarged people’s minds & spirits. Classic works of literature & brilliant dramas that encouraged dialog between us as citizens in a free nation.

 

“The early days of television introduced hour-long anthology drama series, many of which received critical acclaim.^[6][7] Examples include Kraft Television Theatre (debuted May 7, 1947), The Chevrolet Tele-Theatre (debuted September 27, 1948), Television Playhouse (debuted December 4, 1947), The Philco Television Playhouse (debuted October 3, 1948), Westinghouse Studio One (debuted November 7, 1948), and Your Show Time (debuted January 21, 1949).

High culture dominated commercial network television programming in the 1950s with the first television appearances of Leonard Bernstein (on Omnibus) and Arturo Toscanini, the first telecasts from Carnegie Hall, the first live U.S. telecasts of plays by Shakespeare, the first telecasts of Tchaikovsky‘s ballets The Sleeping Beauty and The Nutcracker, and the first opera specially composed for television, Gian Carlo Menotti‘s Amahl and the Night Visitors. The Bell Telephone Hour, an NBC radio program, began its television run featuring both classical and Broadway performers. The networks employed art critics, notably Aline Saarinen and Brian O’Doherty, something that was mostly discontinued by the start of the digital television era (CBS’s John Leonard being the last of significance).^[8][9] “

 

Of course, in today’s Trump world, this would be dismissed as elitist snobbery. But have you ever reflected on the fact that elitists in sports, business, music, etc. are revered but if they label you an intellectual or cultural elitist, their critics can be especially vicious, crude, & ugly and Trump has played this card continuously in his fake posture as a populist.

 

Moreover, there have been notable exceptions in terms of quality television series & “The West Wing,” was definitely such a pleasant exception. But overall & at the risk of being dismissed as an elitist snob, the overwhelming majority of choices on television today is pure, unadulterated crap! And the same goes for the movies.

One comic book hero from the past after another & sequels ad nauseam. It’s like the imagination of Hollywood movie producers & writers has gone on permanent vacation. Zombies, vampires, asinine comedies only the most immature & ignorant can appreciate. An endless stream of war movies always showing America as the great champions & protectors of the rest of humanity. Dystopian nightmares like Mad Max are extremely popular. Animated movies, so-called comedies that make one want to cry. Just one disappointment after another but again, there are exceptions. Where is the cultural uplift, the intellectual contribution that helps to make us better humans, more compassionate, more empathetic?

 

A great book on this subject is “Amusing Ourselves to Death,” by Neil Postman should you care to enlighten & warn yourself and your loved ones. The key point here is to reflect on just how powerful the medium of television has become especially in the context of this essay & specifically how it has propelled a braggart, grifter, fraud, & criminal like Trump to the highest position in the world. Note also that Trump is indeed a master at manipulating the media and he got something like $5 billion dollars worth of free advertising by the media during his campaign because he knows how to keep the cameras on him with his disgusting comments & behavior. So, when the corporate news media lamented their treatment by Trump, I felt absolutely no sympathy for them.

 

And speaking of the slow death of our democracy, we mustn’t forget the role of the military/congressional complex. The historian, Chalmers Johnson summed it up nicely, “We can either be an empire or a democracy, but we can’t be both.” I have been consistently amazed over the years at how pissed-off people get at mythical welfare cheaters but never say a harsh word about the Pentagon’s charging $900 for a hammer & countless other examples of outright theft & corruption in the Pentagon & the numerous “Defense contractors.”

I believe it was recently revealed that since the start of the war in Afghanistan, something like $20 trillion dollars has basically been squandered. Where’s the outrage? Why are the Trumpsters silent on this issue? The politicians tell us again & again, sorry, we don’t have the money for health, education, welfare, our infrastructure, training our working class for decent paying jobs, etc. but magically, they always seem to find the millions & billions for weapons — many which don’t even work — and the PR firms spin the narrative so the public blames the victims even worse off than them, for their economic woes.

 

In the name of fairness & honesty, yes, the Democratic party has betrayed working class & middle-class America repeatedly & most obviously when Clinton signed NAFTA into law. But Clinton only did what the Republicans had been trying to do ever since their darling Reagan was in office. I know that two wrongs don’t make a right but at least the Democrats do a few good things along the way. Yet with the unleashing of the beast that Trump is, the G.O.P. no longer even attempts to hide its utter contempt for everyone who isn’t a part of the 1%. And it really boggles my mind to witness the Trump supporters so fiercely loyal to him as he & the G.O.P. plot & plan to cut-off their food stamps, shutdown Social Security & Medicare, etc. etc. etc. Talk about blind loyalty, this is definitely the Theatre of the Absurd.

 

Is it any wonder I’m so pessimistic, cynical, & despairing? If I dare to mention these contradictions & hypocrisies in a bar or tavern, guys want to beat me up & the bartenders often tell me to shut-up or get out. It’s okay to repeat the latest talking points on FOX “news,” but it’s taboo to open your mouth if you’re a liberal or a democrat. This is yet another one of those freedoms our soldiers are fighting & dying for around the world in our perpetual wars that have been going on ever since I was born in 1952.

Without a doubt, one of the things that I find so incredibly difficult to understand is the fact that Trump idolizes & fawns all over bloody dictators around the globe like Putin and he disrespects America’s allies & other members of NATO & Trump’s walking dead never utter a word of criticism against Trump? It seems these cretins would rather America become a dictatorship as long as we have a “strong leader,” like Trump in charge? Tell me this isn’t the Twilight Zone.

 

We mustn’t forget the important role the “Christian” fundamentalists, evangelicals, & Dominionists have played in our destruction from within. I have written a book on this subject & again for the sake of brevity, I’ll just point out a rather scary observation on my part. You may have heard the often-repeated criticism against Muslim schools like in Afghanistan run by the Taliban & called madrasah (s)?

 

They are usually dismissed as little more than terrorist training schools where the students are taught to hate Americans. I could counter with the sad phenomenon of “Charter schools,” in the U.S. The difference being that in our charter schools which suck money away from public education & aren’t held accountable for test results like public schools are, their students are taught to fear/hate especially secular humanists. Yet a five-minute Google search will show you that our founding fathers were secular humanists, not Christians like the lying, Christian fascists want you to believe.

Tragically for free thinking Americans, something like 74 million of these wolves in sheep’s clothing that call themselves Christians, not only voted for Trump both times, but they also sing his praises. We moved around a lot as I was growing up, sometimes two or three times a year. And I attended Sunday school in a variety of Christian denominations, I didn’t know anything about the differences, I just liked going. But when I was around 14 or so, the hypocrisy just became so blatant that I stopped going to church & calling myself a Christian. But there’s one thing I know for sure and that is that Jesus laid it out as clear as could be in regard to how Christians should believe & behave in his Sermon on the Mount. Trump is like the poster boy for exactly the kind of guy that Jesus would’ve kicked to the curb. The only thing I can figure as to how so many self-professed Christians could follow & support such a vile creature as Trump is their moral cowardice & willingness to overlook Trump’s “little flaws,” because he promises to allow prayer in school, ban abortion, etc.

 

Marching along in our dark parade is perhaps one of the most pernicious forces in American history that didn’t originate here but was definitely imported by the Puritans, anti-intellectualism. Throughout the long & ignoble history of Christianity, the majority of the “Church Fathers,” were anti-intellectualists because they feared their power over their followers would be weakened if the people were educated.

By-the-way, dictators have also feared intellectuals & one of the first things they do when they overthrow the government in a coup is shut down the universities & the press. Note Trump’s installment of Betsy DeVos a rabid anti-intellectual Christian who wants to replace our entire public education system with Charter Schools. The ongoing war against intelligence in American society is a very long & complex story but if you give a damn, Richard Hofstadter’s “Anti-intellectualism in American Life” is the classic & the seminal book on the subject. I’ve read it twice & have dissected it for a book I’ve written but haven’t edited yet. One last note on this subject, if I remember correctly, the Church was against the use of Guttenberg’s printing press even though the Bible was the first book that was mass published. Mull that over if you will?

Speaking of anti-intellectualism, another technological innovation, the so-called “Smart phone,” is also dumbing us down yet many who own one believe it’s the best thing since sliced bread. Whoever came up with the name & the marketing campaign for these stupid phones must be very pleased with themselves for duping the public in such a massively devious PR strategy. People think their communication skills have in effect been put on steroids with these devices. In much the same manner that people who believe the social media has made them more sociable.

 

When I’m in public places like restaurants or bars & I see groups of people who by outward appearances I think are friends yet they’re not socializing with one another, no, their eyes are glued to the tiny screens on their phones like junkies hooked on heroin, oblivious to their “friends,” and the life going on around them. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see that these phones aren’t making people smarter & are actually making them dumber because our human interactions are one of our best and most important ways of learning from one another. Tristan Harris lays out the danger much more succinctly than I & he was an ethicist for Google when he woke up to the harm being done by these distracting toys.

This video by Harris touches on several critical areas & you’ll probably dismiss me as unrealistic, a dreamer, a utopian but hey, why don’t we just get rid of these goddamn “smart phones,” and have phones that can only receive or send a voice mail? Real life emergencies i.e., a family member gets hurt, your car breaks down, etc. are the only valid reasons for owning a portable phone in my opinion. Then we can & should get down to the really serious issues facing humanity like climate destruction, the threats of a nuclear exchange, & the loss of our freedom.

 

Returning to the main subject of this essay, denialism i.e., climate destruction denial, election denial, etc. it’s also very relevant that roughly a third of our population deny the Holocaust happened. And if that doesn’t scare the shit out of you, nothing will because if people can deny such a massive & horrific attempt at the total genocide of a people, it’s that much easier for it to happen again.

Moreover, this essay isn’t just about the denialism of the stupid & the willfully ignorant who have fallen under the spell of the dumbest & most immoral president we’ve ever had, no, it’s also about the denialism on the so-called “Left” in America.

The Trump tornado of terror didn’t come out of nowhere, no, it slowly built-up & steadily grew right under our noses. When Trump first announced that he was running for the office of president of the U.S., most of those on the “Left,” i.e., democrats, liberals, progressives got a real laugh out of it & said things like, are you kidding, Trump isn’t even qualified to be a dog catcher let alone president? But like those religious extremists we see standing on the streetcorners ranting & raving, we dismissed him as just another looney.

 

Note that 74 million self-professed Christians voted for the Golden Calf that is Trump & they also literally believe that all mankind’s problems began when Adam ate that apple from the Tree of Knowledge. In brief, they believe God wants us all to be ignorant & obedient to him, the ultimate authoritarian & the charlatans that come along like Trump, who are convincing authoritarians, should be obeyed.

 

This is very personal for me because for almost half a century, I have tried to warn family, friends, & strangers how dangerously ignorant Americans are as a whole. And I’ve been mocked & dismissed for most of my life. I don’t derive any satisfaction from having been proven right after all these years & as a matter of fact, I never thought of myself as an exceptional student until I was in my late 20s when a handful of professors from philosophy, political science, & literature each told me in their own ways that I was a bright guy.  And even though I was told in the sixth grade that I was reading at the 11^th grade, sixth month level, neither my mom nor any school counselors encouraged me academically.

I’ve shared this bit of my personal history in perhaps a naïve attempt to reveal how painfully alone I have been all my life. Without a doubt, the best years of my life were the first four years I lived with Jeri who was to become my wife. As human beings, we all need to be heard & to feel we have truly communicated with others, so we know we’re not alone. But with all these fancy new gadgets or toys, we are feeling more isolated & alienated from one another than ever before in human history.

 

I don’t think Mother Gaia is going to miss her ignorant, greedy, & destructive children so we’d better pull together my friends or it truly will be the end of humanity. I have a few more important & highly relevant points to share before I wind this essay up & I hope you will give them an honest consideration.

 

Again, Trump isn’t the sole reason we are perilously close to losing our democracy, but he definitely was a catalyst that hastened the end. Sort of like a snowball that grows in size as it speeds down a hillside & become more dangerous & powerful as it gains momentum. Speaking of which, if you’d care to get an in-depth understanding of how Trump built his fortune & fame, there’s a documentary called, “Where’s My Roy Cohn,” which Trump actually said in one of his frustrating moments in office. Cohn was, at the risk of sounding overly dramatic, evil incarnate & mind you, I stopped calling myself a Christian around the age of 14.

If you watch this film, most likely you’ll be struck as I was at the amazing parallels between Trump & Cohn. And if you take the time to inform yourself on Trump’s background, I recommend, “Trump, the Greatest Show on Earth,” by Wayne Barrett. Mr. Barrett followed Trump’s career for over 38 years until his death in 2017. He was the first reporter who took Trump seriously & nailed him for some of his crimes at the beginning. He is the most authoritative writer on Trump in my opinion & another excellent writer in regard to exposing his career of corruption is David Cay Johnston who wrote, “The Making of Donald Trump.” Mr. Johnston has known Trump for over 28 years & is known as America’s de facto top tax enforcer because of his exposes on tax fraud in America’s corporate elite.

If we’re very lucky, Trump’s tax fraud over the decades may be the final nail in his coffin but that won’t save us from future demagogues which are now more likely than ever to replace Trump. Just look at what the GOP has devolved to, something like 350 members of Congress now actively support & spread absurd conspiracy theories & these are the people supposedly representing us? For your edification, here is a list of the methods of demagogues & it requires little effort to see that Trump followed this playbook to the letter:

 

• • 3.1 Scapegoating
  • 3.2 Fearmongering
  • 3.3 Lying
  • 3.4 Emotional oratory and personal charisma
  • 3.5 Accusing opponents of weakness and disloyalty
  • 3.6 Promising the impossible
  • 3.7 Violence and physical intimidation
  • 3.8 Personal insults and ridicule
  • 3.9 Vulgarity and outrageous behavior
  • 3.10 Folksy posturing
  • 3.11 Gross oversimplification
  • 3.12 Attacking the news media

 

Like it or not and acknowledge it or not, Trump is a mirror of our culture and society. He showed the world our dark side. And again, all of us who sat on the side apathetically & didn’t speak out are just as culpable as those MAGA morons who voted for him.

 

History tells us that Mussolini, the fascist dictator of Italy, was a role model for Hitler. Here’s a quote attributed to Mussolini that some dispute but nevertheless is very relevant to America today. By-the-way, thanks to our impoverished public education system, most Americans aren’t aware of the fact that many of our corporations loved Mussolini & fascism because it demolished worker’s unions & therefore made corrupt businesses run much smoother. In fact, several of America’s largest corporations supported & did business with Mussolini’s fascist government as well as Hitler’s Nazi government. Are you beginning to catch on my friend?

 

“Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power”
― Benito Mussolini

 

This again is what boggles my mind about Trump supporters, how in the Hell can they think/believe that Trump, a member of the wealthy elite, is going to look out for their financial well-being? His kind get rich by exploiting the working class & he’s done so countless times over the years from simple laborers to contractors, etc. And he has hidden behind the laws created by the politicians & the corporate cockroaches to enrich himself. He used his term in office to enrich himself & his family at every opportunity like a cheap, used car salesman & the MAGA morons love him?

The Early Warning Signs of Fascism

1. The cult of tradition. This is the belief that the truth is already known once and for all. Fascists believe there is no need to advance in learning.
2. The rejection of modernism. Fascists reject the Enlightenment and its evidence-based rationality.
3. The cult of action for action’s sake. Fascist leaders act impulsively, without thinking or planning ahead.
4. No analytical criticism. Fascists ignore nuance and see any disagreement as treasonous.
5. Fear of difference. Fascists fear diversity. Thus, they are racist by definition.
6. Appeal to a frustrated middle class. An economically frustrated and/or politically marginalized middle class is easy to stir to anger.
7. Obsession with a plot. Because the followers must be made to feel besieged, an internal “enemy” is provided: Immigrants, Muslims, Hispanics, Blacks. (Historically the Jews were often made to be “the enemy.”)
8. Anti-elitism. The followers are made to feel humiliated by the wealth and strength of the educated “elite.” This is used to create resentment.
9. Pacifism is trafficking with the enemy. Fascists believe that life is permanent warfare. Therefore, a desire for peace is treasonous.
10. Contempt for the weak. A fascist leader despises his underlings, who in turn despise those under them. They all either mock or ignore the poor, the sick, and the disabled.
11. The cult of heroism. The Fascist is eager to die a hero’s death. In his impatience, he frequently sends other people to their deaths.
12. Machismo. Fascists show disdain for women, disregard for chastity, and condemnation of homosexuality.
13. Selective populism. Under fascism, the “voice of the people” is not the democratic majority, but only the voices of those who support the leader.
14. Ur-fascism speaks Newspeak. Just as in Orwell’s 1984, Fascists use an impoverished vocabulary and an elementary syntax to limit complex and critical reasoning.

Or in a simpler way.

• Powerful and continuing nationalism
• Disdain for human rights
• Identification of enemies as a unifying cause
• Supremacy of the military
• Rampant sexism
• Controlled mass media
• Obsession with national security
• Religion and government intertwined
• Corporate power protected
• Labor power suppressed
• Disdain for intellectuals & the arts
• Obsession with crime & punishment
• Rampant cronyism & corruption
• Fraudulent elections

Look familiar to Trump’s agenda?

Germany’s Jewish population kept denying that Hitler would come to power and go as far as he did in trying to exterminate them right up to

 

Kristallnacht, (German: “Crystal Night”) , also called Night of Broken Glass or November Pogroms, the night of November 9–10, 1938, when German Nazis attacked Jewish persons and property. The name Kristallnacht refers ironically to the litter of broken glass left in the streets after these pogroms. The violence continued during the day of November 10, and in some places acts of violence continued for several more days.

The pretext for the pogroms was the shooting in Paris on November 7 of the German diplomat Ernst vom Rath by a Polish-Jewish student, Herschel Grynszpan. News of Rath’s death on November 9 reached Adolf Hitler in Munich, Germany, where he was celebrating the anniversary of the abortive 1923 Beer Hall Putsch. There, Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels, after conferring with Hitler, harangued a gathering of old storm troopers, urging violent reprisals staged to appear as “spontaneous demonstrations.” Telephone orders from Munich triggered pogroms throughout Germany, which then included Austria.

 

Just before midnight on November 9, Gestapo chief Heinrich Müller sent a telegram to all police units informing them that “in shortest order, actions against Jews and especially their synagogues will take place in all of Germany. These are not to be interfered with.” Rather, the police were to arrest the victims. Fire companies stood by synagogues in flames with explicit instructions to let the buildings burn. They were to intervene only if a fire threatened adjacent “Aryan” properties.

In two days and nights, more than 1,000 synagogues were burned or otherwise damaged. Rioters ransacked and looted about 7,500 Jewish businesses, killed at least 91 Jews, and vandalized Jewish hospitals, homes, schools, and cemeteries. The attackers were often neighbors. Some 30,000 Jewish males aged 16 to 60 were arrested. To accommodate so many new prisoners, the concentration camps at Dachau, Buchenwald, and Sachsenhausen were expanded.

https://www.britannica.com/event/Kristallnacht

 

“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”

― Edmund Burke

“Fascists use patriotism and religion to manipulate dumb people.

Fascist propaganda works best on the dumbest of the dumb. They don’t know when they’re being lied to.

That’s why it’s no coincidence that the MAGA death cult are the dumbest people in America.”
― Oliver Markus Malloy, American Fascism: A German Writer’s Urgent Warning To America

“If fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross.” (Sinclair Lewis)

In the end, we only have ourselves to blame. What makes us human is our ability to feel compassion and empathy for our fellow human beings. It is what separates us from beasts. Trump clearly isn’t capable of feeling empathy or compassion for others. He’s a malignant narcissist sociopath and those that think he’s wonderful are either the same or blind. This is what pushed America into just another failed and corrupt state!

— Rob DeLoss, Gold Beach, Oregon November 7, 2022