In April 1912, a radio operator named Cyril Evans sent a message from his ship The Californian that the boat had come upon an ice field in the Atlantic. The message came across so loudly to the radio operators of the Titanic, Jack Philips and Harold Bride, who were both in the middle of sending private messages to the United States about the Titanic's maiden voyage and her arrival details, that it blasted their headsets so loudly they got annoyed. However, they never passed along the message. Evans went to bed certain his warnings had been heard. Not more than several hours later, the Titanic would sink after striking a mammoth iceberg. (source)
In 1945, General Dwight D. Eisenhower made sure to visit the concentration camps his troops had liberated during the invasion of occupied Europe. As he put it, "I made the visit [to Gotha] deliberately, in order to be in a position to give first-hand evidence of these things if ever, in the future, there develops a tendency to charge these allegations merely to 'propaganda.'" - (source) Today, there are more holocaust deniers than ever, rewriting the history of the German "Final Solution" to diminish the numbers and therefore, its impact, despite the amount of visual evidence and audio accounts.
In February 1993, two men, Ramzi Yousef and Eyad Ismoil parked a yellow van full of explosives into the public parking garage of the North Tower of the World Trade Center. They then detonated the van, causing the death of six people and injuring over one thousand others. The intent was to cause the North Tower to fall into the South Tower, taking both buildings down. It failed, but one of the captured terrorists warned that this wasn't the end of it. In July 2001, Richard Clarke, the so-called 'terrorist expert' told many in a meeting of the FBI, INS and Secret Services of his hunch something of a spectacular nature was going to happen soon in the U.S. as regarded terrorism. In August 2001, provided an intelligence briefing to Condolezza Rice, then secretary of state, and the president about terrorists desire to hit America, and a report from the late 1980's that they might use hijacked airliners. His position was downgraded. That September, they made good on their promise, as the twin towers in the World Trade Center were brought to the ground in a ball of fire, ash and dust.
In 2006, Katsuhiko Ishibashi, a well-respected professor and seismologist at Kobe University in Japan was a member of the government committee that was to revise the national guidelines on making Japan's nuclear power plants more resistant to earthquakes. He proposed that Japan review it standard for surveying and assessing the danger from active faults, but this proposal was rejected. He later resigned saying that the committee's review process was unscientific and the outcome of the committee findings were rigged in favor of the Japan Electric Association. (source). In 2011, having never been addressed, a high magnitude quake shook apart the reactor at Fukushima, causing a massive reactor leak, and subsequent poisoning of the waters nearby. To this date, the exact result to the wildlife is not yet known or understood.
All of these were different kind of warnings from either educated people in the know, or people hired to make educated guesses based on their respective backgrounds. They went unheeded.
In 2016, there were a good portion of Americans who issued a warning of what a Donald Trump Presidency would look like. None of us could be one hundred percent certain that the honor of serving and the magnitude of the office of the presidency wouldn't cause Trump to step up and heed a higher calling. However, the writing was on the wall.
Trump's insistence that Obama was not a U.S. citizen, and his continual push of the so-called 'birther' movement, already displayed his penchant to ignore facts. During the campaign, Christopher Steele, a former British MI-6 intelligence agent with twenty-five years of experience working Russian counter-intelligence sent a dossier containing information on Trump's campaign folks taking a lot of meetings with the Russians who were intent on influencing the outcome of the election in Trump's favor. This was dismissed because though originally hired privately by a Republican who didn't want Trump elected, the remaining funding for the report was picked up by the law firm representing candidate Hillary Clinton. The U.S. intelligence community held onto the information for some time due to the fact there was a presidential election before warning people of both political parties. Hillary Clinton eventually brought it up in a debate with Trump head-on after Trump repeatedly denied there was any agreement in our intelligence agencies that Russia was attempting to interfere with the election. Eventually Barack Obama warned about it, and Trump was quoted many times warning of a 'rigged' election in Hillary's favor.
Since he has taken office, the attitude of the country has devolved into an every-man-for-himself, if-it-doesn't-affect-me-personally-I-don't-care approach. Things we once held to be a given --that the press is a crucial part of a free society, that the ethics and prosperity of healthy protected elections are of the highest importance, that the FBI is indeed here to protect us, that immigrants generally make us stronger as a country, and that education and progress are important parts of bettering our future -- all have been put under attack. I've had discussions and arguments with people who still see Donald Trump as presidential and a good man, words that Trump himself has used to describe the now five convicted felons from his administration, including his former campaign chairman, his national security adviser and his personal attorney. All have committed crimes that so far have little to do with Russian collusion, and yet funny enough, each one of them were mentioned specifically in the Steele Dossier. Donald Trump's attorney has irrefutably labeled him as the person who requested he commit the crimes that make up counts seven and eight.
According to Lanny Davis, the attorney for Michael Cohen, Robert Mueller would be plenty interested in Michael Cohen's information regarding the 2016 election.
Let's also point out an attorney doesn't need proof to bring about a trial. An attorney needs evidence enough to convene a grand jury to see if it's worth trying a case. Less is needed for impeachment articles to be put forth. The warnings were there.
But this blog is intended to warn not of our continual childish political behavior or of the future of Donald J. Trump.
This blog is a warning for the election of 2024. Assuming Trump is impeached and Pence takes over, he'll almost certainly be the Republican Candidate for 2020. If Trump isn't impeached, he'll almost certainly be the candidate for 2020. Either way, we know who will be running on one side of the aisle. If Trump/Pence is re-elected, then so be it. If they are not, then a Democrat will likely reside in the White House from 2020-2024. The democratic candidate for 2020 could also be someone from the left who is more fringe. Bernie Sanders and his socialist tendencies are likely to gain more value come 2020, assuming he still wishes to run. Will it be someone younger who is a dynamic speaker, but who carries the pendulum of policy in the polar opposite direction toward too much governance? Barack Obama, as much as I liked him, had very little experience to be a President. He was elected initially because he looked and sounded the part.
Why is 2024 so important? It is important because it'll be the first time the Republicans, particularly this new breed of 'there are no rules' Republicans, bring forth their next candidate for the Presidency. We have seen the ascension of candidates based on little to no plausible experience on both sides: Sarah Palin as a VP candidate, Trump as the Presidential candidate. Who will they put forth? Once you consider that a good enough majority of Republicans felt (and still feel) they would support Trump despite all the warnings above, is there any chance that their next candidate is better suited to represent everyone? Or is it more likely he/she could be even more fringe, demanding more referendums on our institutions and moving the U.S. into further dangerous democratic collapse.
Assuming a Democrat wins the White House in 2020, this will be their candidate for 2024, and it could easily be as mentioned above, more to the left than is healthy in an attempt to undo all Trump has done, and reverse course using the results of the Trump presumed failed presidency to push through more controlling statutes than are healthy.
Remember, Hitler's first attempt to get into office by force failed in 1923. He spent time in jail, wrote a memoir and returned to fail again in 1928. His party gained just twelve seats or less than one percent of the vote in the Reichstag. But just a few years later, against a backdrop of The Great Depression and internal violence, Hitler's party won 107 seats.
We can view Trump's victory as the first step in an ever-changing right wing that is moving more and more toward isolationist and populist tendencies. The push for anti-immigration laws and the labeling of all immigrants as threats, the outspoken tendency to belittle women, the backwards progression of technology toward reviving coal and oil, and the trade wars that are in full swing are warning shots across the bow. It seems highly unlikely to me that in this age of complicity of the Republican Party to Trump's whims that we will see a return to the status quo.
Beware the trends we are seeing. The omens are out there that we are on dangerous ground, and regardless of a Trump impeachment, indictment, what have you, the 2024 election cycle will be crucial, not just for that four years, but possibly for the future of our nation.
No comments:
Post a Comment