DianeR,

Lefties never win a disagreement, they just change the subject. If they can't come up with a subject they call you names. They live by their feelings, logic & facts don't matter. Above all, is their obsession with their genetlia. Bill Maher can't get through a program without obssesing on Trumps. Pitiful.

Look how obsessed DS is with Thom's site that shows Thoms proud photos of Thom with a 40 ca. gun, what happened to the leftie gun control screech?

Thoms pic of Hillary.....No No they don't like her anymore.

Thoms pic with the pope and Gandhi, but they hate religion....really?

You've got it right when you say....give me a break!

Coalage3

The leftie/socialists have been trying to divide the country into separate groups that they can exploit for voting purposes. Note their all too frequent use of terms like White privilege, misogynistic, old white men, Nazi’s, Brown people, Nazi’s, homophobic, Nazi’s, people of color, Nazi’s, and their favorite of all, racist’s.

These hate filled little drones are still trying to figure out why they got their collective asses handed to them in 2016 and the amount of Pepto Bismol, therapy dogs, safe spaces, screaming at the sky events, drum circles, the knitting of little pink pussyhats, and anti-depressants they have consumed attests to that fact.

Jesus, give us a break.

I wish them well in the midterms for if they fail even on a small level, exploding heads will prevail and my dream of a “caravan” of leftie/socialists marching SOUTH seeking Mexican citizenship may not come to fruition.

Óinseach, aother obnoxious racist and liar clinging to her guns and religion (and this blog) resorts to classic "whataboutism" every time Trump's, Republican's, and her over-the-top, outrageous, nonstop lying and crude racism is pointed out, a deflection that is tacit approval of such disgusting behavior.

Téigh trasna ort féin.

(Parts 1 & 2)

10/22/18 from Truthdig / Axis of Logic (under Fair Use; Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107)

"American History for Truthdiggers: Original Sin"

By Maj. Danny Sjursen:

(Truthdig editor’s note: The past is prologue. The stories we tell about ourselves and our forebears inform the sort of country we think we are and help determine public policy. As our current president promises to “Make America great again,” this moment is an appropriate time to reconsider our past, look back at various eras of United States history and re-evaluate America’s origins. When, exactly, were we “great”?

The “American History for Truthdiggers” series, which begins with the installment below, is a pull-no-punches appraisal of our shared, if flawed, past. The author of the series, Danny Sjursen, an active-duty major in the U.S. Army, served military tours in Iraq and Afghanistan and taught the nation’s checkered, often inspiring past when he was an assistant professor of history at West Point. His wartime experiences, his scholarship, his skill as a writer and his patriotism illuminate these Truthdig posts.)

PART ONE

American Slavery, American Freedom (Colonial Virginia 1607-1676)

Origins matter. Every nation-state has an origin myth, a comforting tale of trials, tribulations and triumphs that form the foundation of “imagined communities.” The United States of America—a self-proclaimed “indispensable nation”—is as prone to exaggerated origin myths as any society in human history. Most of us are familiar with the popular American origin story: Our forefathers, a collection of hardy, pious pioneers, escaped religious persecution in England and founded a “new world”—a shining beacon in a virgin land. Of course, that story, however flawed, refers to the Pilgrims, and Massachusetts, circa 1620. But that’s not the true starting point for English-speaking society in North America.

The first permanent colony was in Virginia, at Jamestown, beginning in 1607. Why, then, do our young students dress in black buckle-top hats and re-create Thanksgiving each year? Where is the commemoration of Jamestown and our earliest American forebears? The omission itself tells a story, that of a chosen, comforting narrative (the legend of the Pilgrims), and the whitewashing of a murkier past along the James River.

The truth is, the United States descends from both origins—Massachusetts and Virginia—and carries the legacy of each into the 21st century. So why do we focus on the Pilgrims and sideline Virginia? A fresh look may help explain.

The Age of ‘Discovery’

When it comes to history—like any story—the starting point is itself informative. I taught freshman history at West Point, a far more progressive and thoughtful school than many readers probably imagine. Nonetheless, with cadets required to take only one semester of U.S. history, we had just 40 lessons to illuminate the American past. So where to start? The official answer—as in so many standard history courses—was Jamestown, Virginia, 1607.

That, of course, is a fascinating, perhaps absurd, choice. Such a starting point omits several thousand years of Native American history, of varied, complex civilizations from modern Canada to Chile. Time being short and all, 1607 remains a common pedagogical starting point. As a result, from the beginning, our understanding of U.S. history is Eurocentric and narrow (covering only the last 400 or so years). Consider that Problem No. 1.

Next, contemplate the language we use to describe the “founding” of new European colonies. This is, say it with me, the “Age of Discovery.” In 1492, Columbus discovered (even though he wasn't first) America. Now, that’s a loaded term. Isn't it just as accurate to say that Native Americans discovered Columbus—a lost and confused soul—when he landed upon their shores?

When we say Europeans discovered the “New World,” we’re—not inadvertently—implying that there was nothing substantial going on in the Americas until the Caucasians showed up. Europe has a dated, chronological history, reaching back at least to the Greeks, which most students learn in elementary school and later on in Western Civilization classes. Not so for the Native Americans. Their public history starts in 1492, or, for Americans, in 1607. What came before, then, hardly matters.

Inauspicious Beginnings

Englishmen came neither to escape religious persecution nor to found a New Jerusalem. Not to Virginia, at least. No, the corporate-backed expedition—by the Virginia Joint Stock Company—sought treasure (think gold), to find a northwest passage to India, and balance the rival Catholic Spaniards. But, first and foremost, they pursued profit.

The expedition barely survived. That should come as little surprise. They chose a malarial swamp for a home. The first ships carried mostly aristocrats—“gentlemen,” as they were then labeled—with a few laborers and carpenters for good measure. Gentlemen didn't work or deal with the dirty business of farming and settling. But they did like to argue—and there were too many “chiefs” on this voyage. The first party did not include any farmers or women. Only 30 percent survived the first winter. Two years later, only 60 out of 500 colonists survived the “Starving Time.” Over the first 17 years, 6,000 people arrived, but only 1,200 were alive in 1624. One guy ate his wife.

So why the disaster? Why the poor site selection and early starvation? First off, the colonists chose a site inland on the James River because they feared detection by the more powerful Spanish. But mainly the disaster came down to colonial motivations. Jamestown was initially about profit, not settlement. Corporate dividends, not community. This was the private sector, not a permanent national venture. In that sense, matters in early Virginia were not unlike modern American economics.

Saved by Tobacco, the First Drug Economy

They never did find much gold, or, for that matter, a northwest passage. Then again, they didn't all starve to death. Rather, the venture was saved by a different sort of “gold”—the cash crop of tobacco. Tobacco changed the entire dynamic of colonization and control in North America. Finally, there was money to be made. The Englishmen shipped the newest vice eastward and pulled a handsome profit in return. Our beloved forefathers were early drug dealers. More migrants now crossed the Atlantic to get in on the tobacco windfall.

The plentiful “gentlemen” of Virginia sought to re-create their landed estates in England. Despite significant early conflict with the native Powhatan Confederacy, large tobacco plantations eventually developed along the coast. Who, though, would work these fields? Certainly not the landowners. The burgeoning aristocracy had two choices: lower-class English or Scots-Irish indentured servants (who worked for a fixed period in the promise of future acres) and African slaves. Whom to choose? Unsurprisingly, ethics played little role, and cost was the defining factor.

When mortality was high in the colony’s early years, plantation owners favored the cheaper indentured (mainly white) servants. But as more families planted corn, kept cattle and improved nutrition, death rates fell and slaves became more appealing. After all, though expensive in upfront costs, slaves worked for life, and the slave owners got to keep their offspring. Nevertheless, for the first several decades, an interracial mix of slaves and servants worked the land in Virginia.

Bacon’s Rebellion and the American Future

The problem with the tobacco economy was one of space. To be profitable, cash crops require expansive acreage, and in Virginia this meant movement inland. This expansion set the Englishmen on a collision course with local Native Americans. Furthermore, what was plantation society to do about those indentured servants who survived and matriculated? Land would have to be found somewhere. (Though not near the coasts and early settlements. The “gentlemen” weren't about to divide up their own large estates.) In order to maintain their chosen societal model—landed aristocracy—in which the wealthiest 10 percent possessed half the wealth and the bottom 60 percent held less than 10 percent of accumulated wealth, new land would have to be found further west—in “Indian territory.”

Thing is, after some bloody, early wars with the Powhatan, most “gentlemen” preferred a stable, secure status quo. (Not another war. That’d be bad for business.) However, falling tobacco prices, increased competition from nearby colonies and the relentless search by the former indentured class for more land brought frontier Virginians into conflict with an easy scapegoat: nearby Native Americans. Frustrated lower-class men—both white and black—rallied behind a young, discontented aristocrat, a firebrand named Nathaniel Bacon. Bacon led his interracial poor-people’s army in attacks on local Natives and, eventually, on Gov. William Berkeley and the establishment “gentlemen.” In 1675 and 1676, Bacon’s throng destroyed plantations and even burned Jamestown before Bacon died of disease (the “bloody fluxe”) and the rebellion petered out.

Bacon’s Rebellion was one of the foundational—and most misunderstood—events in American history. Here, a populist army savagely assaulted hated Native Americans and aristocrats alike. A mix of black and white former indentured servants demonstrated the fragility of Virginian society. The planter class was terrified. In order to avoid a repeat at all costs, the landed gentry made a devil’s bargain. To ensure stability, they realized they must co-opt some of the poor without ceding their own privileged status.

Enter America’s original sins: racism and white privilege. Plantation owners simply hired fewer indentured servants and became more reliant on (black) African chattel slaves for their labor force. The planters also threw a bone to the middling whites, lowering some taxes and allowing more political representation for white male Virginians.

The implications were as disturbing as they were enduring. White unity became the organizing principle of life in colonial Virginia. To be fair, poor whites lived difficult lives and always outnumbered their aristocratic betters. Nonetheless, these lower-class Caucasians benefited from the new, racialized social system. Pale skin became a badge of honor—life may not be optimal, but “at least we are white.” Black freemen became a thing of the past, and soon “blackness” became inseparably associated with slavery and the lowest of social classes. Black skin became a brand of slavery, and runaways could no longer blend into colonial society. Slaves were easily spotted by virtue of their color.

Bacon’s Rebellion linked land, labor and race together in nefarious ways. Land (ownership) remained the path to freedom. Labor remained essential to profiting from the land, and race came to define the relationship between land and labor. After 1676, a class-based system morphed into a race-based system of labor and social structure. The demand for African slaves rose and a triangular trade developed among North America, Africa and Europe. It seemed everyone benefited from slave labor—it became an Atlantic system. The American South had transformed from a society with slaves to a slave society. It would remain so for nearly two centuries. Race became a prevalent fact of life in the Americas—and still is, 342 years later.

There’s nothing simple about America’s origins, and it is well that this is so. In that way, the United States is like most other modern nation-states. Leaving behind exceptionalist rhetoric and exploring uncomfortable truths signify intellectual maturity. Should this country wish to move forward, be its best self and fulfill the dream of its finest rhetoric, then the citizenry must dispense with reassuring myths and grapple with inconvenient truths.

What, then, do Jamestown and early Virginia have to tell us in 2018? Perhaps this: American slavery arose alongside and intertwined with American freedom. Our society descends from a sinister original sin: the development of a race-based caste system along the banks of the James River. Race, class, labor and slavery were inextricably linked in our colonial past. They remain so today.

PART TWO

It is the image Americans are comfortable with. The first Thanksgiving. Struggling Pilgrims—our blessed forebears—saved by the generosity of kindly Native Americans. Two societies coexisting in harmony. If Colonial Virginia was a mess, well, certainly matters were better in Massachusetts. Here are origins all can be proud of.

Our children re-create the scene every November, and we watch them with pride through the lenses of our smartphones. But is this representation of life in Colonial New England an accurate portrait of Anglo-Native relations at Plymouth, or, for that matter, in the larger Massachusetts Bay Colony? Of course it isn't, but nonetheless the impression—the myth—persists. That’s a story unto itself.

Consider this: How many Americans even know there was a difference between Pilgrims and Puritans? The distinctions matter. The Pilgrims, of course, arrived first. Calvinists of humble origins, the Pilgrims were Protestant separatists who believed the mainstream Church of England was beyond saving. They fled England for the Netherlands in the early 17th century, and then, in 1620, about a hundred boarded the Mayflower to go to North America. It was they who landed on Plymouth Rock.

The far more numerous Puritans were also pious, dissenting Protestants, but they initially believed the Church of England could be reformed from within. They were generally wealthier, more prominent citizens. In about 1630, about 1,000 Puritans formed the first wave to settle the area claimed by the Massachusetts Bay Colony. They were, indeed, fleeing the persecution of King Charles I, but—unlike the Pilgrims—they received a royal charter for their colony. They hoped to found a “New Jerusalem” in the New World.

Stark Contrasts: Virginia vs. New England

These weren't the gold-hungry aristocrats of Colonial Virginia. The Puritans (and Pilgrims) came as families—they included women. The Massachusetts climate and natural population growth made for far lower mortality than that experienced at early Jamestown in Virginia. Everyone was willing to work, and the productive family units made, eventually, for bountiful harvests. This was not a land of “gentlemen” and cash crops, as in Virginia, but of dutiful families tilling the land.

The motivations and origins of the two English colonies affected the social structure of each. Differing goals set the tone from the first. Virginians sought to exploit the land, mine its resources, compete with the Spanish and turn a quick profit. Not so the Puritans. They strove to settle, to put down roots and thrive in an idealized community. Their middling origins combined with communal goals and resulted in familial plots with widespread land ownership—another contrast with the tobacco plantations of Jamestown. All this translated into a rough economic equality, at least in the early years. There was also a near total absence of chattel slavery: The climate didn't support the most common cash crops, and so there was little incentive to import Africans to New England.

God Wills It: The Motivations of the Puritans

It all sounds harmonious, idyllic even. Yet something lurked below the surface, something dark and unpleasant to modern eyes. These were fundamentalist zealots! These insufferable, millenarian Calvinists held themselves in shockingly high esteem. They were chosen, they would transform the world by their example. If the Pilgrims sought separation from a world of sin, the Puritans meant to create a New World, an example for all to emulate. It briefs well, and makes for an agreeable origin narrative, but isn't there something disturbing about such a people, about such overbearing confidence?

Ponder the words of John Winthrop, an early governor of the Bay Colony:

"… wee shall find that the God of Israel is among us, when ten of us shall be able to resist a thousand of our enemies, when he shall make us a praise and glory, that men shall say of succeeding plantations: the Lord make it like that of New England: for we must Consider that we shall be as a City upon a Hill, the eyes of all people are upon us. …"

These were people on a mission, the Lord’s mission, come what may. Such people would seem to be on a collision course with the region’s natives and Anglo nonconformists. And this would soon come to pass.

The Puritans’ motivations and goals raise some salient questions. What does it say about, and what are the implications for, a society founded on such colossal self-regard? Is it, ultimately, a good thing? That’s certainly a matter of opinion, but the questions themselves are instructive. Americans must make such queries to get an honest sense of themselves and their origins. This much is hard to argue with: Here, in Massachusetts, we find the geneses of American exceptionalism—the blessing and curse that has shadowed the United States for more than three centuries, driving domestic and especially foreign policy. Divergent modern political figures, from Ronald Reagan to Barack Obama, stuck carefully to an American exceptionalist script, in rhetoric if not in deed. One wonders whether this “City on a Hill” milieu, on the whole, has been a positive attribute. This author, at least, tends to doubt it. Perhaps we should mistrust such pride, and conceit, in even its most American forms.

Stifling Dissent: Life in Colonial New England

Could you imagine living with these people, comporting with their way of life? It sounds like a nightmare. Yet we Americans hold these antecedents in high esteem. Perhaps it’s natural, but this much is certain: Such veneration requires a certain degree of willful forgetting, a whitewashing of inconvenient truths about Puritan society.

Sure, Massachusetts avoided the worst famines of Jamestown’s early years, but life in Colonial New England was far from serene. It rarely is in repressive religious societies. Remember, the Puritans constructed exactly what they said they would, a theocracy on the bay. The Massachusetts Bay Colony may indeed have more in common with modern Saudi Arabia—executing “witches” and “sorcerers”—than it does with contemporary Boston. Our ancestors were far more religious than most Americans can fathom. But there’s also a problem of framing; we’ve omitted the uncomfortable bits to fashion an uplifting origin narrative.

There were many subgroups that certainly didn’t enjoy life in early Colonial Massachusetts: religious dissidents, agnostics, free thinkers and, well, assertive women. We’ve all heard of the infamous Salem Witch Trials, but nearly four decades earlier the widow Ann Higgins was executed, hung for witchcraft, after having the audacity to complain that hired carpenters had overcharged her for a remodeling job on her house.

All told, 344 citizens were accused of witchcraft in 17th-century Massachusetts. Twenty were executed. The accused had commonalities that are indicative of the nature of gender relations in the Bay Colony. Seventy-five percent were women. Most of those women were middle-aged or older and demonstrated some degree of independence. Many were suspected of some sort of sexual impropriety. The point is that Colonial New England was inhabited by zealots—conformist and oppressive fundamentalists who strictly policed the boundaries of their exalted theocracy. Forget the Thanksgiving feast: This was Islamic State on the Atlantic!

If life was as idyllic as the settlers intended in hail-the-Protestant-work-ethic Massachusetts Bay, then why were so many colonial “heroes” kicked out? Roger Williams, for example, founder of Rhode Island, promoted religious toleration and some separation of church and state, and asserted (gasp) that settlers ought to buy land from the native inhabitants. His thanks? A ticket straight out of Massachusetts. Slightly less well known was Anne Hutchinson. She had the gall to organize weekly women’s meetings to discuss theology and even contemplated the concept of individual intuition as a path to salvation. She too was banished. There was simply no room for dissent in Puritan society.

‘We Must Burn Them’: Puritan and Native Relations

This, naturally, brings us to the native peoples of New England. If nonconformist Englishmen fared so poorly in Massachusetts, then what of the Indians? You can probably guess.

Once again, as in Virginia, the Native Americans did not, or could not, wipe out the nascent colonial community, even though, initially at least, there were fewer soldiers among the settlers in Massachusetts. The explanation for the settlers surviving among the native Americans is far more complex than the simple myth of the noble, benevolent savage. The Puritans were the “beneficiaries of catastrophe,” for New England native communities had recently been ravaged by infectious European diseases that spread up and down the coastline. The thinned-out native populations thus posed less of a demographic threat to Massachusetts.

Far from the serene images of Thanksgiving amity, Anglo-Indian relations quickly turned from bad to worse. Land was a factor, but not the only one. A permanent settler community such as the Puritans’ would require inevitable expansion and rapidly grow, to be sure. As in Virginia, land ownership cohered with “freedom”—Anglo land and Anglo freedom, that is. Still, in New England, ideology was as much of a stimulus for war as land, wealth or further economic motives. The native tribes, swarthy and “unbelieving” Pequot, Wampanoag, Naggaransetts and others, simply did not fit into the Puritan’s messianic worldview. Conquered or converted were the only acceptable states for local Indians.

Early colonial wars in Massachusetts were as brutal and bloody as wars anywhere else on the North American continent. Here there was a direct connection between the Puritan religion and the cruelty seen in the Pequot War and King Philip’s War. In the Pequot War, Massachusetts militiamen attacked a native fort at Mystic, Connecticut, and through fire and fury burned alive 400 to 700 Indians, mostly women and children. The survivors were sold as slaves.

The militia relied on allied native scouts. Observing the ruthlessness of the Puritan fighting men, one native auxiliary asked Capt. John Underhill, “Why should you be so furious? Should not Christians have more mercy and compassion?” Underhill’s reply was as instructive as it is disturbing:

"I would refer you to David where, when a people is grown to such a height of blood, and sin against God and man … sometimes the Scripture declareth women and children must perish with their parents; some-time the case alters: but we will not dispute it now. We had sufficient light from the word of God for our proceeding."

Should, from time to time, a tinge of doubt betray the Puritans’ devout certainty, faithful zeal quickly assuaged the guilty conscience. Consider the words of another participant in the “Mystic Massacre,” William Bradford: “It was a fearful sight to see them thus frying in the fire … and horrible was the stink … but the victory seemed a sweet sacrifice, and they gave the praise thereof to God.”

Nearly simultaneous to the Virginian Bacon’s Rebellion, the Puritans fought King Philip’s—or Metacom’s—War in Massachusetts. Mercilessly executed on both sides, this was a war of survival that forever broke native power and independence in New England. Nearly one in 50 colonists were killed in what was by far the bloodiest war in American history, with 11 times the death rate of World War II. The native leader Metacom, known to the settlers as King Philip, was betrayed by an informer and killed, and his head was displayed on a pole in Plymouth, Mass., for decades. Such was the savagery of colonial war that the tactics and symbolism bring to mind Islamic State in today’s Syrian civil war.

When it came to Native American affairs, the Puritans hardly set the “City on a Hill” example. Or did they? After all, John Winthrop believed the “God of Israel”—a jealous, smiting deity if ever there was one—was among the Puritans, guiding their every move. As noted here earlier, Winthrop claimed this God provided the colonists such strength that 10 of their number could “resist a thousand enemies.” Viciousness and intolerance toward racially distinct, heathen natives were actually at the heart of “City on a Hill” teleology from the start. What Americans now decry in the Greater Middle East is but an echo of their colonial past. That much is worth remembering.

Not So Different: What Virginians and New Englanders Shared

When considering the two origin-societies of Virginia and Massachusetts, the differences are stark and effortlessly leap forth. More difficult, but just as relevant, are their significant commonalities. For it is in the overlap that we find our shared heritage, that which is universal in the American past, and, perhaps, the past of all settler-colonial societies.

Anglo dominance—and arrogance—acutely pervaded both colonial civilizations. In Massachusetts, as in Virginia, conflict and brutality toward the native peoples were regular features of settler life. In each setting, though to differing extents, a fever for land combined with exceptionalist ideology to conquer slave and native alike. For Englishmen, property ownership corresponded with liberty, but all along the Eastern Seaboard, Anglo liberty portended native death and displacement.

If Colonial Virginian society was fundamentally based on white unity at the expense of African slaves, then perhaps Puritan Massachusetts was founded upon Anglo zealotry at the expense of a “savage” Indian “other.” As proud descendants—some of us literally, most figuratively—of these twin settler-colonial enterprises, Americans must grapple with their inconvenient past. Here there’s much work left to be done.

The exceptionalism and chauvinistic Protestantism of the Massachusetts Puritans long influenced the American experiment. From the “City on a Hill” it is but a short journey to Manifest Destiny and the conquest of a continent—native inhabitants be damned!

Again, origins, and origin stories, matter. They inform who we were, and who we are, in stark contrast to who we’d like to think we were and are. America is its best self when it searches its soul and reforms from within. When, that is, it confronts its demons and seeks a better, more inclusive and empathetic future.

ttp://axisoflogic.com/artman/publish/Article_81676.shtml

https://www.truthdig.com/articles/jacobin-fueling-lies-syria/

It's Friday and their lips are moving, so that must mean Republican trolls are lying again.

Morning HotCoffee, Loved the Chicks on the right snowman link.

Here is a hoot from the hypocrites on the left. Democrat Senator tripping over his tongue kinda like Roseann except with a different result.

"Sen. Joe Donnelly says he has black and Indian American staffers, ‘but’ they’re terrific"

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2018/10/31/sen-donnelly-says-he-has-black-indian-american-staffers-theyre-terrific/?utm_term=.209e7b24bdbf

Have a good one.

See ya later.

MentalAge3

MentalAge3

***********************************

The Thom Hartmann Program - 11/1/2018

***********************************

OpEdNews, July 30, 2018 - From Alternet

"Trump Is in Major Legal and Political Trouble — His Desperate Attempts to Escape Could Lead America to Catastrophe.
We should prepare for any drastic measures from war to martial law that Trump may undertake to escape his crises."

By Thom Hartmann:

Is it now time to imagine how far Trump and his Republican cronies in Congress might be able to push things? And how we, as Americans, might respond?

This isn't the first time such a question has been raised.

A bit more than a week before the election of 2016 -- a week before Trump won the election -- one of the few people on earth who's really and truly studied Donald Trump up close and personal, Tony Schwartz, granted an interview to the British newspaper the Independent.

Schwartz, who wrote Trump's book The Art of the Deal and spent months with Trump to gather information for the book, predicted that Trump would declare martial law. Not as a possibility, but as a near-certainty.

Schwartz predicted that Trump would do three specific things, although not necessarily all at once or in any particular order: He'd attack the free press; he'd compile an enemies list and begin getting revenge on those he thinks slighted him; and he'd declare martial law to solidify his power.

"When I said that," Schwartz told the Independent, "I got a lot of rolling of the eyes from people in the media and other people to whom I was making that case. I think today, people do really begin to understand that this is a volatile man with very low self control."

How would this happen? Andrew Buncombe, who interviewed Schwartz for the Independent, wrote: "Asked how Mr. Trump would go about undertaking such a drastic measure, [Schwartz] said many of Mr. Trump's supporters were police, members of the border guards force and the 'far right wing' of the military."

It's enough to make you think that Charlottesville was just a dress rehearsal for our version of the Brownshirts, and that Trump is counting on the support of these "very fine people" if he ever needs them in a pinch. Our very own version of Kristallnacht could be not far off.

For example, imagine that Trump, his family members, and numerous Republicans are indicted for actual crimes, and, particularly with the Nunes faction of Congress, for conspiring to conceal or obstruct investigations of those crimes. And the indictment comes right after the election in November when Democrats have won control of one or both houses of Congress, but Republicans are still in charge until January.

This combination would present Trump and his GOP with both a problem and an opportunity.

The problem, of course, is that Trump, Jared, Don Jr., and the Republicans who've conspired with Trump like Devin Nunes (for example) might all be heading toward jail, and possibly even impeachment after the first week of the New Year.

The opportunity is to create a constitutional crisis and grab even more power and immunity for themselves, possibly even "temporarily suspending" the 2020 presidential elections.

There are numerous possible scenarios; I'll just outline a few trigger points, and you can fill in the rest.

"Trump Is in Major Legal and Political Trouble — His Desperate Attempts to Escape Could Lead America to Catastrophe.
We should prepare for any drastic measures from war to martial law that Trump may undertake to escape his crises."

By Thom Hartmann:

Trump thrives on creating crises, and then "solving" the crisis he, himself created. He did it with DACA, with Obamacare, and with North Korea. It seems he's trying the same playbook with Iran and immigration/asylum.

But what if the crisis he creates in this case involved what looked like widespread violence?

The Constitution gives Congress (controlled by the GOP) the power to "suppress insurrections," while numerous laws including the Patriot Act and its successors give the president the power to declare various levels of emergency or even martial law. (It's been done before; Lincoln did it and even suspended habeas corpus, which was clearly unconstitutional.)

In 2004, the Congressional Research Service (a federal agency that researches legal questions for members of Congress) looked into whether a president could suspend elections in a time of crisis. They concluded: "While the Executive Branch does not currently have this power, it appears that Congress may be able to delegate this power to the Executive Branch by enacting a statute."

Is it inconceivable that our current Congress might do such a thing? Wouldn't it depend on how many people were in the streets protesting (after the election it was a million-plus) and how many right-wing open-carry armed thugs show up?

If Heather Heyer was only the first anti-Trump protester murdered by white supremacists, and dozens or hundreds more were to fall to the guns or bombs of Trump's Very Fine People, Congress may well consider it a state of emergency.

This was, after all, the exact scenario that Timothy McVeigh thought he would bring about. Following the Turner Diaries script, known to every white supremacist, McVeigh believed that President Bill Clinton would react to the Oklahoma City bombing with widespread gun control, which would cause all the good well-armed white people to start a killing frenzy against people of color and bring about the Aryan forces' "triumph."

And McVeigh's thinking on the subject is widely shared in the hard-right-wing underground today.

We Americans tend to think of ourselves as totally unique, but numerous democratic republics have gone down this or similar roads in past generations. As Trump biographer Tony Schwartz noted, "Just look at any country that has been taken over by the military. He'd say there is a threat to the republic and the military needs to crack down and he would start with curfews, and the stop and frisk of anyone who is not white, male and rich."

But what about the power of the Article III courts to restrain Trump, you might ask?

So far, with his Muslim ban and his brutal confinement of refugee children, Trump has gone along with the courts. But consider his presidential hero, Andrew Jackson, the man whose picture Trump hung by his desk in the Oval Office.

Not just the lower courts, but the Supreme Court itself told Jackson that he couldn't do things -- twice -- and both times he simply defied them. One was ending the second National Bank, and the other was the genocidal Trail of Tears.

John Marshall was Chief Justice of the Supreme Court at the time. President Jackson simply ignored the earlier SCOTUS ruling in the constitutionality of the bank (McCulloch v Maryland), and ignored legislation supporting the Court and the bank that passed through both the House and the Senate.

Ignoring the law and legal precedent, Jackson proceeded to shut the bank down, an action that, in part (along with paying off the national debt), produced the deepest and longest depression in the history of the United States.

And when Marshall ordered him not to forcibly relocate the Cherokee Indians from Georgia to Oklahoma (indirectly; the case had to do with a Vermont man held in Georgia who was going to be relocated along with the Cherokee), Jackson was said to have bragged to his friends, "John Marshall has made his decision; now let him enforce it!"

So, what if Trump were to simply follow the example of his hero, Jackson?

If Mueller used federal courts to indict Trump and his merry band, and Trump directed the police agencies of the U.S. to ignore the order (as Jackson directed the U.S. Army to ignore the Supreme Court and relocate the Cherokee, and they complied), then Mueller may find that he has precisely as much power over Trump and his family and friends as Chief Justice John Marshall had over Andrew Jackson.

This wouldn't just provoke a constitutional crisis; it's the very definition of one.

As Alexander Hamilton noted in #78 of the Federalist Papers, "The judiciary... has no influence over either the sword [President] or the purse [Congress]; no direction either of the strength or of the wealth of the society; and can take no active resolution whatever. It may truly be said to have neither FORCE nor WILL, but merely judgment; and must ultimately depend upon the aid of the executive arm even for the efficacy of its judgments." (Capitals Hamilton's.)

But Trump doesn't need a fight with Mueller in the courts to provoke a crisis: war works just as well.

FDR declared martial law in Hawaii (which wasn't even a state then) after Pearl Harbor, and [then-General] Andrew Jackson declared martial law in New Orleans during the War of 1812. (There's that name again...)

Provoking Iran or North Korea into a limited war may give Trump all the power he needs.

And, as George W. Bush noted to his biographer Mickey Herskowitz in 1999, war gives a president political capital. Bush even thought he'd get enough political capital from invading Iraq (this was before he was elected, keep in mind) that he could use it to privatize Social Security.

"One of the keys to being seen as a great leader is to be seen as a commander-in-chief," Herskowitz told reporter Russ Baker that Bush told him.

"My father had all this political capital built up when he drove the Iraqis out of Kuwait and he wasted it," Bush said, adding, "If I have a chance to invade... if I had that much capital, I'm not going to waste it. I'm going to get everything passed that I want to get passed and I'm going to have a successful presidency."

(Much like Schwartz writing Trump's autobiography, Herskowitz wrote the first draft of George W. Bush's autobiography A Charge to Keep. We should attend to the warnings of presidential biographers.)

Privatizing Social Security was very, very important to George W. Bush (maybe as important as staying out of jail is to Trump). Bush ran an unsuccessful campaign for the House of Representatives in 1978 in Texas on that singular platform.

And, after winning reelection and being sworn back into office in 2005, Bush began a campaign, traveling all across the country, trying to convince people privatization was a good idea.

As the San Francisco Chronicle's Washington Bureau Chief Marc Sandalow wrote the day after Bush won reelection, "President Bush proclaimed his election as evidence that Americans embrace his plans to reform Social Security... Bush staked his claim to a broad mandate and announced his top priorities at a post-election news conference, saying his 3.5 million vote victory had won him political capital that he would spend enacting his conservative agenda."

"I earned capital in this campaign, political capital, and now I intend to spend it," Bush told reporters. "It is my style."

The more Bush traveled pitching the idea, though, the more people hated it. He ultimately gave it up, as Brookings reported.

But if Bush was willing to start a war with Iraq to get himself reelected and privatize Social Security, imagine how much more motivated Trump may be to start a war -- with anybody, anywhere -- if he saw his financial empire slipping away, his presidency imperiled, and his children facing jail time.

The Australian Broadcasting Corporation (that country's version of NPR/PBS) is reporting right now that Donald Trump is studying plans to bomb Iran as soon as a month from now. To quote the article that is rocking Australia right now: "Senior figures in the Turnbull Government have told the ABC they believe the United States is prepared to bomb Iran's nuclear facilities, perhaps as early as next month, and that Australia is poised to help identify possible targets."

If Trump believes that Bush was right that war is good for politics and lifts war-making presidents and parties, perhaps this is his midterm strategy in the face of terrible poll numbers. Tragically, such a bombing could well bring Iran's allies, including Russia and China, into a larger war, triggering World War III in a manner similar to how World War I spiraled out of control.

Late in the 2016 presidential campaign, and early in the Trump presidency, it was nearly impossible to imagine the things that he would later do and get away with.

That failure of imagination has cost us dearly.

While the time for freak-out is hopefully far in the future, imagining and gaming out our response to some of the worst-case and most extreme possibilities is not at all a hysterical reaction. If anything, it's the essence of prudence.

What do you think he could do? And how should we best react?

An entire generation of Germans, Italians, and Spaniards are aging into their twilight years right now wishing they'd had such imagination in the early 1930s.

It's time for a conversation.

https://www.opednews.com/articles/Trump-Is-in-Major-Legal-an-by-Thom-Hartmann-America-Freedom-To-Fascism_Iran_Korea_Military-180730-178.html

So nice to be a con.