POST 1232

We learned during Trump 1.0 that when he says outrageous, incendiary, un-American things that he’s telling us what he actually will do. Then, oddly, when he does what he said he would do and breaks the law, so many are surprised.

“We’re shocked, SHOCKED, I tell you to find that there is crime being done in and from the White House!”

But we really did know what that snake was when we picked him up, so there should be no surprise at all. Horror? Fear? Blood running cold? Sure. But not surprise.

Perhaps what is more shocking is the capitulation done by people who had no need to capitulate. The knee benders. The ring kissers. The simple greedy bastards. The ones who obey in advance.

From Wikipedia:

Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison (Paul Weiss) is the sole law firm targeted by an executive order that did not sue the administration and instead made a deal with the administration to avoid sanctions and restore access.

In addition to Paul Weiss, eight other firms made preemptive deals with Trump to avoid being similarly targeted by executive orders. As part of the settlements, the nine law firms have agreed to provide a total of $940 million in pro bono work to efforts supported by the president and the firms.

Plus, they and many others each agreed to Trump’s extortion plan that they “donate” $16 million to Trump’s presidential library, for which there is neither a location nor architectural plans. Trump doesn’t read and his only book is Mein Kampf. There will be no need for book shelves. Neither will there be file cabinets for documents in a Trump library, were it to be built. Likely, there would only be his greatest hits reel showing his tough guy speeches and The Apprentice reruns in a gold and white theater.

Columbia University went completely paws up to Trump when he pulled $400 million in federal funding from them. To get him off their back they relinquished control of their programs, their classes and even their selection of faculty.

See Notes 4 & 5 below.

What they and so many others have in common is that they have ignored Timothy Snyder’s On Tyranny – 20 Lessons From The Twentieth Century.

1. Rule No. 1: Do Not Obey In Advance. Don’t do what you think the bully wants you to do, perhaps hoping to curry favor. Doing so is surrendering without even an objection, much less a fight. It’s voluntarily going paws up. Instead, put on your big boy or big girl pants and punch the damned bully in the face. Hard.
2. Rule No. 2: Defend institutions. Tyrants want to smash institutions, disempower them so that he can control everything and everyone. Instead, put on your big boy or big girl pants and punch the damned bully in the face. Hard.
3. Rule No. 5: Remember professional ethics. Refuse to succumb to directives ordering discrimination and violation of your oaths. Instead, put on your big boy or big girl pants and punch the damned bully in the face. Hard.

There is more, of course, but it all comes down to taking a stand protecting and defending what must be protected and defended. Failure to do so is nothing but caving in, hoping you’ll quickly get out of the crosshairs of the bully and do so on the cheap. The best that can be said about that is that it is astonishingly myopic and self-deluding. When a little kid has a temper tantrum and then you give him what he wants, you’ve trained him to come back in full tyrant form and demand more later. That’s what happens to quick sell-outs. Don’t be an idiot. Take a stand.

And that’s the message that so many should have heard and heeded. Trump’s threatened lawsuits would have been easy to defeat in court because his actions and demands weren’t defensible. His style is to make capitulation the cheapest exit from his bullying. But there really is no exit for those who cave. So, take a stand.

There are yet more short-term thinkers, like the bullies who became ICE thugs. He found a cheap hook to recruit them – a $50,000 signing bonus – and then he owned them. He told them to bully, beat, gas, shoot and assault people indiscriminately – fellow citizens, neighbors – and to pay no attention to whether they were U.S. citizens, legal residents and to essentially ignore whether they were innocents or criminals.

The goal wasn’t about crime. It was and is to terrorize the country so that he could rid the country of non-Whites, using illegal immigration as a cover story, plus cow all of us into submission.

And these ICE capitulators stepped up to collect their checks and then started beating up innocents.

The question to ponder in this “greatest country in the world,” in this “indispensable nation,” in this “American exceptionalism country” is why our educated people in this land of the free and home of the brave would be so easily seduced and manipulated. How does this happen here?

The day will come when the capitulators are in deep, deep trouble, maybe existential anguish. They will look for strength deep inside and will find only an empty vacuum where their souls used to be.

They gave up. They sold out on the cheap until nothing was left.

BTW

From Bloomberg News:

The FBI Redacted Trump’s Name in the Epstein Files.

Hundreds of FBI personnel scrubbed the Epstein documents in AG Bondi’s possession. They removed or redacted Trump’s name and those of his favorite deviants.

Now connect the dots to explain Trump directing Congress to vote to release the Epstein files. He’s made sure that everything incriminating or even embarrassing to him has been redacted from the files that will be released so that there is no risk to Trump, everything sanitized for his protection and no justice to be found anywhere.

He’s ordered the DOJ to investigate Democrats who might be connected to the Epstein crimes. That way Trump can refuse to release hundreds, perhaps thousands of files, claiming that doing so would interfere with an ongoing investigation. There will be terrible obstruction games to come.

The fix is in. If you listen you can already hearing Trump falsely brag yet again that he’s been exonerated.

Given the likely tampering of evidence, consider the votes in Congress yesterday to be not an open road to justice, but the end of the beginning of that road. The real battles are just getting underway.

If you long for justice for those long suffering women who were a while back those horribly abused girls – children; if you long for justice for the sake of justice itself and for the protection and welfare of us all; If one of your fondest wishes is for a fair and just country that resembles at least a little the America you grew up believing in; then you are advised to put your hopes and expectations on low and anticipate a long, critical and brutal fight against the very worst people ever spawned by this country. And expect to be a soldier in that fight, along with the rest of us.

Goes fast, doesn’t it?

• Countdown Timer

• To November 3, 2026

  Mid-Term Election

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