Category: Progressive Commentary

AMERICAN GULAG 

 Somewhere inside Camp Lemonnier, an American military base in the East African nation of Djibouti, eight immigrant men, all convicted of serious crimes in the United States, are housed in a converted shipping container under the guard of officers from the Homeland Security Department. 

In this action, the White House is making a bold claim. The premise is that handing immigrants a one-page document, possibly even in language they don’t read, is sufficient to deport them after 24 hours to a dangerous country to which they have no previous connection.

In May, the Trump administration had planned to send the men to a prison the war-torn country of South Sudan. The move was part of T****’s plan for mass deportations. These men come from countries around the world, only one is from South Sudan. Then an order from a federal judge put a temporary hold on the operation.

On June 23, the Supreme Court ruled that T**** could, at least temporarily, continue deporting people to countries other than their own and could do so without redress from the courts. These men are still destined for South Sudan, 

So what’s the deal? T**** is, in fact, beginning to create an American gulag. He is already sending men who have not been convicted of anything to a prison camp in El Salvador. South Sudan is apparently next. And there are undoubtedly other countries on other continents whose strongmen dictators will be happy accept similar corrupt arrangements.

The entire concept is illustrative of the depths of depraved indifference to the rule of law and regards for humanity that exemplify the essence of Donald L. T****. 

As part of his plan for creating this gulag, T**** is doing it with the least sympathetic of people, noncitizens who may or may not have been convicted of crimes. This is a test of how much cruel, deplorable treatment of human beings and erosion of due process American voters will stomach.

We must loudly and forcefully and continually demonstrate to him that we will stomach none of it. The imperatives of humanity, let alone The 8th Amendment, make it clear that in America, “cruel and unusual punishment [shall not] be inflicted.” Farming his victims out to agents overseas who will do this for him is a travesty of justice and a perversion of that imperative, of that edict. 

But, then, Donald Trump is a perverse man.

#1PathForward

thebernhardperspective.com 

  REQIUM 

RIP Nevaeh Crain, an 18-year old, pregnant Texas women who, crying in pain, too weak to walk, blood staining down her thighs. feverish and vomiting, had gone to two different ER’s within 12 hours seeking emergency medical assistance. 

Both times she was returned home, each time worse than before, even after having been tested positive for sepsis. In fact, Nevaeh was suffering a miscarriage. 

In each case, doctors were afraid because of Texas’ severe anti-abortion law which said that doctors couldn’t do anything to remove her viable fetus unless the patient’s was at risk. Violating he law could result in penalties ranging from massive fines to losing their medical license to time in prison. 

In both cases, the doctors deferred on the side of their own safety and self-interest. By the time Ms. Crain  got to the third ER it was too late. Diagnosed with “fetal demise,” her condition worsened and she died. 

In my never-to-be-humble opinion, the both the Texas State Legislature which passed the law and Texas Governor Abbott who signed it killed this young woman as surely as if they had plunged in a knife. With blood on their hands, they will never be held accountable for the death of Nevaeh Crain.  

The moral to this story: In Texas,

6/22

A SLIGHT MISUNDERSTANDING

In his West Point commencement address on May 24, Donald T**** displayed the depths of his ignorance about the country he’s attempting to govern when he claimed that the voters gave him a “great mandate” that “gives us the right to do what we want to do.”

Not having any real knowledge of our country’s history or understanding how elections work, and being the compulsive, pathological liar he is, Donald is wrong on both counts.

First of all, he did not win any great mandate. In 1984 Ronald Reagan won 59% to 41%. FDR won over 60% in 1936. Those were great mandates. In 2024, T**** won by a scant 49.9% to 48.4%. Winning less than half the votes cast, he won by a hair. That’s no great mandate, it’s a squeaker.

Furthermore, with fully one third of all eligible voters sitting it out, T****’s share of the popular vote amounted to a mere 31.6% of the entire electorate. That is roughly the size of his MAGA base. That’s all the voter support he got. The rest of the voters either voted for Harris or ignored both of them.

Second of all, no president, no matter how large a margin of victory, gets to do whatever he wants. FDR had his National Recover Act (NRA) and his Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA) ruled unconstitutional. His court packing plan was rejected by Congress. Richard Nixon resigned his office rather than face expulsion when his criminal activity resulted in impeachment.

Whether Donald T**** likes it or not, there are constraints and limitations on executive power in this country. Called Checks and Balances, they are enshrined in the Constitution. T**** is learning this truth the hard way as virtually all other presidents have before him.

Now of course, Donald would have known all this and not embarrassed himself at West Point if he ever learned basic civics in high school, which he obviously didn’t, or read the Constitution, which he clearly hasn’t.

But then, it’s doubtful he would understand any of it even if he had.

6/18 

Note: With the violence in the Middle East continuing unabated, and our feckless  “peace president” talking tough, these thoughts come to mind.

T****’s  GENERALS

Donald T**** has alleged more than once that he wishes he had generals like Hitler’s generals. I sincerely doubt that he understands the concept of irony, let alone how it applies here., 

History records that after the initial success of the Blitzkrieg, Germany’s generals lost every essential battle of WW II, starting with the Battle of the Atlantic and the Battle of Britain. Their armies were kicked off the African continent and surrendered in Italy. Their vaunted Atlantic Wall was breached in less than 24 hours and their invasion of Russia was a catastrophic failure. Eventually, the Allies crushed the Wehrmacht on both fronts.

And the Irony? Above all else Donald denigrates losers. And the truth is that Hitler’s generals lost their War. 

Also, the primary attribute Donald demands from his subordinates is loyalty, and he apparently believes that Hitler’s generals were loyal to him. But the truth is that his highest ranking officers held him in low regard and were involved in no less than five assassination attempts against him. In fact, a pair of his field marshals were aware of two of these attempts, yet neither of them thought to report it to their Führer. 

I suspect that what T**** really admires has to do with style rather than substance. Shallow and superficial in all things, he is most likely impressed with the Nazi general’s stiff, sharp uniforms and the way they are portrayed in movies with their disciplined, military correctness. He admires the way they are always snapping their heels together and delivering stiff-armed “Hiel Hitler” salutes all the time. Nothing impresses an autocratic more than servile obsequiousness.

But the truth is not in the movies or perceptions but in history, which is where the fate of the Führer and his generals is sealed. So when to comes to Donald T*** and his desire for generals like Hitler’s, I am mindful of the old adage, 

“Be careful what you wish for. You just may get it.”

NO KINGS

Now that it’s all over, here are my thoughts about the “No Kings” demonstrations: 

We are the people of the Unite States of America. We are a people of principle and honor. We honor our communities and stand by our allies. We defend against aggression and dictators. We uphold and defend our Constitution. We care for veterans, and children, and seniors. We support a healthy national and international economy, community and environment. We believe it is our duty and privilege to feed the hungry, heal the sick and comfort the needy. We are the world leader entrusted to uphold the stability of the rule of law.

We are the people of the Unite States of America. The honor, dignity and integrity of our country are not for sale. Our Government is Of The People, By the People and For the People. 

That is not the creed of Tyrants. In their reality, you are meant to feel powerless. That is what a strongman wants: make you feel as if nothing can stop his taking over of your country. This is Donald T****’s strategy,  it is what he is counting on.

  Our country and our way of life hang in precarious balance. 

Our democratic institutions rely on the compliance of its citizens and leaders with and within the law. They are not capable of dealing with the existential threat of tyrannical defiance. 

Our Founding Fathers presumed and relied on the intentions of good and honorable men to hold the reigns of power and authority. But Donald T**** is neither a good nor honorable man.

The 1st Amendment guarantees our right to free speech and to petition the government for a redress of grievances. That is the purpose of “No Kings.” It is for us to exercise those rights, to fill the streets across the country and make our petitions with loud, strong language. It is not necessary to be nice; Donald T**** not a nice man.

Our one, our strongest weapon in defense of our country, our liberty and our freedom is ourselves, our voices and our righteous anger. T**** wants us to feel powerless to stop him. 

He must see that we are not. 

We must forcefully demonstrate that ours is a government of the people, by the people and for the people, that he does not make laws for us nor is he above them. And if he endeavors to become so, we can and will bring him down.

And we have the way to do that. We have the way to fight against his lust for power. We have our voices. We have the ballot box. We have the One Path Forward.

 RESIST  

DEFLECTING THE BLAME

This is how Elon Musk, President T****’s malicious little toady, defended his wholesale firing of government employees. He alibied the past century’s greatest mass murderers, claiming “Stalin, Mao, and Hitler didn’t murder millions of people. Their public sector employees did.” 

Musk, of course, was lying. The fact is that these atrocities were by and large overseen and carried out by their nation’s militaries, not government employees and functionaries.

Still, Elon justified the firing of over a hundred thousand American public sector employees by falsely asserting it is their predecessors who, in other countries, actively engaged in history’s dirtiest work.

The tyrants who conceived and orchestrated their historic crimes against humanity are held guiltless in the eyes of the world’s richest man. Musk’s lying, convoluted logic in this manner and for this purpose is sick, twisted and depraved. 

And so is he. Elon Musk may be obscenely wealth, but he is also a lying idiot and drug-taking jerk. 

So I say, goodby, Elon. Good riddance to bad rubbish. And don’t let the screen door slam on your way out. 

6/4

THE RISE OF THE DUAL STATE

First developed by a German lawyer in the 1930s, the Dual-State theory preposes that authoritarianism can take hold in small areas even while the broader legal systems function more or less normally. The theory is that within the “dual state” there are in effect two interlinked systems, a concept called “parallel states.”

In these two entities are the normative state which includes the ordinary law that most people live under and benefit from. Alongside it is the prerogative state, a zone of authoritarianism sometimes called the “legal abyss,” in which government power is unbounded.

This is how Germany functioned in the 1930’s. Hitler’s Nazis created a system in which the state could do anything from seizing a person’s assets to sending them to a concentration camp. And yet the Nazis still maintained the ordinary legal system to handle cases that were not seen as political or involve individuals seen as enemies of the regime.

This is, of course, the antithesis of the American system of justice in which one law applies to all men and all institutions. Today, however, the T**** administration is claiming the prerogative right to create its own legal abyss. Consider:

Using dubious claim of an emergency because he doesn’t like the current tenor of international trade, and with his unchecked and arbitrary use of tariffs, T**** has unilaterally usurped the Congress’ and by extension the people’s power to “regulate commerce among foreign nations” as delineated in Article I, Section 8, Clause 3. of the U.S Constitution.

Part of the broader Alien and Sedition Acts, the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 was intended to empower a President to take action against foreign nationals during wartime. By imaginatively claiming that Hispanic gang members constitute an “invasion,” T**** is using the Act as a way to claim the prerogative to arrest people by secretive agents without warrants, incarcerate them in unfit prisons, deny them their right to counsel and deport them without even a pretense of due process.

T**** and his agents have fired over a hundred thousand federal workers without the authority to do so. Although only Congress has the authority to allocate government funding which has, upon signing by the president, the force of law, he has taken it upon himself to cancel appropriations for any and all programs and agencies of which he disapproves, again without the legal authority to do so.

In these and other ways, like his scathing attacks on Harvard University, his cleansing all government entities of DEI and so-called “woke” initiatives, his removal of exhibits he doesn’t like from the Smithsonian Museums and engaging in revisionist history, Donald T**** has taken upon himself the dual state prerogative of one-man authoritarian rule.

There is historical precedent for this.

After the birth of our country different legal systems applied to Native Americans. In the Jim Crow era Southern states operated as single-party, authoritarian regimes permitting and even encouraging extra-legal violence against Blacks. During the so-called “war on terror,” the Bush administration claimed sweeping powers to detain “suspected terrorists” both on battlefields abroad and domestically

Fortunately, in these instances the U.S. came back from the brink. However, unless T*** can be defeated in his attempt to hijack the American legal system and establish dual state, dictatorial rule, we may not be so lucky this time.

There is, however, a way to oppose Donald T**** leading the country into the legal abyss of government rule by his prerogative alone. There is way for citizens to reclaim our envied system of justice and the Constitutional rule of law. There is One Path Forward.

RESIST

5/28 

A QUESTION OF DYING

Secretary of State Little Marco Rubio has stated that “No one has died because of USAID” being cancelled. He asserts that reports of deaths in Myanmar and South Sudan are “false” and that “No children are dying on my watch.” If he is correct, and that is by no means certain, it is only because several US courts have substantially reinstated the program. 

The truth is that Donald T**** craves the ultimate power of life and death. If he had his way, Rubio could not make that statement. That is because millions of people worldwide will lose their primary and in many cases sole source of food if the US aid program is allowed to lapse. 

The linear, Aristotelian nature of the logistic syllogism is irrefutable:

People need food or they will

If you take away their source of food people will not 

have food.

People who do not have food will die. 

It is important to note that the overwhelming majority of the affected people are Black and Brown. It is also important to remember that Donald T**** is a bigot and racist. In all likelihood he is not concerned about these people’s existence.

It’s almost as if he wants them to die. 

LIES, BETRAYAL AND DONALD T****

Back in his first term, Donald T**** claimed that he didn’t want to admit refugees from sub-Saharan (Black) African nations, referring to them as“shithole” countries. He said that he’d much prefer immigrants coming from Nordic countries like Norway. His current two-handed migrant shuffle is accomplishing just that. 

During his campaign T**** promised Venezuelans in Florida, some 350,000 of whom are here under Temporary Protection Status (TPS), that they could stay here. Now, in a cruel act of betrayal, he says he will revoke that status and deport them.

In his fevered desire to deport everyone he can, he is also planning to revoke the refugee status of Haitians, Cubans, and Nicaraguans who have been given shelter here.

T**** is also planning to revoke the TPS status of some 14,500 Afghan refugees, many of whom were flown out during that war’s final hectic days. He will also do the same to deport a similar number of refugees from Cameron. 

Donald T**** is making a targeted effort to deport Black and Brown Hispanics from Cuba and Central America, Black Haitians and Cameroonians, and Brown Moslems from Afghanistan. And he is doing this with treachery and the betrayal of promises made by this country and by him personally.

At the same time, and for reasons based wholly on right-wing racist, conspiratorial lies, he is rolling out the red carpet for White “refugees” from South Africa. These represent a privileged class who, according to all independent observations, are neither singled out or targeted for persecution by their country, their culture or their leaders (See below).

In all this, and not for the first time, Donald T**** is exposing his true, despicable self for what he is: a depraved and shameless bigot and racist. And by doing so in these instances, he is in our name making bigotry and racism official American policy. 

Well, not in my name. These actions by our president are neither right nor righteous, and these abhorrences do not sit well with me. If they do not sit well with you, then, to paraphrase Dylan Thomas, do not go quietly into that long goodnight.

There is one way out. There is One Path Forward. 

RESIST

Note: President T*****’s claims of genocide against White farmers in South Africa are no more than Right-wing conspiratorial lies. Crimes against White farmers in that country represent a tiny fraction of the country’s overall crime rate. From April 2024 through December 2024 that country recorded 19,696 murders. Just 36 of these murders, a minuscule 0.2% of the country’s total, were linked to farms. Furthermore, only seven of the 36 victims – 0.035% – were actual farmers themselves. South Africa has White and Back farmers, but the official data is not broken down by race. The other 29 victims included farm employees, who tend to be Black. No matter what you may see, read or hear, White farmers in South Africa are not being massacred by Blacks abnd they are not victims of genocide. 

THE BERNHARD PERSPECTIVE

5/23

With his announcement of a new round of tariffs against the European Union, it has become increasingly obvious that this T**** tariff business is not about the tariffs themselves at all. In this case it’s because the EU won’t play ball with him, but the way he slaps tariffs on then rips them off has rendered them all but meaningless. 

I think T**** admitted what the real reason was when he bragged that countries were lining up and sending “top men” to come make deals with him. He once claimed that he had made deals with more countries than there are countries to make deals with. 

No, it’s not about the tariffs. As usual, it’s all about him. It’s about showing who’s the boss, and that he has the power to disrupt the world economic order with a wave of his hand. It’s about feeding his fragile, narcissistic ego by having the rest of the world’s leaders approach and kiss his ring. 

The thing is that when narcissistic control seeps into leadership, it distorts truth, erodes trust and destabilizes institutions. This is what we see happening now. Authoritarian leaders rely on states of volatile uncertainty, and that’s what this tariff business is really all about. 

When outcomes aren’t just unknown but constantly shifting and unpredictable, it prevents other countries from being able to anticipate and prepare, keeping them off-balance and unable to mount a practical response.

Awareness of this dynamic works like a vaccine, gradually building immunity against further harm. The thing is to withhold what these leaders consistently demand, what they need and what they desire. In childish minds like T****’s, it makes them easier to control. Ultimately, this will dilute their ability to maintain the kind of control they crave, and reset the the world stage.  

I suspect that the EU, and to a lesser extent China, have realized this, and that the best way for them to deal with our pathetic little man-child is to not play his game. And indeed, this is the way you always have to deal with petulant narcissism, in small children as well as powerful autocrats. 

Like Donald T****.