You’ve most likey seen the King Trump poop bombing protestors video. If not here it is. Don’t forget to turn on the sound for the full effect.
Usually it is someone horrified by what a dictator is doing who issues a warning. Today these people are millions of protesters, pundits, Substackers and others with large and small audiences sounding the alarm.
In past times it was people like Sinclair Lewis in “It Can’t Happen Here” and German pastor Martin Niemöller whose famous poem condemned the complicity of German intellectuals and clergy following the Nazis’ rise to power. Today we have what may be an unprecedented instance of a modern Hitler bragging about his rise to power and warning about what he intends to do. He did this in a weird way by posting the poop bombing video.
I got carried away writing a comment to Sabrina Haake’s Substack this morning and by the time I was done I realized I’d written most of my own Substack. She wrote “Murder on the high seas.” It is subtitled “Orders to execute civilian non-combatants are obviously illegal, triggering an obligation to refuse them.”
This is what I wrote:
Trump, it would seem with a frequency that justifies saying with only slight exaggeration that “every day in at least several ways” he demonstrates his dangerous psychopatholgy. If only he was a mere grandiose egomanical narcissist who wants a gilded life with the trappings of tacky royalty. If only he was merely someone who wanted dictatorial power. He gets an intellectual and visceral thrill out of inflicting pain, fear, and even death on others. He is the worst kind of psychopath. Not only doesn’t he think the rules of society apply to him as say a typical robber or fraudster, but he is a sadist. Not a mere assassin who is assigned a target to do a hit and dispatches the victim, he is more like someone who tortures someone, but not to get vita l information but rather because he enjoys it. Shit, we have a vindictive fuckwad who gets pissed off at another country, Canada, because they run a TV ad (see article). Now he must be seething because their baseball team won the first World Series game as if this is a personal insult.
That he’s managed to find the 5% of the population that experts say meet the diagnosis of being psychopaths is no surprise. Of course he has a person like Hegseth.
I’m sorry if this isn’t the most coherent comment. All of this just pisses me off and I am probably ranting. Hopefully I made more sense in my Substack from yesterday: “The ballroom, the threatening all caps posts, the blowing up men in boats, all are sideshows to the Trump damnatio ad bestias planned for main arena. This is the entire country.” I asked how many of us will end up like Ignatius of Antioch? I predicted that if Trump has his way it could be all of us.
In other words we will be like the 43 people in the boats Trump has blown to bits. Real bombs or ravenous loins ripping our flesh off in Trump’s arena or having the last semblences of our democracy dissolved we seem helpless to stop this.
How long before a true Hiterlerian regime is established? How long before we can feel safe as we take our signs out and go off to a protest? How long before Sabrina and I can post a Substack? How long before YOU can even make a comment like (so far this morning) six of you already did this morning?
They’ve come for the immigrants. They’ve bombed the fisherman. They’re after Tish James, James Comey, John Bolton, maybe Adam Schiff who he called the lowest form of scum, a horrible human being, and a very dishonest person (see video). Michael Cohen is prediciting that he will be indicted.
They attack universities trying to teach the truth and scientists trying to find a cure for cancer.
We should all be reminded of “First They Came” by Martin Niemöller. This is so relevant today.
First they came for the Communists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a CommunistThen they came for the Socialists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a SocialistThen they came for the trade unionists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a trade unionistThen they came for the Jews
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a JewThen they came for me
And there was no one left
To speak out for me
The problem with the poem’s message is that it suggests that speaking might have stopped the Holocaust. In fact speaking then would have gotten you sent to a work camp or worse.
Now speaking just gets some high profile people indicted or other countries tariffed. How long before we are not merely muzzled but murdered?
Sabrina ends her Substack as follows:
Even if a partisan Supreme Court gave Trump criminal immunity for murder (an unsettled question), that immunity does not extend to Hegseth, or to other service members piloting the drones or firing the missiles.
Orders to execute civilian non-combatants are obviously illegal, and trigger service members’ obligation to refuse them.
Those who choose to follow them should expect to follow Hegseth to court martial when this period of insanity ends.
I want to empahize this:
It seems to me that this does not just apply to the orders to bomb, to murder, the people on these boats. It should hold just as true for any member of the military obeying an illegal order. This would include all orders that send them into American cities to prevent people from peacefully protesting.
Not only should the military be held accountable for illegal activity. So should those federal enforcers who go beyond self-defense and brutalize or assault people, not just civilians but police officers too.
How long before those with the courage to risk attending protests called, rather than “No Kings” but “Don’t Say You Weren’t Warned?”
Portland media:
Don’t forget, if you missed a recent Substack they are here.
