Navalny

How It Works – v2


POST 1144

Preface

This is an update of a piece originally posted February 7, 2021, one month after the treasonous insurrection.

In yet another attack on the rule of law, President Trump has now pardoned or commuted the sentences of 1,500 of the January 6 criminals, including the cop killers.* The Republicans in the majority of both Houses of Congress have shown themselves to be cowardly and spineless in the face of Trump’s assault on the Constitution. They are essentially dissolving Congress voluntarily.

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“Fear will keep the local systems in line.”

In the first Star Wars movie there is a scene with Darth Vader and the officers of the Imperial star ship.

.

That’s pretty much how Hitler did it. He didn’t actually make the Reichstag go away. He just neutered it into becoming a lap dog by means of The Enabling Act of 1933, which the council members passed due to fear for their lives. Then things became way worse, as they always do in dictatorships. Required reading: Steve Schmidt’s There Is a Thin Line Between Life and Death.

It’s pretty much the same in Putin’s Russia, Erdoğan’s Turkey, Xi’s China, Duterte’s Phillippines and now in the U.S. Eliminating legislative oversight is what authoritarians do to hoard all power for themselves. Most often it’s done with thug tactics. Just ask Putin opponent Alexei Navalny about his experience with Putin’s gulags and nerve poison. Oh, wait: you can’t ask Navalny because Putin murdered him.

The January 6 mob was a violent insurrection dispatched by Trump, a riot of Jesus-bannered, cross carrying thugs, including the Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, 3 Percenters, neo-Nazis, white supremacists and other unhinged hoodlums. They were there to overthrow our government – to effectively eliminate Congress – so that Trump could take over the country (see the movie clip again if you need a refresher). And to kill cops.

Does that sound so extreme as to be preposterous? If so, you need to pay closer attention, because that’s exactly what those thugs said they were there to do, all at Trump’s bidding. They were there to murder any House or Senate members they found (cue the clips of senators running for their lives). They brought a noose to lynch Mike Pence. Those aren’t things people do in order to preserve their government.

Capitol Officer Brian Sicknick

Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick died from cop killer mob violence while defending 535 members of Congress and the symbol of America that is the Capitol Building. He was killed by Bible-thumping, flag waving American terrorists, who most certainly weren’t promoting law and order, honoring our cops or doing what Jesus would do.

Honoring Officer Brian Sicknick

Both before and since the insurrection, non-Republican members of Congress and election volunteers have received death threats* to themselves and to their family members.

For any remaining fascism skeptics:

If not to overthrow the will of the people and our democracy, what do you think that election fraud Big Lie was about?

Surely, you don’t think those rioters were play acting when they attempted to kill those in Congress.

Surely, you don’t think they believed in democracy when they attempted to trash the votes of tens 81 million Americans.

Surely, you don’t think the currently seated members of Congress who attempted to stop the Electoral College vote counting and whose knees buckle upon hearing of Trump’s every whim actually believe in and honor their oath of office.

Surely, you don’t think the pardoned traitors don’t mean it when they vomit their vitriol of retribution.

Click me – but read Note #5 below first

This is how democracies die. A cult leader exhorts fanatics, the thugs terrorize all opposition and incrementally people surrender to death threats and violence. And that’s advanced when hundreds of our legislators give a standing ovation to the hateful nut cases spewing fascist hatred. That’s advanced when Trump puts forth a slate of entirely unqualified suck ups to be heads of cabinets and it’s advanced when spineless Republicans put those Trump sycophants in power. Yes, fascism can happen here in America. It’s happening right before your eyes.

I’ve exhorted readers to learn what FDR’s Vice President Wallace had to say about fascism in America. If you believe in democracy and have not yet read his essay, please read it now.

Now that Trump has pardoned these violent criminals – cop killers – you can expect acts of terrorism, including sniper and mass shootings, bombings (think: Timothy McVeigh and the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City) and perhaps political assassinations over the coming years. These are highly armed, angry, hateful, bigoted, self-righteous thugs who expect to continue their self-righteous war against America. That’s exactly what they’ve promised. And Trump loves and protects them.

I’m all for our learning to talk with one another constructively, to make peace, perhaps to have a truth and reconciliation commission. But that can only happen after violence is no longer a threat and democracy is secure. Reference: South Africa.

Now it’s time for all of us to stand and be counted in support of the FBI, our state justice departments and law enforcement agencies to stop the barbarians. It’s imperative that we eliminate the clear and present danger that these home grown killers and desecrators are.

The cop killer terrorists have already breached the gates of democracy and are buoyed in their treasonous actions by Trump and because they see January 6 as a victory for themselves. If we are to continue our bold experiment in self-rule, we better get some victories notched against the barbarians damned fast.

Oh, and Trump fired 18 inspectors general in violation of the law requiring 30 days advance notice,

  1. Trump don’ wan’ no stinking people who can hold him accountable, so he’s getting rid of the watch dogs. He’s lived a lifetime of doing whatever allowed him to skate from responsibility for his actions, including packing the Supreme Court with his extremist picks to give him a license to lie, cheat, steal and kill from the Oval Office.
  2. The real deal, the giggly, bubbly part for Trump, is that this, along with the pardons, is a stake in the ground saying that he doesn’t have to obey our laws. He’s making it clear that he is above the law and is daring anyone to stand up to him. The question is whether Congress will let him get away with that, just as the Reichstag let Hitler get away with everything. You are advised to have low expectations of our Republicans.
This Just In: Fired for Cause

Jeff Bezos’ termination of faithfulness to the Washington Post’s masthead slogan, “Democracy Dies in Darkness,” has led to spineless reporting, suck up editorials and shameful toadying. It is worse than just embarrassing. It is the dying of a light that protects and defends our democracy, all for a few coins in Bezos’ pocket and a pat on his slick scalp by the Führer-in Chief.

I just cancelled my subscription.

Let me know when that coward is gone and there is new leadership at the paper worthy of the legacy of Kathryn Graham and Ben Bradlee.

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* Refer to Thom Hartmann’s post, If Obama Had Sent a Mob to Kill a Cop, Republicans Would Never Let You Forget It – The GOP would be screaming “Cop Killer” every single day — so why aren’t Democrats holding Trump to the same standard?

Coming Sunday: This Is Not Normal

Ed. note: We need to spread the word so that we make a critical difference, so,

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JA


Copyright 2025 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.

What’s Most Important


Post 1,040

The President of the United States has a lot of responsibilities, including that ” . . . he shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed . . .” as required by Article II of the Constitution. The to-do list is long and demanding to the point of being inhuman. There is significant long term impact from nearly everything the President does.

He has to manage:

immigration

the economy

safeguarding our democracy

transportation, like rail and air safety and highways

the health and welfare of the American people

Enough. You get the idea.

But which job of the President is most important? The sine qua non. The one for which all others can be made to take a number and stand in line. As critically important as it is, even in this age of grift, fraud, treason, insurrection and more, it isn’t justice. Even as the cost of groceries is frustratingly high, it isn’t the economy. Our immigration system has been universally pilloried for decades, as Congresses have steadfastly refused to do anything to make it better. That has left us with the chaos we see every day. But even fixing that isn’t the most important duty of the President.

The most critical task of the President of the United States is national security. Protecting us from bad guys who would do us harm must take precedence, because if we are at risk of foreign attack, none of the other issues will matter.

The task is never ending. There is no box to check and then say “next.” On December 8, 1941 it was obvious and easy to identify what must be done. Such clarity is exceedingly rare. National security is most often devilishly complicated.

For example, consider the Ukraine war. In 2022 when Putin’s Russia invaded Ukraine in an effort to destroy that country and to make it part of Russia, it wasn’t obvious that we had a dog in that fight. But it quickly became clear that Putin’s genocidal war crimes adventure has consequences that can impact us.

It’s plain to see that this former KGB tough is trying to reconstitute the Soviet Union. That puts our NATO allies at risk and that means that war would be at our doorstep if Putin succeeds in Ukraine and then starts after our NATO friends. He’s already suggested that annexing the Baltic states might be next. Maybe eastern Poland, too.  Article V of the NATO charter would pull us into the conflict and our national security would be immediately compromised. That electric shock up your spine just now is you recognizing how close we may be to World War III. Prof. Heather Cox Richardson has more on this here.

That’s why national security is job one and why it is devilishly complicated. Let’s look at this situation just a bit more.

It’s well established that Putin kills his critics and political opponents, so it’s little surprise that he murdered Alexei Navalny. Putin had him tried and convicted on trumped up charges and sent him to a gulag in the Siberian Arctic and held there in solitary confinement. There was little Navalny could do to Putin from there. so why bother killing him? Here’s my theory.

Putin is an incrementalist. He pushes the envelope, finds that he can get away with something and then pushes some more. Ukraine is a perfect example.

After annexing the eastern section of Ukraine and the Crimea in 2014 he stopped there, waiting for world reaction. All he got were blabbers blabbing. No one came to the rescue of the Ukrainians to push Putin back, so in 2022 he went after the entire country. That’s incrementalism.

He didn’t get away with that recent invasion yet, but he may be in position to do so. Our spineless Republican Trump suck-ups have followed Trump’s demand to prevent Biden from having a win, so they refuse any further funding for Ukraine. These House cowards are leaving the Ukrainian fighters running out of munitions. They just ceded the bombed out city of Avdiivkak to the Russians, giving them a major win and a retreat for the Ukrainian forces.

That kind of battlefield advance made it time for Putin to push the envelope in a different direction, so he had Navalny murdered. Now Navalny is out of his way permanently.

Steve Schmidt wrote of Navalny:

One day, his name will be known in the same breath as Gandhi, Mandela, Churchill, Lafayette and Lincoln around the world. One day, when Russia is free, Alexei Navalny will be exalted. Today, he is simply dead, murdered for demanding that each individual human has a right to live in freedom.

Anne Applebaum wrote in The Atlantic:

Only minutes after his death was announced, I spoke with Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, the Belarusian opposition leader. “We are worried for our people too,” she told me. If Putin can kill Navalny with impunity, then dictators elsewhere might feel empowered to kill other brave people.

More incrementalism.

Now the world is howling, including freedom loving Russians, but my guess is that the howling will slowly quiet and Putin will have gotten away with his crime. The envelope will have been permanently expanded.

That devilishly complicated national security task which comes above and before all others becomes not just more difficult, but more likely murderous when our own team is in constant conflict with itself, undermining our efforts and our options. It used to be that our political differences stopped at the water’s edge. We came together as one to protect and defend our country. Now that imperative has been betrayed, over-laid by petty self-interest and the infestation of cowards. Now the MAGA crowd sides with Putin.

We have elections coming up. Many candidates will thump their chests and proclaim what true Americans they are. They will tell you that their opponent is a weenie, soft on immigration, wanting open borders and willing to let our blood be poisoned by “others.” Those alt-right people are enemies of our country because they are spineless cowards, traitors to our Founders and our Constitution and violators of their oath of office, regardless of the holy verbiage they vomit.

Vote for the other candidates. The ones who have demonstrated that they will go to the Congress or their state capitol to fight for America, to honor their oath of office and to demand justice everywhere. Vote for the candidates who believe in this America, not some dreadful replica of the murderous nation led by Vladimir Putin.

That’s what’s most important for us to do.

  • Today is a good day to be the light
  • _____________________________
  • Our governance and electoral corruption and dysfunction and our ongoing mass murders are all of a piece, all the same problem with the same solution:
  • Fire the bastards!
  • The days are dwindling for us to take action. Get up! Do something to make things better.


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    The Fine Print:

    1. Writings quoted or linked from my posts reflect a point I want to make, at least in part. That does not mean that I endorse or agree with everything in such writings.
    2. There are lots of smart, well-informed people. Sometimes we agree; sometimes we don’t. Search for others’ views and decide for yourself.
    3. Errors in fact, grammar, spelling and punctuation are all embarrassingly mine. Glad to have your corrections.
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    JA


Copyright 2025 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.

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