Why We Fight

 

Band of Brothers," that Spielberg/Hanks series about Easy Company's World War II experiences was mostly accurate, sometimes just got things plain wrong, but overall, it provided a sense of what it was like for a group of men some of whom survived the war as a true band of brothers, to make their way through that trial by fire.

We can hear that from those who fought in Easy Company after they saw the series on TV. Each found some inaccuracy here and there--especially where Lt. Dike and Pvt. Blithe were concerned, but overall the veterans say the series got it mostly right. 

Mad Dog has never fought in a war.

His brother got shipped off to Vietnam and Mad Dog has heard his stories. One thing Mad Dog thinks is true is that once you are in war, you are in it, and you do what is required or seems like a good idea at the time.  Mad Dog's brother was a doctor on a Coast Guard cutter, bobbing in the waters off the coast of Vietnam, and the doctors on these cutters told each other just what Cook says in "Apocalypse Now," i.e., "NEVER GET OFF THE BOAT!" But Mad Dog's brother got off the boat, and on to a swift boat, so he could go up the river to the villages to bring medicine and the Great American way to the villagers, where American military doctors were busy winning the hearts and minds of the locals. He was rewarded with a rocket attack on his swift boat. Thankfully the rocket missed.

"Why did you do something that foolish?" Mad Dog asked him. "You didn't have to do that."

Mad Dog never got a really cogent answer to that question. People, apparently, do stuff in wartime for reasons which later may not make much sense. The answer to that "why" question is often not very satisfying.

Episode 9 of "Band of Brothers" is called "Why We Fight." It begins with a hard bitten veteran, Perconte,  who has been with the company since its inception, in a sandbag station with a machine gun, guarding the periphery of camp. He is on duty with O'Keffe, a new replacement to the company. O'Keefe is fiddling with the machine gun, saying he hopes he has not missed all the fighting, now that the Germans seem to be in retreat. Perconte explodes, telling O'Keefe he should only be so lucky to have missed all the fighting, that guys like O'Keefe wind up with their guts hanging out of their wounds crying for their mothers, because that's what combat is. As for Perconte, he is happy to have slept in a real bed with sheets and to have used toilet paper--both for the first time in months. That's what Perconte is fighting for, the pleasure of toilet paper.

Of course, it is Perconte who discovers the concentration camp on a patrol outside of the German town, and when he rushes back to tell Captain Winters, Perconte cannot even get the words out, he is so stunned. 

Gas Chamber At Mauthausen 

Walking through the concentration camp, the American soldiers look around, and cover their noses from the unbearable stench, and they discover the magnitude of the evil they have been fighting. 

So, the episode is called, "Why We Fight." But, of course, fighting to liberate that concentration camp was NOT why these soldiers were fighting. It was an unexpected revelation, not a reason for them to fight, a casus belli. They had no idea what evil lurked behind the lines of the Wehrmacht they had been facing. The Wehrmacht was nasty enough to concentrate the attention of these American soldiers. They were fighting for their own lives and that was enough.

Mauthausen Concentration Camp, Austria

But this is often the case in war. Soldiers fight to keep each other alive, without thinking about greater war aims, as Eric Maria Remarque so beautifully depicted in "All Quiet on the Western Front." The funniest scene has Kat, the squad's emotional center, being told that the war resulted from France having insulted Germany, and Kat says, "Oh, well I don't feel offended at all! So I guess I just be packing up and going home!"

Oath to Hitler, Not to Germany

Even the American Civil War, which turned out to be a war to free the slaves, was not fought by warriors determined to end slavery, in large measure. Many, if not most, of the northern troops had no sympathy for the slaves and were not fighting to free them. Even their best generals, like William T. Sherman, had no particular sympathy for the slaves. In fact, the rallying cry was "Union!" (Mad Dog has wondered why keeping South Carolina in the union would have motivated a farm boy in New Hampshire to joint up. And yet, there are cemeteries all over the state, in every little hamlet, with Civil War dead.)  Some of that changed, as the Federal troops marched through the South and slaves appeared with satchels, following the Union army to freedom.  Like Perconte discovering the concentration camp, those northern troops saw for the first time suffering they had not comprehended, nor imagined and the "why we fight" got added on later.

Lincoln tried to give an answer to the "why" question with his Gettysburg address, but he was reviled by even Northern newspapers for suggesting the Civil War was really a second American revolution, a fight to expunge the original sin of slavery. And when he tried again, in his Second Inaugural address to explain how the war came about, he admitted the war seemed propelled by a force of its own, "and so it came."

The Troubles in Ireland have a big "why" which concerns religion. Read "Say Nothing" (Patrick Radden Keefe) and be amazed at the depths and the breadth of hatred between Catholics and Protestants in Belfast. They make the Hatfields and McCoys look like a disrupted tea party. And to Mad Dog's eye, there is so little that actually separates these people. ("Derry Girls," the TV show, does some amazing riffs on this issue. They are forever trying to figure out, from names or appearances, whether someone is Catholic or Protestant, and can't do it.)

It has been said that the most vicious internecine warfare occurs not between people who are very different, different races, from distant lands, but among people who, to outsiders, look very much alike. The Palestinian/Israeli conflict seems to be a case in point. Of course, there is the Muslim/Jewish difference, but watching Israeli TV shows, Mad Dog was struck by scenes where an Israeli store owner sees a customer enter, who to Mad Dog's eye looks like anyone else, but that person entering the store is immediately identified as a Palestinian by the owner, and treated most unfriendly. "Where did all that come from?", Mad Dog asks the screen. 

So, in that case, maybe the "why" is a little more obvious to the combatants. Of course, given the October 7 attack, the viciousness, the rapes, the kidnappings, which indicated how calculated that onslaught was, the casus belli is obvious. But, like many wars, the "why" seems to morph as time goes on.

She Knows Why She Fights

The "why" with respect to the war against Japan seemed pretty clear at the time: Pearl Harbor. 

But why did the Japanese attack Pear Harbor? 

It is only now decades later, with the advent of youtube and histories written at a distance that the Japanese rationale for the attack is now presented. To be sure, the Imperial Japanese, with their bushido culture, driving them to ravage Chinese and Korean populations as subhumans, provides plenty of "why." 

Of course, there are always "innocent" victims of war: the children who were immolated by Curtis LeMay's firebombing of Japanese cities and by the atomic bombs were hardly combatants--although slightly older children were taught with sharpened bamboo to prepare to kill the American invaders.

And, clearly, in Gaza today, innocent children are dying, just as innocent children died on October 7. 

So, in the end, Mad Dog suspects there is really often no single "why" war happens, or violence erupts. There may be a driving force, a climate set by people at the top, but there are as many reasons as there are people involved.

The Ox Blood Incident, Now Daily, And Brought to You by Your Masters

 

The Oxblood Incident was a book about due process, and it captured the perils of a rush to judgment, of acting before enough time is allowed to gather evidence, of simple "sweeps" to satiate a community's longing for immediate action to protect  property and sense of security.

Two cowboys arrive in a Nevada saloon to be told that cattle rustlers have killed a local cowboy named Kinkaid and made off with cattle belonging to Kinkaid's boss. 

Cattle rustling was rumored to be getting out of control in those parts, and the men who crowd the saloon decide to send a message to rustlers and to regain control of their part of the prairie, so they muster up a posse and leap on their horses, only to be briefly stopped by the town's judge who admonishes them to bring the men back to town for trial.

Shortly, three men are found sleeping around a campfire with cattle bearing the marks of Kinkaid's boss and they are seized. One of the men is Mexican. One, Martin, claims they bought the cattle but he cannot come up with documents to prove their legality and the posse hangs the men, only to meet the judge and sheriff on the way back to town and, wouldn't you know it, Kinkaid, very much alive. It turns out the cattle had been legally sold. The men were not illegals; they just didn't have the bill of sale.

Now, this, of course, is an allegory about the importance of due process, about the importance of taking the time to do the annoying, time consuming, important things we call due process to be sure we are not doing an injustice to those we have seized, over whom we have power.

It is about how easy it is to arouse passions, to coalesce around a perceived threat and to assemble a group with powers which overwhelm isolated individuals.

Governments can do this, especially if they have leaders who can sell a threat or who can sell a story about a victimized group to whom we must all ride to the rescue or commission others to ride to the rescue (better yet, so we don't have to get our own hands dirty.)

Courts, of course, have played the role of slowing this whole process down, because there can be no "law and order" without the "order" part. Sometimes, you need to shout "Whoa! Cowboy, just pause a moment."

But now, of course, our Supreme Court has said, "Go ahead. You don't need to worry about warrants, trials, probable cause or any of those inconveniences. Just act." In his opinion, Justice Kavanaugh said it only made "common sense" to arrest men because they were speaking Spanish, doing jobs like roofing (which illegal immigrants are known to do) or because they look like "members of an ethnic group" known to have lots of illegal immigrants. 

Justice Kavanaugh thinks certain people ought to suffer, like the unfortunate trio of "The Oxbow Incident," if  they are heard speaking Spanish, or if they are Hispanic looking, low wage workers  ought to be arrested, deported to El Salvador or Sudan, without trial, without stopping to ask, "Did this guy actually violate any law?"

Kavanaugh writes (Noem v Vasquez) approvingly of mass arrests without warrants, 

"So it is in this particular case, particularly given the millions of individuals illegally in the United states, the myriad of 'significant economic and social problems' caused by illegal immigration," using race, language spoken, work sites raided as the criteria for arresting and abducting these Hispanic, Spanish speaking roofers and landscapers only makes "common sense."

Notice, of course, the justice cites no evidence we actually have millions of illegal immigrants, or if we do, that the vast majority are causing economic or social mayhem rather than working hard, furtively at backbreaking jobs no White Americans want. He doesn't have to. He's a justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, for life and he can just drive off in his $100,000 camper and see you later. (Or was that Justice Thomas? Or Justice Alito? Mad Dog cannot keep those guys straight. Maybe Gorsuch? Well, part of the dirty half dozen. None of these guys has ever climbed up to do a roof. And, none of them even speak Spanish, so they are not at risk for being shoved into a van.)

Of course, Justice Sotomayor, the only Justice who does speak Spanish (ever),  calls this opinion "unconscionable" but no matter, she is only one of three justices offended.

So, rest easy, America, we may act precipitately; we may cut some corners; we may hang out to dry the wrong people, but they're not White people, so no foul, no harm.

 

And as for the Constitution--remember the Constitution?--"Nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws"

--you don't need three years in law school to notice it does not say the State cannot deprive any CITIZEN due process, it says any PERSON who is here is entitled to protection of due process? Why? Because when it was adapted in 1868, many states still had not granted former Black slaves citizenship. And it is  because you are entitled to due process for just being here, that America has located Gitmo offshore, where Constitutional protections do not apply, because those guys are not "here."

No matter, the Supreme Court can make up its own laws. 

And the only people who will be hurt will not be White. 

 

Watching the Train Wreck from My Porch

 The internist knows everything, but can do nothing; the surgeon knows nothing, but can do everything; the pathologist knows everything and can do everything, but too late.

--Old Housestaff proverb

Age is no better, hardly so well, qualified for an instructor as youth, for it has not profited so much as it has lost.

--H.D. Thoreau

It is a man's opinion of himself which determines his fate.

--H.D. Thoreau

Being an old decrepit bag of bones, that's what's ridiculous. Gettin' old.

--Sam the Lion, "The Last Picture Show."

In high school, Mad Dog could see there was no point asking his teachers any questions because they were, with some rare exceptions, only a page ahead of him in the textbook. Asking really interesting questions of these people was only likely to create embarrassment. That changed in college, where asking the professor a question elicited not only an enlightening answer, but often ignited a whole rocket launch of erudition, unexpected, delightful and taking Mad Dog into realms unanticipated and enriching. But that was only true for the humanities--in science classes, he was more or less back to high school, and the answers to his questions were evasive.  In medical school the most important questions were often answered: "I don't know. If you want to find out, here's the study you'd have to do." Often, the older doctors had seen things and they could tell you the important information that what you were seeing in a patient was either to be expected or unexpected, which was important. The professors in medical school knew more than the students. But so did the nurses. We were all told as interns to ask the nurses who knew way more medicine than we did as new medical school graduates, and boy did they ever.

On rounds one day, a man who had just been sent to the ward after a week in the cardiac care unit for a heart attack told us he was having a little tightness in his chest, and then he suddenly asked for a bed pan: the two nurses looked at each other in alarm--one rolled down the head of his bed and the other ran for the Crash Cart where all the medications and equipment for cardiac resuscitation were kept. Sure enough, before Mad Dog had time to even ask what all the fuss was about, the patient arrested and he was resuscitated successfully because the nurses were slapping all the Bristojets of lidocaine in our hands, and had the chest pads for the electric cardioverter in place within seconds. They knew that telltale signal of vagal release which preceded cardiac arrest.

Now, in his dotage, Mad Dog can see the signals: He has seen it all before. He knows that the Trumpish use of the word "antisemitism" has nothing to do with any desire to protect Jews from abuse, but is simply a replacement motif for anti-intellectualism, for resentment of professors at elite universities who think they are better than other people, and smarter and higher class. But rather than resorting to "effete intellectuals" or "nattering nabobs of negativism" like Spiro Agnew, Trump can do what autocrats do, he can find a victim to create and defend. So he is the champion of resistance to antisemitism, which gives him license to wreck universities, to dance on the graves of those smartass professors and university presidents. 

New Hampshire Howl, Obadiah Youngblood

Richard Hofstadter wrote about Anti Intellectualism in American Life in the 1960's. Then it was Senator Joseph McCarthy, who was pointing to the universities as the haven of Communists, elitists and people who thought they were better than everyone else.

So these are the hallmarks of the disease Mad Dog knows, has seen before. 

But, as Bill Clinton once observed about retirement: "When I was President, I had to be very careful about what I said; every word, every phrase I used was dissected, analyzed and often came back to haunt me. Now, out of office I can say whatever I want, what I really believe. Trouble is, nobody cares. Nobody even listens."

And so that's Mad Dog, sitting on his porch in New Hampshire, watching the slow motion train wreck, seeing masked men in bullet proof vests, abduct people for looking Hispanic, speaking Spanish or working on a roof or in a yard landscaping, and the Supreme Court says that's all just fine and reasonable. 

And now we have a national police, which the Germans called their Gestapo; we call it ICE. ICE, to Mad Dog's ear is way cooler. Cool as ICE. ICEMAN cometh. ICE in his veins. IIIIICE!

Oh, that's the disease all right. Get the crash cart. Get out the paddles. 

But no, Mad Dog is just an old decrepit bag of bones, watching the new generation rise, and he watches this with eyes which have had the youth bled from them by the hard sleet and snow winters, seeing the sham with well earned cynicism. But, like the elders of Peyton Place, sometimes, against all the warnings of better judgment, he turns his tired winter eyes toward heaven, to seek the first traces of a false softening. (Thanks, Ms. Metalious.)

Carleigh Bariont

Now, there is a youngster, full of hope, running in the Democratic primary for Congress, Carleigh Beriont. She has children in the Hampton public schools and she is a graduate of Mt. Holyoke College and holds several degrees including a PhD from Harvard. She is "running for the children," best as Mad Dog can discern. She is a "quality candidate."

Which is why Mad Dog thinks she doesn't have a chance.

Mad Dog holds three diplomas from Ivy League universities and he knows exactly what those degrees mean and what they do not mean.

Successful students, Mad Dog thinks are the Eddie Haskells of the world. Mad Dog realizes 99% of his readership has no idea who Eddie Haskell was, because they were too young to watch "Leave it to Beaver." But the Ivy League was filled with Eddie Haskell's. You can google it, thank God. (Even Bubbles, of The Wire, made Leave It to Beaver allusions, a complete anachronism, and a jarringly out of character reference, but not even David Simon could resist citing that generational/cultural touchstone. Basically, the crowd which remembers "All Shook Up," will not need to google. If you do, you are forgiven.)

***

Mad Dog has  observed elections, candidates and public opinion for 17 years in New Hampshire and he has formulated Rule One of Candidacy in this state: The most obvious, best choice for any office never wins. That is the one sure thing you can bet on.

Terence O'Rourke

When Terence O'Rourke ran for the same seat in a Congressional primary with eleven candidate some years ago, he was head and shoulders above everyone else in the crowd. He had enough educational bone fides (Marquette University BA, Tulane Law, JD) but he was also a combat veteran, an Army Ranger, winner of a bronze star (which he never mentioned, unless directly asked) and an all around stellar human being. He came in dead last by a country mile. People round here thought he was "too aggressive," not nice enough. 

Senator Klobuchar

When Amy Klobuchar came to New Hampshire during primary season, running for the Presidential nomination, Mad Dog looked at her resume`: Yale undergrad, University of Chicago Law. Uh-oh, he thought.

The thing about Ivy Leaguers is they tend to be company men. Which is to say, they tend to be careful not to offend. They have got into their prestigious places not by rebelling but by regurgitating, by playing the game, by pleasing people, by learning not to annoy those who have some power over their fates.

So Mad Dog asked Senator Klobuchar: "You have told us about all the programs and policies you hope to enact. But how do you propose to defeat a candidate of charisma with a campaign of policy?"

Mad Dog saw a brief flicker of incomprehension, then panic, flit across the Senator's face. Then she collected herself and she said, "Well, I think I have charisma!"

Clearly, not a question she had thought about or been prepared for, and she managed to dredge up a laugh line, but, nevertheless, telling.

Had Senator Klobuchar pulled Mad Dog aside and said, "I'll come by and sit on your porch and we'll chat about this," Mad Dog would have made the time. He would have told her what she was up against is a man who had made his public image over a decade, who rejected the carefully parsed, well formed paragraphs, who was not afraid to offend, who owned "authenticity" and if she wanted to beat that guy she'd need to start swinging for the fences and stop playing to simply not lose. She'd have to be outrageous. She might have replied, "Bernie is already doing that and getting nowhere." And Mad Dog would have said, "But he's not pretty or young or from the Midwest."

Senator Klobuchar never came  to sit on Mad Dog's porch. Neither will Carleigh Beriont. 

No loss for them.

Mad Dog will have no answers for them. 

But he believes he has, at least, managed to ask the right question.

Measles, Influenza, Covid: Tales from the Crypt

 

Of all the people Mad Dog has seen die, and there were scores of them who died when he was training, one stands out from the rest. 

It's not entirely clear why, but likely has something to do with her youth and the unexpected nature of her course of illness.

Mad Dog had seen people die with great regularity at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Hospital for Cancer and Allied Diseases, but they had cancer and were expected to die and when they did, some of them welcomed death.

This woman was 21 years old and brought to the emergency room by her boyfriend. The ER resident called Mad Dog down saying, "She just looks...dusky."

The admission game in the ER is that the ER resident has to justify why he thinks a patient is sick enough to require admission because the intern getting that patient is going to be working for hours no matter how sick or not sick the patient may be, and the intern wants to be convinced the case justifies all that effort. 

But in this case, the ER resident was not calling an intern, he was calling Mad Dog, who by then was a senior resident, and it was Mad Dog's job to decide if the patient was sick enough to warrant a precious ICU bed. In those days even a big city hospital like The New York Hospital only had 12 intensive care unit beds, and those were on the Cardiac Care Unit and were, theoretically reserved for people with heart attacks, usually men in their 50's, but here the resident was pitching admitting this 21 year old woman to the CCU, and she had no heart problems. 

What she had was "dusky." Even in the fluorescent lights of the Emergency Room, you could see it. Dusky means sort of gray/blue. 

Mad Dog's job was to look at her and say either yes or no. If it was no, she'd go the ward, where each nurse had a dozen patients and more at night, and this was just before midnight. 

She was lethargic, but awake, not comatose, and the ER resident had done blood gases and her oxygen level was 60, which had to be a mistake.  Arterial blood oxygen was 90-98% not 60. This was in the days before those little finger gizmos which show you your oxygen saturation--to know the arterial oxygen level you had to stick an artery--usually we used the radial artery in the wrist and then plop the syringe in an ice cup and press on the wrist for 15 uninterrupted minutes. Sometimes, if you missed the artery you hit the vein next door and Mad Dog thought the ER resident had inadvertently sent off venous blood.

This being night time, there was no nurse to do the compression, so Mad Dog did all that and then ran the cup up to the lab on the 9th floor. By the time he got back to the ER, breathless and wondering what his own blood oxygen level might be, the lab tech was on the phone with the results: 60, again. And Mad Dog knew for sure that was an arterial blood--the syringe had pumped up a centimeter with each heart beat, just the way it should have. 

So Mad Dog wheeled her gurney up the the CCU where the intern and resident were nowhere to be seen, busy with other crises and Mad Dog remained with her for a while. She just got bluer and bluer and more and more obtunded and before we even had a chance to put her on a respirator, she arrested (cardiac arrest) and died right in front of us, the nurse and Mad Dog. 

It was flu season, so the hospital was packed, every bed occupied, some patients on beds in hallways, and when the autopsy results came back we understood why she never stood a chance: Her lungs were the consistency of liver. Normally lungs are sponge like, pretty fluffy and light and moist, but these lungs were thick and heavy and maroon, and there was no way air would come into contact with the delicate blood vessels carrying the red blood cells which were supposed to pick up oxygen across the delicate alveolar vascular spaces. 

The influenza test was positive. 

She had died of influenza.

Mad Dog presented her case to a half dozen conferences, asking everyone what he could have done differently. He knew he should have intubated her--put her on a respirator in the ER, but that was difficult and had its own risks and would have delayed getting her to the CCU. But beyond that, Mad Dog was looking for answers from the graybeards, the guys who had tricks up their sleeves, who had seen everything and done everything.

 But as he gave the story, he saw the flash of recognition in all the older doctors' faces: They had all seen patients die of influenza.

"This is what influenza does," they would say, shaking their heads. "It just does that." 

Not to everyone, influenza does that, but to a high enough percentage that more people and more soldiers died of influenza in 1918 Europe than died from bombs and bullets on the battlefield.

When COVID hit New York City, Mad Dog's son was doing his residency at Mt. Sinai. They had long refrigerated 18 wheel rigs parked outside the hospital on Fifth Avenue--to receive the bodies. The hospital morgue was overflowing. He had to strip down in the hallway outside his apartment and put  his scrubs and mask in a black plastic garbage bag, and walk straight to the shower before seeing his wife and baby. 

Given the death rate of COVID, early on in that pandemic in 2020,  about 3-4 million Americans were projected to die from that virus. In that first year only 1 million died, once the vaccine became available. "Only" a million died. Death statistics are endlessly arguable, but it's pretty clear the vaccine saved lives, and not just the lives of people at the far end of their lives, but little kids, twenty-somethings, all through the age ranges.

Watching "Gone with the Wind" in a movie theater Mad Dog was struck by the audience reaction when Scarlett O'Hara gets the letter which announces that her husband had died, not in combat, but from measles, in camp. 

The audience laughed.

Mad Dog knew why they laughed. Scarlett's husband was a well meaning nerd, a half man, not virile or a warrior and it seemed perfect that he would die of a child's disease, to which no strong man would succumb.

But, of course, measles took the lives of thousands of soldiers in their camps, men who had never been vaccinated or even exposed to measles because they lived isolated on farms. 

But, of course, to that 1974 audience, living in New York City, in an age of universal vaccination, these folks had never seen measles, nor heard much about it. Measles seemed to these 20th century New Yorkers a ridiculous thing to die from.

When you think about it, in the 21st century, it still is a ridiculous thing to die from. But watching someone die from measles does not seem ridiculous. It is bleak, maddening, agonizing.

And we will see more of that now. Because of just a few men, our President and his chosen new vaccine expert, RFKJR. Neither should ever be forgiven that. 

Diptheria has just claimed several victims. Influenza will always claim victims, but fewer if enough people get vaccinated. COVID is less likely now to claim the young, but it will still claim some unvaccinated. And measles now is doing its terrible work again.

Measles does that. It just kills people with a pneumonia. That X Ray at the top of this blog post is a measles pneumonia. 

Who? Me? No! You!

  

President Trump took to FOXNEWS to decry left wing radicals who equate right wingers with Nazis.

Elon Musk, MAGA man, Trump Was Right About Everything

He points to the killing of Charlie Kirk as an expression of radical left wing dogma driving violent attacks on upstanding right wing advocates, as if lefties are just so violent and right wingers are just innocently speaking their minds and being violently attacked for expressing their opinions. And these violent attacks, Trump says are simply integral, part and parcel, inexorably connected to left wing ideology and their playbook.

(Of course, the left says exactly that about Trump and his MAGA adherents.) 

Charlottesville Unite The Right Marchers

He took special umbrage at the left characterizing the right as "Nazis." After Charlottesville, where United the Right (UTR)  demonstrators staged a torch light parade mimicking the Nazi torch light parades of the 1930's which was their signature stagecraft, and UTR men wore swastikas and other Nazi emblems and runes, Trump said there were very fine people on both sides.

Terrence O'Rourke

As Terrence O'Rourke, a New Hampshire Congressional candidate said at the time: "We are in a very divided state of mind nowadays, but as divided as we are, I would have thought that we could all agree on one thing: There is no such thing as a very fine Nazi."

Very Fine Nazis

Trump retreated, and said he didn't mean the Nazis were very fine, just the rest of the non Nazi UTR. (One advantage of Trump's imprecision of speech is you never can be quite sure what he means, or who he's talking about exactly, so he can always say you didn't understand what he was really saying.)

But looking at the UTR parade, it is difficult to tell who among the United The Right were not Nazis.

During his interview, Trump railed against the leftists whose rhetoric he said was direct incitement to the murder of Charlie Kirk and Trump added: "We have radical left lunatics out there and we just have to beat the hell out of them."

Later, when reminded that this statement itself constitutes a incitement to violence, he said, well, he was talking about beating the hell out of them at the polls. (You didn't understand me. Of course we understood him, but he could not stick with what he actually meant.)

But this sort of endorsement of beatings and violence is longstanding and consistent with Trump: In November, 2015 when a Black Lives Matter activist was beaten in front of his stage at one of his rallies, he remarked, "what he was doing was so bad, maybe he should have been roughed up." Roughed as in beaten to a bloody pulp while Trump watched on approvingly, from the stage.

For those of us who've read a little history, we know that the street thugs of the Nazis was a very big part of their tactic to gain power. They simply walked along the street and beat up people who expressed any sort of opposition. When Goering was appointed to head the Reichstag (parliament), he encouraged his Nazi delegates to beat up opposing legislators and called his opponents "pigs" and "filthy Jews." In the halls of parliament. Beating people up, of course, makes democracy nigh on impossible--it's hard to debate contentious issues if you know it's going to end up in a brawl every time. There's only so much ultimate fight club a legislature can bear.

When mobs broke through windows and doors during the January 6, Capitol insurrection, and beat police officers unconscious Trump called those men "unbelievable patriots," and after they were convicted and sentenced in courts of law, he pardoned them. So he likes the ruffians, the real men, the manly man, and that is part of what he sells. It's what makes women feel safer with him in power. He's tough enough to protect them against all those imaginary illegal immigrant rapists. 

The cruelty is the point, as many have observed.

We sometimes forget how violent January 6th actually was, but look at this video, enlarge it and you will be reminded what these patriots, these ordinary tourists really were like.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/11/us/capitol-mob-violence-police.html

So, when Trump complains about the radical left being inflammatory,  is this not the kettle calling the pot black?

Is this not simply another instance of Trump following the advice of Joseph Goebbels n to simply, "accuse the other side of whatever they say you are doing wrong."

But if it quacks like a Nazi duck, and if it walks like a Nazi duck, then it likely is a Sieg Heil Nazi duck. 

Violence

 

President Trump has ordered all federal buildings to lower flags to half mast to honor and mourn Charlie Kirk, a Trump supporter and conservative influencer Mad Dog had never heard of until he was shot.

Minnesota At Half Mast

Trump blamed the assassination on the "radical left," although no one has been arrested for the murder. It may have been Hunter Biden, for all we know. Or maybe Obama, who was born in Kenya. Or maybe Hillary is up to shooting people again, like Vince Foster. But definitely not Jeffrey Epstein, who, you know, committed suicide while in custody.

When the Democratic Speaker of the Minnesota House of Representatives was murdered along with her husband and another Democratic legislator and his wife wounded by the same gunman, who carried with him a victim list of other Democrats, nothing emanated from the White House decrying political violence.

When Trump was asked if he had called Minnesota governor after the murders to express condolences he said, "I think the governor of Minnesota is so whacked out. I'm not calling him. Why would I call him? I could calla and say, "Hi, how you doing?' Uh, the guy doesn't have a clue. He's a mess. I could be nice and call, but why waste the time?"

So Trump wastes no tears on people who probably would never vote for him.  He doesn't like guys who got captured and became prisoners of war, because Trump is a tough guy with heel spurs. He would never get captured because he would never actually enlist in the cause of defending America by arms. 

When a gunman attacked the CDC offices in Atlanta and shot dead a defending policeman, flags were not flown at half mast honoring a government employee defending other government employees.

When fifteen Nazis were shot dead as they attacked police in the 1923 Beer Hall Putsch, which failed to put Hitler in power, Hitler established monuments, established an annual march re-enacting the failed coup and established a commemorative flag, the Blood Flag in their honor.

During the Weimar years, more than 500 political assassinations bloodied the streets and buildings, all but 10 were directed by Nazis at more liberal politicians.

This is no surprise, because part of the appeal of right winger is machismo, masculinity, strength, the threat of violence. That's why torch light parades are a right wing thing--they are meant to evoke not love, but fear.

"For all those who draw the sword, will die by the sword," Jesus told Peter (Matthew 26.52.) This can be understood to extend beyond swords to guns but also to simple exhortation toward physical force ("rough him up") and street thugs in masks manhandling men for speaking Spanish and looking Hispanic, for looking like an "alien" to White cops,  without warrant, without ceremony, without restraint, without process.

People in cities should not be afraid to walk outside, Mr. Trump has said, the criminals should fear Mr. Trump and his supporters. I am strong. Fear me! I will do violence to you, or my fans will. Just try heckling me at one of my rallies and see what happens: you will be "roughed up."

Nothing is yet certain about the motivation of whoever shot Mr. Kirk. The assumption on the right has been he was murdered as a martyr to the cause of right wing righteousness. 

Or, we may never know. Mr. Trump, of course, already knows.

But whatever the reason, Mr. Trump and the MAGA mob have provided one: Violence, they will claim is the exclusive weapon of the radical left, while the MAGA mob, which delights in pummeling hecklers at Trump rallies, which delights in the images of a cowboy hat wearing sheriff on a horse whipping a Haitian man at a border crossing, that's not violent; the right can only be the victim of violence, never the perpetrator.  

Of course, no side has a monopoly on political violence.

But one side invokes the threat of violence to get its way, to stimulate its followers into a mob. 

 

ADDENDUM:

Great Minds Think Alike Dept:

(Actually, this is not Great Minds thinking alike, so much as mediocre mind stumbles toward the same conclusion a great mind reached in more expeditious fashion: The day after Mad Dog posted, Paul Krugman showed why he's widely read and celebrated by posting on the same topic.)

Krugman: "Waving the Bloody Shirt"

At this point what do we know about who killed Charlie Kirk, and why?

Nothing. And we may never know anything. In part that’s because there appears to have been a rapid degradation in the FBI’s effectiveness since Trump appointees took over and prioritized political loyalty over competence.

The fact that Kirk was a right-winger doesn’t mean that the shooter was a left-winger. There are many possible stories you can invent about what may have motivated the assassination. What we do know is that no prominent Democrat has called for violence against Republicans, and no prominent Democrat has celebrated Kirk’s death.

Whoever did this, there’s just no rational way you can blame this on “the left.”

Also, whatever motivated this murder, it’s simply a fact that over the past decade right-wing extremists have killed many more people than left-wing extremists:

And Trump — who has repeatedly incited mob violence since his first campaign — clearly wants to use the Kirk killing as an excuse for more violence and intimidation. “We have radical left lunatics out there,” declared Trump, “and we just have to beat the hell out of them.” An utterly malign appeal to mob violence from a sitting president, particularly outrageous since no one knows who killed Kirk and why.

And let’s be clear: everyone — Republicans, business leaders, and more — who decided, in effect, to forget about Jan. 6 helped set the stage for this malignancy.

So while we want to know what lay behind Kirk’s assassination, the important story right now is Trump’s intent to use the killing to incite violence against anyone who stands in his way.

--Mad Dog