American Carnage 2021

The day I watched in horror, a marauding mob storm the Capitol building, I expected to see smoke rise from its windows. I expected to see carnage on a scale never seen before. Watching the frenzied attackers make their way into the building breaking glass and spilling blood, I was more than certain something devastating was to come. As I saw congress members hunker down, I expected bullets to fly.

No serious response from law enforcement was noticeable other than the severely ill equipped outnumbered Capitol Police doing their best. The great mighty American military machine which is often equipped to launch wars in far off places at a moments notice, was nowhere to be seen. This convinced me that a coup was in progress.

When the person tasked with keeping Americans safe and democracy sacrosanct, was the one setting it all alight, I was certain the unthinkable was underway.

A democracy that was supposedly ingeniously designed by the founding fathers centuries ago, had found a loop hole it seemed. The checks and balances had failed and the day of reckoning was here after four years of open defiance of all rules of engagement.

The institutions miraculously held. Some carrying these institutions followed through with their promise to the constitution. Despite the chief architect of the insurrection calling his detractors traitors, many were able to come out of their stupor to recognize who the real seditionist was.

Now more than a year later a congressional committee is trying to lay bare to the American public what really happened that day and the planning that went into its culmination. While to many, what happened was so obvious and open that it needed no elucidating, for the purpose of democracy and transparency all is being revealed after an arduous and contentious investigation, in an attempt to prevent such an abhorrent act from ever occurring again.

But to a vast majority, this is only political theater as an election is on the horizon. They still believe the insurrectionist is the legitimate president and the current one serving is an imposter. What happened on January 6th was just a “dust up”, and the circus taking place in Washington does not deserve attention, as Fox News thinks it is just the third impeachment of a man who has already been absolved of his alleged crimes. To the party that insidiously peddles this narrative, power by any means necessary, is all the matters.

This goes to prove that this nation is now divided on the idea of democracy.

Many often ask, especially after a peaceful transfer of power did not take place for the first time in its history, was America ever this divided?

In her 244-year history, the U.S. has endured deep divisions between its political parties. The Civil War, immigration in the late 1800s, women’s suffrage, whether to enter the first and second world wars, civil rights and anti-war protests in the 1960s, gay rights, abortion rights and numerous other issues have divided people right down to their gut and they still do.

But such deep division over the idea of democracy and what it means is relatively new. The internet and social media has had a large role to play in how America has arrived at this stage in its discourse, where its citizens cannot even seem to agree on its founding principles.

Across America today, especially in the south and mid-west, a vast majority still embrace the last president as their leader. Many candidates that he is endorsing are winning primaries and probably will be elected to congress on the strength of his name. While he goes around calling the January 6th hearings a “Kangaroo Court”, his power remains unchallenged in vast pockets of America. With the current economic situation being dire, his lure is even more enticing to many.

Whether the January 6th hearings will amount to anything more than just another fat document, is anyone's guess. The likelihood of the person behind the insurrection ever being indicted or standing trial for treason and sedition is a long shot. The political cost of such an action could be grave.

But the act of not doing anything when the evidence speaks for itself also puts America’s standing in the world at a crossroads. If the Insurrector-in-Chief is not held to account, then the prospects of the mob returning becomes very present and American democracy weakens beyond repair.

In his inaugural address, the last president promised he would end what he called “American Carnage” as the leader of this “great nation”. The carnage he was referring to, was the so called erosion of American values and the economic devastation brought upon by previous administrations. He also famously said as a candidate, that he could shoot anyone on fifth avenue and would not have to pay a price for it. His actions killed people at the Capitol.

True American Carnage was visited upon on January 6th.

Can America survive and heal, is anyone’s guess.

It is what it is.

Great Dictator - The Russian Edition

War is a failure of politics and of humanity, a shameful capitulation, a stinging defeat before the forces of evil. — Pope Francis

A Ukrainian friend of mine in Brooklyn, texted me yesterday, saying her aging parents and her brother and his wife and children were in a bomb shelter spending the night as bombs exploded all around. The previous day the children were at school.

War returned to Europe after a very long hiatus.

This time threatening to spill over borders which were once thought to be secure and stable.

As bombs fell on Kyiv and people sought shelter in subways and bomb shelters, and a mass exodus ensued, the all too familiar scene harking back to a time no one wants to remember even as their faintest dreams, seemed to emerge in the middle of Europe.

This time the dictator is different, but the tactics are the same.

Create a narrative, brain wash your population with propaganda, control the media, arrest and kill dissenters, get the generals and oligarchs in line, blame another power for provocation and then unleash fear and terror.

In recent memory the two cold war enemies, have invaded nations with impunity. Fighting proxy wars and playing geopolitical chess games with the lives of innocent people.

This round goes to Russia. A nation that has been under a dictatorship for almost three decades.

This dictator wears a suit and amasses fortunes all the while proclaiming himself to be a Russian nationalist and a patriot.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, which the great dictator sees as an unacceptable blemish on Russian pride, he has been entertaining desires of rebuilding the empire and raising the iron curtain. Hitler saw the collapse of Germany at the end of World War I and the The Treaty of Versailles in the same light.

By suppressing all dissent with poison, bullets and fear, he has turned Russia into a totalitarian police state where his cult is the only one there is to follow.

Now it seems he is entering the final stages of a dictator’s dementia. A state of paranoia.

The attack on Ukraine cannot be seen in any other terms.

The idea that the west is to blame for expanding NATO to his borders and provoking a sleeping giant, is only one small part of the story.

In the decades the dictator has been in power he has dismantled and destroyed all democratic institutions within his nation. He has ruled with the machismo of a thug. And has appointed and supported other thugs in power in his orbit so he can reign supreme. He suspended term limits for his presidency effectively declaring himself president for life.

His thuggery has been on display on the world stage for sometime now, as he used polonium to poison his enemies and disrupt infrastructure and elections in the US with cyberattacks.

He found a friend in Donald Trump, two people cut from the same cloth. For four years he gave his tacit approval of a thuggish man and hoped he would be able to engineer a coup and change the balance of power. Alas, that did not come to pass.

Anyone who sees this war as nothing else than wanton aggression against a neighbor with less power, is standing on the wrong side of history. A democracy is being blatantly trampled upon and if history is to be our guide, dictators do not relent.

The dictator’s track record of invasions and extermination of civilians is long in our modern times.

In the mid-nineties he along with his predecessor Boris Yeltsin lay waste to Chechnya, a break away nation of the Soviet empire. The destruction unleashed was termed “madness” by then German Chancellor Helmut Kohl. Today Chechnya is ruled by a sycophant thug.

Then followed Georgia, Crimea and Eastern Ukraine and now a full on assault to retake the second largest nation in Europe.

Dictators are driven by naked ambition and an ideology whose purpose is to disrupt the world order. Their power play is to trample conventions, discard treaties and undermine human rights and disregard life.

Empire building is always at the back of their mind. The goal is to expand at any cost and the project is to amass power so the world would negotiate on their terms. This is what we see transpiring in front of our very eyes today.

How long this will be tolerated from the sidelines is to be seen. The prospect of a nuclear war is the only deterrent in dealing with a mad man with buttons at his fingertips.

The last great war came to an end when the evil of nuclear weapons was unleashed upon Japan. If Hitler had nuclear weapons in his arsenal, one can only imagine the nightmarish outcome that could have been brought upon the world.

This dictator has more nuclear weapons than anyone in the world. He has already said he has put them on high alert.

The French President revealed that he did not know who he was dealing with, when he sat on the other end of the long white table, as the person seemed isolated and distant. The photo was telling.

Therefore we must tread lightly in order to not provoke a rabid dog, more than necessary.

As long as there are dictators in this world and weapons of mass destruction of all shapes and sizes infesting our civilization, as Mick Jagger says “War, children, it’s just a shot away.”

It is what it is.