How Do We Stop Them From Killing More People?
By Thom Hartmann A...
Donald Trump and Jair Bolsonaro, presidents of the United States and Brazil, are essentially refusing to do anything consequential about an epidemic that is killing massive numbers of their own countries' citizens.For this, they should be brought before the International Criminal Court at The Hague and charged with crimes against humanity.
To compound the situation here, Trump is now ridiculing people who wear masks, including Joe Biden.
Wearing masks is one of the most simple, low cost and effective ways to slow down the spread of this pandemic and reduce the numbers of deaths.
But Donald Trump doesn't want to smear his makeup, and so is suggesting to his insecure white male followers that wearing a mask makes a man seem less manly. He's also refusing to do anything about testing at the national level other than ordering some swabs.
This isn't just an abrogation of his duties as president. It is a crime. It is intentional disinformation being put forward purely for political purposes, and it will kill people.
Even worse was his ignoring and lying about the coming pandemic when he was first informed of it back in November and December. Trump and Bolsonaro knew what was coming, both from their own intelligence agencies and from news reports of the situations in China, Italy, and Spain.
While countries from Taiwan to New Zealand to Norway have gotten the virus under control, Trump and Bolsonaro did worse than nothing by spreading lies and disinformation while the virus exploded through their populations
Many of the families of people who have died of COVID-19 here in the United States have considered suing Trump, but it is nearly impossible to sue a sitting president, and Bill Barr has made it clear that the Justice Department will not hold Trump accountable for anything, up to and including shooting somebody on Fifth Avenue.
Therefore, we here in the United States, who are the victims of his criminal malfeasance, and the rest of the world who are victims of the United States and Brazil becoming the uncontrolled epicenters of a worldwide explosion of disease, must act.
It's time to bring Donald Trump, and his mini Trump, Jair Bolsonaro, before the international criminal court at The Hague and convict them of crimes against humanity.
-Thom
Comments
#3
#1
Great reference on "Go Here". Unfortunately way too much info for a Trumpster to read and digest. The Republicans know their base and what they can get away with. If they give any indication of understanding throw a diversion (like Morning Joe's aid's death) at them. That will keep them off of the track.
Another diversion.
#4
I am with you 100 percent. Let's act. It can't be from the same consciousness that created this mess we're in, though. Everything in this particular blog post is bad (good writing, of course), directing our attention to really bad situations. I appreciate you doing this.
Here is what resonates with me most as I've been thinking the same for a long time: "This isn't just an abrogation of his duties as president. It is a crime. It is intentional disinformation being put forward purely for political purposes, and it will kill people."
This should be enough to imprison a sitting president.
#5
Question; how are the actions of djt and the republican senate with respect to our country any less demeaning then the actions of the cop against George Floyd?
#6
I am white and now 66. When I was fourteen, a man, Vinny, who had an issues with my step-father, Dean, fired thirteen bullets into our apartment at 3am in North Hollywood, CA. Bullets came within inches of everyone, my deaf sister, my mother, my step-father, Dean, and me.
It resulted in 24 officers entering our apartment and the apartment the shooter fired from. In that apartment was my mother’s friend, Phyllis, and her six-month old baby, another friend Tina, a 5’ tall 90-pound Latina, and Vinny the shooter. None of them liked Dean. Vinny had convinced the ladies that the bullets were blanks. He worked in the studios. Just the same, they tried to stop him but were unable to.
Once in the apartment the officers started searching. I was standing there when the officers found Dean’s drugs, lots of them. In court they claimed that they began their search after finding seeds in my room. They lied in court many times over. Such a good lesson for a fourteen-year old.
Once they found the drugs, they gathered everyone into Phyllis’s apartment. They handcuffed all the adults and sat them down in a line against the front window. Tina yelled at the officers. They grabbed her, threw her face up on the floor and beat her with their clubs hitting her breasts repeatedly. They hit all of the adults with their clubs while they sat against the window. Please note that the person beaten the worst was Latina.
My sister and I, were allowed to roam freely between the two apartments with the baby. In Phyllis’s apartment I stood next to an officer who planted pot in a dining room draw.
The adults were taken into custody while my sister, the baby and I were left to wait for a family friend to pick us up. I am certain that if we were people of color, they would have sent us to Juvenile Hall. We were left with a rookie officer who sobbed as he apologized to me for what had happened that evening. He said he had not become an officer to participate in anything like what he had witnessed that night. He said he would be resigning from the force the next day. He did not want to ever want to experience that evening again.
That night a good officer was lost. Twenty-three officers covered up the violence and the planting of drugs by their fellow officers.
#7
Hi Thom,
There is more to policing history than slave patrols. Check out this history that adds the northern history of police to protect corporations from unions and union workers:
Policing is not about suppressing crime, it's about suppressing disorder (real or imagined). "More than crime, modern police forces in the United States emerged as a response to "disorder." What constitutes social and public order depends largely on who is defining those terms, and in the cities of 19th century America they were defined by the mercantile interests, who through taxes and political influence supported the development of bureaucratic policing institutions. These economic interests had a greater interest in social control than crime control. Private and for profit policing was too disorganized and too crime-specific in form to fulfill these needs. The emerging commercial elites needed a mechanism to insure a stable and orderly work force, a stable and orderly environment for the conduct of business, and the maintenance of what they referred to as the "collective good" (Spitzer and Scull 1977). These mercantile interests also wanted to divest themselves of the cost of protecting their own enterprises, transferring those costs from the private sector to the state." thttps://plsonline.eku.edu/insidelook/history-policing-united-states-part-1
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History is replete with petty autocrats from the first cave art up to ... 05:57:17, UTC, 5/28/2020. Trump and Bolsonaro are not aberrations, which is such a sad commentary on the advancement of civilization this late in the game.
Each generation has a moral responsibility to exorcise its own demons, especially in these perilous times, far direr than any preceding. Go here to review the exhaustive, fully-sourced public record to be submitted as material evidence to the International Criminal Court at The Hague -- on a divergent plane of existence where Truth, Justice, and the American Way are actual things, which we teach to our children.
It's too bad the adults in Republican Bizarro Universe forgot the lessons.