Pity The Poor Dictator When His Time is UP

Dictators by their nature will eventually go too far. They cannot help it. It is fixed in their personalities.

They usually come to power through a bloody revolution where part of the military sides with the government and part sides with the rebel leader-become-dictator. By whatever means the man ascends to the seat of power, he is destined to fail unless he can refrain from brutal enforcement of his every command.

Many dictators are revered by an adoring populace (at the beginning). Those who do not question his authority and allow themselves to be ruled and forego their own freedoms in order to allow the dictator to exorcize The Others will do well under his thumb.

But even the most benevolent of dictators use their unlimited power to squash dissent when it ultimately arises. His promises to the people are withdrawn. He cannot fulfill those promises and must blame someone because it is unthinkable (by himself) that his perfect plan and implementation were in some way deficient.

Most of the world's dictators do not last beyond a few years. Those who do become more despotic by the day. They squash protests, imprison opponents, execute resisters and journalists. In short, anyone who voices disapproval must go. The purges start with deportations and exile but soon ramp up to prison and disappearances.

In countries like North Korea and Saudi Arabia they have no compunction about summary executions. They make no bones about their brutality in order to serve as a deterrent to others. Several of the South American countries make the resistance disappear while maintaining a smiling face toward the world. They deny their brutality for as long as possible, but eventually that facade disintegrates too.

Here in America, we blindly elected a proto-dictator who immediately set to the task of consolidating his position as the supreme leader who cannot be touched by the law, the Congress or the Judiciary. His approach has been to foment chaos to a level where nobody is capable of focusing on a single issue. Congress cannot unify to act. The people cannot agree on whether he is or is not a dictator or whether being one is a good thing or bad. The Judiciary is being stacked to rubber stamp his authority to do whatever he thinks up to do.

Every vile act and policy has a hint of good in it. A cursory view of his "accomplishments" looks good at the surface, but look a bit deeper and the malicious aspects are exposed. Tax cuts on the wealthy give them money in their pockets to supposedly improve the economy, but all the cuts really are are Revenue Reduction Acts designed to hamstring the government and give cause to reducing the amount of money ordinary American have in their pockets. Cut revenues and you cannot effectively regulate the pollution corporations create in the absence of oversight and regulations.

Saving a few millions on SNAP funding to reduce the reliance of poor people on the government sounds good until you realize there are no opportunities for them to make up for the lost funds with any job they can get.

Stopping abortions sounds like a good and moral act until you see that the women who are getting the abortions cannot afford the additional mouth to feed (even as the dictator seeks to remove her SNAP funding for food.) Cutting through the propaganda about who seeks abortions and why one can see that the abortion is never entered into frivolously. It is not because the woman is promiscuous or vain, immoral or careless. It is because she sees the reality of that mouth to feed, the medical costs, the burden on her keeping a job and the effect on her existing children.

Stopping the killing of babies sounds noble but the tissue being aborted is far from being a baby. While it might have the potential of becoming a child, there is a reason it is called a fetus or embryo. Yeah, an egg could hatch into a chicken, but it is still just an egg.

The dictator cares not for the quality of the lives of the people but in controlling their actions and behaviors in such a manner as to maintain his dictatorship. Women with babies they cannot afford are controllable. The dictator finds it far easier to outlaw the abortion than to eliminate the need for it.

Dictators prescribing the permission for businesses to refuse services or employment to same-sex couples, transgender persons, persons with disabilities and anyone who is not like the business owners might please a few proprietors but ignores the fact that such people still need those services. It is only a quantum step from gender-discrimination back to racial and religious discrimination. The dictator thrives on such adversity.

The level of power and authority of dictators rises. Peaks and declines on a Bell-curve over time. The dictator will eventually be overthrown, but he can do a lot of generational damage before he is taken out.

#Sharpiegate

#Sharpiegate

A friend of mine asked me why I didn't shut up and let the President just do his job, the job he was chosen for. She treated my response as though it were a rhetorical question when I said, "do you really like the job he is doing and how he is doing it?" She would not or could not reply.

When the bully or tyrant keeps up his assault on you you must rebut and rebuff him at every move. Rest assured if you stop countering his moves, he won't. Giving up or giving in is surrender. You will pay the price; first for losing and then for working against him in the first place.

Silence is surrender. He who tires first loses. In this Presidential Administration there is no graceful winning as in Tennis. There is no leap over the net to shake hands with a worthy adversary. Indeed, this Administration has no adversaries, only enemies. It is not a game. It is a blood sport. There will be no drinks and a cigar in the clubhouse afterwards. More likely your head will be on a plaque in the hall.

No single man or woman can command the entire enterprise be it a corporation, a nation or a continent. The fallacy of domination is that there are millions of people who get the short end of the stick when a few people get the gem encrusted knobby end of the stick. Dictators succumb to the fate of a thousand cuts. Or Tens of thousands of cuts. He becomes engrossed in trying to defend each and every small assault on his empire. Therein lies the strategy in stopping the Tyrant.

He and his organization are already the defendants in hundreds of civil lawsuits. He and his organization face dozens of potential criminal indictments from multiple jurisdictions. The federal DOJ and those of several states have thick dockets with material ready for the opportunity to file and proceed. Each day that passed adds to the weight of the legal burdens facing him. A continuous stream of new cases turn up. The sources of evidence each must individually be enjoined to prohibit disclosure of records which will serve to topple the tyrant.

It is not they the legal jurisdictions who are merely amassing evidence against the dictator. It is he himself who has committed the violations and the jurisdictions are only uncovering the crimes. The crimes have already been committed. It only remains to use due process to prosecute and bring closure.

The approach of impugning the character and credibility of a few women accusers will not work when the crimes have been committed by a cohort of conspirators. The sexual accusations are necessarily a one-on-one, she said he said basis. There are few if any paper trails to follow. In the case of tax fraud, money laundering, income/loan manipulations, there are dozens of accessory perpetrators all of whom have a lot to lose if convicted. There are thousands of documents constituting tons of paper that will sink the guilty.

The powerful Justice-type folks will do their jobs and the rank and file people can do their part too. He loves misinformation, deception and diversion. Those strategies will be his downfall. Information overload and hammering away at his apparatus will wear him down. More investigations are surely forthcoming. This debacle of #Sharpiegate is merely the latest one.

America: Love It or Leave It

When you hear or chant “America: Love it or Leave it” what do you think it means? What is love for America? Exactly what is the America which is being referred to? It’s a simplistic concept and not one without analogous situations to be considered.

A child may not love a parent for the actions and behaviors of that parent but leaving the household is fraught with dangers which might be as perilous as staying under the roof of an abusive parent. A woman with toddler children is not in a position to pick up and leave the abusive husband, boyfriend or other head of household with the children in tow. Similarly she would be remiss in leaving those children behind to face the wrath of the abuser. For her the solution may be to force the abuser out in the hopes that he would eventually go away.

Leaving the country into which you were born is not the solution for people who are not benefiting from the resources that everyone else get a share of. Being told to leave it if you don’t like it is the message of the abuser. They count themselves as the rightful owner of the house, the country, the community assets which they are magnanimous enough to share as long as their rules are followed. “This is MY house and as long as you are under my roof and eat my food, you will obey MY rules.” How many of you have heard that from your father? He was declaring My house: Love It or Leave It.

While he might very well pay the rent or mortgage and foot the food bill for the household, he doesn’t own America. Each and every person who took their first breath inside the national borders is a part owner of all the resources this land has to offer. Every person granted citizenship by an act of government is likewise a citizen and entitled to a share. Problem is there are people who don’t recognize the rights of others. All that matters to them is what they want. How convenient it would be if every person who disagreed with them would go away and not act against them?

The short sighted consequence of that exodus would be no one to work for them or buy what they have to sell.

The America that the powerful ones tout is not the fun loving peaceful land of plenty for everyone. The “liberty and justice for all” part of the pledge to the flag is denied to many people. For them they love the ideals this country is supposed to stand for and are willing to fight against the usurping class to make it the country it claims to be. Leaving is not an option. Leaving is surrender. Leaving makes it impossible to correct the deficiencies.