Opinion

— The most horrifying news story of the day: Ukraine can’t fight the war against Russia without the Starlink Internet system to guide their weaponry and for communication. Yesterday, it was reported that Trump is considering having Musk cut off Starlink to that country to bring them to their knees on behalf of Vladimir Putin.

— Republicans are really in love with Nazi Hitler salutes! First it was Musk, at an event after Trump’s inauguration, throwing a Nazi salute twice. Then, Thursday, Steve Bannon did it at CPAC. They think that they’re “owning the libs” with these and other Nazi references and icons, but there’s nothing funny or cute about normalizing a racist ideology that led to 85 million deaths, massive suffering, and laid waste to most of Europe. Is it time for America to consider the German approach to hate speech, explicitly banning it and providing both civil and criminal penalties for promulgating Nazism?

One of the enduring mysteries in today’s American political life is why so many Republican politicians and their friends are adopting or promoting openly Nazi symbols, iconography, and slogans.

Is it a shout-out to the hardcore racists and haters that make up the GOP’s base, or just a performance to get enough votes to win elections? Or a proclamation that the end-goal of Republican governance is the destruction of American democracy, perhaps in deference to Vladimir Putin? How about it’s being a bizarre attempt at trolling people old or well-educated enough to remember or know what Nazism inevitably leads to?

Dear President Zelensky:

What America’s barely-elected president is trying to do to Ukraine and the world order is a disgrace, and I want you to know that most Americans are horrified. Even as Trump/Musk/Putin conspire to force their naked oligarchy on the world, most of us have grandparents who remember how fascism works, and we don’t like strongmen.

Before I became a trial lawyer, I was corporate. Studying legal systems abroad morphed into drafting foreign license agreements, and in the late 90s, I negotiated across the table from Russian oligarchs. These were men who, through connections with the recently-dissolved Russian state, came into new money when Soviet apparatchiks divvied up Russia’s wealth and natural resources for themselves.

Meet Boris, a walking Russian stereotype

The 32-year-old Norwegian considered himself a deep thinker and a big fan of the right-wing and Russian propaganda which argued western civilization was rotting from within because of multiculturalism, empowered women, racial/religious minorities, and liberalism. Putting pen to paper, he wrote:

“When I first started blogging I was concerned with how we could ‘fix the system.’ I’ve gradually come to the conclusion that the system cannot be fixed, and perhaps shouldn’t be fixed. Not only does it have too many enemies, it also has too many internal contradictions.
“If we define the ‘system’ as mass immigration from alien cultures, globalism, multiculturalism and suppression of free speech in the name of ‘tolerance,’ then this is going to collapse. It’s inevitable.
“The goal of Western survivalists — and that’s what we are — should not be to ‘fix the system,’ but to be mentally and physically prepared for its collapse, and to develop coherent answers to what went wrong and prepare to implement the necessary remedies when the time comes.
“We need to seize the window of opportunity, and in order to do so, we need to define clearly what we want to achieve.”

After writing over 1500 pages describing how it’s the essential duty of every white man in the world to marginalize or even kill as many non-white non-Christians as possible, Anders Breivik set off a bomb in Oslo’s Government Quarter, killing eight people.

After nearly a month of the president ruling by force rather than persuasion, you can still find pundits who believe that the Democrats, if they are going to save the republic, must be more than anti-Trump.

They have to be for something, not just against it.

Regulars here will know I’m not a fan of BS and half-measures. Don’t piss on my boots and tell me it’s raining …

This has been a horrible month for anybody who still cares about America, her place in the world, and her duty to her people.

The Republican Taliban doesn’t want my wife, Louise Hartmann, to vote. And they may well put that desire into law this year.

Republicans have always been wary of women voting or even engaging in politics, while Democrats are welcoming of women.

In 1828, gold was found in the Appalacian Mountains of Georgia on land that belonged to the Cherokee Nation. As word of the gold spread, miners and settlers pushed into the area. The State of Georgia wanted to regulate, permit and benefit from the commerce, but the land belonged to the Cherokee under treaty with the federal government. As the state and miners continued to encroach, the Cherokee Nation refused to cede more land and sought an injunction that eventually reached the Supreme Court.

In 1832, Chief Justice John Marshall infuriated sitting president Andrew Jackson by declaring that the State of Georgia had no right to encroach on Cherokee lands, because the land belonged to the Cherokee under the terms of a federal treaty. Ignoring the Supreme Court’s ruling, a furious President Jackson famously responded: “John Marshall has made his decision, now let him enforce it.”