The actual disgrace in the United States does not rest with Trump, but with his voters and supporters. Whoever takes democracy, constitutionality and decency reasonably serious will not be able to vote for the incumbent – independent from the political attitude. From this aspect it is an absurd perception that Donald J. Trump can still win the election.
Author: gdrthinktank
John Adams, the Roosevelt’s – all Socialists?
From my Writing Room
Copyright © 2020 by Uwe Bahr
Those Americans obsessed with the term “Socialism” and inclined to exploit it propaganda-like for the upcoming election should first of all consult the history books or simply a dictionary to get things straight in their head. Having spent nearly 30 years in the pseudo-Socialism of the German Democratic Republic (GDR), I have experienced history first-hand. Socialism in its definition places the means of production not in private hands, but in the hand of the state. This much is certain: No economy can effectively function under such condition.
I cannot even notice the slightest sign of such development in the United States. Instead, I see a largely absent system of government-controlled provisions which could protect the little man from being squeezed out like a lemon. If you do not know what I am talking about, go – for example – and work for America’s largest retailer and try to make it from paycheck to paycheck while caring for a family. If folks there do get additional “handouts” from the government, it originates from the ordinary taxpayer and not from those shoveling Billions into their greedy gorge. In conjunction with that, think about the unjust distribution of the enormous wealth in the United States. Think about the unscrupulous profiteering of Health Care Insurance companies at the expense and health of the common people.
If any corrective measures to curb the very big money would be judged “Socialism”, then your country in its history has produced outstanding Americans who could easily have qualified as “Socialists” – one of them long before the term was even coined.
He was John Adams, second President and the only signer of the Declaration of Independence who never owned a slave. Adams was already concerned about “the few versus the many” in the young American Republic. In other words: Despite the absence of a nobility like it existed in Europe, he feared that sooner or later the country’s wealth would be concentrated in the hands of few people and institutions to the disadvantage of the working majority.
Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt, 26th President and a Republican, openly sided with the Unions when coal miners in Pennsylvania took their issues to the street. Try to say the word “Union” nowadays in a break room belonging to that sacred retailer mentioned further above. They will talk to you in private.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt rescued millions of Americans from the despair of the Great Depression by creating Public Works programs. He initiated Social Security, encouraged the formation of labor unions and committed himself to the revival of more equal liberty in his country.
Three great men in American history: Did they leave a smack of Socialism in the history books just because they took a stand for the general welfare?
Sure, America today finds itself in different times with different problems. But to really save the country from further decline, a new type of President combining the attitudes of the three great Presidents would have to emerge. A President with a sense of mission.
I do not see it happen anytime soon. Instead, clueless windbags on the political right parrot dull paroles about Socialism and other brainwashing nuisance, thereby polarizing and dividing the United States of America even further.
Unparalleled
From my Writing Room
Copyright © 2020 by Uwe Bahr
If it was not for my American wife, I would not be in this country anymore and long back in Germany. There have been inconsistencies going on everywhere lately, but the United States are presently salient with a good deal of people revealing ominous disturbances toward a sound human mind. A public disease seems widespread in this society like another virus on its own.
In 1989/90, when we sent the self-declared peoples’ government of the GDR (East Germany) packing, I considered these apologists of Socialism the most primitive sort of people I was ever governed under and was certain that I will never see any attempts of that magnitude from a government again to play their own populace for a sucker. Obviously, I was misled here by my own presumptions.
What I am seeing today in the country of my current residence is not only shocking, but nothing more than a largely effective process of national dulling disguised as patriotism. I can’t help myself to express it in a more polite and harmless way. The adherents of Donald J. Trump – in my judgement – suffer from pathetic brainwashing including the influence of conspiracy theories, leading inevitably to a disturbed mind. Never in my life have I seen anything even close to this.
And it makes feelings even worse when noting that white Evangelicals rank among Trump’s most reliable bases. Is this what Christian morality is about? The hypocrites, who tell themselves and others you HAVE to believe in God, should be ashamed for the rest of their life.
It is what it is?
From my Writing Room
Copyright © 2020 by Uwe Bahr
Should anybody feel sorry for someone who did not care when his own people were dying, but rather tried to “play it down” to foster his own career and reelection in defiance of truth and facts as well as the welfare of the country? Who in their right mind can support this man? This is the ultimate insolence and stupidity.
Quote: “They are dying, it’s true, and it is what it is.” President Donald J. Trump in an interview on Axios, filmed on 28 July, 2020, aired on 3 August, 2020.
In the same interview, he insisted that the pandemic is under control in the US. He made this statement when 1,000 Americans were dying from the virus on a daily rate.
All of the sudden, while affected himself, Trump’s truth has turned into a miracle:
Quote: “We have things happening that look like miracles coming down from God.” Donald J. Trump on 3 October, 2020, while being treated for Covid 19 at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland. He apparently made this comment related to medical treatment hopefully soon available to decisively fight the pandemic.
Misleading
He played it down more than once.
What now? Who knows if there will be an election next month at all – independent from Trump having caught the virus.
To me, Joe Biden is a nice guy, but he somehow does not gain my impression of being able to endure four years in the White House.
Which means, Kamala Harris could become your President after the next.
How in the world is it possible that especially holy people from the churches threw in their lot in 2016 with the likes of Donald J. Trump who was well known for his reputation long before he became President: A bragger of the most primitive sort, a philanderer dealing with “adult actresses”, a New York socialite acting as juror in beauty pageants, a charlatan gambling and cheating left and right.
Do these traits constitute matching qualifications and references to become President of the United States? How can somebody entrust their country, their children and their future to somebody like this, independent from their political affiliation?
Disturbed
On the first presidential debate on Wednesday, September 30, 2020:
Trump purposely interrupted Biden and Wallace more than 140 times because he is intellectually overly handicapped to develop and express a coherent train of thought. Any semblance of a debate would have further unmasked his limited abilities.
This will not prevent his base to vote for him. The United States are lurching toward the brink of an abyss. Let’s hope the country will not have to suffer even more harm during the winter.
The Pledge of Allegiance and the Hitler-Salute
From my Writing Room
Copyright © 2019 by Uwe Bahr
If one wants to scrutinize history, the background story encompassing this famous, (almost) all-American pledge really turns into quite some remarkable fun. Not too many people seem aware of it.
According to American historians, the pledge in its origin – and (again: almost) the way it is used today – was truly written by a Socialist in 1892 named Francis Bellamy:
“I pledge allegiance to my Flag and the Republic for which it stands, one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”
Not to worry, for Francis Bellamy was a Baptist minister, and yet he called himself a “Christian Socialist”, thereby advocating the idea of strict separation between church and state. As an aside, I feverishly believe that a Socialist is not too remote from Christianity away, for both incorporate the idea of common good and love of neighbor, they both call their adherents and the rest among themselves “brothers and sisters” at the last, and they both teach to share. If each of these confessions of creed would only be practiced and experienced in a more pure form than man has done at all times and more than likely will continue to do so – how great would that be.
Everything is possible, as we can see. By reading the original text of the Pledge of Allegiance one will not escape the fact that the phrases “the flag of the United States of America” and “under God” were not implied yet, and how could they:
For a convinced Socialist, the pledge was not only intended to relate to the United States but rather to all countries in the world. Mr. Bellamy was thinking big and fraternally aligned his transnational creed with the ideas of the International Socialist Labor Movement, which was in full swing at the time of his writings.
It is eminently notable that a pledge written by an outspoken Socialist serves as a serious endorsement and confession today for the United States of America. It may also elicit a little smile, at least in me.
It is not over yet: The clause “under God” in this pledge, implemented at the urging of President Eisenhower in 1954 and, among others, used in public schools is unconstitutional. At least the Baptist minister once seemed sufficiently acquainted with history to silence any vague suspicion of religious tenor from the outset. For the framers of the Constitution in their First Amendment’s Establishment Clause explicitly excluded any endorsement of any specific religion over another as well as the preference of religion over non-religion on the side of the polity. For the same reason, the US-Constitution lacks each and any reference to God, thereby establishing the American Republic de facto as the first secular state in the modern Western world.
That’s still not the whole story. Bellamy’s pledge was accompanied with an eponymous salute: the right hand lifted and outstretched to the height of the eyes, palm downward, elsewhere also commonly known as Hitler-salute. Will wonders never cease: American schoolchildren effectively and proudly performed this salute in their classrooms for fifty years until 1942 – my father and mother at the other side of the Atlantic, admittedly under different circumstances, even a bit longer until 1945.
Harming your country and yourself
From my Writing Room
Copyright © 2020 by Uwe Bahr
Quotation taken from: Tampa Bay Reporter, June 20, 2020:
A Supervisor of Elections in Florida said “she comes from a family dedicated to service to our country …” Her father, a veteran of the U.S. Army, “defended America from enemies that would do us harm.”
One has to savor the words slowly coming from an acting Supervisor of Elections, the more so as her father served in a war which the United States had lost – both politically and militarily. It remains an interesting question how he could have defended America from enemies in Vietnam under such circumstances and thousands of miles distant from his own homeland. And when did it ever happen that the winner of the war – North Vietnam – went to the United States to do you harm? Were it not the Americans who went to Vietnam under spurious arguments and lies, engaging themselves in a war which brutally harmed the civilian population there – children, women, and old people, who had no chance to defend themselves as it was in almost any other war? Vietnam to this day suffers the consequences of the atrocities bred by the US, to mention “Agent Orange” as just one keyword among others.
A statement too much to expect from a highly intelligent woman because she is trapped in a society not allowing her leeway in this highly sensitive, patriotic matter – or do her words really emanate from not more but a Republican-brainwashed conviction?
Furthermore, a conclusion like the one suggested would have been in full accordance with a more prominent insider of the Vietnam disaster and once upon a time war hawk named Robert S. McNamara, US-Secretary of Defense under Presidents Kennedy and Johnson. McNamara, who later would also warn President George W. Bush of another uselessly triggered war – the one in Iraq in 2003 -, stated in 1995 in reference to the American war in Vietnam: “We were wrong – I believe, we were terribly wrong … and we owe it to future generations to explain why.”
Did this Supervisor of Elections ever hear of these explanations, has she ever learned of it, or has she just positioned herself in ignorance? Her father, who “defended America”, never told her the truth? That the fighting and dying in Vietnam was in vain and not to protect anyone from an enemy who never did you any harm?
Whatever the case, as a member of the Grand Old Party and in times of misguidance and uncertainty the Supervisor missed the exemplary opportunity to publicly articulate a pioneering message toward fellow citizens in her locality about the necessity of a general, mandatory rethinking within the American society. Instead, as a potential candidate for the political progeny, she presented herself as a diehard with words Americans have had rammed down their throat too often in the past, words out of touch with reality and history, words decidedly inept for a personal leadership claim including the ability of pointing the way into a better future. Such candidate might do for the job of Pinellas County Supervisor of Elections, but never to commend herself for higher tasks – at least not in a semi-normal society.
The Wind of Change 