That Time When Business Greed Nearly Lost the Allies WWII and How It Relates to the Covid Crisis

We are plunging toward a dark and dangerous winter. A third wave of Covid-19 infections is surging around the world. At this writing, U.S. Covid cases are increasing at a rate of more than 100,000 new infections per day. One thousand Americans are dying from the virus each day. The health care facilities of nearly every state are being overwhelmed by Covid caseloads.

It is a sad fact that all this could have been avoided.

If more state governments had been responsible and closed the bars, restaurants, gyms, and political rallies that act like petri dishes for the virus’s growth, Covid’s impact could have been mitigated. But too many politicians bent to the pressure placed on them by both small businesses and corporations to avoid such lockdowns. Even in states like California, where a lockdown did start to contain the virus, politicians eventually caved and lifted restrictions too early and too quickly.

We’ve seen this same profit-at-any-price mentality in this country before when another scourge threatened American lives, and businesses refused to adapt to the situation to save lives. The last time we saw this kind of thinking, we nearly lost WWII.

Operation Drumbeat

Within weeks of declaring war on the United States, Adolf Hitler launched a U-boat offensive against the American East Coast called Operation Paukenschlag (Operation Drumbeat). On January 14, 1942, the first German sub arrived off the coast of Rhode Island, soon followed by four more. The German sailors were delighted to find tankers and freighters sailing alone without escort. Even more surprising, they found the coast brightly lit by shore lights that provided U-boats with perfectly silhouetted targets.

Blackouts are a necessity of war. Across the Atlantic, blackouts were imposed on every English, French, and German shoreline. Even before entering the war, American military officials realized the potential need for blacking out the Eastern seaboard at night. But local chambers of commerce, fearing a loss of profits, fought every attempt to impose a coastal blackout.

The result was devastating.

In just weeks, those first five U-boats sank 16 ships totaling 104,761 tons. Allied logistics experts estimated the loss in ships, cannon, vehicles, and fuel was equivalent to the damage caused by 30,000 German aerial bombing sorties. And it was just the beginning.

Like the coronavirus, the U-boat onslaught came in waves. The first wave may have come as a surprise—though it shouldn’t have—but there was no excuse to not be prepared for the following waves. But, just as with the Covid crisis today, America remained unresponsive to the threat

The blame can’t be laid entirely at the feet of East Coast business interests—though they fought tooth-and-against blacking out shoreline enterprises. Just as with the Covid crisis, there was ineptitude at high levels of government where bureaucrats would not accept the reality of a U-boat threat in American waters.

The Anglophobe Admiral

Admiral Ernest King, chief of naval operations, was an Anglophobe. A British official described King as “intolerant and suspicious of all things British, especially the Royal Navy.” Before America entered the war, King rejected all calls for preparing for a U-boat attack on the United States, refusing to believe Germany had such a capability despite the fact U-boats had operated in American waters in WWI.

Merchant ship Dixie Arrow torpedoed off Cape Hatteras by U-71, 26 March 1942.

Like Donald Trump’s refusal to accept the reality of the Covid crisis, King refused to acknowledge the threat facing merchant ships sailing in American waters or his own failure to protect them. Even after the first German submarine onslaught, King’s Anglophobia made him resist implementing any of the hard-won lessons the English learned about fighting U-boats in three years of war. He adamantly refused to adopt a convoy system to protect Allied shipping as the British had despite the fact that convoys—groups of merchant ships protected by sub-hunting ships and patrol boats—was used by the American Navy in WWI. King’s attitude, and that of many of his subordinates, was summed up by U.S. Rear Adm. R. S. Edwards. “Americans must learn by their own mistakes,” he told a British colleague, “and we have plenty of ships.”

In fact, we did not have plenty of ships.

By mid-March, the loss of oil tankers was so great that the Petroleum Industry War Council warned the U.S. would run out of oil in six months. By June 1942, Army Chief of Staff George C. Marshall worried “that another month or two of this . . . [and] . . . we will be unable to bring sufficient men and planes to bear against the enemy . . .”

The danger to the war effort posed by King's ethnocentrism prompted General Dwight D. Eisenhower to write, “One thing that might help win this war is to shoot King.”

To the British, the Battle of the Western Atlantic was a “holocaust.”

A convoy system wouldn’t be organized until mid-1942, when President Franklin D. Roosevelt ordered King to implement one.

And still the lights shone

In February 1942, FDR issued an executive order giving the military authority to order coastal blackouts. Once again, seashore businesses pushed back, and the military hesitated to implement the order. Admiral King sent the coastal defense commander a “request” to implement a “dimout” of shore lights, but he still refused to call for a full blackout.

U-boats victories mounted as did merchant ship losses. For the tourists and party clubbers enjoying the well-lit coastal nightlife, the war came home the hard way. At night, they could see torpedoed ships burning offshore. In the mornings, those same fun lovers found the scorched bodies of merchant sailors that had washed ashore. Eventually, coastline businesses began to lose money simply because people did not want to be that close to the reality of war. And still, they refused to execute blackouts until much later in the year.

By then the damage was done. In the first six months of 1942, nearly 400 Allied merchantmen were sunk in American waters at a cost to Germany of only six U-boats. Unlike Pearl Harbor, none of the ships were salvageable. No one was ever held responsible for these terrible losses. It would still take until the first half of 1943 before American anti-submarine warfare capabilities caught up with those of Britain and Canada.

(New York Times)

Today Americans face a similar deadly threat, one that threatens the well-being of us all, not just a relative few merchant sailors. Yet we’re are seeing the same inaction and ineptitude that nearly lost us the war against the Axis Powers. While European countries are seeing positive results by reimposing restrictions on restaurants, bars, and other gathering places, too many Americans still resist taking basic precautions that can slow the spread of the virus and save hundreds of lives (see graph). At this writing, just shy of a quarter million Americans have died from the disease, and the number keeps climbing every day.

In his book Operation Drumbeat, author Michael Gannon concludes, “Civilian avarice and carelessness must take their places on the list of agents accountable for the U-boat triumphs.”  When the history of America’s war against Covid-19 is written, what will the historians say of us?

Militia Plots: A Rare but Serious Threat

The news shocked many Americans. The FBI announced they had thwarted an armed rightwing extremist militia plot to capture local government officials and hold them hostage.

You may think I’m talking about the October arrests of more than a dozen Michigan militia henchmen who were planning to abduct Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and put her on trial for the heinous crime of trying to save Michiganders from the coronavirus.

You’d be wrong if you did.

What I described above was a 1934 plot to seize control of the San Diego, CA city hall by a rightwing militia of quasi-Christian zealots called the Silver Shirts. Founded in 1933 by William Dudley Pelley (right), a one-time presidential candidate, the Silver Legion of America was patterned after the Italian dictator Benito Mussolini’s Black Shirts with the intention of establishing a “Christian Commonwealth” in America that would exclude all Jews and nonwhites.

The Silver Legion was a pro-fascist/Nazi group, one of several that existed in the U.S. in the 1930s. (See: American Fascists: A Forgotten History.) The local contingent of Silver Shirts concocted a plan to overthrow San Diego’s city government when they heard rumors that a group of communists was making similar plans (they weren’t). Two Marines from Camp Pendleton uncovered the plot when they infiltrated the Legion while investigating a series of weapons thefts from local military units.

Militia coup attempts like those thwarted in San Diego and Michigan might seem rare, but they aren’t unknown, and they are no laughing matter. They pose a very real threat to American citizens and to our democracy.

 The first antigovernment militia coup was the 1791 Whiskey Rebellion. Contrary to the belief of many radical gunowners that the Second Amendment was intended by our Founding Fathers to provide for the overthrow the government, the Whiskey Rebellion was quickly put down by a federal force led by then-President George Washington. (See: The Myths that Drive America’s Love of Guns.)

Anti-government militia plots have been the bane of American life, particularly since the 1990s. Several militia plots were uncovered during that decade. Members of a group called the North American Militia planned to bomb several targets in Michigan, including a federal building and an IRS building, and even discussed assassinating various government officials.

In 1997, members of a Missouri militia group planned a July 4 attack on Fort Hood, Texas, as the military base hosted an annual “Freedom Festival” attended by 50,000 men, women, and children. Fortunately, the FBI and the Missouri State Highway Patrol thwarted the plot. (See: The Militia Movement.) And in March 2011, the FBI charged nine members of an extremist militia group in Michigan with seditious conspiracy for plotting to attack law enforcement and spark an uprising against the government. (See: Domestic Terrorism: Focus on Militia Extremism.)

These rebellions were stopped or quickly suppressed before they started. But that doesn’t mean militia coups are not dangerous. In 1898, a white supremacist militia successfully overthrew the biracial city government of Wilmington, NC. There was no response to the deadly coup from local police, the state government, or Washington, DC. Its success is having unfortunate repercussions in today’s presidential politics, as Donald Trump keeps holding up that event as a model for future coups. (See:  The White Supremacist Coup that Trump Uses as a Template.)

Many Americans like to believe Timothy McVeigh’s April 19, 1995 bombing of the Oklahoma City federal building that killed 168 men, women, and children was the act of a “lone wolf” terrorist, Timothy McVeigh. In fact, in addition to McVeigh, three accomplices were also charged and tried for the crime. They had hoped the bombing would initiate an uprising that would take down the U.S. government. McVeigh was also a member of Christian Identity, a rightwing, white supremacist militia, which the FBI believed may have also been involved with the plot. (See: Were There More OKC Conspirators?: The Elohim City Connection.)

The last four years saw a rise in militia activity, thanks to the hateful and extremist rhetoric of Donald Trump. Armed militia members confronted peaceful Black Lives Matter protestors and marched to protest social distancing practices implemented by local governments in the wake of the coronavirus. Even before planning to abduct Gov. Whitmer, Michigan militia gunmen marched on the state capitol in an obvious threat to state lawmakers.

Not all rightwing coup plots were the work of militia movements. In 1933, a group of wealthy conservative bankers and financiers plotted to raise a private army and use it to overthrow the American government and establish a fascist dictatorship. Called The American Putsch and The Bankers Revolt, the plot was thwarted by the man they approached to lead their army. Smedley Butler, a retired Marine Corps major general and two-time recipient of the Medal of Honor, played along with the conspirators and collected evidence for the FBI. One of the alleged conspirators was a wealthy, pro-Nazi financier named Prescott Bush, father and grandfather of two U.S. presidents. (See: American Fascists: A Forgotten History.)

Unlike George Washington riding forth to preserve the country and democracy during the Whiskey Rebellion, Donald Trump has done nothing to mitigate the threat from these rightwing extremist groups. On the contrary, Trump appointed self-avowed pro-fascist, white nationalists like Steve Bannon and Stephen Miller to his staff. He’s referred to white nationalist groups as “some good people” and told the Proud Boys to “stand by.” Trump has also called for armed militia members to act as “poll watchers” during the balloting. His failure to condemn these hate groups or their malicious plots only encourages them to continue their terrorist plots. More conspiracies will be on the horizon as long as this irresponsible president remains in power.

And despite the best efforts of law enforcement, the next plot may not be stopped in time.

Hitler and Trump: Two Men With a Single Mind?

 There is a new meme making the rounds on Twitter. It is a quote from a WWII psychological profile of Adolf Hitler commissioned by the Office of Strategic Services, forerunner of the CIA. The quote says, “His primary rules were: never allow the public to cool off; never admit a fault or wrong; never concede that there may be some good in your enemy; never leave room for alternatives; never accept blame; concentrate on one enemy at a time and blame him for everything that goes wrong; people will believe a big lie sooner than a little one; and if you repeat it frequently enough people will sooner or later believe it.”

Obviously, the quote has gone viral because many people believe it applies as easily to Donald Trump as it does to Der Fuhrer. But a close reading of the full OSS report, “A Psychological Analysis of Adolf Hitler: His Life and Legend,” reveals many more similarities between the Nazi dictator and America’s wannabe fuhrer—so many that one could believe they were one and the same man.

Family: Both Hitler and Trump had authoritarian fathers. Alois Hitler was described by Hitler’s British-born nephew, William Patrick Hitler, as a drunk and tyrant who regularly beat his children. Trump’s father, Fred, was also an authoritarian parent, demanding daily reports from his wife on the children’s conduct and dictating disciplinary actions. According to Trump’s niece, Mary L. Trump, Fred pushed his eldest son, Fred Jr., to become as ruthless as he was so he could take over the family business. Fred Jr., however, wanted to be an airline pilot. After that, Fred Sr. “dismantled [Fred Jr.] by devaluing and degrading every aspect of his personality." Mary Trump blames her grandfather’s treatment of her father for the alcoholism that eventually killed him.

In Awe of Authority: Despite his media persona as a man of strength and resolute courage, Hitler was humbled by persons of authority. “From the weight of evidence, it seems certain that Hitler does lose his self-confidence badly when he is brought face-to-face with an accepted authority of high standing…” Yet, he was in constant search for a male figure he could use as a guide. “[T]hroughout his later life we find him searching for a strong masculine figure whom he can respect and emulate.” Hitler was drawn to strong, authoritarian historical figures such as Caesar, Napoleon, and Frederick the Great. According to the OSS report, Hitler was confused by leaders such as President Franklin D. Roosevelt who could lead a country and “still act like a gentleman” without “a great deal of name-calling, shouting, abusing, and threatening.”

It’s well known Trump has never met a dictator he didn’t submit to. Vladimir Putin of Russia, Xi Jinping of China, Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines, Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, Kim Jong Un of North Korea are all authoritarian leaders Trump has praised and, in most cases, provided with preferential treatment over his own country. (See: Nine Notorious Dictators, Nine Shout-Outs From Donald Trump). At home, Trump openly suggests he wants to wield such power and attempts to do so by threatening and abusing anyone who stands up to him.

Young—Very Young—Women: Throughout his political career, Hitler portrayed himself as a man alone whose only mistress was Germany. Trump, on the other hand, has extravagantly exaggerated his prowess as a playboy. Neither depiction is true. Hitler, like Trump, had a penchant for very young, even underage girls.

Hitler’s first tryst was with Henny Hoffman, the daughter of his official photographer. Hitler first met Henny when she was nine. Henny was about 17 when her mother died and she began dating Hitler. He was in his thirties. “The relationship continued for some time until Henny … got drunk one night and began to talk about her relationship with Hitler,” according to the OSS report.

Henny was followed by a mysterious relationship with Geli Raubal, the daughter of Hitler’s half-sister, Angela. Geli lived with Hitler, 19 years her senior, in his Munich apartment. According to the OSS profile, Hitler spent lavishly on Geli and was extremely jealous of any men who paid attention to his niece. The affair did not end well. In September 1931, Hitler traveled to Nuremburg for a party meeting. The next day, Geli was found dead in his apartment of a gunshot wound to the lung. Hitler’s personal pistol laid next to her. Despite suspicions otherwise, her death was ruled a suicide.

Eva Braun was only 17 when she first caught Hitler’s eye, 23 years younger than Der Fuhrer. Theirs was Hitler’s longest relationship with a woman though he tried to hide it from the German people. It, too, was tumultuous, with Braun twice unsuccessfully attempting suicide. They finally married days before the German surrender, then committed suicide inside the Fuhrer Bunker.

Two of Trump’s wives were much younger than he when they married. Marla Trump was 17 years younger than Trump, and Melania 24 years younger. Trump frequently partied with Jeffrey Epstein, a financier and convicted child molester who was charged with sex trafficking minors in 2019 shortly before he allegedly committed suicide in a jail cell. In 2016, a woman accused Trump in a Manhattan federal court of raping her at one of Epstein’s parties when she was only 14 years old. The alleged victim dropped her suit after receiving multiple death threats from Trump supporters.

Trump has repeatedly made lascivious comments about his own daughter, Ivanka. During a 2003 Howard Stern Show interview, he said Ivanka had “the best body.” On the television show The View, Trump said, “I’ve said if Ivanka weren’t my daughter, perhaps I’d be dating her." He also once allegedly asked a friend, “Is it wrong to be more sexually attracted to your own daughter than your wife?” Ivanka was 13 at the time.

Hitler and Trump may have shared another sexual aberration—golden showers. It has long been suspected that Russia’s Putin has video of Trump engaging in sexual urination with two prostitutes in a Moscow hotel. According to the OSS report, Hitler engaged in the same sex games. “His sexual pervasion has quite a different nature that few would have guessed,” it says. “… [A]n extreme form of masochism in which the individual derives sexual gratification from the act of having a woman urinate or defecate on him.”

Draining the Swamp and Other Christ-like Things: Donald Trump ran for office claiming only he could “drain the swamp” in Washington, DC. Hitler, too, came to power claiming he would drain the Berlin swamp. “When I came to Berlin … and looked at the traffic… the luxury, the perversion, the wanton display… disgusted me so thoroughly, that I was almost beside myself,” Hitler said in a speech. He saw himself as a new Messiah who would clean up Berlin the way Christ cleared the moneychangers from the temple.

A Messiah complex is something else both men share. “As time went on,” the OSS report says, “it became clearer (Hitler) was thinking of himself as the Messiah and that it was he who was destined to lead Germany to glory. … Comparisons between Christ and himself became more frequent.” Trump, too, frequently refers to himself with Biblical references, claiming he is “the Chosen One,” “the King of Israel,” and “the second coming of God.”

Unfortunately, both men’s e most loyal followers only encouraged such thinking. It was not unusual for Hitler’s most zealous followers—good Christians all—to hail him with “Heil Hitler, our Savior,” according to the OSS profile. Trump’s biggest group of supporters, white Christian evangelicals, have been all too willing to buy into his egomaniacal self-aggrandizement. A 2019 article in Psychology Today, reported, “a significant portion of his supporters literally believe the president was an answer to their prayers. He is regarded as something of a messiah, sent by God to protect a Christian nation.” (See: The Belief That Trump Is a Messiah Is Rampant and Dangerous.)

Know-It-Alls: Both Hitler’s and Trump’s fragile egos compelled them to act as know-it-alls when, in fact, a better description would be “know-nothings.” In 2018, Trump infamously referred to himself as “a very stable genius” and he repeatedly insists he knows more than his advisors and generals. (See: Everything Donald Trump is an Expert In, According to Him.) Even after contracting Covid-19 and receiving millions of dollars in specialized treatment, Trump still maintained he knew more about the virus than the health experts.

According to the OSS report, Ernst Rohm, head of the Nazi Brown Shirts, said of Hitler, “You try to tell him anything, he knows everything already.” Another of Hitler’s associates is quoted saying, “He has always been a poseur. He remembers things that he has heard and has a faculty for repeating them in such a way that a listener is lead to believe they are his own.”

Normal conversation never takes place around either man. “It is well-known he (Hitler) cannot carry on a normal conversation or discussion with people,” says the OSS profile. “Even if only one person is present, he must do all the talking.” Trump too must dominate every conversation, as seen in the first presidential debate. When he can’t, he sits with tightly cross arms and a scowl on his face.

For both men, this overconfidence in their own “genius” falls apart when confronted by an honest news media asking the kind of hardball questions reporters should ask of a country’s leadership. “Hitler becomes nervous and tends to lose his composure when he has to meet newspapermen,” says the OSS profile. Hitler was unable to answer questions for which he was not prepared and insisted any interviews questions be submitted in advance. “Even then he gives no opportunity to ask for further clarification … he immediately launches into a lengthy dissertation, which sometimes turns into a tirade. When this is finished, the interview is over.”

Trump has never been at ease with the media, criticizing their work as “liberal,” “left wing,” and “fake news.” He does not do well in press conferences when reporters are allowed to ask questions and so rarely holds them. When asked for clarification, he becomes surly and insults the person asking the question, and frequently simply ends the conference. In an August face-to-face broadcast interview Trump tried to convince Australian journalist Jonathan Swan with statistics that under his leadership the U.S. was controlling the coronavirus better than any other country. Swan then proved to Trump that he didn’t understand his own statistics. Trump was left befuddled and speechless. (See: Trump’s attacks on media are influencing Republicans’ attitudes toward press.)

Bring In the Clowns: Neither Hitler nor Trump were taken seriously at first. According to his OSS profile, “Earlier in his career the world watched him with amusement. Many people refused to take him seriously on ground that ‘he could not possibly last.'”

Despite the faux persona of a successful businessman that he built with the help of his pseudo-reality series “The Apprentice,” Trump was never taken seriously as an entrepreneur or a politician. Nowhere was this more evident than his hometown of New York where he was largely considered a clown. On Election Day in 2016, Trump was greeted with laughter and jeers as he arrived at his polling place.

Unfortunately, in both cases Hitler and Trump should have been taken seriously. Hitler’s reign of terror left Germany a country of smoking rubble, devastated by Allied bombings and artillery. In less than four years, Trump’s reign of error has cost the United States its world standing, its economy, and the lives of more than 200,000 American lives. 

The White Supremacist Coup that Trump Uses as a Template

Donald Trump’s reelection campaign platform consists of only one theme: American cities are being torn apart by black mobs and antifa terrorists, and only he—the law and order president—can bring order back to the nation.

The idea that Trump, who has presided over the most corrupt White House administration in history, is campaigning as a “law and order” president would be laughable except for one thing: by spewing his hateful and racist rhetoric for more than three years, he has set the stage for a violent right-wing, white nationalist takeover of the country.

It happened here once before on a smaller scale. It happened in 1898 in Wilmington, NC.

As it neared the turn of the 20^th century, that North Carolina city was hailed as a prime example of the New South. The state’s largest city, its population was mostly black and prosperous. There were African American doctors, educators, and entrepreneurs, and it was run by black elected officials. In fact, North Carolina in general was more progressive than other southern states, having sent four black Republicans to Congress between 1875 and 1899.

This success was the result of a political coalition of Republicans—including black Republicans—and the Populist Party, which was comprised white farmers hit hard by a bad economy.

The Racist Democrats

That didn’t well with the conservative and racist Democratic Party.

Yes, back then the Democratic Party was largely the party of the South and that meant the party of racist white men. Most black voters cast their ballots for the Republican Party. We wouldn’t see the ideological line up we see today until the mid-20^th century, when progressives began taking over the Democratic Party and “Dixie Democrats” the Republican Party.

Trump, a Republican who filled his campaign staff and White House staff with self-avowed white nationalists like Steve Bannon and Stephen Miller, would feel quite at home with the Democrat Party of 1898. The North Carolina Democratic state party handbook for that year stated, “This is a white man’s country and white men must control and govern it.”

State GOP leaders Furnifold Simmons, a future U.S. Senator, Charles Aycock, a future North Carolina governor, and Alfred Moore Wadell developed a plan to break up the Republican-Populist alliance: stoke white anger and resentment against blacks.

Their plan was supported by a FoxNews-like North Carolina newspaper which published racist political cartoons warning of “Negro domination” and the need to protect “white womanhood” from black men.

Red Shirts and other white supremacists pose
 following a violent coup that overthrew an interracial
 city government in Wilmington, NC.

The Democrats also had a private militia called the “Red Shirts.” Much like Trump’s support from white supremacist militias today, the Red Shirts used threats and violence to intimidate black voters. Armed Red Shirts attended Republican rallies to frighten away attendees, and patrolled polling places to keep black voters at bay—much as Trump is currently recruiting “an army” to guard polls today.

Shortly before the election, Alfred Moore Waddell addressed a Democratic rally announcing that “negro office-holding ought at once and forever be brought to an end. Even if we have to choke the current of the Cape Fear River with carcasses.”

The Democrats overwhelmingly won the election, taking over every city office that was open. But the coup didn’t stop there.

Following their election “victory,” the Democrats then forced any remaining coalition office holders out, with a show of force by marching 2,000 armed Red Shirts through the streets. Then they set to destroying the black economy. Any protests were met with violence, living up to Waddell’s promise to block “Cape Fear River with carcasses.” No one knows exactly how many black Americans were killed. Estimates vary from 40 to 60, but the death toll was probably higher.

On September 10, in a threat that sounded reminiscent of Waddell’s promise, Trump declared that if he wins, he will invoke the Insurrection Act to “put down” any protests with military force.

Same Rhetoric

The violence in 1898, of course, was blamed on black “instigators” just as Trump blames the riots raging about the country today on black activists and the largely mythical “antifa,” despite FBI reports that much of the violence is the work of white supremacist militias.

Following the violence, the Democratic victors announced a “White Declaration of Independence” declaring, “We will no longer be ruled, and will never again be ruled, by men of African origin.” Jim Crow laws, including literacy tests and poll taxes, were enacted to prevent blacks from voting. Wilmington, once a shining example of black opportunity, was now the domain of white nationalists.

And today, the nation has a president with a long record of open hostility toward black Americans who preaches hate-filled rhetoric about people of color and finds succor and support from the KKK and other white nationalist groups. He has spent more than three years driving a schism between the races, encouraging enmity between fellow Americans, lighting U.S. cities ablaze, and setting the stage for what he and his racist allies hope to be a white supremacist victory in November.

 

Trump Not Alone in His Attitude Toward the Military

For it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' "Chuck him out, the brute!"

But it's "Saviour of  'is country"  when the guns begin to shoot

—Rudyard Kipling (Tommy)

Recent reporting by The Atlantic magazine that Donald Trump referred to U.S. Marines killed during WWI as “suckers” and “losers” hardly comes as a revelation to anyone who has followed his comments and actions toward the military. From claiming the late Sen. John McCain was “no hero” because he was captured during the Vietnam War, to disparaging Gold Star parents of service members killed in Iraq and Afghanistan along with the country’s senior most leadership, to summarily firing Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman and his twin brother for simply performing their sworn duties, Trump has shown nothing but disrespect to anyone who ever served in uniform. (See: Every time Trump has attacked American veterans or military families)

The sad truth, however, is that attitude toward service personnel is not uncommon among the American people, especially rich Americans.

I experienced some of that attitude when, as a young Coast Guardsman, I was stationed in Virginia in 1973 just as the U.S. began its withdrawal from Vietnam. The local population was so jaundiced toward military personnel, we were ordered not to place base access stickers on our vehicle windows. To do so invited baseball bat-toting redneck good ol’ boys to bash in your car’s windows. We also could not wear our uniforms off base for fear of having those same bats used against our heads. Signs saying “Sailors and Dogs Keep of the Grass” spotted the landscape.

While some Vietnam vets complained about being disrespected by hippies and war protesters, my discussions with other vets of the period showed just as many experienced the same hostility I did from the good, God-fearing people of the American South. Apparently, people in the South—the same South that committed treason by seceding in 1860—felt those of us in uniform toward the end of the Vietnam War needed to be taught a lesson for “losing the war.” In fact, David Morrell’s post-Vietnam thriller, First Blood, featured a Vietnam veteran named Rambo targeted by a Southern sheriff and his town folk. Morrell said news reports about the mistreatment of vets in the South gave him the idea for his book. (Ironically, the movie made from the novel moved the story to the Pacific Northwest to spare southern feelings.)

Not Limited to Modern Times

This attitude toward the military isn’t limited to modern times. On March 15, 1783 officers under George Washington's command discussed mutinying because Congress failed to provide them with long-promised back pay and pensions for serving during the Revolution. The mutiny was averted when Washington addressed his officers with a speech about the sacrifices they all made that brought tears to the officers’ eyes.

In the aftermath of the American Civil War, thousands of disabled Union veterans were left hanging while Congress argued over whether pensions or other remuneration should be provided to the former soldiers. It was years before Union veterans received any benefits; Confederate veterans received nothing—notably, not even from the southern states they fought for.

Following the Civil War, soldiering as a career fell into disfavor. If you watch a western movie about the U.S. cavalry, with few exceptions all the soldiers will be white. However, in the real Wild West one out of every three soldiers—cavalry and infantry alike—were black, members of two regiments of the segregated U.S. Colored Troops, the legendary Buffalo Soldiers.

Even among the white troops, there were few patriotic Americans. Most were immigrants from England, Ireland, Poland, Germany, and other European countries because soldiering was widely considered beneath a “real” American. (The same was true about police officers; hence, the stereotype of the Irish beat cop.)

During the Spanish-American War, Buffalo Soldiers—by now professional fighters—stormed Kettle Hill and San Juan Hill alongside Teddy Roosevelt’s untested volunteers, the Rough Riders. Yet it is the Rough Riders, led by a wealthy socialite, who received the most credit for that battle victory.

When America belatedly entered WWI, her soldiers were sent “over there” with parades and patriotic songs. Once home, however, they were less heralded. In 1932, suffering from the indignities of the Great Depression, veterans marched on Washington, DC, demanding payment of bonuses Congress promised them for their service. The veterans were treated as traitorous “Reds” by the Hoover administration, which launched a deadly military attack on them. (See: Nearly 100 Years after the Bonus March, Trump is Making the Same Mistakes)

Veterans of WWII were treated better—if they were white. The GI Bill provided them readjustment and educational benefits. But 1.2 million black veterans were denied the full range of benefits provided by the bill, thanks to racist Southern Democrats who feared it would provide African American vets with a chance to socially advance. (See: How the GI Bill's Promise Was Denied to a Million Black WWII Veterans)

A Deeper Chasm

The end of the Selective Service draft in 1973 created an even deeper chasm between those who serve and those who don’t. According to the U.S. Census Service, 18 percent of the U.S. population were veterans in 1980; by 2016 that was down to seven percent. Some of that decline, of course, was due to older vets passing away. But during the height of the Vietnam draft, there were 3.5 million men and women on active duty; today there are only 1.3 million on active duty, or less than .5 percent of the population.

In the days following the 9/11 attacks, I was discussing whether the draft would be reinstated with a fellow veteran I worked with. I pointed out that if it were brought back, it would have to include women. A young female colleague became horrified at the idea she might be drafted to fight in a war. “Why me!” she shrieked. “There are people who enjoy doing that.” Doing what? we asked. “You know,” she said. “Killing people.”

So, that’s what she thought about us.

In the cluster-you-know-what that became the Bush administration’s response to the terrorist attacks, yellow ribbon magnets with “Support Our Troops” were displayed on cars, and people started thanking us for our service (I was on a reserve Coast Guard boat crew, and later became a medical service corps officer in a component of the California National Guard). Sailors, soldiers, Marines, and airmen were suddenly “warriors,” as if they belonged to a separate social stratum. And still the Bush administration forbade the media from photographing or videotaping aircraft filled with flag-draped coffins bringing home our country’s honored war dead.

It’s gratifying to see America’s outrage over Trump’s reported comments about our war dead, but I wonder how long it will last or if it will have any impact at all. Despite Trump’s multiple Vietnam draft deferments—the last due to a spurious diagnosis of bone spurs—and despite his dismissal of John McCain’s military service, and despite so much more, he was still “elected” president. And the bulk of those who voted for him were the good, God-fearing people of the American South and other rural areas, the same people who treated those of us in uniform so badly 47 years ago.

And that’s why I fear Trump’s slandering those who served and sacrificed as “losers” and “suckers” won’t make a difference at the polls. 

A Novel More Prescient Than Fiction

In 1935, American novelist and playwright Sinclair Lewis published a novel he meant to be a cautionary tale about the rise of an authoritarian government in the United States. But when read in today's political climate, the book seems less a work of fiction than a prescient foreboding of what was to come.

The basic plot of  It Can't Happen Here involves a pompous, blustering, populist politician who gets elected president running on a platform that is anti-woman, anti-Jew, and anti-black, by making promises he can never deliver on, by accusing the news media of spreading lies, and by proclaiming only he can cure the country's ills and "make it great again." Once he takes office, he begins issuing orders that by-pass the law-making powers of Congress and the legal review of the judiciary, and strips the rights of millions of people.

What sounds like a plot torn from today's headlines was actually written 80 years before the election of Donald Trump to the White House.

Sinclair's bitingly witty story holds so many parallels to the results of the 2016 election and its aftermath as to be unnerving. Written at a time when fascist governments were popping up throughout Europe, the book was inspired by the naïve belief of Americans at the time that what was happening across the Atlantic "can't happen here."

Berzelius "Buzz" Windrip is a populist U.S. senator loosely based on the bombastic southern Senator Huey Long, whose quest for the presidency was ended by an assassin's bullet in 1935. Windrip curries the favor of Americans disgruntled over the economic blight of the Great Depression by claiming he would end unemployment, much as Trump promised to "bring jobs back" to America.

Men of Little Intellectual Curiosity

A man of little intellectual curiosity, Windrip claims his autobiography is the world's greatest book next to the Bible, the same claim made by an equally incurious Trump about his ghostwritten autobiography The Art of the Deal. Windrips' political base is a rag-tag group of agitators called The Minute Men, or MMs for short. Think of the MMs as a combination of the Tea Party radicals and Alt-Right white supremacists who helped put Trump into office.

Windrip runs for office, much as Trump did, with promises of taking power in Washington away from industrialists and bankers and giving it back to the little man. Once in power, however, Windrip begins appointing incompetent cronies to key government leadership roles.

Sound familiar? Trump, who promised to "drain the swamp" in Washington, filled his Cabinet with controversial D.C. insiders, family members, wealthy financiers, corporate CEOs, and lobbyists—most of whom were appointed to their offices without approval from Congress.

Almost immediately, Windrip by-passes Congress and begins issuing executive orders ending President Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal social programs, stripping women of the right to vote, and Jews and blacks of their civil rights. He replaces key military leaders with buffoons from the Minutemen, and abolishes all regulations on businesses.

In the first few days of his administration, Trump used executive orders to strip regulations on banks, industry, and polluters; demanded the repeal of President Obama's Affordable Care Act; ordered the mass deportation of undocumented immigrants (at least those who are non-Anglo); began caging Hispanic immigrant children, and removed the nation's top military and national security leaders from the National Security Council, replacing them with his Alt-Right strategist, Steve Bannon. Bannon, a self-professed white nationalist, didn't last long, of course, and as of this writing he is facing federal criminal charges for fraud.

To consolidate power, Windrip sends handpicked "commissioners" to assume the leadership of local governments. The move is very similar to the Nazis use of gauleiters to take control of areas of Germany. Trump hasn't done that—yet—but several Republican governors have dispatched "emergency managers" to take over local government bodies in their states. (Two such emergency managers were charged with felonies for their roles in the Flint, Michigan drinking water fiasco.)

Windrip fails to make good on any of his campaign promises save one; he ends unemployment by sending the unemployed to labor camps. Workers from labor camps are provided to companies for a small fee. This, of course, means those companies lay off regular workers who, now unemployed, are sent to labor camps.

As one of his first acts, Trump rescinded President Obama's executive order to withdraw federal prisoners from privately operated prisons, which have been criticized for bolstering their profits by outsourcing inmates as prison laborers.

Building Walls to Keep Us In

Windrip fulfills one of Trump's campaign promises when he strengthens border security to prevent illegal immigration out of the United States into Canada and Mexico. Walls, after all, keep people in as well as out. Trump has not succeeded in building his promised border wall, but his incompetence during the Covid-19 crisis forced the bulk of Europe to ban U.S. travelers from visiting their countries—essentially building a wall to keep us in. The only wall Trump succeeded in building so far is an "unscalable" wall around the White House grounds.

Eventually, as Windrip consolidates his power, he does away with all political parties except the new Corporatist Party, whose members are called Corpos. The country is now ruled by and for corporations and wealthy oligarchs, the very definition of fascism as defined by the father of fascism, Italy's Il Duce, Benito Mussolini.

Trump stuffed his Cabinet with wealthy and mostly incompetent corporate donors. His economic policies have benefited major corporations at the expense of American workers. His trade war with China did nothing to hurt that country while devastating a large part of the American agricultural sector. Even before the pandemic, Trump's job numbers were plunging despite burgeoning corporate profits.

Lewis narrates his story through the disbelieving eyes of Doremus Jessup, a middle-aged newspaperman who cannot believe his fellow citizens don't see the slow creep of growing totalitarianism in the country. When MMs begin to terrorize the citizenry, people assume they are just a small minority of rabble-rousers. Even when Windrip establishes concentration camps to house his enemies, many in the country simply cannot believe the United States is falling victim to corporate fascism. They continue to believe "it can't happen here." By the time they realize it has happened here, it is too late.

Trump has praised white supremacists, neo-Nazis, and QAnon conspiracy theorists. He ordered federal police and troops to attack peaceful demonstrators so he could be photographed holding a Bible outside a Washington church. His followers have attacked synagogues and mosques, and gunned down cops. Federal agents clad in unmarked military uniforms kidnapped peaceful protesters in Portland, Ore., threw them into unmarked vehicles, and held them without just cause. Alt-Right armed militia are being allowed to patrol American streets. One of those "minutemen," a 17-year-old teenager with an illegal weapons, is now accused of murdering two people.

And still too many Americans refuse to see this country's slide into authoritarianism. They still believe "it can't happen here."

Lewis's inspiration for this book was simply the time in which it was written. In the 1930s, the United States was still recovering from the Great Depression. Ninety percent of the country's wealth was owned by only three percent of the population. (Today, after 30 years of Reaganomics, only one percent of Americans own the bulk of the nation's wealth).

Dissatisfaction over the slow economic recovery spawned several populist movements, many of them pro-fascist. In 1932, a group of wealthy conservatives attempted a coup to overthrow the government and establish a fascist government. (See: American Fascists: A Forgotten History on this blog.)

Lewis doesn't spare any political movement in this book. He views any strongly held belief system, political or religious, as potentially authoritarian. All it takes is a populace too wrapped up in their own lives to not recognize what's happening about them, or not caring what's happening as long as it doesn't happen to them.

There is no happy ending to this book. There is no great uprising of patriots; many of those who most loudly proclaimed their patriotism in the beginning of the book end up in the MMs or working for Windrip, just as the Republican Party—which initially opposed Trump's candidacy—is now his greatest enabler.

 Far more than Orwell's 1984 or Huxley's Brave New World, It Can't Happen Here is a cautionary tale  all Americans should be reading—and heeding—today.

Trump’s Nero’s Decree: How He Is Planning a Scorched Earth Policy for America

In the dwindling days of WWII, as Russian artillery battered Berlin, Adolf Hitler hunkered in his bunker and pouted over how the German people failed him. Believing the deutsche Leute had betrayed the Thousand Year Reich by being too weak, he determined they no longer deserved the Fatherland. If he were going down, Hitler would make sure all of Germany went down with him.

Der Fuhrer turned to his armaments minister, Albert Speer, who had just reported that the German economy could not hold out for more than two months and said, “it is not necessary to worry about their [the German people’s] needs for elemental survival.” Hitler issued an order to destroy Germany’s entire infrastructure, including transportation facilities, docks, public utilities, factories, and mines. Leave nothing was to rebuild Germany after the war.

Fortunately, Speer and the German generals refused to follow such orders, which became known as Hitler’s Nero Decree.

The order was named after the Roman dictator who, according to legend, fiddled while ancient Rome burned. While historians dismiss the idea Nero set Rome ablaze or played music while it burned, they do agree the disaster fit nicely into his political agenda. He used it as an excuse to clamp down on Christians whom he blamed for the fire, and tortured and killed hundreds.

Such “scorched earth policies” are often the last resort failing dictators reach for before the end. Libya’s long-time dictator, Muammar Gaddafi, invoked a scorched earth policy in 2011 as his regime started disintegrating amid the Libyan Civil War. Gaddafi ordered the nation’s oil fields set ablaze, pummeled entire towns to dust with artillery fire, and ordered his army to “shoot anything that moves.”

Hoping to maintain his regime, Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad repeatedly has used chemical weapons against his own people, laying toxic waste to large parts of his country.

For the past four months, Donald Trump appeared to be executing his own Nero’s Decree. Since emerging from his White House bunker—to which he fled on May 31 when confronted by unarmed, peaceful demonstrators—and as he trailed his presidential campaign opponent, Joe Biden, by double digits, Trump’s actions reflected those of a tyrant facing his demise and demanding revenge.

Now that Biden has been proclaimed the president-elect, Trump will have two more months to promote his scorched earth policy.

Now before anyone flames me for calling Trump a tyrant, I am not using that word lightly nor am I the only person who believes that’s what he wants to be. There are definite attributes for fascism and tyrants. In February 2020, Stephen M. Walt wrote in Foreign Policy that Trump has nearly check off each of those attributes. And Trump’s persistent extreme right-wing rhetoric itself has been described by pundits as a “scorched earth policy.”

Besides checking off the dictator’s do-to list, Trump’s decisions—or the lack of decisions—appear intended to do the greatest harm to the U.S.

Weaponizing Covid-19

Trump’s failure to lead during the current Covid-19 crisis goes beyond mere incompetence; it borders

Donald Trump rips off his mask after arriving 
back at the White House despite being contagious.

on premeditated mass murder. Even the dumbest, vain man—seeing the pandemic turn into, as one health expert called it, “a wildfire”—should be able to admit defeat and turn to his science advisors for guidance. Trump’s repeated refusal to listen to the experts or implement even the simplest means of slowing the spread of the virus looks more like active sabotage. Does he hope the virus will continue to ravage American citizens after they vote him out of office?

Apparently, that is exactly what he is hoping. After contracting the Covid-19 virus in October, Trump continued to attend a political debate, a campaign rally, and a celebration party for his latest U.S. Supreme Court candidate—all without masks or social distancing. Hospitalized for treatment, Trump insisted his Secret Service security detail drive him around the block in a sealed presidential limo so he could wave to his followers, thus exposing his own bodyguards to the virus. After three days in the hospital, Trump checked himself out and returned to the White House where—still refusing to wear a mask or remain in isolation—he continues to spread the virus. 

As of this writing, Trump's arrogance and ignorance has resulted in several members of his own staff down sick with the virus as well as several senior senators and many of his security detail. The entire Joint Chiefs of Staff who control our national defense are now isolated because of their exposure to the virus through Trump and his associates. His recklessness has essentially decapitated our government.

And yet Trump continued holding campaign rallies, exposing more of his mask-less supporters and more of his Secret Service detail, and more of his staff to the virus. He even tweeted to his followers there was nothing to fear about the coronavirus, a disease that has killed more than 200,000 Americans so far.

We can expected Trump to further endanger the country to the Covid virus. He promised to fire Dr. Anthony Fauci after the election, leading the country war again the virus without its most competent leader. He will encourage more super-spreader events such as protests and rallies, all designed to sicken more Americans.

Militarizing American Streets

In May, Trump ordered federal troops to attack and disperse peaceful protesters outside the White House. Shortly after leaving his bunker, Trump threatened to unleash federal troops and law enforcement on the American people.

At the time I wrote that Trump was making the same mistake President Herbert Hoover made in 1932 when he unleased federal troops on the Bonus Marchers, WWI veterans demanding money Congress had promised them. Hoover’s disastrous actions cost him his reelection.

I didn’t expect Trump to listen and he didn’t.

Supposed federal officer photographed as they
snatched a Portland protester and shoved him
into an unmarked van. Source: Wikipedia

In July, Trump sent heavily armed federal officers in combat gear to Portland to confront peaceful protesters demonstrating in front of the federal courthouse. He did so without conferring with state or local offices. The administration said Trump sent the officers to protect federal property.

Shortly after their arrival, the feds started kidnapping protesters off city streets and shoving them into unmarked vans. The demonstrations became violent, largely due to the federal forces’ own heavy-handed and unnecessary tactics. Both local and state officials say those actions are exacerbating the protests. Despite their mission to protect federal property, local officials now say those federal forces are patrolling far beyond the courthouse and are trying to enforce local laws over which they have no jurisdiction.

The actual identity of many of those federal forces remained unknown for weeks. The military garbed officers wore no patches or badges identifying their agencies other than a small patch saying “police.” That raised questions whether they are actual law enforcement officers or private security contractors or even right-wing "militia." Indeed, a group of armed pretend soldiers did make an appearance, but it now appears most of the military-garbed troops were from the Department of Homeland Security.

Trump’s dispatching federal officers to Portland set that city ablaze and put Trump’s poll numbers into free fall. Even with their eventual withdrawal, the city has yet to find peace. Trump threatened to send more federal agents to other cities. No city has requested such "help" and some threatened to meet the agents with their own law enforcement forces. Trump is very likely to make good on his threats for the next two months.

As he loses the power over the federal law enforcement apparatus, expect Trump to turn to his personal armed militias, those right-wing, white supremacist terrorist cells he once described as "some good people." During one of the debates, he told these latter day Nazi Brown Shirts to "stand by," presumably meaning to prepare for violence at his command.

Trump's refusal to acknowledge the accuracy of the vote, coupled with numerous meritless lawsuits he filed to stop the vote, is designed to create mistrust of the election process among his so-long misled followers. Trump hopes to propel his followers, particularly the militias, into the streets to commit acts of violence. Even as the vote was continuing, Trump stirred up unrest in his supporters, causing them to gather in angry protests around vote-counting centers, even threatening voting officials and counters. Two Trump supporters armed with rifles drove from Virginia to Pennsylvania intending to stop the vote with blood shed.

No Peaceful Transition

Trump says he will not concede the election and will take his fight for continued power up to the U.S. Supreme Court, which he has packed with ultra-conservative justices. Whether the court supports Trump or not, his legal shenanigans will further erode trust in our democracy and fill our streets with both anti-Trump protesters and pro-Trump protesters, the latter probably armed. Pro-Trump agents provocateurs will initiate violence, just as the FBI said they did in Portland and elsewhere. Make no mistake about it, if he can, Trump will start another civil war and leave the nation in flames.

If Trump continues his scorch earth decisions, the result will undoubtedly be more violence. Cities, like Portland, will burn. The coronavirus, fed by the violence, will spread. Americans will suffer and die.

And Trump will have his revenge.

Conservatives Snapping at the Hand that Feeds Them

A few years ago, the New York Times published two pieces shedding light on the most mysterious—and, to Democrats, the most frustrating—fact of American political life: that those conservative-voting “red” states consume far more federal government “entitlements” benefits than liberal-voting “blue” states.

This is both mysterious and frustrating to the Democrats because the Republican Party— including Donald Trump and Senate Leader Mitch McConnell—rails against what they call “the welfare state.”

According to the GOP, the so-called “welfare state” discourages Americans—in their view, blacks and Hispanics—from seeking honest work. But, as the Times article pointed out, most of the recipients of government benefits are white conservatives who are retired or disabled. What makes people such as these vote against their own interests?

Shortly after the first article appeared, Paul Krugman, the Times Nobel Prize-winning economist columnist, also explored that conundrum.

Krugman points to an Indiana University study showing that residents of the 10 states ranked by the Gallup Poll as being the “most conservative” received 21.2 percent of their income from government entitlements, compare to only 17.1 percent for the 10 states Gallup ranked as “most liberal.”

“Wasn’t Red America supposed to be the land of traditional values, where people don’t eat Thai food and don’t rely on handouts?” Krugman asks.

Ayn Rand's Corrosive Influence on American Politics

The three and a half years he’s been in the White House, Donald Trump has shown himself to be a greedy, self-involved, narcissistic, sociopath. At the same time, Republican leadership in the U.S. Senate to be of like mind with Trump. It’s not difficult to understand why; their brand of political conservatism is, at its heart, sociopathic.

But the true inspiration behind their hard-edged conservatism is neither Pinochet nor Friedman, but a mediocre, early 20th century novelist and self-proclaimed philosopher named Ayn Rand. Rand’s brand of social Objectivism has been the center of extreme right philosophy. GOP Senator Rand Paul, along with his former Republican congressman father, Ron Paul, are hard-core adherents to Ayn Rand’s philosophy. Her belief system was also behind the Tea Party movement.

Her novel, The Fountainhead, is one of the few books Trump said he enjoyed reading. When he became president, Trump proclaimed he would appoint Rand acolytes to cabinet posts. One of those, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, told the Washington Post, “One of the very first serious books I read when I was growing up was Atlas Shrugged, and it really had an impact on me.” Pompeo is said to be currently facing multiple internal corruption probes.

The problem is, Ayn Rand’s philosophy and writing are sociopathic.

The Russian-born Rand has been poisoning the minds of self-absorbed adolescents for decades with her philosophy of the individual as the center of the universe. That philosophy holds well with high schoolers who truly believe the universe revolves around them. Most people say adieu to Rand and her rants as they mature. Those that don’t become sociopaths— as Rand was herself.

The terrorist-hero of The
Fountain was based on a
real-life psychopathic killer.

Had she ever laid herself on a psychiatrist’s couch, Rand no doubt would have been diagnosed as sociopathic. Throughout her life, Rand—like the heroes in her best-known books, The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged—believed whatever was good for her was right. She once wrote the basis of her philosophy stemmed from her childhood in post-Revolution Russia when her parents refused to buy her a dress she wanted or give her a cup of tea like the grown-ups were drinking. She believed if she wanted something, she should have it. It is said she once took money that her family needed for food to buy tickets to the theater.

Rand was so enamored with the idea of the unfettered self, she developed an infatuation with the notorious psychopathic serial killer, William Edward Hickman. In 1928, Hickman kidnapped his last victim, a 12-year-old girl, and held her for ransom. When the girl’s father paid the ransom, Hickman dumped the girl’s eviscerated and dismembered body in the street. At the time, it was considered one of the greatest crimes of the century.

Psychopathic 'Superman'

Ayn Rand felt otherwise.

In her notebooks, Rand wrote admiringly of Hickman. “Other people do not exist for him, and he does not see why they should,” she wrote. She added, using words eerily prescient of what the Nazis would be saying a few years hence, that Hickman had “no regard whatsoever for all that society holds sacred, and with a consciousness all his own. He has the true, innate psychology of a Superman. He can never realize and feel ‘other people.’”

Hickman, who was executed in 1928, became the model for Rand’s Fountainhead hero, Howard Roark, a self-absorbed architect who wins a woman’s devotion by raping her, and ends up committing an act of terrorism—blowing up the Fountainhead building—because he didn’t get his way.

Howard Roark, like his real-life model, was one sick puppy.

Rand’s self-proclaimed Objectivism philosophy basically says man makes his own reality. Whatever he determines to be, is. Evidence of how wide-spread this narcissistic philosophy is among the extreme right of the Republican Party was seen when Karl Rove, then chief advisor to President George Bush, told journalist Ron Susskind, “we create our own reality … we’ll act again, creating other new realities.”

Former GOP House speaker Paul Ryan, also an Ayn Rand fan, carried that same philosophy to the podium at the 2012 Republican Convention when, as Mitt Romney’s running mate, he delivered a diatribe on the Obama administration that was so separated from reality that even Fox News criticized its lies.

Kindred Spirits

Ryan, in fact, has a lot in common with Rand. Like her, Ryan likes to bite the hand that fed him. Ryan, youngest son of an upper middle-class family, received Social Security survivors’ benefits after his attorney father died of a heart attack. Since his family didn’t need those benefits to survive on, Ryan stuffed them away and used them to pay for his college education. Later he advocated doing away with Social Security for those who do need it.

Ryan's home in Wisconsin was declared a national historic site, meaning the Ryan family receives a taxpayer subsidy to maintain it. Since graduating from college, Ryan drew a government paycheck, first as a congressional aid, then as a congressman. Now retired from Congress, Ryan continues to collect a government pension and tax-payer subsidized health care.

Ayn Rand, too, took advantage of a government-sponsored education in the Soviet Union, and then turned against the system as soon as it no longer benefited her. She was the beneficiary of many government programs in the United States, as well. When her first play abruptly closed in 1938, the Works Progress Administration took it on a nationwide tour and paid Rand a weekly salary. In her old age, Rand regularly criticized those living on Social Security, even though she was receiving Social Security benefits under a married name.

Like Trump, Ayn Rand was an amoral, narcissistic, sociopath, and her poisoned pen continues taint American political thought and corrupt American political morals.

_____________________

UPDATE (July 8, 2020): Like the woman whose juvenile rhetoric they advocate, the Ayn Rand Institute admitted on July 7 that it had received up to $1 million in forgivable loans from the Paycheck Protection Program approved by Congress to help businesses during the Covid-19 crisis. The institute, which continues Rand's criticism of government welfare of any kind, used twisted logic to rationalized why it took the bailout. Apparently it isn't enough for the institute to keep Rand's childish philosophy of greed and selfishness alive, they also follow her hypocrisy, too.

 

For further reading:

Trump Administration Embraces Ayn Rand's Disdain for the Masses

US Republican leaders love Ayn Rand

The new age of Ayn Rand: how she won over Trump and Silicon Valley

Ayn Rand-acolyte Donald Trump stacks his cabinet with fellow objectivists

Romancing the Stone-Cold Killer: Ayn Rand and William Hickman

‘We Took PPP Funds and Would Do It Again’

In sign of the times, Ayn Rand Institute approved for PPP loan