Harvey Weinstein, Roman Polanski and Bill Cosby are not aberrations. Women have been raped and defiled by the likes of them since the movie capital of the world began its existence as such. Washington, D.C. is the mirror image of LA.[2]. They are “Sin Cities USA,” along with Las Vegas. Today, they don’t even pretend to be otherwise.[3]
Needless to say, America’s enemies haven’t missed this decline and degradation one iota. Quite to the contrary, they are taking advantage of it at every turn. We are enmeshed in a war in Ukraine, which like other American debacles—Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq—has no end in sight. Wokeism has exalted freaks of nature and proper pronouns to such an extent that women’s sports are denigrated; their safety in restrooms and athletic facilities is threatened[4]; and sex changes are taught if not encouraged at an early age.
There are zero doubts that the inmates have taken over the asylum.[5]. Our borders are essentially wide open; drugs flow freely; crime is RAMPANT; and America’s future is seriously in question. Moreover, those who love our country feel helpless to change its trajectory. Everywhere they turn, there is madness. America has become unrecognizable since brain-addled Joe Biden and his thugs regained control of the levers of power barely two and a half years ago.[6]
[1] Timothy D. Naegele was counsel to the United States Senate’s Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, and chief of staff to Presidential Medal of Freedom and Congressional Gold Medal recipient and former U.S. Senator Edward W. Brooke (R-Mass). See, e.g.,Timothy D. Naegele Resume-21-8-6 and https://naegeleknol.wordpress.com/accomplishments/ He has an undergraduate degree in economics from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), as well as two law degrees from the School of Law (Boalt Hall), University of California, Berkeley, and from Georgetown University. He served as a Captain in the U.S. Army during the Vietnam War, assigned to the Defense Intelligence Agency at the Pentagon, where he received the Joint Service Commendation Medal (see, e.g., https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commendation_Medal#Joint_Service). Mr. Naegele is an Independent politically; and he is listed in Who’s Who in America, Who’s Who in American Law, and Who’s Who in Finance and Business. He has written extensively over the years (see, e.g., https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/articles/ and https://naegeleknol.wordpress.com/articles/), and studied photography with Ansel Adams. He can be contacted directly at tdnaegele.associates@gmail.com
Dr. Gradle, Beverly Hills, California commented about Gavin Newsom’s California – and Joe Biden’s America – at MailOnline:
“The criminals are getting bolder and bolder in California. They know they will face very few consequences thanks to the Liberal Government. No one is safe any longer, except those Lawmakers that have their own armed guards! The State has deteriorated very badly.”
More than two decades ago, I had dinner in the “Windows on the World” restaurant at the top of a World Trade Center tower in New York City, which no longer exists. Twenty-two years ago, on September 11, 2001, it was hit by a passenger jet and came crashing down.[2]
I had worked in the Pentagon too, and that day another jet cut a swath into the building, and killed many inside as well as its passengers. Another jet crashed in a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, after a group of passengers rushed the cockpit and its hijackers.
Still another jet brought down a second World Trade Center tower. For some of us, 9/11 will be remembered forever, like the day when I walked out of my law school class to learn that John F. Kennedy had been shot in Dallas.
Also, the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in Hawaii changed lives forever. Most of the “Greatest Generation” of Americans who won World War II are gone now. So are many of those who served in our wars in Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq.
But no American should ever forget these events in our history, lest they be repeated in horrific ways. Nuclear attacks can occur, as well as nation-ending EMP attacks that would take down our electrical grids and make electric vehicles (EVs) useless, and kill most of us.[3]
Tragically, D-Day that changed the world is largely forgotten[4]; and the Fourth of July is too.[5]. Those who forget the past are destined to repeat it . . . or even worse—much worse than 9/11. History must be taught and revered, not ignored or rewritten. The good, bad and the ugly must be understood, to put the future into perspective.[6]
[1] Timothy D. Naegele was counsel to the United States Senate’s Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, and chief of staff to Presidential Medal of Freedom and Congressional Gold Medal recipient and former U.S. Senator Edward W. Brooke (R-Mass). See, e.g.,Timothy D. Naegele Resume-21-8-6 and https://naegeleknol.wordpress.com/accomplishments/ He has an undergraduate degree in economics from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), as well as two law degrees from the School of Law (Boalt Hall), University of California, Berkeley, and from Georgetown University. He served as a Captain in the U.S. Army during the Vietnam War, assigned to the Defense Intelligence Agency at the Pentagon, where he received the Joint Service Commendation Medal (see, e.g., https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commendation_Medal#Joint_Service). Mr. Naegele is an Independent politically; and he is listed in Who’s Who in America, Who’s Who in American Law, and Who’s Who in Finance and Business. He has written extensively over the years (see, e.g., https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/articles/ and https://naegeleknol.wordpress.com/articles/), and studied photography with Ansel Adams. He can be contacted directly at tdnaegele.associates@gmail.com
So wrote Alfred, Lord Tennyson in his “Charge of the Light Brigade” about the harsh realities and tragedy of wars.[2]
Franklin D. Roosevelt gave us World War II, while Dwight D. Eisenhower won that war in Europe—or much of the continent might be speaking German today. John F. Kennedy thrust us into Vietnam, and almost launched a nuclear holocaust with the Soviet Union.
Lyndon Johnson expanded JFK’s Vietnam War, while years earlier Harry Truman gave us the war in Korea.[3] America’s Democrats have often been the party of war, while Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush brought down the Soviet Union without a shot being fired.
Friends of mine died during the Vietnam War; and I was in Berlin when the ragtag Soviet military was retreating to “tent cities” in the USSR, and selling their uniforms and plumbing fixtures from their barracks.
Today, brain-addled Joe Biden has America at war in distant Ukraine, with the Ukrainians serving as our proxies or surrogates. China is on the verge of invading Taiwan, and flexing its military muscles elsewhere globally, including an ever-expanding and ominous presence in our own hemisphere.
Anyone who thinks that a war is a great and glorious undertaking, knows very little or nothing about wars. Those who have lost friends or loved ones, or seen them maimed, has a truer sense of the costs. Right now, Russia’s butcher Vladimir Putin is conducting a savage war in Ukraine, where rape and torture are commonplace.
China is equally brutal. There are approximately one million Uyghurs and other prisoners in Chinese concentration camps. EMP weapons have been used by China in its border war with India. If anyone thinks that China would hesitate to engage in tactics approximating or exceeding what Putin has done, gross naïveté is evident.
Lastly, anyone reading this article may be required to serve in our next war, or will have loved ones who will do so; and this includes both men and women.
[1] Timothy D. Naegele was counsel to the United States Senate’s Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, and chief of staff to Presidential Medal of Freedom and Congressional Gold Medal recipient and former U.S. Senator Edward W. Brooke (R-Mass). See, e.g.,Timothy D. Naegele Resume-21-8-6 and https://naegeleknol.wordpress.com/accomplishments/ He has an undergraduate degree in economics from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), as well as two law degrees from the School of Law (Boalt Hall), University of California, Berkeley, and from Georgetown University. He served as a Captain in the U.S. Army during the Vietnam War, assigned to the Defense Intelligence Agency at the Pentagon, where he received the Joint Service Commendation Medal (see, e.g., https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commendation_Medal#Joint_Service). Mr. Naegele is an Independent politically; and he is listed in Who’s Who in America, Who’s Who in American Law, and Who’s Who in Finance and Business. He has written extensively over the years (see, e.g., https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/articles/ and https://naegeleknol.wordpress.com/articles/), and studied photography with Ansel Adams. He can be contacted directly at tdnaegele.associates@gmail.com
Lots of Americans—perhaps most of them—have never heard of Watergate, much less the so-called “White House plumbers” that are being trumpeted by the woke, Leftist media as the 2024 presidential race begins in earnest. Joe Biden is brain-addled at best; and he may be gone from our midst at any moment. But otherwise, he is the horse that his political party is riding, for better or worse. And in a thoroughly-sinister and despicable manner, albeit predictably, they are trying to destroy Donald Trump for the umpteenth time.
All of this needs to be put into perspective historically. The “Progressives”—a term that the Democrats coined, coopted and began using to mask their skulduggery and blatant criminality—stole the 1960 election from Richard Nixon. The thoroughly-immoral John F. Kennedy, his family, the Democrats and Chicago mob boss Sam Giancana conspired together to rig the elections in Chicago and West Virginia. A footnote, but an important one is that JFK and Giancana shared a mistress, Judith Campbell Exner, whom they used as a go-between.
Both JFK and Bobby Kennedy were assassinated; Lyndon Johnson became the President; and he escalated the Vietnam War, such that more than 58,000 Americans died, some of whom were my friends. Many more were maimed; and our great nation’s honor and prestige globally were impaled on a human tragedy to such an extent that Johnson could not run for reelection in 1968.
Reenter Nixon, and he won the presidency in that year, and went on to win a second term by a landslide in 1972. Never chastened, the Democrats seized on an amateurish break-in of their party headquarters in Washington, D.C.’s Watergate office complex to destroy the Nixon presidency. The so-called “plumbers” broke into their offices; Nixon was tagged with a “cover up” of what had happened; and a rising chorus of Democrats and their acolytes in the media drove him from the presidency.
Next, these utterly ruthless Democrats tried to bring down Ronald Reagan’s presidency with allegations that were labeled “Iran Contra,” despite the assassination attempt on his life, and the fact that he and George H.W. Bush brought down the Soviet Union without a shot being fired. Then, they moved on to Trump, and have tried to destroy him since his quest for the presidency began. Indeed, as Biden’s mental capacity declines steadily, they and the “Deep State”—or embedded bureaucracy—are frantically trying to destroy Trump before he resumes the presidency after a four-year hiatus.
The Biden presidency has brought the United States to the brink of World War III—or multidimensional wars in Ukraine, Taiwan and the Asia Pacific, the Korean peninsula and the Middle East—which might destroy life as we know it. The Biden “Nightmare” has destroyed our energy independence; unleashed a flood of cartel members, human traffickers and drugs that kill across our borders; and condoned unprecedented and unpunished crime in our cities and throughout the United States.
Thus, put into perspective, Watergate was a blip on history’s radar screen, while the Democrats’ criminality might destroy life as we know it. Most Americans are simply trying to survive today’s challenges; and they attempt to ignore homelessness and other indicia of America’s decline and societal destruction. Having seemingly weathered Covid-19 and its mutations—or the Chinese viruses—many are focused on the basics of keeping their families intact and afloat.
The idea that they or their children or grandchildren might be drafted to fight the next wars, and soon, is abhorrent beyond belief. It’s as if a bad dream suddenly became their reality, and the inmates had taken over the asylum. Yet, this is the edge of an abyss to which Joe Biden and his criminal co-conspirators have brought us in two short years. It seems impossible, you may say or think. But this is the destination to which we may be arriving after years of the unchecked madness.
[1] Timothy D. Naegele was counsel to the United States Senate’s Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, and chief of staff to Presidential Medal of Freedom and Congressional Gold Medal recipient and former U.S. Senator Edward W. Brooke (R-Mass). See, e.g.,Timothy D. Naegele Resume-21-8-6 and https://naegeleknol.wordpress.com/accomplishments/ He has an undergraduate degree in economics from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), as well as two law degrees from the School of Law (Boalt Hall), University of California, Berkeley, and from Georgetown University. He served as a Captain in the U.S. Army during the Vietnam War, assigned to the Defense Intelligence Agency at the Pentagon, where he received the Joint Service Commendation Medal (see, e.g., https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commendation_Medal#Joint_Service). Mr. Naegele is an Independent politically; and he is listed in Who’s Who in America, Who’s Who in American Law, and Who’s Who in Finance and Business. He has written extensively over the years (see, e.g., https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/articles/ and https://naegeleknol.wordpress.com/articles/), and studied photography with Ansel Adams. He can be contacted directly at tdnaegele.associates@gmail.com
Some of us have lived through World War II, the Korean War, our wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and “minor skirmishes” such as John F. Kennedy’s “Bay of Pigs” fiasco in Cuba.[2] In the tony area of Los Angeles called Brentwood, just up the street from where O.J. Simpson killed his wife Nicole and Ron Goldman, my elementary school classmates and I went through mock nuclear attack drills. We had to hide under our school desks and cover our heads, to protect ourselves against “falling debris” from Soviet attacks that thankfully never came.
Growing up a mile or so west of the UCLA campus in Los Angeles, my first and only childhood memories of World War II were of giant searchlights—like those used at Hollywood movie premieres—scanning the skies for Japanese aircraft. Was this an overreaction? The fact is that a Japanese submarine shelled the Santa Barbara oilfields at Ellwood, just north of today’s UCSB college campus.[3]
Now, in a country that few Americans knew anything about, Russia’s KGB-trained killer Vladimir Putin’s thugs have destroyed much of Ukraine, and have raped and tortured Ukrainian women, and subjected Ukrainians to barbarism not seen in Europe since World War II. Many forget that when his Soviet antecedents entered Berlin at the end of that war, they raped an estimated 2 million German women. A former secretary of mine was a young girl there; and what she witnessed was unspeakable. No human being should ever go through that, she told me, yet it is happening again, as Putin’s barbarians defy all civilized norms.
And all of this is occurring as the world slowly recovers from China’s deadly Coronavirus pandemic and its lockdowns, which have killed or injured millions, physically, economically and mentally. Not satisfied, the Chinese huns in Beijing are threatening war unless the United States and the West acquiesce to their demands regarding Taiwan and the Pacific.[4] As if this was not enough, Putin even threatens the Arctic[5], in addition to unleashing a nuclear war.
None of the catastrophes overshadow the possibility of nation-ending EMP attacks, which might kill millions.[6] Is this pure and unadulterated madness? Of course it is.[7] And it is occurring at a time in history when the United States is leaderless, and perhaps more divided than at anytime since the Vietnam War. We have a President who can barely utter a complete thought, and who may have been mentally impaired after at least two brain operations.[8] And we have a Vice President standing in the wings and waiting for him to “croak,” who was a former ho.[9]
Also, illegal aliens (including human traffickers and members of drug cartels) have been flooding across our borders, unobstructed. Crime has been spiraling out of control because our police have been targeted by the thugs, slugs, hoods and mongrels of “Black Lives Matter,” Antifa and other far-Left groups, which have burned our cities and destroyed black and other businesses. Prices for gasoline and other commodities have reached stratospheric levels, and are expected to climb even higher, because America’s eco-Nazis have sought to curtail or destroy our oil production and independence. And shortages of vital goods exist.
The United States has been weakened at a critical time in history when we as Americans—of all colors, ethnicities, religious beliefs and economic levels—can ill afford it. Needless to say, this whets the appetites of our enemies, and is what they have been planning carefully for years. Our automobile sales lots are empty because of the shortage of chips and other essential parts. Our laptops and many cellphones are made in China; and if Chinese products were removed from the shelves of Walmart stores, they would be decimated.
The game of chess is won by those who plan ahead, and advance methodically from move to move, and from “check” to “checkmate.” Right now it can be argued that China and Russia are moving ever so close to having us in “check,” by crippling our great nation. Their next move would be “checkmate,” which would destroy our lives as we have known them. Only by waking up now, and realizing fully the perils we face, can we avoid a catastrophic end that none of us ever thought would be possible.
[1] Timothy D. Naegele was counsel to the United States Senate’s Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, and chief of staff to Presidential Medal of Freedom and Congressional Gold Medal recipient and former U.S. Senator Edward W. Brooke (R-Mass). See, e.g.,Timothy D. Naegele Resume-21-8-6 and https://naegeleknol.wordpress.com/accomplishments/ He has an undergraduate degree in economics from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), as well as two law degrees from the School of Law (Boalt Hall), University of California, Berkeley, and from Georgetown University. He served as a Captain in the U.S. Army during the Vietnam War, assigned to the Defense Intelligence Agency at the Pentagon, where he received the Joint Service Commendation Medal (see, e.g., https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commendation_Medal#Joint_Service). Mr. Naegele is an Independent politically; and he is listed in Who’s Who in America, Who’s Who in American Law, and Who’s Who in Finance and Business. He has written extensively over the years (see, e.g., https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/articles/ and https://naegeleknol.wordpress.com/articles/), and studied photography with Ansel Adams. He can be contacted directly at tdnaegele.associates@gmail.com
Government at all levels of America is a vast wasteland of tragic inefficiency and incompetence. People are paid relatively large sums of money to do nothing—or even worse, to screw things up. The Coronavirus pandemic lockdowns have underscored that fact. Many government workers stayed home and did essentially nothing for long periods of time; and some are still doing that.
When I worked in the Pentagon during the height of the Vietnam War, it was affectionately referred to as “Fort Fumble” by many who worked there. The feeling was that the only reason we had survived as a nation was that our enemies were more incompetent than we were. The fact is that JFK-Robert McNamara-Lyndon Johnson’s War never should have been fought in the first place.
Approximately 55,000 Americans died for nothing, and some were my friends. Many more were maimed for life, physically and mentally. Fast forward to George W. Bush’s Afghan and Iraq Wars, and the pattern was repeated. But incompetence spreads across all levels of government, from the highest federal departments in Washington, D.C., to the local offices of the Social Security Administration and other federal agencies, to the offices of the lowest levels of state and local governments.
Government does not work, period. The FBI and Department of Justice are corrupt, and routinely manipulated for political purposes.[2] Indeed, the coin of the realm in Washington and elsewhere for lawyers and lobbyists is their ability to influence and obtain results. In the process, they provide prostitutes or simply young girls who are trying to climb the social ladder of Washington and other power centers—including the lowest levels.[3]
None of this would constitute the tragedy that it is if Russia’s KGB-trained killer Vladimir Putin was not threatening nuclear war if he does not get his way in Ukraine and beyond; and if China was not poised to invade Taiwan, and move elsewhere in the world. Americans cannot afford to have a leadership vacuum, with its layers of government performing at less than is possible—and World War III possibly staring us in the face.
[1] Timothy D. Naegele was counsel to the United States Senate’s Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, and chief of staff to Presidential Medal of Freedom and Congressional Gold Medal recipient and former U.S. Senator Edward W. Brooke (R-Mass). See, e.g.,Timothy D. Naegele Resume-21-8-6 and https://naegeleknol.wordpress.com/accomplishments/ He has an undergraduate degree in economics from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), as well as two law degrees from the School of Law (Boalt Hall), University of California, Berkeley, and from Georgetown University. He served as a Captain in the U.S. Army during the Vietnam War, assigned to the Defense Intelligence Agency at the Pentagon, where he received the Joint Service Commendation Medal (see, e.g., https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commendation_Medal#Joint_Service). Mr. Naegele is an Independent politically; and he is listed in Who’s Who in America, Who’s Who in American Law, and Who’s Who in Finance and Business. He has written extensively over the years (see, e.g., https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/articles/ and https://naegeleknol.wordpress.com/articles/), and studied photography with Ansel Adams. He can be contacted directly at tdnaegele.associates@gmail.com
The photo below is of a young Afghan woman who was disfigured years ago. Her turmoil was discussed here[2]; and her plight is cited again, because what happened to her may be illustrative of what happens to so many Afghan women and young girls in the days and months to come. They will be raped, disfigured and become sexual slaves of the Taliban. It will be as if the gates of Hell have been opened wide to them, and there is no mercy or kindness in this world.
The same thing happened in Syria and in the countries of Africa; and human trafficking is a fact of life in the United States and globally.[3] Also, the harvesting of human body parts is real and happens every day in Mexico and elsewhere.[4] Some of us are so repulsed by such thoughts that we say prayers for the victims, but turn our attentions elsewhere. We need to stay as positive as possible in the midst of the Coronavirus pandemic that has claimed so many lives, and hurt others physically, psychologically and economically.[5]
Historically, Mujahideen fighters helped the United States drive the Soviet Union out of Afghanistan, which led to the collapse of the “Evil Empire” ultimately. Instead of helping them, Congress turned its back, just like it abandoned our allies in Vietnam. The Mujahideen fighters morphed into today’s Taliban, who quite naturally have hated Americans ever since, after being betrayed.[6]
Seared into the memories of some of us are the images of people being airlifted from the roof of our embassy in Saigon, before Vietnam fell, which has been occurring in Kabul as America abandons that doomed capital too.[7] And then there was the day when we turned on our TVs to watch the twin towers collapsing in New York City on 9/11, as well as the Pentagon—where I had worked—being attacked, and the passenger jet crashing in Shanksville, Pennsylvania.[8]
It has been written that the fall of Afghanistan and the slaughter there, and the raping and enslavement of Afghan women and young girls, will haunt the Democrats for a generation. Surely, it is the defining moment of the failed Biden-Harris presidency, just as Lyndon Johnson could not run for reelection in the wake of the Vietnam tragedy.[9] Like the image below, at the very least the fall of Afghanistan may produce scenes that are never forgotten by Americans or others globally.
Lastly, the open question is whether the fall of Afghanistan and America’s humiliation will create or trigger a “domino effect,” whereby other countries in the region (or globally) fall, which have been our allies? Obituaries will be written for decades to come, and the victors will write theirs.[10] But right now our prayers are with our friends in Afghanistan who will suffer terribly. Some will wonder where a loving God is, in the midst of so much madness.
[1] Timothy D. Naegele was counsel to the United States Senate’s Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, and chief of staff to Presidential Medal of Freedom and Congressional Gold Medal recipient and former U.S. Senator Edward W. Brooke (R-Mass). See, e.g.,Timothy D. Naegele Resume-21-8-6 He has an undergraduate degree in economics from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), as well as two law degrees from the School of Law (Boalt Hall), University of California, Berkeley, and from Georgetown University. He served as a Captain in the U.S. Army during the Vietnam War, assigned to the Defense Intelligence Agency at the Pentagon, where he received the Joint Service Commendation Medal (see, e.g., https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commendation_Medal#Joint_Service). Mr. Naegele is an Independent politically; and he is listed in Who’s Who in America, Who’s Who in American Law, and Who’s Who in Finance and Business. He has written extensively over the years (see, e.g., https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/articles/), and studied photography with Ansel Adams; and he can be contacted directly at tdnaegele.associates@gmail.com
[3] See, e.g., https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2018/10/25/remembering-the-comfort-women-victims-of-human-trafficking-and-slavery/ (“Remembering The Comfort Women, Victims Of Human Trafficking And Slavery”) (see also the comments beneath this article)
[4] See, e.g., https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2017/06/15/who-is-next-the-murder-of-a-young-american-and-the-harvesting-of-his-body-parts-in-mexico/ (“Who Is Next? The Murder Of A Young American And The Harvesting Of His Body Parts In Mexico”) (see also the comments beneath this article)
[5] See, e.g., https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/timothy-d.-naegele.pdf (“The Coronavirus and Similar Global Issues: How to Address Them”)
[9] See, e.g., https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyndon_B._Johnson#1968_presidential_election
[10] See, e.g., https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9896007/Taliban-commander-gives-press-conference-INSIDE-Kabuls-Presidential-Palace.html (“Taliban leader claims he ‘spent eight years in Guantanamo Bay’ in triumphant speech from Kabul palace as Islamists seize Afghanistan – while thousands fight to flee country out chaotic scenes at airport”)
Some of us have lived through this period of time before. Only the faces change.
We were in Berkeley for the “Free Speech” and anti-Vietnam War riots. We were in Washington, D.C. when the city was set ablaze after Martin Luther King, Jr. was killed in Memphis. We were there when Watergate broke, and we lived through that too. We lived with 9/11, and watched Iraq turn into a graveyard for so many Americans and their dreams, while still others were maimed for life, and trillions of dollars were wasted . . . for nothing.[2]
The title of this article is the rallying cry of Pat Buchanan—an adviser to Presidents Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and Gerald Ford, and a former GOP presidential aspirant himself—who has written:
Sunday morning, President Trump announced that the world’s worst terrorist, the head of the ISIS caliphate who had raped an American woman, had received justice.
About to be captured and carried off in a helicopter by U.S. special forces, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi blew himself up with an explosive vest in a compound in northwest Syria. The long search for the sadist and fanatic had ended in triumph. No U.S. troops were lost.
That evening, Trump went out to the fifth game of the World Series between the Washington Nationals and Houston Astros. As his face was flashed on the big screen, the stadium erupted with people booing and chanting, “Impeach Trump!” and “Lock him up!”
That Trump is not cheered at a D.C. baseball game is not odd, for the spectators are not working-class Trumpians. Series tickets cost hundreds, even thousands, of dollars, and the spectators are drawn from a town that gave Donald Trump 4% of its votes in 2016.
The mutual distrust in this city was on display when Trump told the press yesterday morning that he had not alerted House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to the impending U.S. raid, because he was afraid of leaks.
“I wanted to make sure this kept secret,” said Trump. “I don’t want to have people lost. … We were going to notify them last night, but we decided not to do that because Washington leaks like nothing I’ve ever seen before. … A leak could have cost the death of all of them.”
The Russians, however, were alerted we were coming, as they control the airspace over the compound we were targeting. And Trump thanked the Russians for their cooperation.
Also left out of the loop was the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Adam Schiff, one of the “Gang of Eight” that is almost always given a heads-up about major military operations. Schiff is conducting secret hearings to drum up support for Trump’s impeachment and removal for “high crimes and misdemeanors.”
It is imprecise to say this city is divided over Trump. It is rather almost solidly united behind what millions of Middle Americans believe to be a deep state-media conspiracy to overturn the 2016 election and effect a coup d’etat against a president whom this city detests but fears it cannot defeat in 2020.
A week ago, this writer noted the astonishing number of foreign capitals that were on fire with protests that go beyond marching and demonstrating — to riot, rebellion and even revolution. As with the “yellow vest” protests that shut down Paris on many weekends this past year, and the disorders in Hong Kong, the epidemic had spread to Beirut, Barcelona and Santiago, Chile.
In Iraq, over 200 have been killed and thousands injured in protests this month against the Baghdad regime. In Algeria, now six months after President Abdelaziz Bouteflika was forced to step down, rioters still battle the army.
The thread common to these uncivil, often-violent disruptions?
A conviction that the cause the protesters are advancing is so critical, noble and necessary that democratic rules may be dispensed with and law and order suspended in pursuit of the cause.
Saturday’s Washington Post describes the mindset that is taking hold in D.C. among militants, using as an example the Extinction Rebellion group’s dragging of a boat into the street at 16th & K to block traffic for hours to call attention to rising sea levels.
“Blocking traffic may only be the beginning,” wrote Marissa Lang. “As protests in the District continue at a rate of about two a day, activists looking to stand out from crowds that march near the White House or the Mall have resorted to more disruptive measures in recent weeks — a tactic that experts said will probably escalate.”
She cites sociology professor Dana Fisher: “There has been a lot of discussion among people on the left who use protests as a tactic that peaceful, traditional protests may not be enough. … That could mean … more people blocking traffic. … I think we’re going to see a lot more people coming into D.C. to get arrested.”
Fisher continues: “When activists don’t feel like their grievances are being heard or responded to … the natural progression is to get more confrontational and, sometimes, to get more violent. … I’m … surprised it’s taken so long.”
Who wins when leftists go lawless — in liberal citadels like D.C.?
This thinking echoes the famous “bodies upon the gears” speech of Mario Savio at the famous 1964 University of California, Berkeley campus riot: “There’s a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that … you’ve got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you’ve got to make it stop!”
After Berkeley came civil disobedience; the burning of ROTC buildings; and urban riots marked by looting, shooting and arson. Out of that came Richard Nixon’s 49-state landslide, Ronald Reagan, and Republican triumphs in five of six presidential elections starting in 1968.
Bring it on.[3]
To those at the stadium in our nation’s capital who booed the President—and chanted, “Impeach Trump!” and “Lock him up!”—they are the dregs of society, without a purpose in life. Pat Buchanan is right: they are not working-class Americans, but the privileged elite; and they occupy a town that gave Donald Trump only four percent of its votes in 2016. They do not relate to you and me. They are like the Hollywood-do-nothings who prance around spouting meaningless platitudes, and feeling entitled.
Trump is right not to trust any Democrats, or those on the far-Left, or their media lackeys—or the RINOs in the Republican Party such as the despicable Mitt Romney. Yes, lots of us are ashamed that we voted for him and the equally-despicable Paul Ryan and others.[4] And yes too, Russia’s killer and dictator-for-life Vladimir Putin whom I despise is more trustworthy than the un-American racist anti-Semite Barack Obama and his co-conspirators who have engaged in sedition, such as Adam Schiff, Maxine Waters and Jerry Nadler.[5]
A rising number of Americans are understanding, finally, that we are in the midst of this great nation’s second Civil War: a fight for the soul of America, which will determine its destiny for years and generations to come. Abraham Lincoln stood at a similar precipice, and stared into the abyss, and he destroyed the enemy. While it took generations to heal, he saved our great Republic. Had he failed, we might not be one nation today.[6] Donald Trump is his worthy successor.
[1] Timothy D. Naegele was counsel to the United States Senate’s Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, and chief of staff to Presidential Medal of Freedom and Congressional Gold Medal recipient and former U.S. Senator Edward W. Brooke (R-Mass). He and his firm, Timothy D. Naegele & Associates, specialize in Banking and Financial Institutions Law, Internet Law, Litigation and other matters (seewww.naegele.com and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/timothy-d.-naegele-resume-19-9-27.pdf). He has an undergraduate degree in economics from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), as well as two law degrees from the School of Law (Boalt Hall), University of California, Berkeley, and from Georgetown University. He served as a Captain in the U.S. Army, assigned to the Defense Intelligence Agency at the Pentagon, where he received the Joint Service Commendation Medal (see, e.g., https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commendation_Medal#Joint_Service). Mr. Naegele is an Independent politically; and he is listed in Who’s Who in America, Who’s Who in American Law, and Who’s Who in Finance and Business. He has written extensively over the years (see, e.g., www.naegele.com/whats_new.html#articles), and can be contacted directly at tdnaegele.associates@gmail.com
The United States has the purest form of democracy in the world. Does this mean that it is perfect, and without flaws? Certainly not. But we are blessed by our Founders’ inherent wisdom, which has stood the tests of time. Years ago, I wrote:
I believe in this country, and I believe in Americans of all colors, faiths and backgrounds. The United States is the only true melting pot in the world, with its populace representing a United Nations of the world’s peoples. Yes, we fight and we even discriminate, but when times are tough—like after 9/11—we come together as one nation, which makes this country so great and special. Also, all of us or our ancestors came here from somewhere else. Even the American Indians are descended from those who crossed the Bering Strait—or the “Bering land bridge”—according to anthropologists.[2]
Pat Buchanan—an adviser to Presidents Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and Gerald Ford, and a former GOP presidential aspirant himself—has asked the question that is the title of this article:
What happens when democracy fails to deliver? What happens when people give up on democracy?
What happens when a majority or militant minority decide that the constitutional rights of free speech, free elections, peaceful assembly and petition are inadequate and take to the streets to force democracy to submit to their demands?
Our world may be about to find out.
Chile is the most stable and prosperous country in Latin America.
Yet when its capital, Santiago, recently raised subway fares by 5%, thousands poured into the streets. Rioting, looting, arson followed. The Metro system was utterly trashed. Police were assaulted. People died. The rioting spread to six other cities. Troops were called out.
President a Sebastian Pinera repealed the fare hike and declared a national emergency, stating, “Chile is at war against a powerful, implacable enemy who does not respect anything or anyone and is willing to use violence and crime without any limits.”
How does a democracy that has spawned within itself a powerful and implacable enemy deal with it?
Last week, tens of thousands of Lebanese of all faiths and political associations rioted in Beirut and Tripoli to demand the overthrow of the regime and the ouster of its president, speaker of parliament and Prime Minister Saad Hariri. All must go, the masses demand.
In Barcelona, Friday, half a million people surged into the streets in protest after the sentencing in Madrid of the secessionists who sought to bring about the independence of Catalonia from Spain in 2017.
In all of China, few enjoy the freedoms of the 7 million in Hong Kong. Yet, for five months, these fortunate and free Chinese, to protest a proposal that would have allowed Hong Kong residents to be extradited to China, stormed into the streets to defy the regime and denounce the conditions under which they live.
These protests have been marked by riots, vandalism, arson and clashes with police. “Hong Kong streets descended into chaos following an unauthorized pro-democracy rally Sunday,” writes the Associated Press. Protesters “set up roadblocks and torched businesses, and police responded with tear gas and a water cannon. Protesters tossed firebombs and took their anger out on shops with mainland Chinese ties.”
What are the Hong Kong residents denouncing and demanding?
They are protesting both present and future limitations on their freedom. The appearance of American flags in the protests suggests that what they seek is what the agitators behind the Boston Tea Party and the boys and men at Concord Bridge sought — independence, liberty and a severing of the ties to the mother country.
Yet, because the Communist regime of Xi Jinping could not survive such an amputation, the liberation of Hong Kong is not in the cards. The end to these months of protest will likely be frustration, futility and failure.
Perhaps it is that realization that explains the vehemence and violence. But the rage is also what kills the support they initially received.
In 1960s America, the first civil rights demonstrations attracted widespread sympathy. But the outburst of urban riots that followed in Harlem, Watts, Newark, Detroit and 100 cities after Martin Luther King’s assassination sent millions streaming to the banners of Gov. George Wallace in the campaigns of 1968 and 1972.
When the “yellow vest” protests broke out in 2018 in Paris, over a fuel tax, the demonstrators had the support of millions of Frenchmen.
But that support dissipated when protesters began smashing windows of boutique shops on the Champs-Elysee, assaulting police and desecrating monuments and memorials.
This reversion to violence, ransacking of stores and showering of police with bricks, bottles and debris, is costing the protesters much of the backing they enjoyed. In the trade-off between freedom and order, people will ultimately opt for order.
Yet, one wonders: Why are these outbursts of violent protests and rioting taking place in stable, free and prosperous societies?
Chile is the most stable and wealthy country in South America. Catalonia is the most prosperous part of Spain. Paris is hardly a hellhole of repression. And Hong Kong is the freest city of China.
If the beneficiaries of freedoms and democratic rights come to regard them as insufficient to produce the political, economic and social results they demand, what does that portend for democracy’s future?
For, despite the looting, arson and attacks on cops in Hong Kong, Xi Jinping is not going to order his satraps to yield to popular demands for autonomy or independence. Nor is Madrid going to accept the loss of Barcelona and secession of Catalonia. Nor is the conservative Chilean government going to yield to the street rebels and revolutionaries. Nor is Paris going to back down to the “yellow vests.”
Yet, one wonders: If the “end of history” and worldwide triumph of democratic capitalism thesis has, as most agree, been disproven, is it possible that the Age of Democracy is itself a passing phase in the history of the West and the world?[3]
Americans have not given up on democracy at all. While many are at odds with their fellow citizens about the direction that our great nation should take, they are exercising their rights of free speech dramatically, for an often-troubled world to see. Is it a pretty sight? Is democracy in action an edifying experience? Not always, but it is a sign that our great democracy is functioning.
The rifts in our body politic cut across lots of fracture lines: Donald Trump or no Trump[4]; abortions or no abortions[5]; foreign wars or no foreign wars[6]; the admission of illegal immigrants or none[7]; man-made “global warming,” or one of the greatest hoaxes perpetrated on Mankind by the “eco-Nazis”[8]; — . . . and the list goes on and on.
If one person could be said to have been at the very heart of the cleavages in our society today it is the racist and anti-Semite Barack Obama, who did more than any other president to resew the seeds of racism in America today, and to divide this country along fault lines that are “fragile” in the best of times.[9] By leading the treasonous efforts to destroy the candidacy and then the presidency of Donald Trump, there is no doubt that Obama engaged in sedition, which is consistent with his character.[10]
Pat Buchanan was correct when he observed that “the rage is . . . what kills the support they initially received”—and we have seen all of this before (e.g., during the Vietnam War era), and survived. George Orwell warned about it in his prescient Animal Farm, where all of the animals were considered equal until the Pigs accreted power and control, and subjugated the other animals (or “disbelievers”) until they reigned supreme.[11]
Abraham Lincoln and his trusted generals, Ulysses S. Grant and William Tecumseh Sherman, dealt with the harsh realities of divisions within our great nation that might have torn it asunder—and they prevailed.[12] At times, the forces of division (and of evil and darkness) must be destroyed, not simply defeated. Nothing less will suffice. This was certainly true of Adolph Hitler and his “Thousand-Year Reich.”
Lastly, Pat Buchanan was mistaken in the conclusion of his article above. In the United States, the Left is being given enough rope to hang itself, like its alter egos did before. And most Americans are myopic: they are focused on their own lives, and do not really care what goes on in the world outside—as long as it does not affect them—which is understandable.
[1] Timothy D. Naegele was counsel to the United States Senate’s Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, and chief of staff to Presidential Medal of Freedom and Congressional Gold Medal recipient and former U.S. Senator Edward W. Brooke (R-Mass). He and his firm, Timothy D. Naegele & Associates, specialize in Banking and Financial Institutions Law, Internet Law, Litigation and other matters (seewww.naegele.com and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/timothy-d.-naegele-resume-19-9-27.pdf). He has an undergraduate degree in economics from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), as well as two law degrees from the School of Law (Boalt Hall), University of California, Berkeley, and from Georgetown University. He served as a Captain in the U.S. Army, assigned to the Defense Intelligence Agency at the Pentagon, where he received the Joint Service Commendation Medal (see, e.g., https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commendation_Medal#Joint_Service). Mr. Naegele is an Independent politically; and he is listed in Who’s Who in America, Who’s Who in American Law, and Who’s Who in Finance and Business. He has written extensively over the years (see, e.g., www.naegele.com/whats_new.html#articles), and can be contacted directly at tdnaegele.associates@gmail.com
Like it or not, this is what the far-Left Democrats and their kindred spirits in America’s so-called “mainstream media” have wrought. They are the party that gave us the senseless and tragic Vietnam War during which more than 55,000 Americans died—and many more were maimed, and to this day are “walking wounded”—and the party that gave us Watergate. And yes, lots of us began as Democrats, but will never vote for one again.
Today, they have a blood thirst for destroying the presidency of Donald Trump; and the father and progenitor of this is the un-American traitor, racist and anti-Semite, Barack Obama. Instead of healing racial divisions in this great nation, he exacerbated them and fed them. Few Americans took time to read his book before his election as our president in 2008, “Dreams from My Father.”[2] If they had, they would have realized fully his un-American and racist views.
Having grown up in Hawaii and Indonesia, he never lived on the U.S. mainland until he attended Occidental College in Los Angeles, and later Columbia University in New York City, during which time he admitted to being a “druggie.” A direct quote:
Junkie. Pothead. That’s where I’d been headed: the final, fatal role of the young would-be black man.[3]
He attended the church of the racist Jeremiah Wright for many years[4]; and he openly embraced the notorious anti-Semite Louis Farrakhan.[5] Because Obama smiled, and seemingly supported American values, many in the United States were fooled by who he was and really is. Deceit may be the hallmark of his life.
Perhaps the once-respected New York Times has put these issues in their starkest form, in the following article by Alexander Burns and Nick Corasaniti, albeit not intending to do so:
After the 2016 election, Democratic leaders reached an all but unanimous conclusion: To defeat President Trump in 2020, they would have to do more than condemn his offensive behavior and far-right ideology, as Hillary Clinton had done. They would need, above all, to promote a clear and exciting agenda of their own.
They took that lesson to heart in the midterm elections and afterward, capturing the House of Representatives with a focus on health care and then attempting to impress the electorate by passing legislation on matters like campaign finance reform and the minimum wage. As Democratic presidential contenders pushed campaigns built on big ideas, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi resisted a chorus of calls for impeachment, even from some of her party’s leading 2020 candidates.
Yet 13 months before the next election, Democratic leaders are now steering into a protracted, head-on clash with Mr. Trump. By seeking the Ukrainian government’s help in tarring former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., Mr. Trump left them no choice, they say, but to pursue an impeachment inquiry that could consume the country’s attention for months.
Ms. Pelosi has indicated she aims to move the process along with haste, in part to avoid an election-year conflagration, but the exact course of the inquiry is impossible to foresee.
All 19 Democratic presidential candidates now support the impeachment inquiry, and many Democrats are optimistic that voters will as well, because Mr. Trump is so unpopular and the allegations against him are grave and easily grasped. For now, Republicans are the party on the defensive, flummoxed by the cascading disclosures about Mr. Trump that have threatened to upend his re-election campaign.
But there is also a general recognition, at every level of the Democratic Party, that impeachment could complicate their candidates’ efforts to explain their policy ideas to the country and persuade voters they have a vision beyond ousting Mr. Trump. The party has been disappointed too many times, its leaders say, by betting that Mr. Trump’s violations of political and cultural norms would bring about his downfall.
On Friday evening, Ms. Pelosi declared at a conference of New Jersey Democrats in Atlantic City that she would not allow the 2020 election to become a campaign about impeachment. Insisting the inquiry “has nothing to do with the election,” she said the campaign would be fought on other terms.
“That’s about facts and the Constitution,” Ms. Pelosi said of the impeachment process. “The election is about all of the issues and policies that we have a difference of opinion with the Republicans on, and they are very drastic — and they have nothing to do with impeachment.”
Ms. Pelosi has already advised the newest members of her caucus — the ones who secured the majority last year — that they will have to execute a careful balancing act in the coming weeks, to show voters in their districts that they can continue to pass important legislation. She is said to be particularly focused on a proposal to lower prescription drug prices that she unveiled last week, before the Ukraine saga began.
But even before impeachment, House Democrats were gaining little traction with policy bills that withered in the Republican-controlled Senate. Polls have shown their proposals to be popular, but they have been routinely overshadowed in the news by Mr. Trump.
There is little doubt that impeachment will become a singular obsession in the political world and dominate news coverage for as long as the inquiry is underway. A few early polls on impeachment suggest that public support for the inquiry is somewhat stronger than opposition to it, but those numbers could easily change in either direction as the process unfolds.
Diane Feldman, a Democratic pollster, said it would be difficult for the party to communicate with voters on issues besides impeachment for the duration of the process. But candidates up and down the ballot had to try to drive a message about policy all the same, she said.
“I think it’s worth the effort, but it’s a long shot,” Ms. Feldman said. “That we not put all of our eggs in the impeachment basket seems to me extremely wise.”
However, Ms. Feldman said, the impeachment process could also “add some clarity to risks that Trump presents to our national security and foreign policy” and sharpen the overall Democratic case against his re-election.
The task of balancing impeachment against policy priorities will be especially delicate for lawmakers elected last year, including dozens who won narrow victories in historically Republican districts. Democrats are defending a sizable number of seats that Mr. Trump carried in 2016, in parts of the country like upstate New York, Oklahoma City and northern Maine, where the impeachment issue is likely to stir backlash.
Congressional Republicans are likely to struggle in a different way, as they face pressure from their party’s conservative base to defend Mr. Trump even as he behaves in erratic or legally questionable ways.
Democratic presidential candidates are attempting their own juggling act, mixing denunciations of Mr. Trump’s actions on Ukraine with detailed policy promises. Mr. Biden, the candidate most directly connected to the impeachment uproar, has repeatedly denounced Mr. Trump but has declined to reorient his activities around responding to the president. Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, Mr. Biden’s leading competitor in the primary, has reminded voters this week that she was the first major Democratic candidate to demand Mr. Trump’s impeachment. But she, too, has not dwelled on the subject in her speeches, and she has indicated she would prefer to avoid a sprawling, open-ended process.
And at the same Democratic gathering in New Jersey where Ms. Pelosi spoke on Friday, Senator Cory Booker urged his party to avoid “partisan glee” about the prospect of impeaching Mr. Trump. Talking to reporters outside the event, he said Democrats should keep campaign considerations separate from impeachment: “It’s just something that I need to deal with in a very sober way,” he said, “away from politics.”
But Mr. Biden and Ms. Warren may be among the only Democratic candidates who can count on breaking through the din of impeachment with regularity, along with Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont and perhaps Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Ind. For the rest of the Democratic field, strategists say, the next stage of the primary race may have less to do with delivering high-minded policy arguments on the national level than courting voters in the early primary and caucus states with personal appeals — as an impeachment battle rages in the foreground.
Meredith Kelly, a Democratic strategist, said the experience of the last presidential race had not faded in the party’s thinking. A veteran of the 2018 campaign to seize the House, Ms. Kelly said Democratic candidates would have to both build a “methodical” case against Mr. Trump during the impeachment inquiry and also keep detailing “a proactive vision of what you stand for.”
“It was a lesson from 2016: You couldn’t only call out Donald Trump without your own positive vision for the country,” said Ms. Kelly, who advised Senator Kirsten Gillibrand’s presidential campaign. “You cannot stop talking about kitchen-table issues and your vision for the country.”
Democratic voters this week expressed a combination of enthusiasm for impeachment and anxiety about potential political complications — and, at times, a desire to stay focused on policy.
At Mr. Biden’s campaign stop in Las Vegas on Friday, Rick Carter, 74, a voter from Henderson, Nev., said he had been highly skeptical of impeaching Mr. Trump until the recent revelations about Ukraine. The newest allegations, he said, were “pretty clear, to the point.”
Still, Mr. Carter said he hoped candidates would continue training their attention on subjects like the cost of prescription drugs.
“I want to start focusing on what the American people need,” he said.
Geoff Garin, a Democratic pollster, said that even in the tumult of impeachment there were opportunities for Democrats to emphasize policy. He pointed to Ms. Warren’s campaign as one that was plainly “breaking through on policy” even amid Mr. Trump’s constant provocations.
“The House has passed a lot of bills that have gotten very little news coverage,” he noted. “But when members go home and have interactions with their constituents, they’re going to spend a lot of time talking about their legislation to have Medicare negotiate for lower prices and give all people the benefit of lower drug prices.”
And while the impeachment process unfolds, Mr. Garin added, Democrats could likely count on Mr. Trump not to deliver a broad, policy-based message of his own.
“Trump’s not really making any effort to do anything but rally his base on this,” Mr. Garin said. “And in doing that, I think he’s probably aggravating his situation with voters in the center.”[6]
If anyone is dazzled by or believes the current crop of far-Left Democrats, one need only hark back to the words and tragic deeds of Germany’s Adolf Hitler, the Soviet Union’s Joseph Stalin and China’s Mao Tse-tung, who killed millions.[7] Or read (or reread) the words of George Orwell in his prescient “Animal Farm,” where all of the animals were equal until the “Pigs” reigned supreme and were masters over—and subjugated—the other animals.[8]
The Pigs of today have taken over and reside in the Democratic Party; and to mask their evil intentions, they coined the title “progressives,” which is the farthest thing from who and what they really are. The Times‘ article is correct: “[T]he exact course of the [impeachment] inquiry is impossible to foresee.” Having lived through the Watergate saga and tragedy, which was unfolding just as I was leaving the U.S. Senate, I know that impeachment assumes a life of its own, and consumes and sucks out the air from everything else.
The Times‘ writers add:
All 19 Democratic presidential candidates now support the impeachment inquiry, and many Democrats are optimistic that voters will as well, because Mr. Trump is so unpopular and the allegations against him are grave and easily grasped.
President Trump is loved by vast numbers of dedicated American supporters; and his poll numbers exceed those of Obama at this point in their respective presidencies. And the allegations against the President with respect to Ukraine do not remotely compare with the corruption of Joe Biden and his son Hunter vis-à-vis that country.[9]
For Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to assert that “she would not allow the 2020 election to become a campaign about impeachment”—and “[i]nsisting the inquiry ‘has nothing to do with the election,'” and that “the campaign would be fought on other terms”—is laughable, absurd and pathetic. She was first elected to Congress in 1987, while Watergate was breaking wide-open fifteen years before, in late 1972 and early 1973, just as I was leaving the Senate. At best, she is naïve or duplicitous, but more likely she is engaged in outright lying.[10] All other issues are buried and consumed by impeachment, period . . . unless, God forbid, there is a direct attack on the United States or some other national tragedy.
The Times’ writers are correct:
There is little doubt that impeachment will become a singular obsession in the political world and dominate news coverage for as long as the inquiry is underway.
And the Democratic pollster, Diane Feldman, was correct when she said it would be difficult for the party to communicate with voters on issues besides impeachment for the duration of the process. Geoff Garin, a Democratic pollster, was mistaken when he said that Democrats could likely count on President Trump not to deliver a broad, policy-based message of his own. The President will tout his accomplishments far and wide, to the long-neglected—and taken for granted by the Democratic Party—African-Americans, and others who have benefited.
Again, my sense today is that what we will witness in the months to come may be very similar to the Vietnam War and Watergate eras. The fabric of our great nation will be ripped wide-open, pitting friends and loved ones against each other. I love this country, and no other. I want to see it flourish, and all Americans benefit. However, I am very concerned about the months to come, and the effects they will have on America—and how our enemies abroad view us and our vulnerabilities, which they may seek to exploit.
Political pundit Dick Morris believes that many Democrats in Congress are fearful of attacks from their Left, and losing in their primaries; and hence, Nancy Pelosi has embarked on impeachment to give them cover. He may be correct. However, the larger issue—which they seem blind to see—is that the country may be ripped apart to a much greater extent than even during the Vietnam War and Watergate. The Democrats and their captive far-Left media and the “Deep State” are determined to end the presidency of Donald Trump.
However, they do not realize, much less fully, how strongly other Americans feel about him and his presidency. Abraham Lincoln was hated by a large segment of America, yet he persevered and saved the nation. The United States today may be approaching a similar juncture, pitting brothers against brothers and sisters against sisters. The Trump faithful have watched Obama and his fellow co-conspirators attempt to destroy the candidacy and then the presidency of Donald Trump—which is an attempted coup, and treasonous and seditious. Yet, no one has been indicted, convicted and gone to prison.
The rule of law in America has been turned on its head; and vast numbers of Americans are very angry. Some are angry that Trump was ever elected in the first place, while others—in vast numbers—are angry that the Left has tried to destroy the Trump presidency and nullify their votes. I am deeply concerned that the United States is heading toward its second Civil War. Also, I do not see anything on the horizon that will bring us together again as one nation. If we are moving toward a new Civil War, will it become a shooting war? Quite possibly. I do not discount that outcome at all.
Lastly, this is not like a football game or other sporting event, where if our favored team loses we are disappointed or even “heartbroken,” but we move on to another day. This is about the future and survival of our great nation, and of the American people. Get it wrong, and our offspring’s future may be dark beyond comprehension. We have enemies who would like to destroy us, in an instant.[11] Perhaps all of this is what Obama meant when he envisioned a “fundamental transformation” of America[12]—to be completed in 2020—because the Trump presidency is a repudiation of the un-American traitor, racist and anti-Semite, and his presidency.[13]
[1] Timothy D. Naegele was counsel to the United States Senate’s Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, and chief of staff to Presidential Medal of Freedom and Congressional Gold Medal recipient and former U.S. Senator Edward W. Brooke (R-Mass). He and his firm, Timothy D. Naegele & Associates, specialize in Banking and Financial Institutions Law, Internet Law, Litigation and other matters (seewww.naegele.com and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/timothy-d.-naegele-resume-19-9-27.pdf). He has an undergraduate degree in economics from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), as well as two law degrees from the School of Law (Boalt Hall), University of California, Berkeley, and from Georgetown University. He served as a Captain in the U.S. Army, assigned to the Defense Intelligence Agency at the Pentagon, where he received the Joint Service Commendation Medal (see, e.g., https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commendation_Medal#Joint_Service). Mr. Naegele is an Independent politically; and he is listed in Who’s Who in America, Who’s Who in American Law, and Who’s Who in Finance and Business. He has written extensively over the years (see, e.g., www.naegele.com/whats_new.html#articles), and can be contacted directly at tdnaegele.associates@gmail.com
By Timothy D. Naegele[1]
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