The United States is 248 years old, and we are once again facing the dangerous dissolution of our democracy.
In 1863, Abraham Lincoln addressed the nation with the following words:
“Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation or any nation so conceived, and so dedicated, can long endure.”
In World War II, a generation of Americans fought and died to preserve our democracy and to save the world from destruction.
Hitler was then the despot, the destroyer of Europe, and potentially the United States. Today, we have a Hitler here on our own land.
As Abraham Lincoln said:
“It is rather for us, the living, we here be dedicated to the great task remaining before us that, from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they here, gave the last full measure of devotion… we here highly resolve these dead shall not have died in vain; that the nation, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”
Today, 161 years later, it is still our task to recognize the enemy of our democracy, and join the battle to save our nation from destruction, whether from within or without.
“We are now engaged in a great civil war, testing whether this nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure.”
The civil war in which we find ourselves now, the battle in which we are presently engaged, is over the minds of men and women.
We now have enemies outside the country, and we have enemies within.
It is the task of this generation to recognize and fight against any force that threatens our nation, just as Lincoln advised. It is our task to dedicate ourselves to the positive values of our democracy, and to be ever watchful of the negative forces wishing to destroy them.
This is a blog by Heather Cox Richardson (https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com) posted on October 13, which ought to be of interest to anyone going to the polls to vote:
“He is the most dangerous person ever. I had suspicions when I talked to you about his mental decline and so forth, but now I realize he’s a total fascist. He is now the most dangerous person to this country…a fascist to the core.”
This is how former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley, the nation’s highest-ranking military officer and the primary military advisor to the president, the secretary of defense, and the National Security Council, described former president Donald Trump to veteran journalist Bob Woodward. Trump appointed Milley to that position.
Since he announced his presidential candidacy in June 2015 by calling Mexican immigrants rapists and criminals, Trump has trafficked in racist anti-immigrant stories. But since the September 10 presidential debate when he drew ridicule for his outburst regurgitating the lie that legal Haitian migrants in Springfield, Ohio, were eating their white neighbors’ pets, Trump has used increasingly fascist rhetoric. By this weekend, he had fully embraced the idea that the United States is being overrun by Black and Brown criminals and that they, along with their Democratic accomplices, must be rounded up, deported, or executed, with the help of the military.
Myah Ward of Politico noted on October 12 that Trump’s speeches have escalated to the point that he now promises that he alone can save the country from those people he calls “animals,” “stone cold killers,” the “worst people,” and the “enemy from within.” He falsely claims Vice President Kamala Harris “has imported an army of illegal alien gang members and migrant criminals from the dungeons of the third world…from prisons and jails and insane asylums and mental institutions, and she has had them resettled beautifully into your community to prey upon innocent American citizens.”
Trump’s behavior is Authoritarianism 101. In a 1951 book called The True Believer, political philosopher Eric Hoffer noted that demagogues appeal to a disaffected population whose members feel they have lost the power they previously held, that they have been displaced either religiously, economically, culturally, or politically. Such people are willing to follow a leader who promises to return them to their former positions of prominence and thus to make the nation great again.
But to cement their loyalty, the leader has to give them someone to hate. Who that is doesn’t really matter: the group simply has to be blamed for all the troubles the leader’s supporters are suffering. Trump has kept his base firmly behind him by demonizing immigrants, the media, and, increasingly, Democrats, deflecting his own shortcomings by blaming these groups for undermining him.
According to Hoffer, there’s a psychological trick to the way this rhetoric works that makes loyalty to such a leader get stronger as that leader’s behavior deteriorates. People who sign on to the idea that they are standing with their leader against an enemy begin to attack their opponents, and in order to justify their attacks, they have to convince themselves that that enemy is not good-intentioned, as they are, but evil. And the worse they behave, the more they have to believe their enemies deserve to be treated badly.
According to Hoffer, so long as they are unified against an enemy, true believers will support their leader no matter how outrageous his behavior gets. Indeed, their loyalty will only grow stronger as his behavior becomes more and more extreme. Turning against him would force them to own their own part in his attacks on those former enemies they would now have to recognize as ordinary human beings like themselves.
At a MAGA rally in Aurora, Colorado, on October 11, Trump added to this formula his determination to use the federal government to attack those he calls enemies. Standing on a stage with a backdrop that read, “DEPORT ILLEGALS NOW” and “END MIGRANT CRIME,” he insisted that the city had been taken over by Venezuelan gangs and proposed a federal program he called “Operation Aurora” to remove those immigrants he insists are members of “savage gangs.” When Trump said, “We have to live with these animals, but we won’t live with them for long,” a person in the crowd shouted: “Kill them!”
Officials in Aurora emphatically deny Trump’s claim that the city is a “war zone.” Republican mayor Mike Coffman said that Aurora is “not a city overrun by Venezuelan gangs” and that such statements are “grossly exaggerated.” While there have been incidents, they “were limited to several apartment complexes in this city of more than 400,000 residents.” The chief of the Aurora police agreed that the city is “not by any means overtaken by Venezuelan gangs.”
In Aurora, Trump also promised to “invoke the Alien Enemies Act of 1798.” As legal analyst Asha Rangappa explains, the Alien Enemies Act authorizes the government to round up, detain, and deport foreign nationals of a country with which the U.S. is at war. But it is virtually certain Trump didn’t come up with the idea to use that law on his own, raising the question of who really will be in charge of policy in a second Trump administration.
Trump aide Stephen Miller seems the likely candidate to run immigration policy. He has promised to begin a project of “denaturalization,” that is, stripping naturalized citizens of their citizenship. He, too, spoke at Aurora, leading the audience in booing photos that were allegedly of migrant criminals.
Before Miller spoke, a host from Right Side Broadcasting used the dehumanizing language associated with genocide, saying of migrants: “These people, they are so evil. They are not your run-of-the-mill criminal. They are people that are Satanic. They are involved in human sacrifice. They are raping men, women, and children—especially underaged children.” Trump added the old trope of a population carrying disease, saying that immigrants are “very very very sick with highly contagious disease, and they’re let into our country to infect our country.”
Trump promised the audience in Aurora that he would “liberate Colorado. I will give you back your freedom and your life.”
On Saturday, October 12, Trump held a rally in Coachella, California, where temperatures near 100 degrees Fahrenheit (38 degrees Celsius) sparked heat-related illnesses in his audience as he spoke for about 80 minutes in the apocalyptic vein he has adopted lately. After the rally, shuttle buses failed to arrive to take attendees back to their cars, leaving them stranded.
And on Sunday, October 13, Trump made the full leap to authoritarianism, calling for using the federal government not only against immigrants, but also against his political opponents. After weeks of complaining about the “enemy within,” Trump suggested that those who oppose him in the 2024 election are the nation’s most serious problem.
He told Fox News Channel host Maria Bartiromo that even more troubling for the forthcoming election than immigrants “is the enemy from within…we have some very bad people, we have some sick people, radical left lunatics…. And it should be easily handled by, if necessary, by National Guard, or if really necessary, by the military.”
Trump’s campaign seems to be deliberately pushing the comparisons to historic American fascism by announcing that Trump will hold a rally at New York City’s Madison Square Garden on October 27, an echo of a February 1939 rally held there by American Nazis in honor of President George Washington’s birthday. More than 20,000 people showed up for the “true Americanism” event, held on a stage that featured a huge portrait of Washington in his Continental Army uniform flanked by swastikas.
Trump’s full-throated embrace of Nazi “race science” and fascism is deadly dangerous, but there is something notable about Trump’s recent rallies that undermines his claims that he is winning the 2024 election. Trump is not holding these rallies in the swing states he needs to win but rather is holding them in states—Colorado, California, New York—that he is almost certain to lose by a lot.
Longtime Republican operative Matthew Bartlett told Matt Dixon and Allan Smith of NBC News: “This does not seem like a campaign putting their candidate in critical vote-rich or swing vote locations—it seems more like a candidate who wants his campaign to put on rallies for optics and vibes.”
Trump seems eager to demonstrate that he is a strongman, a dominant candidate, when in fact he has refused another debate with Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris and backed out of an interview with 60 Minutes. He has refused to release a medical report although his mental acuity is a topic of concern as he rambles through speeches and seems entirely untethered from reality. And as Harris turns out larger numbers for her rallies in swing states than he does, he appears to be turning bloodthirsty in Democratic areas.
Today, Harris told a rally of her own in North Carolina: “[Trump] is not being transparent…. He refuses to release his medical records. I’ve done it. Every other presidential candidate in the modern era has done it. He is unwilling to do a 60 Minutes interview like every other major party candidate has done for more than half a century. He is unwilling to meet for a second debate…. It makes you wonder, why does his staff want him to hide away?… Are they afraid that people will see that he is too weak and unstable to lead America? Is that what’s going on?”
“For these reasons and so many more,” she said, “it is time to turn the page.”
“22,000 Nazis Hold Rally in Garden,” The New York Times, February 21, 1939; Ryan Bort, “When Nazis Took Over Madison Square Garden,” Rolling Stone, February 19, 2019.
Something has gone agley with America. Certainly the founding fathers never dreamt that crooks and criminals would dominate the government of the United States.
How naive it was to think that only decent people who believed in the democracy and who wanted to do the best for the country, that they would be the dominant public servants.
Today every time you turn around, starting with Trump, Vance, and the mayor of New York City, it is hard to find a public servant who doesn’t have a criminal background or record. We the decent people of America must band together to support decent public servants.
Right now, whether you think Kamala Harris is good, bad, or indifferent, she is a decent person. She will make every effort to do what is best for America and she will get honest advice from decent people around her. That is already one hundred percent of an improvement over having despicable people represent the United States.
Kamala Harris on a recent TV interview spoke of the problems women face in trying to take care of their young children, and at the same time, to hold a job. The woman in question needs the job to be able to afford rent and food.
Why does not every office building have a childcare center? It’s cheap, easy, and each business in the building could contribute to the small amount that it would require to maintain such a center; it could solve the problem for working women who have preschool-age children. In smaller towns where they do not have office buildings, town centers could be used. This might also be an additional source of employment for women.
Every community should have child care centers for preschool-age children located in office buildings. A woman who goes to work can drop her child in the center and pick the child back up at the end of the work day. It would also allow the mother to visit her children during the day when she has free time.
This city seems to come up with one more stupid idea after another. The very latest is to get rid of the parking in NYC.
Per parking spot, the city would lose a total of around $25,000 per year from the elimination of the spot – multiply that by, let’s say, 1,200 parking spots, and that’s a total of almost $30 million lost per year. This is only a rough estimate.
Since people cannot afford to live in the city anymore, workmen and service-workers have to drive into the city to bring their equipment to repair your toilet or sink (to say nothing of painters, carpenters, electricians, etc.) If the city eliminates parking, what will they do?
The problem is also how the cars are parked. Right now there is parallel parking in the bus lane. Everything possible is wrong with this plan. Before Mr. Bloomberg gave those spaces away, there was public parking. By making it impossible to come into Manhattan and park, the problem is being exacerbated.
Buses should be less than half the size that they are, and they should run down the center lane – the way the trolleys used to go. If they are small and stay in the center lane, they would not block traffic to the extent that they do. The city should implement more pedestrian islands in the middle of streets for people to get on and off buses, which would leave the curbs free so traffic can move more freely and people can go to stores and get in and out of taxis.
The first thing that the city needs to do is to create nose-in curb parking on one side of the street only instead of parallel parking, which is ridiculous. Certain streets should be designated as nose-in parking streets, and certain streets should be designated as cross-town streets with no parking. Heavily trafficked cross-town streets should not have public parking. Perhaps on every other street, one side of the street should have nose-in parking. If the angle of the parking is acute enough, it takes up barely more space than parallel parking, but creates double the number of spaces. The city could actually make more money by having nose-in parking.
Of course it is also obvious that any new building should be forced to dedicate a certain number of floors to public garage space in return for the right to build. This would be an additional price to the contractors who now are the only winners in the building of these tall, empty skyscrapers, which are a blight on the city.
Handled properly, the city could make more money from parking while still serving the public.
For several years on 53rd Street and Park Avenue, the entire block has been trashed. A perfectly beautiful apartment building was torn down, presumably to be replaced by something. However, the years have passed and it has been replaced by nothing.
It is incomprehensible that the city does not at least turn this empty eyesore on Park Avenue into a park space. That’s not so expensive to do and the reward is tremendous for the city and for the people living in the neighborhood.
The city government should make it a requirement of any building contractor who creates vacant space to fill that space with gardens or a park if they are not immediately building a new building. Instead of creating more eyesores for the city, they would be creating more green and garden space.
A recent trip to Astoria proves what seems to have been clear for a long time. If you walk the streets of Manhattan, most of the shops are closed; if you walk the streets of Astoria, most of the stores are open. It is quite clear that Manhattan has moved to Astoria.
Manhattan has become too expensive – nobody who works here can afford to live here anymore. People are moving to Astoria and the jobs have also moved to Astoria – so have little stores and restaurants.
It is obvious that the rent in Manhattan is simply too high: small businesses can no longer afford to be here. Central Manhattan is fast becoming an area of empty shops and low service.
Almost any service call today brings people in from outside of Manhattan to perform the required service. It would seem that the simple answer to this problem is to reduce the rents.
Why in the world do rents continue to be so high in Manhattan even though the properties are empty? It makes more sense to rent a place at a lower price and raise the rent over a period of years rather than leave the space empty.
However, if they are going to be empty, why not turn them over to artists and offer free studio space to artists? That would be much better than having the property empty.
Everything possible should be done to keep young people, artists and essential workers in Manhattan.
Amazingly enough, in all but two states – Vermont and Maine – a person who has been convicted of a felony cannot vote. This means that in most states of the Union Trump cannot vote, but he can run for the Presidency.
Is that not insane? It makes no sense at all. It is just as stupid as the Supreme Court decision that grants immunity to any President for official acts committed while in office.
Instead of nobody being above the law, suddenly the President of the country is free to commit whatever crimes he wants. This would enable Trump with impunity, were he President, to totally control the state, the government, and the nation. The President is now above the law.
If Kamala Harris becomes President of the United States, and hopefully she will, one of the first issues she will have to deal with is the border.
The probability is that the border should be closed and illegal immigrants should not be afforded housing, food, and health care while veterans and normal citizens are living on the streets.
This country has never had a proper border policy, and it seems that it is really time to come up with one. How many immigrants do we need a year? We do need immigration. We need farm workers. We need people to work on the roads, bridges, etc. around the country.
Only people who are willing and able to work should be allowed entry into the country and they should be deployed where they are needed, not all sent to live in hotels in New York City with no obligation.
First step, we need to decide how many people we will allow in annually. The second is to establish English Training Centers. The third is to deploy where needed.
Immigration should be defined by what kind of workers we need including doctors and skilled people of all kinds. The point is that the border is a primary issue needing to be dealt with.
The American form of government has made it possible for people to acquire wealth. It is a system of government that has allowed social and economic mobility more than any other country in the world. A larger part of American wealth is based on commerce. America has allowed major companies to acquire a great deal of wealth while often cheating the public.
We are all consumers. We all go to the grocery store. We all buy packages of food. It must be evident to everybody that opens a fresh tin or a package of raisins, potato chips, or anything else, that they are only getting half of what they paid for. The companies are pretending to give people bargains by advertising bigger packages but in reality the goods inside only fill up half of the package.
This is what America has become.
When you look at the American profile today it is no longer the tall, thin American it once was – a huge percentage of the public is overweight. Parents are buying food by the price of food, and unhealthy foods are more affordable than the healthy ones. It is understandable that people buy food that is inexpensive, but the cheap food people are eating is filled with sugar and other deceptive chemicals. It is clear that the commercial side of our society often bilks the public.