Snyder is doing what historians are supposed to do: strip away the noise and name the thing precisely.
“A whole civilization will die tonight.” That sentence doesn’t need context. It doesn’t need to be walked back or interpreted. It is, by the legal definition the United States itself signed in 1948, an expression of genocidal intent by a head of state.
What strikes me most is his point about words creating permission structures. This is basic behavioral science. Once a leader speaks the unthinkable, he doesn’t just reflect a norm—-he moves it. Everyone below him recalibrates what’s acceptable. That’s how atrocity scales. Not with one order. With a thousand small recalibrations by people who tell themselves they’re just doing their jobs.
Snyder is right that this is on us. Not just politicians. Every person who normalizes the sentence, contextualizes it, or simply scrolls past it is participating in the recalibration.
The historians always see it first. The tragedy is that seeing it and stopping it are entirely different things.
What's that old definition of insanity - doing the same damn thing over & over, in expectation of different results? In my old age, that's how I feel about this "all-purpose prescription" offered to political change agents. All of us "out here" are supposed to be spending half our day phoning, emailing, snail-mailing, postcard-posting - the list goes on - until all of them "back there" finally get the message and spring into action? Excuse me. These people were hired - by us - to get this stuff done. Should we be monitoring the White House gardening crew, too? Or housekeeping? Do they need hourly reminders to take care of their tasks? No - they don't. Only Congress apparently needs to be told - every hour of every day - which way the wind is blowing. This is driving (make that "has driven") me crazy. Our situation is tragic - and if there are some legislators who are unaware of what's going on, let the impeachment hearings begin!
I hear you and feel this pain too. But even you taking the time to say this is your vital contribution to distancing yourself from his world and his agenda.
We are speaking truth. And we are hearing lies. But whether truth or lies will contribute more to our as-yet-unknown future is still on us. Keep telling the truth. If politicians don’t listen, tell journalists. If they don’t listen, tell your neighbors. Keep speaking somewhere, somehow, resolute in your ability to name reality.
By speaking and by listening truthfully we save each other, together.
Thank you for your note Myra. I may not contact my congress-folks very often (since mine mostly vote my way!) but do like to weigh in on substack comments once in a while. And hearing back helps to make the conversation "feel real" - as in real people having a real meeting about real problems. Now if we could just get the real Congress to take real action!!!
Candace, Thank you for articulating the angst (there may be a more apt word) that gnaws at me every day. Why don't they just do their fucking jobs? Life, liberty, pursuit of happiness, with equality and justice under rule of law is the agenda. A politician shouldn't have to stick his finger up into the wind every month, week, or day in order to figure out policies that promote those goals. Instead, they bombard voters daily arousing our fears of losing some program, or right we thought we possessed, unless we "sign a petition to stop it, and by the way please send us $25, or $7, or whatever you can afford so I can work on your behalf."
We the people need to significantly reduce the amount of money sloshing through our politics. That means we need to get the politicians out of politics. Serving in a legislature shouldn't be a career. Elections should be
short (45 days) and campaigns partially funded by government based on a formula of grass roots support demonstrated by small donations or other metric. Term limits and age restrictions (I'm 85) have become a necessary tool, rather than political science discussion topics, to keep our elected representatives young, thinking, willing to accept new ideas and evidence, and connected to the real world circumstances experienced by their constituents. Do we really want our futures, and our kids and their kids futures, determined by a Mitch McConnell or a Chuck Grassley??
Fred, I very much appreciate your thoughtful comment. I think we're on many (if not MOST!) of the same pages. I am sure there are better (and less expensive) ways of doing most things (if only we could get some serious, clear-headed, and imaginative brainiacs to convene, do some fresh thinking, and come up with them!). --- As for my aversion to the constant hammering from the "call your representatives every day" folks, for one thing, my own reps usually vote my way and don't need to be hounded. Also, if Congress is inundated daily with hundreds of thousands of messages, how can they possibly absorb it all, let alone get any legislating done? --- And yes, let's encourage the older members to step aside at some reasonable point. Make room for the new.
Until what passes for leadership in Republican House and Senate change, the chances of President Loose Cannon facing any consequences are near zero. Change leadership in House and Senate!
They are on vacation, yet again. These people maybe work a three day week and then fly home. On our dime. Free healthcare, money for food, a $million or so to run their office, and many more perks.
It's not all of them, but it is most of them who are entirely useless parasites.
Yes and but the first reaction a day ago was horror at the expletives!! The horror at those words deflected from what Snyder is pointing out.. The shock value, the awe, the reaction to words knock out people's ability to understand what is really being said-- until we let rationality, like here, translate. We should be horrified but it's not a temporary horror about the even unprecedented use of expletives, rather about *what* is being threatened and as usual blatantly. Trump ups the ante- and has been... unstoppable. He's in a corner now.
It is what our journalists should be doing too. Snyder speaks more like Edward R Murrow than even the better newspapers and broadcasters have done. So only a small slice of the public hears these criminally insane words as such. Most hear bluster and energy and determination to punish “the bad guys” he invokes to justify his evil threats of destruction.
Or they just don’t “pay attention to the news” anymore, since it is all threats of vengeance and vainglorious boasting. Honest words for it: lies and propaganda.
Texas representative Dan Crenshaw has chosen to attack Trump's critics for falling into the trap of taking him literally, but he's the president of the United States and this isn't reality TV. As Macron said recently in during a state visit to South Korea:
"There is too much talk … and it’s all over the place...We all need stability, calm, a return to peace – this isn’t a show!...You have to be serious. When you want to be serious, you don’t go around saying the opposite every day of what you just said the day before. And perhaps you shouldn’t talk every day.”
Exactly. I often wonder why radical, moderate, or libertarian types don't embrace Tim's work. One of my friends, a pretty extreme lefitist which is ok by me, absolutely disregards Prof. Snyder. Perhaps this intellectually gifted historian--"gifting us" us with his newsletters, dialogues on MSNBC NOW, and outright, candid advocacy-activism is too much to belief in our cynically-minded space of us v. them. I hope not.
This is where all the decades-long “sanewashing ” of a megalomaniac has finally gotten us. Full-on war criminals in charge, and a pacified congress and helpless electorate. So tonight he threatens the entire Persian civilization when he should be in jail. Where does one go when we are past despair?
I think that Kassie’s comment should go to the top of the pile:
- it tunes with Timothy Snyder’s alarm call to us
- it’s too late for polite assessment: that’s the warning of both Timothy and Kassie.
Of course we all hope that Trump ‘taco’s’. To add terrorism (that’s what Trump and Hegseth are idolising) to strategic mistake is a catastrophe for us all: US, Iran, the Middle East, West v Islamic government, the developed world v the global south.
I think we probably all share feelings of shame, horror, and fury towards the Trump Administration, the passive Congress and the immoral (yes, immoral) US Supreme Court.
The sanewashing not just of a megalomaniac but of the political party that has been moving in this direction for decades, of the Supreme Court that gave its blessing to unlimited $$$ in electoral and other political spending, and of the "great replacement theory," which contradicts and attempts to erase everything the U.S. has tried to stand for.
One of the greatest mistakes of the 20th century, Kassie, the CIA's coup on Mossadegh.
The Iranians, a well-educated, long-civilized people, freely elected him, and in 1953 Brit and U.S. criminal fossil fuel interests got the coup to install the savage Shah instead.
The Shah and his murderous, tortuous SAVAK, oppressed the Iranian people for a quarter century before they finally kicked out the predator U.S. and Brit fossil fuel criminals who all along for the stooge and his thugs were calling the shots -- and having the American and UK taxpayers pay for their cruelties.
I've contacted my congressional "leaders", but see no action to remove this president. I've rallied and marched, but not sure this will save an entire population or prevent genocide in the hands of a crazy person. If Iran is bombed tonight, it might also be our civilization is gone, never to return.
I've called my senators and member of Congress and told their staffers to convey to them that what the president is threatening is not just a war crime, but a crime against humanity, an act of genocide, and . . . a high crime and misdemeanor, and that they must force him to back down or remove him from office. And I've asked everyone I know to do so as well, with constant calls to Congress to tell the members of Congress that if they allow this to happen, there will be blood on their hands as well. I don't know what else to do. I hope that the world's leaders are making similar calls to our ambassadors or the president himself,.
As a US history/government/law instructor, I showed my class "Hotel Rwanda" and had my law partner, a child of Nazi Germany, speak to them about how genocides seed within the population. The demeaning name calling stands out today and unfortunately has been sane washed and normalized. I've read your book and urged it on my friends. I can't predict what will happen tomorrow or next week, but neither can this demented ignorant sadist who only lives for the morning Fox news cycle. I heard from one constitutional law expert that Laura Loomer had Trump fire his national security team, especially the one expert on Iran, for not being loyal "enough." This man, as had others, wrote and advised Trump NOT to invade Iran or else it would close the Straits of Hormuz. Yet when he did, and when they did, he claimed NO ONE warned or could have predicted this scenario. A lie or dementia-fueled memory erasure? Kushner and Witcoff also went to negotiations with NO information about nuclear limitations so even when iran was willing to limit its program, Witcoff didn't understand what they were saying. That led Kushner to report to Trump an attack was imminent. This is beyond "Dr. Strangelove." This is a compounding scenario that could well slip into unimaginable destruction.
When I was a child, I had great difficulty understanding why the German people who saw atrocities occurring around them on a daily basis did not speak up. We now have a perfect explanation for that — people were afraid and kept quiet. Now it may be too late, witness what ICE has been doing. Silence doesn’t absolve us, it only aggravates the situation,
In college I read Milton Mayer's 1955 book THEY THOUGHT THEY WERE FREE: The Germans, 1933–1945. I've reread it several times since. I've also connected it to the white Americans who were fine with kidnapping, enslaving, and breeding Black people before the Civil War and with subjugating them for nearly a century afterward. I'm sure some people kept quiet because they were afraid, but many more actively aided, abetted, and benefited from it because they saw nothing wrong with it. I came of political age while my country was making war on the people of Vietnam and the rest of Indochina. As a D.C. resident I attended more than one pro-war mass rally on the Mall. I could go on and on, but the short version is that this didn't come out of nowhere and it really is who we, collectively, are, unless we stop it.
I'd say because the Congress of Yesteryear has vanished without much of a trace. We have a few stragglers who struggle and do their best to keep what we once had alive, but they appear to be far, far outnumbered. Never forget - elections have consequences.
Moreover the price for disobedience is high. In OCS we were given some instruction in military justice, including what constitutes an illegal order, bhu the emphasis was placed on the need for caution. If you refuse to obey an order and the Court Martial rules against you, you're in "a world of shit".
The Republicans are no longer a recognizable political party, they are ALL complicit in this genocide. In a properly functioning government Trump would today be physically removed from the oval office.
“the United States has undertaken atrocities before.” This is precisely why your country is not a member of the ICC.
The scientific mission being carried out by NASA right now is lost in this dung heap. The discoveries of this brave crew are buried under the filth of the trump-epstein netanyahu war.
Please, just arrest trump for treason and the commissions of war crimes. What are you waiting for?
I have thought about that as well. It seems that our Supreme Court decided that anything he does that is considered within his duties can not be prosecuted, you know get out of jail free card!
I'm certain that this presidency is the culmination of years of treachery by hidden entities that desire power over everyone. They started with gutting education, an undereducated population is easily led & tricked. And then our television shows went from Father Knows Best to those awful 'Housewives' reality shows. And reality TV has become more &:more poisonous. Pitting people against each other, having people do ridiculous tasks to embarrass themselves or possibly injure themselves. That has carried over online to TikTok pranks that can be dangerous as well as humiliating. And being an old lady I'll just add, don't get me started on video games! The violence on TV, the movies, & in games just dampens the reaction of disgust or horror & as we see all too often empathy is considered weak & woke. My Mom told me we would rot from within & she was right! All this makes us easy pickin's for China & Russia.
And the upcoming elections are most definitely at risk. This criminal cabal will do anything to stay in power &:spread their noxious White Christian Nationalism.
Ca
May I ask, where do you live? Obviously someplace at least somewhat more law abiding & normal.
Once - it seems a long time ago - we looked up to Americans and trusted them. I do hope you get rid of your horrible President the sooner the better. It will take some time to restore the relationship.
"One can hope that there will be politicians who find the courage to remove the man who speaks genocide from office." But they haven't done it yet, and I don't think they will before 8pm. Hoping those in the military will refuse to carry out what they know will be war crimes.
Lindsey Graham. Shame! Former best political friend of the noble John McCain. Graham should ask himself: "Has it come to this? Am I serving as the political wing-man and chief apologist for a man bent on striking out one our world's oldest civilizations?"
The next question he should ask himself, after wiping himself off, is: For what?
For years now I have had the same thoughts others have expressed about the rise of the Nazis and the German people. And the same thoughts about now knowing experientially how it was in Germany in the 1930s. I am praying that we do not find our selves experiencing the 1940s as well, as the USA will be on the wrong side of that debacle.
And yes, calling and writing our members of Congress early and often is essential now. I think it is more important than going to rallies at this point.
Those who have the responsibility to remove a president threatening genocide and fail to do so are complicit in whatever Trump does to realize his vision for the Middle East. Our beloved republic has become a pariah state. We can oppose, we can protest, we can denounce. But we cannot alter the fact that we belong to a pariah state. Without immediate action by those empowered to act and remove Trump, we are forever stained.
I strongly agree with Mr. Snyder. The statement on genocide is clear and unequivocal.
A part of me feels like a member of the White Rose Society in the early 1940s- scolding and warning a nation- pleading to reverse course- yet knowing that war and destruction was inevitable. Greenland, Venezuela, Iran, Cuba, Canada, Panama, abandonment of Ukraine, NATO...the list goes on. Fascism often feasts on war- until it doesn't- and self-destructs.
But while I feel the same antipathy expressed here towards Trump and the Administration- my most immediate concern is the Iranian people. I would like a cease fire in place and at least the temporary re-opening of the Strait of Hormuz. I also want to see the needed international pressure put on all warring parties to end the war. That international pressure- ineffective to date- will become more pressing and powerful as the global economy shrinks and their countries destabilize.
Strategically it is clear the US is on a path to becoming an "enemy of the world"- that will result in its defeat. Defeat everywhere. A malignant narcissist like Trump can never admit fault or how their actions brought defeat- but I can assure you the nation can and will.
It is apparent most Americans don't fully realize what their government has done to their country. They may not like it- but the urgency vs the threat seems lacking. Perhaps never having had the experience living in a country like Russia- they can't imagine what a complete loss of political freedom is. Or what living in a hated and feared nation means to whatever geopolitical advantages they once had.
As Vance cavorts with Orban- he only further destroys whatever the US might have meant to the world as a force of democracy and freedom- let alone good.
But Iran is the most pressing concern. This escalation must stop. Despite what I have written- nothing is inevitable. Otherwise- why bother writing- except perhaps as marker in history for future generations to see.
There is a very thoughtful book titled East West Street by Philippe Sands that relates the story that takes place during the Nuremburg trials after WWII. The discussion before the trials started was whether to charge these high ranking NAZIs with genocide or crimes against humanity. The title refers to two Polish Jewish lawyers who attended the same Warsaw law school and lived on the same street. One lived east of Warsaw, and one lived west of Warsaw. One emigrated to Britian and one emigrated to USA when the war broke out. All of the Judges heard from both sides as to whether "genocide" was appropriate or "crimes against humanity". Raphael Lemkin was the American professor who advocated for genocide. However, the panel of Judges finally decided to charge them with "crimes against humanity" as the word genocide had been coined based on Lemkin's study of the Armenian "genocide" which is still not recognized by Turkey as genocide. There were no existing laws anywhere which cited the term "genocide" at the time of the Nuremburg trials.
Snyder is doing what historians are supposed to do: strip away the noise and name the thing precisely.
“A whole civilization will die tonight.” That sentence doesn’t need context. It doesn’t need to be walked back or interpreted. It is, by the legal definition the United States itself signed in 1948, an expression of genocidal intent by a head of state.
What strikes me most is his point about words creating permission structures. This is basic behavioral science. Once a leader speaks the unthinkable, he doesn’t just reflect a norm—-he moves it. Everyone below him recalibrates what’s acceptable. That’s how atrocity scales. Not with one order. With a thousand small recalibrations by people who tell themselves they’re just doing their jobs.
Snyder is right that this is on us. Not just politicians. Every person who normalizes the sentence, contextualizes it, or simply scrolls past it is participating in the recalibration.
The historians always see it first. The tragedy is that seeing it and stopping it are entirely different things.
Thank you for the clarity.
—Johan
Congress must act and act soon.
Write them, call them several times a day.
What's that old definition of insanity - doing the same damn thing over & over, in expectation of different results? In my old age, that's how I feel about this "all-purpose prescription" offered to political change agents. All of us "out here" are supposed to be spending half our day phoning, emailing, snail-mailing, postcard-posting - the list goes on - until all of them "back there" finally get the message and spring into action? Excuse me. These people were hired - by us - to get this stuff done. Should we be monitoring the White House gardening crew, too? Or housekeeping? Do they need hourly reminders to take care of their tasks? No - they don't. Only Congress apparently needs to be told - every hour of every day - which way the wind is blowing. This is driving (make that "has driven") me crazy. Our situation is tragic - and if there are some legislators who are unaware of what's going on, let the impeachment hearings begin!
I hear you and feel this pain too. But even you taking the time to say this is your vital contribution to distancing yourself from his world and his agenda.
We are speaking truth. And we are hearing lies. But whether truth or lies will contribute more to our as-yet-unknown future is still on us. Keep telling the truth. If politicians don’t listen, tell journalists. If they don’t listen, tell your neighbors. Keep speaking somewhere, somehow, resolute in your ability to name reality.
By speaking and by listening truthfully we save each other, together.
Thank you for your note Myra. I may not contact my congress-folks very often (since mine mostly vote my way!) but do like to weigh in on substack comments once in a while. And hearing back helps to make the conversation "feel real" - as in real people having a real meeting about real problems. Now if we could just get the real Congress to take real action!!!
Candace, Thank you for articulating the angst (there may be a more apt word) that gnaws at me every day. Why don't they just do their fucking jobs? Life, liberty, pursuit of happiness, with equality and justice under rule of law is the agenda. A politician shouldn't have to stick his finger up into the wind every month, week, or day in order to figure out policies that promote those goals. Instead, they bombard voters daily arousing our fears of losing some program, or right we thought we possessed, unless we "sign a petition to stop it, and by the way please send us $25, or $7, or whatever you can afford so I can work on your behalf."
We the people need to significantly reduce the amount of money sloshing through our politics. That means we need to get the politicians out of politics. Serving in a legislature shouldn't be a career. Elections should be
short (45 days) and campaigns partially funded by government based on a formula of grass roots support demonstrated by small donations or other metric. Term limits and age restrictions (I'm 85) have become a necessary tool, rather than political science discussion topics, to keep our elected representatives young, thinking, willing to accept new ideas and evidence, and connected to the real world circumstances experienced by their constituents. Do we really want our futures, and our kids and their kids futures, determined by a Mitch McConnell or a Chuck Grassley??
Fred, I very much appreciate your thoughtful comment. I think we're on many (if not MOST!) of the same pages. I am sure there are better (and less expensive) ways of doing most things (if only we could get some serious, clear-headed, and imaginative brainiacs to convene, do some fresh thinking, and come up with them!). --- As for my aversion to the constant hammering from the "call your representatives every day" folks, for one thing, my own reps usually vote my way and don't need to be hounded. Also, if Congress is inundated daily with hundreds of thousands of messages, how can they possibly absorb it all, let alone get any legislating done? --- And yes, let's encourage the older members to step aside at some reasonable point. Make room for the new.
Until what passes for leadership in Republican House and Senate change, the chances of President Loose Cannon facing any consequences are near zero. Change leadership in House and Senate!
They are on vacation, yet again. These people maybe work a three day week and then fly home. On our dime. Free healthcare, money for food, a $million or so to run their office, and many more perks.
It's not all of them, but it is most of them who are entirely useless parasites.
No, D, but most of them are very useful -- to dark money and the corporate CEOs.
They all have local offices, which are staffed, and which will be visited by them. They can only hide if we don’t make an effort to contact them.
Yes and but the first reaction a day ago was horror at the expletives!! The horror at those words deflected from what Snyder is pointing out.. The shock value, the awe, the reaction to words knock out people's ability to understand what is really being said-- until we let rationality, like here, translate. We should be horrified but it's not a temporary horror about the even unprecedented use of expletives, rather about *what* is being threatened and as usual blatantly. Trump ups the ante- and has been... unstoppable. He's in a corner now.
They may be "different things" but making them accessible to even the most obtuse is still important.
It is what our journalists should be doing too. Snyder speaks more like Edward R Murrow than even the better newspapers and broadcasters have done. So only a small slice of the public hears these criminally insane words as such. Most hear bluster and energy and determination to punish “the bad guys” he invokes to justify his evil threats of destruction.
Or they just don’t “pay attention to the news” anymore, since it is all threats of vengeance and vainglorious boasting. Honest words for it: lies and propaganda.
Texas representative Dan Crenshaw has chosen to attack Trump's critics for falling into the trap of taking him literally, but he's the president of the United States and this isn't reality TV. As Macron said recently in during a state visit to South Korea:
"There is too much talk … and it’s all over the place...We all need stability, calm, a return to peace – this isn’t a show!...You have to be serious. When you want to be serious, you don’t go around saying the opposite every day of what you just said the day before. And perhaps you shouldn’t talk every day.”
Exactly. I often wonder why radical, moderate, or libertarian types don't embrace Tim's work. One of my friends, a pretty extreme lefitist which is ok by me, absolutely disregards Prof. Snyder. Perhaps this intellectually gifted historian--"gifting us" us with his newsletters, dialogues on MSNBC NOW, and outright, candid advocacy-activism is too much to belief in our cynically-minded space of us v. them. I hope not.
This is where all the decades-long “sanewashing ” of a megalomaniac has finally gotten us. Full-on war criminals in charge, and a pacified congress and helpless electorate. So tonight he threatens the entire Persian civilization when he should be in jail. Where does one go when we are past despair?
I think that Kassie’s comment should go to the top of the pile:
- it tunes with Timothy Snyder’s alarm call to us
- it’s too late for polite assessment: that’s the warning of both Timothy and Kassie.
Of course we all hope that Trump ‘taco’s’. To add terrorism (that’s what Trump and Hegseth are idolising) to strategic mistake is a catastrophe for us all: US, Iran, the Middle East, West v Islamic government, the developed world v the global south.
I think we probably all share feelings of shame, horror, and fury towards the Trump Administration, the passive Congress and the immoral (yes, immoral) US Supreme Court.
Anthony, in Scotland.
The sanewashing not just of a megalomaniac but of the political party that has been moving in this direction for decades, of the Supreme Court that gave its blessing to unlimited $$$ in electoral and other political spending, and of the "great replacement theory," which contradicts and attempts to erase everything the U.S. has tried to stand for.
I would not describe the Congress as pacified. The Republicans are complicit as they sit idly by they endorse his actions. Never forget.
One of the greatest mistakes of the 20th century, Kassie, the CIA's coup on Mossadegh.
The Iranians, a well-educated, long-civilized people, freely elected him, and in 1953 Brit and U.S. criminal fossil fuel interests got the coup to install the savage Shah instead.
The Shah and his murderous, tortuous SAVAK, oppressed the Iranian people for a quarter century before they finally kicked out the predator U.S. and Brit fossil fuel criminals who all along for the stooge and his thugs were calling the shots -- and having the American and UK taxpayers pay for their cruelties.
Back to resistance and solidarity 💪🕊️❤️
I've contacted my congressional "leaders", but see no action to remove this president. I've rallied and marched, but not sure this will save an entire population or prevent genocide in the hands of a crazy person. If Iran is bombed tonight, it might also be our civilization is gone, never to return.
I've called my senators and member of Congress and told their staffers to convey to them that what the president is threatening is not just a war crime, but a crime against humanity, an act of genocide, and . . . a high crime and misdemeanor, and that they must force him to back down or remove him from office. And I've asked everyone I know to do so as well, with constant calls to Congress to tell the members of Congress that if they allow this to happen, there will be blood on their hands as well. I don't know what else to do. I hope that the world's leaders are making similar calls to our ambassadors or the president himself,.
As a US history/government/law instructor, I showed my class "Hotel Rwanda" and had my law partner, a child of Nazi Germany, speak to them about how genocides seed within the population. The demeaning name calling stands out today and unfortunately has been sane washed and normalized. I've read your book and urged it on my friends. I can't predict what will happen tomorrow or next week, but neither can this demented ignorant sadist who only lives for the morning Fox news cycle. I heard from one constitutional law expert that Laura Loomer had Trump fire his national security team, especially the one expert on Iran, for not being loyal "enough." This man, as had others, wrote and advised Trump NOT to invade Iran or else it would close the Straits of Hormuz. Yet when he did, and when they did, he claimed NO ONE warned or could have predicted this scenario. A lie or dementia-fueled memory erasure? Kushner and Witcoff also went to negotiations with NO information about nuclear limitations so even when iran was willing to limit its program, Witcoff didn't understand what they were saying. That led Kushner to report to Trump an attack was imminent. This is beyond "Dr. Strangelove." This is a compounding scenario that could well slip into unimaginable destruction.
When I was a child, I had great difficulty understanding why the German people who saw atrocities occurring around them on a daily basis did not speak up. We now have a perfect explanation for that — people were afraid and kept quiet. Now it may be too late, witness what ICE has been doing. Silence doesn’t absolve us, it only aggravates the situation,
In college I read Milton Mayer's 1955 book THEY THOUGHT THEY WERE FREE: The Germans, 1933–1945. I've reread it several times since. I've also connected it to the white Americans who were fine with kidnapping, enslaving, and breeding Black people before the Civil War and with subjugating them for nearly a century afterward. I'm sure some people kept quiet because they were afraid, but many more actively aided, abetted, and benefited from it because they saw nothing wrong with it. I came of political age while my country was making war on the people of Vietnam and the rest of Indochina. As a D.C. resident I attended more than one pro-war mass rally on the Mall. I could go on and on, but the short version is that this didn't come out of nowhere and it really is who we, collectively, are, unless we stop it.
https://hmd.org.uk/resource/first-they-came-by-pastor-martin-niemoller/
Why aren't both houses of Congress meeting to address this issue? Congress has the war making authority, but the Congress critters have gone AWOL!
Republicans have refused to come back at the insistence of the Democrats.
But they're still collecting their paychecks, still enjoying free health care.
I'd say because the Congress of Yesteryear has vanished without much of a trace. We have a few stragglers who struggle and do their best to keep what we once had alive, but they appear to be far, far outnumbered. Never forget - elections have consequences.
Please, how do we reach our military leaders to prevail upon them to not obey the orders saying
"A whole civilization will die tonight" because our body politic seems unable to stop this madman at the helm??
Yes, thank you for your clarity.
the military leaders who might do that were removed
Moreover the price for disobedience is high. In OCS we were given some instruction in military justice, including what constitutes an illegal order, bhu the emphasis was placed on the need for caution. If you refuse to obey an order and the Court Martial rules against you, you're in "a world of shit".
So don't count on the military to save us.
we may need retired military, Milley, to do something radical..junta..
not realistic? none of this is realistic
Except we may have to. Actually, I AM counting on them. Who else is left?
Same question. In case any of them are reading this, "We're counting on YOU!!!"
The Republicans are no longer a recognizable political party, they are ALL complicit in this genocide. In a properly functioning government Trump would today be physically removed from the oval office.
“the United States has undertaken atrocities before.” This is precisely why your country is not a member of the ICC.
The scientific mission being carried out by NASA right now is lost in this dung heap. The discoveries of this brave crew are buried under the filth of the trump-epstein netanyahu war.
Please, just arrest trump for treason and the commissions of war crimes. What are you waiting for?
I have thought about that as well. It seems that our Supreme Court decided that anything he does that is considered within his duties can not be prosecuted, you know get out of jail free card!
I'm certain that this presidency is the culmination of years of treachery by hidden entities that desire power over everyone. They started with gutting education, an undereducated population is easily led & tricked. And then our television shows went from Father Knows Best to those awful 'Housewives' reality shows. And reality TV has become more &:more poisonous. Pitting people against each other, having people do ridiculous tasks to embarrass themselves or possibly injure themselves. That has carried over online to TikTok pranks that can be dangerous as well as humiliating. And being an old lady I'll just add, don't get me started on video games! The violence on TV, the movies, & in games just dampens the reaction of disgust or horror & as we see all too often empathy is considered weak & woke. My Mom told me we would rot from within & she was right! All this makes us easy pickin's for China & Russia.
And the upcoming elections are most definitely at risk. This criminal cabal will do anything to stay in power &:spread their noxious White Christian Nationalism.
Ca
May I ask, where do you live? Obviously someplace at least somewhat more law abiding & normal.
From one old lady to another, I live in Ottawa. Here we have the pleasure of listening to Pete Hoekstra tell us how nasty we are🤥
Once - it seems a long time ago - we looked up to Americans and trusted them. I do hope you get rid of your horrible President the sooner the better. It will take some time to restore the relationship.
"One can hope that there will be politicians who find the courage to remove the man who speaks genocide from office." But they haven't done it yet, and I don't think they will before 8pm. Hoping those in the military will refuse to carry out what they know will be war crimes.
Lindsey Graham. Shame! Former best political friend of the noble John McCain. Graham should ask himself: "Has it come to this? Am I serving as the political wing-man and chief apologist for a man bent on striking out one our world's oldest civilizations?"
The next question he should ask himself, after wiping himself off, is: For what?
I always hope that John McCain is haunting him at night!!!!
He needs more haunting. I think, however, that his ambition over arches his former integrity
For years now I have had the same thoughts others have expressed about the rise of the Nazis and the German people. And the same thoughts about now knowing experientially how it was in Germany in the 1930s. I am praying that we do not find our selves experiencing the 1940s as well, as the USA will be on the wrong side of that debacle.
And yes, calling and writing our members of Congress early and often is essential now. I think it is more important than going to rallies at this point.
Those who have the responsibility to remove a president threatening genocide and fail to do so are complicit in whatever Trump does to realize his vision for the Middle East. Our beloved republic has become a pariah state. We can oppose, we can protest, we can denounce. But we cannot alter the fact that we belong to a pariah state. Without immediate action by those empowered to act and remove Trump, we are forever stained.
I strongly agree with Mr. Snyder. The statement on genocide is clear and unequivocal.
A part of me feels like a member of the White Rose Society in the early 1940s- scolding and warning a nation- pleading to reverse course- yet knowing that war and destruction was inevitable. Greenland, Venezuela, Iran, Cuba, Canada, Panama, abandonment of Ukraine, NATO...the list goes on. Fascism often feasts on war- until it doesn't- and self-destructs.
But while I feel the same antipathy expressed here towards Trump and the Administration- my most immediate concern is the Iranian people. I would like a cease fire in place and at least the temporary re-opening of the Strait of Hormuz. I also want to see the needed international pressure put on all warring parties to end the war. That international pressure- ineffective to date- will become more pressing and powerful as the global economy shrinks and their countries destabilize.
Strategically it is clear the US is on a path to becoming an "enemy of the world"- that will result in its defeat. Defeat everywhere. A malignant narcissist like Trump can never admit fault or how their actions brought defeat- but I can assure you the nation can and will.
It is apparent most Americans don't fully realize what their government has done to their country. They may not like it- but the urgency vs the threat seems lacking. Perhaps never having had the experience living in a country like Russia- they can't imagine what a complete loss of political freedom is. Or what living in a hated and feared nation means to whatever geopolitical advantages they once had.
As Vance cavorts with Orban- he only further destroys whatever the US might have meant to the world as a force of democracy and freedom- let alone good.
But Iran is the most pressing concern. This escalation must stop. Despite what I have written- nothing is inevitable. Otherwise- why bother writing- except perhaps as marker in history for future generations to see.
There is a very thoughtful book titled East West Street by Philippe Sands that relates the story that takes place during the Nuremburg trials after WWII. The discussion before the trials started was whether to charge these high ranking NAZIs with genocide or crimes against humanity. The title refers to two Polish Jewish lawyers who attended the same Warsaw law school and lived on the same street. One lived east of Warsaw, and one lived west of Warsaw. One emigrated to Britian and one emigrated to USA when the war broke out. All of the Judges heard from both sides as to whether "genocide" was appropriate or "crimes against humanity". Raphael Lemkin was the American professor who advocated for genocide. However, the panel of Judges finally decided to charge them with "crimes against humanity" as the word genocide had been coined based on Lemkin's study of the Armenian "genocide" which is still not recognized by Turkey as genocide. There were no existing laws anywhere which cited the term "genocide" at the time of the Nuremburg trials.