Mostly Monday Reads: Not even Godwin’s Law applies Anymore

Firefighters battle a marsh fire near Bell City on Sept. 13, 2023. (Bell City/Hayes/Holmwood Fire Department)

Good Day, Sky Dancers!

New Orleans has certainly set me up for sharing the Dystopian Hell Realm that we’ve been introduced to by Orange Caligula.  Marsh Fires have created an acrid smell and an overcast set of days in what usually is the perfect season of Autumn here. I’ve even learned a new weather term, “Super Fog.” That’s what caused a lot of crashes and problems on the interstates here. I posted about this earlier.

We may have dodged Hurricane Season, but I’m unsure how to characterize a season with a Salt Water Wedge that’s making more than a few communities downriver use bottled water. What comes out of the faucet isn’t drinkable down there.  It’s combined with these eerie Marsh Fires.  They’ve now broken through to remove the brushy, dead foliage left by the drought. Currently, there is a coastal flooding warning on our radar. I’m sitting high and dry here on the banks of the Mississippi, watching the dismal Republican pols and candidates miss the natural disasters while inventing their own. Climate change, anyone?

John Buss, @repeat1968

Many of us are now on the Trumpist list known as ‘Vermin.’  If this sounds less Orwellian and more Hitler-like to you, it should.  This is from Michael Tomasky at The New Republic. “It’s Official: With

“Vermin,” Trump Is Now Using Straight-up Nazi Talk. He’s telling us what he will do to his political enemies if he’s president again. Is anyone listening?”

We’ve all often wondered whether Donald Trump understands the historical import of what comes out of his mouth. He’s so ill-informed, so proudly ignorant, that it’s easy to think that when he hurls a historical insult, he just doesn’t know.

I feel pretty safe in saying that we can now stop giving him the benefit of that particular doubt. His use—twice; once on social media and then repeated in a speech—of the word “vermin” to describe his political enemies cannot be an accident. That’s an unusual word choice. It’s not a smear that one just grabs out of the air. And it appears in history chiefly in one context, and one context only.

Before we get to that, let’s just record what he wrote and said. On Saturday at 10:25 a.m., he posted on Truth Social: “In honor of our great Veterans on Veteran’s Day, we pledge to you that we will root out the Communists, Marxists, Fascists, and Radical Left Thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country, lie, steal, and cheat on Elections, and will do anything possible, whether legally or illegally, to destroy America, and the American dream.” Then, at a rally in New Hampshire later that day, he repeated those words essentially verbatim—promising to “root out … the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country”—and doubled down on it: “The real threat is not from the radical right; the real threat is from the radical left, and it’s growing every day, every single day. The threat from outside forces is far less sinister, dangerous, and grave than the threat from within. Our threat is from within.”

This is straight-up Nazi talk, in a way he’s never done quite before. To announce that the real enemy is domestic and then to speak of that enemy in subhuman terms is Fascism 101. Especially that particular word.

Mom and Dad were back in Kansas City, MO, right before he deployed to England.

My Dad and Mother would be 100 this year.  As I frequently shared here, my Dad was in the Army Air Corps during World War 2.  He and his unit were responsible for bombing targets in France, Belgium, and Germany so the troops on the group and the parachuters could get to Germany. One of the results of these missions was freeing those who remained in Concentration Camps.  That would include people of the Jewish Faith, Homosexuals, and intellectuals.  People were often teased with “Godwin’s Law” because it couldn’t happen again or here.  Right?

Godwin’s law, short for Godwin’s law (or rule) of Nazi analogies,^[1] is an Internet adage asserting that as an online discussion grows longer (regardless of topic or scope), the probability of a comparison to Nazis or Adolf Hitler approaches 1.^[2]

Well, this Trump Speech was not “reductio ad Hitlerum“.   Dad’s crew on the bomber included a Jewish American from a small town in Washington State as well as a Puerto Rican American from New York City.  BB’s Dad was a small-town Middle of America professor who spent time in the Pacific Theatre. Everyone in the military represents everyone you could possibly meet in the US population, from indigenous Americans to those who are newly immigrated.  How dare this man speak like this on a day when we remember those who have sacrificed much for our democratic Republic? Which of them would be on Trump’s “vermin” list?

This is from the Washington Post. “Trump calls political enemies ‘vermin,’ echoing dictators Hitler, Mussolini, On Veterans Day, the former president vowed to “root out” his liberal opponents, drawing backlash from historians who say his rhetoric is reminiscent of authoritarians.” It’s reported by Marianne LeVine.

The former president’s speech in Claremont, N.H., echoed his message of vengeance and grievance, as he called himself a “very proud election denier” and decried his legal entanglements, once again attacking the judge in a New York civil trial and re-upping his attacks on special counsel Jack Smith. In the speech, Trump once again portrayed himself as a victim of a political system that is out to get him and his supporters.

Yet Trump’s use of the word “vermin” both in his speech and in a Truth Social post on Saturday drew particular backlash.

“The language is the language that dictators use to instill fear,” said Timothy Naftali, a senior research scholar at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs. “When you dehumanize an opponent, you strip them of their constitutional rights to participate securely in a democracy because you’re saying they’re not human. That’s what dictators do.”

Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a historian at New York University, said in an email to The Washington Post that “calling people ‘vermin’ was used effectively by Hitler and Mussolini to dehumanize people and encourage their followers to engage in violence.”

“Trump is also using projection: note that he mentions all kinds of authoritarians ‘communists, Marxists, fascists and the radical left’ to set himself up as the deliverer of freedom,” Ben-Ghiat said. “Mussolini promised freedom to his people too and then declared dictatorship.”

Steven Cheung, a Trump campaign spokesman, told The Post “those who try to make that ridiculous assertion are clearly snowflakes grasping for anything because they are suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome and their entire existence will be crushed when President Trump returns to the White House.”

Cheung later clarified that he meant to say their “sad, miserable existence” instead of their “entire existence.”

New Orleans firefighters are flooding an underground marsh fire in New Orleans East that’s been burning for at least three weeks and spreading smoke across the city. Photo: Chief Chris Mickal, NOFD photo unit

Liz Cheney ripped into the RNC after this speech.  This is from The Hill, “Liz Cheney says RNC chair ‘collaborating’ with Trump’s ‘Nazi propaganda’.” This is written by Miranda Nazzaro.

Former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) ripped Republican National Committee (RNC) Chair Ronna McDaniel for dodging questions Sunday about former President Trump’s “vermin” comments, which Cheney described as “Nazi propaganda.”

“When @GOPChairwoman refuses to condemn the GOP’s leading candidate for using the same Nazi propaganda that mobilized 1930s-40s Germany to evil, it’s fair to assume she’s collaborating,” Cheney wrote in a post on X, formerly Twitter. “History will judge Ronna McDaniel and every republican who is appeasing this dangerous man.”

Since we’re on the subject of disrespecting Americans serving in our Military, I have one bit of reasonable, possible bi-partisan effort to stop the temper tantrum reign of Tommy the Willfully Stupid.

A fire burns in the southeast corner of the Bayou Sauvage Urban National Wildlife Refuge in New Orleans in early August 2023. U.S. FISH AND WILDLIFE SERVICE PHOTO LDAF

Here are some details on that. This is from the Military Times. “Senate may change rule to break Tuberville hold on military promotions.”

Senate Rules Committee officials this week will try to break through Sen. Tommy Tuberville’s months-long blockade of military nominees, though it’s unclear if the plan can gain enough Republican support to work.

The committee on Tuesday will vote on a plan to allow consideration of about 350 pending nominations in a single parliamentary move, a dramatic change in precedent for the chamber. The proposal is expected to easily pass out of the committee but will face more problems in the full Senate, where Republican cooperation will be needed for final approval.

Tuberville, an Alabama Republican, has held up fast-track consideration of routine senior military promotions and confirmations since the spring over his objections to the Defense Department’s abortion access policy. In recent days, several GOP colleagues have pressured him to relent on the holds, citing cascading leadership difficulties caused by the move.

But Tuberville thus far has rebuffed those requests. Tuesday’s rules committee meeting is designed to force a resolution on the issue, with Democratic leaders (and a number of top Pentagon officials) insisting the standoff has already lasted too long.

Marsh fires still burning in Creole(Cameron Fire Department)

Don’t forget about all the domestic and abroad disturbances that require a US presence. We still have a looming government shutdown.  The Republican Party representatives cannot govern.  This is from CNN. 

New House Speaker Mike Johnson may already be losing his first big clash with the hard-right lawmakers who are making the Republican majority and the nation ungovernable as time races down to yet another federal funding cut-off.

The Louisiana conservative, who was just lifted from obscurity to second in line to the presidency, may soon find himself in the position that doomed his predecessor Rep. Kevin McCarthy — needing Democratic votes to keep the government open.

A funding deadline of Friday night means Washington again faces a wild ride of shutdown brinkmanship caused by extreme GOP lawmakers who either cannot or don’t want to help run the country. The imbroglio is not just harming America’s image as a functioning democracy abroad. It has already wasted every week of the House majority party’s term since the summer and threatens to further weaken the key swing-district members critical to the GOP’s hopes of keeping the gavel in next year’s election.

Johnson on Saturday unveiled a complex two-tiered plan to temporarily fund the government, with a pair of deadlines in January and February for the passage of permanent department budgets.

The move could head off the Washington holiday-season tradition of shutdown dramas and mammoth all-encompassing spending bills. But the chances that a GOP majority that has trouble passing any bill could deliver on this intricate plan seem very low.Given the House’s record, Johnson may simply be setting the country up for two government shutdowns rather than one.

While the two-step approach appears to be a concession to the far right — which abhors what it calls “clean” continuing resolutions, or CRs, that keep government open temporarily at current spending levels — Johnson’s approach may already have backfired since it lacks the sweeping cuts that hard-right Republicans demanded even though they have no chance of getting them past a Democratic-run Senate and White House. “It’s a 100% clean. And I 100% oppose,” Freedom Caucus member and Texas Rep. Chip Roy wrote on X, conjuring up exactly the showdown that cost McCarthy his job.

Johnson’s task is so difficult because the tiny GOP majority means he can lose only a handful of members on any bill and still pass it with only Republican votes – hence the need to get help from Democrats on some issues and the consequent risk of further alienating far-right members of his conference.

The Marsh Fires aren’t getting as much play on the national level as the forest fires up north, but believe me, if you live downwind of them, you feel them. They’ve been trying to get masks to people here with asthma and problems breathing. I’ve felt like I’ve had one big sinus infection the entire time, but other than a few pain relievers and allergy medicine, there’s not much you can do.  I hope we’ve gotten our share of FEMA and federal disaster relief for this because if they shut the government down, there will be a lot of hurt all over the state.

Have a great week! I hope all our active military and veterans got the recognition and respect they deserve for Veteran’s Day!

What’s on your reading and blogging list today?