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| They Thought They Were Free, by Milton Mayer “What happened here was the gradual habituation of the people, little by little, to being governed by surprise; to receiving decisions deliberated in secret; to believing that the situation was so complicated that the government had to act on information which the people could not understand, or so dangerous that, even if the people could not understand it, it could not be released because of national security. And their sense of identification with Hitler, their trust in him, made it easier to widen this gap and reassured those who would otherwise have worried about it.” --from Chapter 13, “But Then It Was Too Late” |
Said Sanders, "Henry Kissinger was one the most destructive secretaries of state in the modern history of this county. I am proud to say that Henry Kissinger is not my friend. I will not take advice from Henry Kissinger. ... So count me in as somebody who will not be listening to Henry Kissinger."
Kissinger and Nixon worked to "make the [Chilean] economy scream," engineering the 1970s coup establishing a fascist Pinochet as dictator, who presided over the torture and murder of 10,000s (Democracy Now), among other work resulting in several near-genocides of the 1970s.
Near genocides, that is torturing and killing 100,000s of human beings and destroying societies, and "atrocities management," which is always necessary.
The point is the Bannon-Trump ambitions to sow chaos in the political culture is typical of American presidential administrations though the large-scale targets have been foreign countries, and with exceptions not the American public, the prime target of the Trump adminstration.
Trump himself has for years made explicit he is working for chaos and destruction in the political culture (Schwartzman, Johnson, Washington Post), methodically working.
It's not logically necessary that a political campaign/psych warfare operation imposing chaos will implement policy and pursue action imposing chaos, but the malignant psychopaths who inflict are not often healed by assuming public office.
Write Paul Schwartzman and Jenna Johnson in the Washington Post in Dec. 2015:
He referred to Mexicans as 'rapists,' questioned Sen. John McCain’s status as a war hero, ridiculed the physical appearance of his opponents, falsely claimed that “thousands” in New Jersey cheered as the World Trade Center fell and, this week, called for a ban on Muslims entering the United States.
Despite predictions that such searing, divisive rhetoric and the resulting outcry would cripple his campaign, Donald Trump’s insults and controversial proposals have propelled him to the forefront of the 2016 presidential race—and kept him there.
And while it may seem like a lurching, chaotic campaign, Trump is, for the most part, a disciplined and methodical candidate, according to a Washington Post review of the businessman’s speeches, interviews and thousands of tweets and retweets over the past six months.
When Donald Trump talks and acts these first two weeks of his administration, he's not explaining his position about a public issue.
Trump is sowing chaos, attacking the norms of our Constitutional republic such as freedom of religion, freedom of the press, due process and equality under the law.
If Trump actually were to read, the New York Times explains this morning the "escalating crisis," induced by Trump's Muslim ban and firing the acting attorney general, Sally Q. Yates, last night (Michael D. Shear, Mark Landler, Matt Apuzzo and Eric Lichtblau, New York Times).
Reports of escalating crises are music to Trump.
We first must realize the scope of the crisis Trump knows.
Most Republicans want an authoritarian state and love the idea of imprisoning, torturing and killing human beings, including Americans, after dislocating the Constitutional niceties and human rights concerns of the snowflake. So Trump will not be opposed in meaningful ways by Republicans.
The stakes are high and rising.
White supremacists, (which are the same as white nationalists), have found in a friend in Trump's administration, the Republican Party and the normally functioning institutions of modern American foreign policy. Just a little engineering and adept project management are necessary to achieve the desired outcomes of the lunatics.
From Josh Harkinson in Mother Jones:
The Trump administration has insisted since Sunday that the president's executive order banning travel to the United States from seven predominately Islamic countries 'is not a Muslim ban.' But as Mother Jones first reported in a series of investigations starting last summer, the two top Trump advisers who reportedly crafted the immigration crackdown—Stephen Bannon and Stephen Miller—have a long history of promoting Islamophobia, courting anti-Muslim extremists, and boosting white nationalists.
For nearly a year before stepping down as the CEO of Breitbart News to lead the Trump campaign, Bannon hosted a SiriusXM radio show, Breitbart News Daily, where he conducted dozens of interviews with leading anti-Muslim extremists. Steeped in unfounded claims and conspiracy theories, the interviews paint a dark and paranoid picture of America's 3.3 million Muslims and the world's second-largest faith. Bannon often bookended the exchanges with full-throated praise for his guests, describing them as 'top experts' and urging his listeners to click on their websites and support them.
One of Bannon's guests on the show, Trump surrogate Roger Stone, warned of a future America 'where hordes of Islamic madmen are raping, killing, pillaging, defecating in public fountains, harassing private citizens, elderly people—that's what's coming.' ...
It is an open question whether Trump's pivoting to genocide would invoke majority support among the American population, but Bannon and Miller cannot wait to find out.
