TRUMP’S TRIALS - DEMOCRACY v FASCISM

With the conservatively dominated Supreme Court unsure whether or not an attempted coup or even the assassination of a political opponent are presidential criminal activities, Trump’s  2020 Presidential election seditious conspiracy trials could be forestalled. Regardless of how the Supreme Court may ultimately rule the fact that they lent credibility to Trump's Fascist contentions enables Trump to scream on, arms waving. that unless a President is an absolute dictator he will be fearful that he will be prosecuted. Trump is right if he had been an absolute dictator he could not have been prosecuted for attempting a coup but that is no reason for the right wing squad on the Court to weigh the argument seriously.

So, for now, the New York 2016 Presidential election interference case is the only judicial hearing determining  the culpability of the Forty - Fifth President’s ongoing anti democratic actions. 

It is not hyperbole to claim that the whirlwind surrounding Trump is a clash between which governmental system will be in play - Democracy or Fascism. The legal issues that are at stake relating to both the 2016 election trial and the, thus far, aborted 2020 election trials are the same - is the President of the United States accountable for his criminal actions and/or were they not criminal, by definition, because he was President.

“THE HUSH MONEY PAYMENT TO A PORN STAR” TRIAL IS A BIG DEAL

Lest anyone play down the significance of this 2016 “Hush money payments to a porn star” trial, it is of monumental import. It details a deep ongoing conspiracy of illegal election interference. That thesis has been acknowledged by the former publisher of the tabloid,“The National Enquirer”, David Pecker who was the chief agent of the scheme. Pecker has been granted immunity for his testimony. 

Evidence will be further led that the Republican National Committee, (RNC), was en route to axing Trump’s candidature in 2016 following the “Access Hollywood Tape” where Trump bragged inter alia that, “I grabbed women by the pussy”. The added revelations of affairs with Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal would have ended Trump’s political career as in those days the RNC controlled the Party, not Trump.

 Pecker produced magazine cover after cover promoting Trump by trashing, first, his Republican primary rivals and subsequently Hillary Clinton the Democratic Candidate with tissue upon tissue of lies.Then he ran wildly positive stories about Trump. The third leg of his trifecta of criminality was that he engaged in what is known as “catch and kill” - the purchasing of incriminating stories so that they would not see the light of day.  “The National Enquirer” is on the stand of every check out line in the country. Pecker admitted that what he was doing was illegal and was to promote the Presidential candidature of his friend, Donald Trump. In fact Pecker has already paid $187,000 fine to the Federal Election Commission for flouting Campaign Contribution regulations. 

So this trial is revealing of an all encompassing illegal conspiracy and while the violence of 2020 is missing the objective was the same - tilting the scales to see Trump in the WhiteHouse.

THE JUDICIAL SYSTEM - A CENTRAL PILLAR OF DEMOCRACY

The Judicial system is a central pillar in a democratic state where there also has to be electoral accountability as well as the rule of law. The application of the legal system is very fragile and the rich and powerful, as Trump has illustrated, can manipulate it to their own ends. America still relies heavily on the jury system which favors Trump because if just one of the jurors believe that the prosecution has not met the heavy burden of proof beyond a reasonable doubt, Trump cannot be found guilty. Justice favors the rich as well as they can pay an army of highly capable counsel to sew that doubt in just one of the twelve sitting in judgement. 

It is trite to call the first ever criminal trial against a former President of the United States “historic”. The outcome, of what is considered the least important of the four criminal indictments against the Forty - Fifth President Donald J. Trump has tremendous political significance not only as to whether he will also be the Forty - Seventh President but for democracy itself. This since Trump has behaved in a manner consistent with Fascist leaders, trashing the institutions that maintain democracy so as to replace them by an authoritarian regime with him at the helm. His behavior towards the judicial system and its officers is on display as well as his disdain for society’s principle accountable mechanism - free and fair elections.

TRUMP’S DEFENCE IS THAT WHAT HE DID WAS DEMOCRACY!

After the first few two weeks of the Trump trial in a New York State court, where he is charged with falsifying business records to cover up a payment to a porn star so as to ensure his candidature in the 2016 presidential election, it is obvious that the prosecution and the defense are not on the same constitutional page. The former are following the rules of an institutional democracy by attempting to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant Donald J Trump is guilty of violations of the central tenet of democracy - free and fair elections. The latter are involved in trashing the system in effect arguing that “President Trump” is immune from this charge.

The Trump Defence Counsel argued that he was “innocent”. Innocent of what?  The defence argues that the hush money payment to a porn star to shut up, which many regard as the fact that allowed Trump to win the Presidency, is “democracy”. He further insisted that Trump be referred to as “President” in a trial before his peers. This ludicrous appellation to a defendant who is not the sitting occupier bolsters the narrative that Trump is still President! 

The Defence further claimed that “Trump had nothing to do with those 34 pieces of paper, (the alleged fraudulent documents). except he signed checks, In the White House. While he was running the country. That is not a Crime” That is the lame contention put forward by Trump's counsel which would ring much better at one of Trump’s Nuremberg style rallies where the former President wallows in victimhood. Implicit in this explanation is that Trump was far to busy running America and the world to notice he was refunding his "enforcer" for paying off a porn star"

Trump’s Counsel in putting forward Trump’s position so out of kilter with reality that the trial judge took the unusual step of warning him that his credibility was on the line.

TRUMP’S POSITION ON THE LEGITIMACY OF THE TRIAL IS MORE OF THE SAME

Donald J. Trump the Forty - Fifth President has repeatedly challenged the legitimacy of the proceedings which he has declared is “rigged’. He has over and over alleged that the Judge and the Prosecutor are political hacks who are victimizing him at the behest of his Presidential rival Joseph Biden. He has attacked the witnesses and even the Judge's daughter resulting in a “gag” order, which he has broken at least 14 times - belittling witnesses and even has claimed that the jury is biased. Trump claims that these attacks were “free speech”. Underlying this behavior, which in any democracy, would be contempt of court, is Trump’s stated belief  that he cannot be prosecuted for any criminal behavior. A position maintained by Fascist leaders in the twentieth century and present day authoritarians and an argument being elevated by the Supreme Court by a hearing. 

This bizarre counter to reasoned legal charges is congruent with Trump’s recognized pattern of behavior. Trump has run amok trampling over all the safeguards enshrined in the judicial system. There is little doubt that Trump is not deviating from his modus operandi that he is immune from prosecution, that he still is President and entitled to dictatorial powers. He has however reassured that should he be re elected to what by his reckoning would be a third term, he would be a dictator “for only one day”.

Trump speaks in code like the mob bosses he so admires including  John Gotti of the notorious Gambino Family who incidentally evaded justice by "persuading" one juror to not find him guilty on a number of occasions.  More recently Trump compared himself to the most infamous mob boss of all time, Al Capone. So Trump was not kidding when he said he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue New York. When challenged by Bill O’ Reilly of Fox News that his soul mate Vladimir Putin killed people be basically said “So what”. 

So what is the upshot of all of this?

THE UPSHOT OF TRUMP CONTINUING HIS POLITICAL CAMPAIGN DURING THE "HUSH MONEY" TRIAL

Trump is acting in the belief and hope of whatever the outcome of the "hush money" trial that it will not impact on his political trajectory. There is also always the hope that there is one juror that will buy his garbage, If not he will immediately appeal - a process that will take years. If he gets re elected the fix is already in. All the trials will go away. The Federal trials will be axed by him or his Justice department and no one will argue that a sitting President should continue in the State system. He has openly signaled that he will use the justice system to get even with his opponents even locking up the Congress people who conducted the January 6 Investigation and signaled he would charge President Biden, “The most corrupt President in history”.

Trump has one other potential outcome with his ongoing anti establishment rants and his victimhood - a repeat of January 6. He has daily warned that all hell would break loose if he was charged. He has forecast bloodbaths. At the moment his pleas for his cult to pitch up at his trials and demonstrate have fallen on deaf ears. His supporters outside the court room can be counted on the fingers of one hand., He is projecting the image of being Nelson Mandela confiding on his “Truth Social” website in the hope that the judge might send him to jail for practicing his "First Amendment Rights of Free Speech". He couldn’t handle 27 hours in lock up let alone 27 years. There is a fantasy that if he forces the judge to detain him for contempt of court that that might finally wake up those cultists that haven’t already been sentenced for their January 6 attempted coup.

AT THE END OF THE DAY

This is the season where literally the Trump court appearances are a three ring circus.

One fact is for sure the NY finder of the fact, Judge Marchan, is not creating hypotheticals that don’t exist and ignoring the facts of the case like some Supreme Court Justices.  

Manhattan State District Attorney Alan Bragg would not have brought this case unless he believed he had belt and braces. There was criticism of Bragg’s Office in the criminal case against The Trump Organization and its Chief Financial Officer Alan Weisselberg in that Trump himself was not charged. Weisselberg served prison time when both he and the Trump Organization were found guilty.  

Poor Donald Trump, the President whose main concern is his family - protecting Melania, going to his son Barron's graduation and celebrating Melania's birthday, is being persecuted by Joe Biden.

Compulsory viewing for the Supreme Court Judges - Stanley Kramer's riveting movie - "Judgement at Nuremberg". 

The Roberts' Court better be careful about extending Presidential power because the next President, President Biden, may just use it to increase the size of the Court and put on jurists who follow the intent of the Founders!

MODERN GLOBAL ANTI SEMITISM POST OCTOBER 7

Modern day world wide anti semitism, paradoxically following the Hamas attack of Israeli community settlements and a Peace Festival on October 7 2023, has been largely based on new rationales These add to the older tropes justifying the millennia old hatred. All the justifications for Jew loathing can be defined by artificially creating 4 categories -  The New Left, The Old Left, The New Right and The Old Right. Jay H. Ell will attempt to outline the philosophies of these entities. 

Before expanding on modern global antisemitism its adherents and their theories, Jay H. Ell believes that the context of this phenomenon is germane to the discourse.

THE MIDDLE EAST STATE OF PLAY OF ACTORS CIRCA MARCH 2024

HAMAS is a self declared “freedom fighter” organization whose stated aim is genocide of the Jews and a Palestine “From River to the Sea”. Sinwar is at its head. There is appropriate world wide empathy for the Palestinians caught in the middle in Gaza, 

ISRAEL is a democracy that currently has a right wing extremist government with two messianic figures who believe in “From the Sea to the River”. Netanyahu is at its head. There is scant empathy for the Israelis.

GAZA is a humanitarian disaster area for which there is joint culpability. History will decide who shoulders the overwhelming blame. The potential for starvation of the Palestinians has led the United Sates to acquiesce to a Security UNO Council resolution for an immediate cease fire for humanitarian aid and hostage release. Both of the latter have  to be the priorities of the Israeli government. However the Netanyahu response is to to invade Rafah!. The invasion of Rafah is a war cry rather than an immediate necessity. 

ISRAEL’S Netanyahu and his government have an 80 percent disapproval rating. They will be removed peacefully in a democratic election or by the Israeli Knesset. While there are determined moves to axe the Israeli Prime Minister, the reasons he has been accepted thus far are outlined in the blog  CIVILIAN CASUALTIES - HAMAS, NETANYAHU, BIDEN, UNO ,AND THE SUNNIS, March 3 2024.

HAMAS came into power by force. Sinwar and Hamas won’t subject themselves to democratic change. Only force can remove them.

THE IRANIAN LED RESISTANCE, unlike Israel is not asked what their “day after” plan will be. Will it be the return of 8 million Jewish “colonialists”  to countries of “origin” including Islamic states, gas ovens or slaughter Hamas style?

OCTOBER 7 2023 saw an attack unbridled in savagery and sadism on innocent Israeli citizens with the taking of over 200 hostages, The Israeli response was to eradicate the perpetrators, Hamas. The world response was to attack not only Israel but diaspora Jews regardless of what they believed. 

The Middle East war has spilled over into internal politics, with, first and foremost Netanyahu running against Biden, Schumer running against Netanyahu and Trump running against Biden.

GLOBAL ANTI SEMITISM

For the first time in history Jews both in Israel and in the Diaspora, (for practical purposes America and to a lesser extent Europe), have been the subject of widespread  antisemitism  Ironically the protagonists of this mantra for this modern day prejudice have differing rationales since anti semites themselves never admit they are anti semites. They always piously behold that “Some of their best friends are jews, even grandchildren”. Jews have been hated since time immemorial because of, what they believe, for all the myriad of evils they are allegedly responsible for and for being born.

Ironically too, the Jews of Israel and the Jews of the Diaspora, that support Israel, are in different worlds in their analysis of the status quo. As the podcasters in “For Heaven’s Sake” explained, the Diaspora’s understanding of the Israeli conflict is more like the Afghanistan and Iraq strifes while for Israel this is existential, for survival more akin to World War11. What both these Jewish constituencies are acutely aware of is that the Jews themselves don’t define who a Jew is, rather it is the anti semites that decide.

SELECTIVE MORALITY

While the invective started immediately after October 7 it has been fueled by the devastation of Gaza and the inevitable collateral damage that urban warfare brings. The situation is not helped by an obscene right wing government in power in Israel. However no one is calling for the end of Russia, Hungary or China because of their regimes. Russian immigrants in London are not being warned to go to the center of London because of the plunder of Ukraine. No Hungarian immigrant captain of a sport’s team is being axed in Australia because he is Hungarian. No children of ex patriots of China are being harassed in school or College in France on account of what the Chinese government is doing to the Uyghurs. 

So why the Jews? The Jews who constitute 00.02 percent of the world’s population. Besides the hatred of the Old Right including Iran and its Resistance movement as well as the growing numbers of Neo Nazis, and extreme right wingers, what is the rationale of these people who come out in droves?  While the anti semitic entities overlap in rationales it is useful to examine them as “purists”. The most disconcerting and ubiquitous of these is the New Left.

THE NEW LEFT

The New Left, including many Jews, no longer equate liberalism with Zionism, which in this instance  is the right of the Jews, outside of the diaspora, to have their own state as voted by UNO in 1947. They equate the current Israeli extremist government with Zionism. They like the Israeli right wing believe that the two state solution is dead -  they only see a Palestinian one and assume the Palestinians will allow the Israelis to live side by side with them in a happy democracy.   

 The New Left accepts implicitly that October 7 was a legitimate “freedom fight” with wildly inaccurate comparisons to the African National Congress struggle against apartheid. They exculpate Hamas, which is the dominant political and military Palestinian organization for the resulting carnage and starvation in Gaza when that was their objective to achieve victory, which indeed they have, in the propaganda war that followed.

Many of the liberal entities, that Jews disproportionately were involved in, have morphed into New Left entities. These include The Women Movement, Black Lives Matter and the ANC in South Africa.  Jews stood side by side with Martin Luther King. They formed the first organization for the advancement of “colored people” in America. Ruth Bader - Ginsberg and Bella Abzug pioneered equality for women. For a lengthy essay on the subject see Frank Foer, “The Golden Age of American Jews Is Ending: The Atlantic March 4, 2024).

The apartheid struggle in South Africa was awash with Jews on every level as the architect of true apartheid Hendrik Verwoerd warned, “That it hadn’t passed unnoticed how many Jews were in the opposition”. 

As far as the New Left are concerned it is isn’t the Liberal Organizations that have changed it is The Jews, The Zionists. They are the ones that are out of step and not with the program. So the “Liberal Organizations” say nothing to the rape and plunder by Hamas. They ignore Hamas's  sacrifice of the Palestinians much as the fellow travelers accepted Stalin’s genocide as part of the price to pay for a world wide Dictatorship by the Proletariat.. The LGBT groups in spite of the fact that they have marches in Jerusalem, proclaim “LGBT support ‘From The River To The Sea”.This regardless of the current draconian policies of The Resistance. Women, in Palestine are, to put it kindly, second class citizens while Israeli women are raped in the tunnels yet the silence of the world wide women movements is deafening. In the "day after" the moral police will be in control of women as they are today in Iran. 

The New left argue with the arrogance and with certitude they have the power of history going forward much like the Fascists and the Communists did in the twentieth century.  At their least radical they argue for a cease fire without mentioning the hostages…..  They mock protagonists, even Holocaust survivors,  who are supporters of the two state solution, as being out of date. They then lampoon liberals saying look who are on your side - the MAGA Republicans. The false equivalency if accurate would mean America and ISIS K are on the same page because they both are against Putin’s Russia.

They are wrong, liberalism like true democracy is a messy business. Once again there is a simplistic social engineering answer to a complex problem. For example they have no idea who will govern their one state where the Palestinians will be in a majority. Like Bibi Netanyahu they have no idea of the day after. It will just magically happen,.

However there is a philosophy behind all of this 

INTERSECTIONALISM - THE BASIS OF THE NEW LEFT

There is no longer much love for liberalism, even if it has evolved to its present day form to the modern welfare state with the influence of the Enlightenment philosophers from Milton to Marx. Liberalism, it is argued is one dimensional while the new philosophy of “Intersectionanlsm” brings together multiple  social factors. These factors such as feminism and race inherently combine to produce an identity that is subject to oppression that cannot be ameliorated. Attempting to fight racism alone, for example, is doomed to failure as it is interconnected with other factors. 

The oppressed are marginalized. Societies are thus divided into the weak, oppressed, and the strong, oppressors, period. It follows that nothing can undo colonialism. It lives on as ineo colonialism. You have to side with the weak in their fight against the strong. Rationale and facts are irrelevant. 

Similar to this line of thinking is Herbert Marcuse’s revisionist Marxism. He believed that where Marx got it wrong was that it was not a class struggle it was a subjugated identity struggle. Consequently he was heavily into rights for women.

Marcuse like the intersectionalists in their identity philosophies have been criticized for not taking individuals into account. That is the least of their problems. The upshot is the day after 10/7 there was no condemnation of the savagery rather the support of it.The underdogs had sought to regain their land. What followed was, inter alia, THE UNSURPRISING SILENCE AS ISRAELI WOMEN ARE RAPED IN TUNNELS. (See blog 

January 27, 2024). 

THE NEW RATIONALE OF ANTI SEMITISM - THE OLD LEFT

The Old Left are not so old. They have a new hypothesis as why  the State of Israel is illegitimate. Their new mantra was articulated in 2001, 7 years before Israel’s last offer to the Palestinians for a Two State Solution and 4 years before Israel unilaterally ceded Gaza. Using the present day principles of what constitutes evil, The United Nations Conference on Racism declared that Israel was guilty of apartheid, racism, attempted genocide, crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing. Although this finding was subsequently reversed by the General Assembly it stuck. In another historical irony, the morally, politically and financially bankrupt South African Government seized on the Israeli defensive response a few weeks into the war to charge Israel at The International Court of Justice with the aforementioned crimes. (See blog January 15,2024 “IRAN’S NEWEST PROXY, SOUTH AFRICA, LIBELS ISRAEL AS GENOCIDAL”.

The late Chief Rabbi of the United Kingdom Jonathan Sacks interpreted that the basis for anti semitism morphed through the ages from Jews being different, for killing Christ, because they threw poison into wells,  killed children to use their blood to make unleavened bread, were racially inferior, (still there today with the Old Right), were capitalists, were communists and now because they have a fascist state exhibiting the modern day evils on land stolen from the Palestinians.

THE NEW RIGHT

The basis of this philosophy is that truth is perception.The granddaddy of all this was the French philosopher Albert Foucalt. 

Foucalt was into knowledge and its relationship to power. The elites controlled the masses by claiming they had the monopoly on facts and science, both of which they opined were subject to objective analysis. What these power mongers were claiming, Foucalt argued, was that the masses were ignorant. However, he continued, the masses’ perceptions were just as valid as the facts and science of the elites. (Look around - you may recognize the phenomenon). 

The upshot of all this baloney is that Hamas’s attack was justified and what followed in Gaza is all Israel’s fault. (See blog: THE RATIONALE FOR REFRAMING THE ISRAEL/HAMAS CONFLICT,December 30, 2023). 

AT THE END OF THE DAY

Once again the world is perpetrating a pogrom on Jewry which is novel in its rationales. Once again it is impossible for Jews to counter it, How do you prove that you are not poisoning the wells or that you aren’t in a secret plot to take over the world? 

Joe Biden, the leader of America and the free world, needs every bit of support in this existential struggle between reality and madness in America, Ukraine and the Middle East. Now is not the time to be uninvolved. He is correct in making the 2024 Presidential  election about “Who we are”. (See blog:  "OLD"JOE IS JUST BID-EN HIS TIME, March 19, 2024.

The action of the United States in no longer shielding Israel politically on the world scene has yet to play out. The latter outcome coming after repeated warnings that Israel needed to have a valid “day after” plan and just could not continue hostilities with famine raging in Gaza and Israeli hostages languishing in the labyrinthine underground Hamas tunnel complex. Netanyahu better watch his false braggadocio because Biden can take his battleships and go home. 

In the words of the composer, Irving Berlin, another American Jew, who wrote the biggest hit song in history,“White Christmas”, - “God Bless America”. He penned that too.