Yelling Fire in a Packed Theatre
By Eric G. Weiner
“Reckless endangerment is a crime consisting of acts that create a substantial risk of serious physical injury to another person. The accused person isn’t required to intend the resulting or potential harm, but must have acted in a way that showed a disregard for the foreseeable consequences of the actions.” US Legal.com
Thanks to Trump and his Republican enablers, the United States is now a powder keg ready to go off as a dangerous idiot waves around a blow-torch. And we are letting him.
There are laws against falsely yelling fire in a packed theatre. Why? Because many are crushed to death in the panic to escape. What Trump (and his Republican cohorts) are doing, is far worse… and much more dangerous.
Many who believe in him are now convinced that terrible evil is afoot, and many believe it is worth killing to root it out. They have been urged by Trump supporters to “clean your rifles”, and “stock up on ammunition”. The irony is many of them have been led to believe they will be fighting to preserve democracy in America. Of course, many others could care less about democracy and just want to be in on some good bloody action.
Whether Trump is resisting the election results to forestall having to answer in court to the multiple charges pending against him, to help Putin in his so-far, very successful attempt to destabilize the United States, or just to create a financial and power base for when he leaves office, we can not know for certain; we may never know. What we do know is that he has been planting the seeds of dire conspiracies and “enemies of the state” since before his 2016 election.
“But while Stop the Steal may sound like a new 2020 political slogan to many, it did not emerge organically over widespread concerns about voter fraud in President Donald Trump’s race against Joe Biden. It has been in the works for years.
Its origin traces to Roger Stone, a veteran Republican operative and self-described “dirty trickster” whose 40-month prison sentence for seven felonies was cut short by Trump’s commutation in July.
Stone’s political action committee launched a “Stop the Steal” website in 2016 to fundraise ahead of that election, asking for $10,000 donations by saying, “If this election is close, THEY WILL STEAL IT.” Rob Kuznia, Curt Devine, Nelli Black, and Drew Griffin, CNN Updated 11:08 AM ET, Sat November 14, 2020
His conspiracy theories started before 2016. His racial “birther” attack on Obama — “not a true” American; claiming Obama didn’t even have an American birth certificate. During the 2016 election, his supporters planted stories about a pedophile ring run out of a Pizza Shop that was created by the Democrats. He launched personal attacks on journalists, judges, and anyone who said anything opposing him resulting in death threats to those involved. He falsely claimed Obama had planted hidden mikes and cameras to spy on him at his home and offices. He claimed that the Coronavirus was a “Democratic hoax”, then later, a “Chinese conspiracy”. He has incessantly been claiming that absentee votes were the means of widespread Democratic fraud, and now he is claiming (without a shred of evidence) the election was rigged, first by the poll counters, then by false ballots, and most recently, by voting machines that are somehow connected to China, Venezuela, and of course, that arch-villain and Jew, George Soros. All of these charges have been thrown out of courts for lack of even semi-plausible evidence.
And the Democrats continue to smile and take the high road and hope it will all just pass. That by setting a better example they will win over the rising tide of hate and misinformation. That didn’t work in Germany prior to World War Two and it will not work today.
Why are the Democrats not at least countering with the clear proofs that exist of Republican electoral fraud and crimes against the citizenry and the electoral process? Why do they stay silent in the face of the ever-rising tide of venomous lies? I suspect it is because like all people, of all times, they do not want to think the worst. They will go along hoping for the best while an army is being built that will sweep them aside like dandelion fluff in the wind.
This man is inciting people to view the election as a fraud. He is inciting people to see it as a criminal act and act accordingly. He is not admitting defeat, he is not conceding loss, he is not allowing the usual transition process to proceed. This man is guilty of so many crimes against the state, and the people of The United States. Yet those who have any possibility of calling him to account remain silent and keep on smiling.
Millions of the now furious Trump followers truly believe that the election has been rigged against him, that they and he have been cheated, defrauded. Trump has been working this scenario for a long time now. He has also been supporting armed militias and praising their escalating actions and occasionally using the armed forces, Homeland Security and the National Guard to step in against lawful protests and against the wishes of local governments and state governors. Just today he fired a Homeland Security head of election cybersecurity who dared state that the election was the safest, most secure election the U.S. ever had. He has called Kamala Harris a “Communist Monster”, said Joe Biden is “against god”.
He has poured gasoline over a gigantic pile of kindling that he has carefully built up over years, and now he is about to light a match. He must be stopped, and he must not be forgiven. He is trying to mount an unlawful insurrection in the United States that is all the more treasonous because it is based on patent falsehoods that he spreads cynically and disingenuously. He doesn’t believe what he says, he lies because that is what he has been trained to do for a lifetime — “this is the greatest hotel in the world”, “this is the greatest university on the planet”, “this is the best casino in America”, he does this because of his training, his psychopathology and because he cares nothing about consequences for anyone but himself.
The Democrats in taking the “High Road” and ignoring this man are playing a very dangerous game. When he began talking voter fraud they should have been countering with all the frauds he has committed — his university, his charity, the 2016 vote with aid of the Russians and all his campaign staff who colluded with them, to say nothing of his fraudulent attempt to play this current election — using the Post office to interfere with fully legal mail-in ballots (if this is not a crime against the American democracy and worthy of Treason charges nothing is), his attempts (and successes) along with his colleagues at eliminating polling sites and ballot boxes in Democratic and minority districts, his attempts at getting vote counters and voters to be intimidated by armed goons, his attempting to stop vote counting where it wasn’t going his way and most of all his blatant lies and long-standing attempt to besmirch, undermine, and create distrust, contempt and a climate of violent opposition to the electoral system we depend on for the remnants of democracy that still remain in the United States of America. He is setting the stage for armed resistance to a legitimate winner of the election and creating an ongoing danger long after the office changes hands (if he doesn’t manage a coup in the meantime — which his latest moves in the Pentagon and security agencies may well indicate).
This man not only must be removed from office now, he must be charged with Sedition and Incitement to Riot, and any who have been promoting his falsehoods without evidence should be tried along with him, removed from office, and put in prison.
There can be no Democracy if there is one law for the people, and another, for the leaders of that Democracy. Especially when these crimes are the most potentially deadly of all.
For those of you who admire, and have faith in Donald Trump, I will remind you he is the man who said that the Coronavirus was “all a Democratic hoax”, yet at the present time, the greatest surge in cases and per capita death rates are occurring precisely in those states that most trusted his word and took minimal precautions against its spread. The United States has had, and still has, the highest number of cases in the world and the highest number of deaths — this in the most technically advanced nation on earth. These deaths can be directly laid at the feet of Donald Trump due to his wholly irresponsible actions and criminal inactions. To those of you who have faith in Donald Trump, may you live long enough to regret your trust in such an untrustworthy man.
· It has been a long-standing tradition not to charge American Presidents during their administrations, and in the 240 years of the United States no president has ever been eliminated from office by impeachment, and none have ever been indicted; let alone convicted, after leaving the office. This despite horrific crimes against humanity that are seldom discussed or taught in the educational establishments of the west. It has been a Good-Old-Boy’s Club. If you are on the inside you may bicker, and support this or that pet cause, or favour this or that benefactor, but overall you take the public’s money and siphon it to the people who supported you who in turn make sure some of it is siphoned back to you. The wink and giggle between the incoming and the outgoing President never amount, god-forbid, to any consequences of wrongdoing while in office. If you go in that door you are protected. When you go out that door the same applies.
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· And so we had Theodore Roosevelt’s atrocities against Cuba (read Mark Twain’s unpopular political essays to learn about this), Truman’s wholly unnecessary atomic bombing of civilian populations in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, JFK’s complicity in the Indonesian slaughter of over 500,000 civilians, Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon’s illegal war in Vietnam resulting in the unnecessary death of over three million people, and now the incredibly corrupt and exceedingly dangerous Donald Trump who has no qualms inciting armed violence, fascism, undermining elections, and possible civil war, to say nothing of policies that have led to the immediate deaths of a quarter of a million Americans so far. and whose dismantling of all environmental controls, will lead to the deaths of millions, and possibly billions more.
While Joe Biden takes the high road and hopes civility and a sense of “Presidential” even-temperament will win in the long run, he is taking a very great risk. Hitler was not stopped by the faith many then had that “the system will not allow such terrible things to happen”. The system has been broken for a very long time, it has just taken till now for this to become so very clear.
If there are no consequences for the criminal actions of a President what results? What results is a hypocritical country that has spawned a monster like Donald Trump and will spawn still others who have no reason to fear wreaking ever greater havoc in the years to come.
