You would think the Republicans, with their immense respect and admiration of everything the Founding Fathers did, would be aware that they did not want a monarch, that Cincinnatus was their ideal, and that Washington was admired for gracefully conceding power and setting a model for future transitions. Yet here they are, pretending that an ex-president has privileges that are in ways greater than those of a sitting president, and obstructing justice that attempts to recover confidential materials that are the property of the nation, not some imperial individual.
It’s never been about the Constitution, or tradition, or the good of the country for these Republicans. It’s always been about power and money.
But now we know. That ex-president, who still has a death grip on the more fanatical fraction of the Republican party, was an opportunist who looted everything he could from the office, either as trophies or for sale or as blackmail material. You would also think that a party of arch capitalists who value property rights above all else would recognize that he did not own these things, they were not his, they were the property of the country, and that he was a criminal thief and traitor. We’re getting a better picture of exactly what he stole.
Some of the seized documents detail top-secret U.S. operations so closely guarded that many senior national security officials are kept in the dark about them. Only the president, some members of his Cabinet or a near-Cabinet-level official could authorize other government officials to know details of these special-access programs, according to people familiar with the search, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe sensitive details of an ongoing investigation.
Documents about such highly classified operations require special clearances on a need-to-know basis, not just top-secret clearance. Some special-access programs can have as few as a couple dozen government personnel authorized to know of an operation’s existence. Records that deal with such programs are kept under lock and key, almost always in a secure compartmented information facility, with a designated control officer to keep careful tabs on their location.
And now, of course, Trump’s defense is a crooked judge he appointed who is now abusing the courts to hinder any investigation. This is fascism, plain and simple. Not semi-fascism. Fascism.
One can but hope he has the same end as the original. Though given what a bucket of lard he is, they’ll need a stronger lamp post.
They value property rights so much that anything that is a commons or otherwise property of the people isn’t property at all and is free for the taking. That’s the fundamental truth of “capitalists”- looters, the lot of them.
Not to worry though. Only some of the classified documents reported in depth on foreign nuclear defenses. The rest were only HUMINT, as in spy reports.
Nothing bad ever happens when spies get exposed, just ask Mata Hari.
I have to share some of what I learned about classified information while I was in the Navy.
In 1970 at nuclear power school (propulsion, not weapons) there was paper supplied in the class room,
marked confidential, for taking notes. All the handouts in class were marked confidential. All
material was to be left on shelves in the class room, for study we had to go back to the school.
School was open 24 hours, always some one at a desk by the entrance checking people in and out.
Every one had that duty on rotation. I don’t recall any instruction about intruders, nor do I know
responce time for base security. School was in a remote largely abandoned part of the base
(NTC Bainbridge, near Port Deposit MD).At the end of school all notes and handouts were to be turned in.
Topics studied included math, chemistry, physics and materials nothing I think would be
particularly secret, but a physics instructor may have let something slip. He mentioned natural
reactors a year before the official discovery of the OKLO natural reactors.
Can you imagine being the FBI agent discovering this folder? They’ve probably been told that they cannot look into folders they don’t have clearance for. So this agent has to guard and then hand over the folder to somebody who does have the clearance to look inside: a specific Cabinet officer. And they just can’t pop it in the mail. But hopefully, they have an on-site SCIF there with the proper safe to hold it until it gets to the Cabinet officer (and how do you officially transport something like this?).
Just the logistics of examining all this stuff boggles.
Sigh… There’s that cynicism again. It can also be about bigotry, religion, and a view of history warped by an ideological lens. As we skeptics have learned over the last couple of decades, people are more than capable of operating on contradictory narratives and goals.
Bigotry isn’t about maintaining one’s power within society? Religions and religious people do not use religion to maintain their wealth and power? Ideological lenses are usually, but not always, about maintaining the power and wealth of the dominant group, right? In a way I agree with you. Power and money can be glibly tossed out there to explain just about everything (one of the few (very few) things Marx and Engels got right) which tends to stifle exploration of what is actually going on.
Power and money will eventually warp culture in a convenient way.
If there was not bigotry, religion and a warped view of history before, it will eventually become prevalent.
As Marx said “interest never lies”.
Apropos Cinncinatus, coincidentally this morning the former Tory PM of the UK, Boris Johnson, made a going-away speech favorably comparing himself to that Roman. I suppose to imply that he virtuously gave up the ministership, as opposed to being kicked out.
Anyway I learned that Cinncinatus was most famous for violently putting down plebian/slave uprisings in order to keep the elite patricians in total control of the “republic”. So I might repeat from the OP, “It’s always been about power and money.”
At least the bald guy with the funny uniforms gave the world a lot of neoclassic architecture.
Trump, Bojo and Truss have never produced anything (except -in one case- butt-ugly hotels).
Truss has produced one thing today: laughter. She stood up in Parliament and blamed Labour for not doing various things, seemingly forgetting that Labour hasn’t been the party in power for the last 12 years but her party has. She also accused the Labour leader of wanting to raise taxes like Labour always does, conveniently forgetting that her party was the one which has increased taxes to their current highest point for 70 years. Tory financial mismanagement since 2010 (failing to invest, demanding austerity, then kicking itself in the teeth with Brexit) has restored the tax burden to the same level as it was when we had just finished fighting six years of a globe-spanning war!
And so Jan 6, 2001, drops into the memory hole, along with all the rest, while we all try to catch up with the latest worstest.
Liz Truss first PM questions
https://youtu.be/X3fEFiJGWyY
Retrospect
Liz Truss being fully (DELETED)
https://youtu.be/pxkBdcWfUfc
remyporter @2 — Well said!
Yes, but coming out and admitting it’s plain and simple fascism might raise uncomfortable questions like:
• Why was it so important in 2020 to nominate a center-right candidate for President on a platform of “unity” with what was obviously fascism?
• Why was it so important in 2016 to nominate a center-right candidate for President whose message boiled down to “we can’t fight the Republicans so just settle down and stop resisting” if the Republicans are fascist?
• Why did Obama spend 8 years demanding “bipartisanship” with fascists?
Facing up to the existence of fascism means facing up to the fact that centrism is a dead-end which does nothing but encourage the left to enable fascism against their better judgement, and the centrists in charge of the Democratic Party really, really don’t want people to realize that.
Shorter Vicar: But Biden! But Obama! But the Democratic Party!
(Apparently Clinton has fallen into desuetude)
@10. birgerjohansson :
Pretty sure Trump didn’t actually build any merely bought them then put his name on them in the tackiest, most garish fashion possible.In fairness, Trump did build golf courses and combo golfcourse cemetaries from what I gather so there’s that.
@ The Vicar (via Freethoughtblogs) :
Er, it was? Was it? Pretty sure that’s a strawman and Biden wasn’t nominated because of having “unity” with fascism.
Lets’s see : https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/2020-democratic-party-platform
Skimming through that, sure doesn’t look like it..
Huh. @#17 John Morales – The Vicar did mention HRC albeit obliquely after all.
Again, pretty sure that wasn’t Hillary’s actual message boiled down or otherwise summed up. Lessee from :
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/02/us/politics/hillary-clinton-campaign.html
FWIW I think HRC’s message summed up was about having a woman as POTUS for the first time and continuing Obama’s policies but of course the decades long campaign of anti-Clinton hatred from Murdoch and the focus on Trump and the whole mess that election campaign became muddled & confused things. Mostly due to factors outside HRC’s control. Sadly,slogans do cut through and “Stronger together” and “I’m with her” didn’t resonate as much as MAGA & Lock her up!” and, how ironically now, “But her emails!”
He didn’t. The Repugs under those of Obama’s presidency were bad but not yet the fascistic personalty cult of Trump that they became although their Obama derangement syndrome was taking them there with Trump’s Birtherism pushing that.. FWIW Obama warned people that Trump was a fascist and should be kept out of the White House back in 2016 :
Source : https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2020/01/obama-2016-trump-fascist/605488/
Citations and supporting evidence needed.
Has Biden “enabled fascism” as you claim? No. He and other Democrats have opposed it.
Biden defeated Trump – against your predictions. HRC got more actual votes than Trump too. This means that Biden & the Democratic party get to enact policies and appoint SCOTUS Justices – a broken Congress permitting. Biden has already appointed one Justice; Ketanji Brown Jackson the first African-American woman one. Is that really a “dead end?” Is that “enabling fascism?”
Now I really wish Biden – and the whole Democratic party – was more progressive and more assertive in taking progressive actions. I wish they’d go much further and do much more and make things much better than they do. But to say that they are as bad or even nearly as bad as the Repugs is simply factually inaccurate.