THE SINISTER SIDE OF THE GENIUS ACT

While most folks were trying to forget the horrific news it seems we are being spoon-fed daily and enjoy their summer, Congress and the Executive were busy legislating, once again, in favor of oligarchic interests, and, in the long-run, against the better interests of the majority of common everyday citizens. The legislation in question is at the heart of one of the more obscure goals that Donald Trump set out for his administration from the start of his second term in office. In the early days after his election triumph, Trump made fleeting mention of his objective of launching the US into the crypto era. That’s what the law in question is about. 

Little has been made of this point. In fact, mention of it has been pretty much negligible compared with stunning daily news of heavy-handed immigration enforcement, or of the president’s personal war on anybody who ever said an unkind word about him, or of Trump’s connection to child sex-trafficking monster Jeffrey Epstein, or of his disemboweling of, almost literally, every government office that ever provided assistance to the least fortunate sectors of the population. But it is something that affects us all, whether we realize it yet or not.

If information about this new law has been scant, it is probably because it has been little analyzed by the mainstream media, which have plenty of sensational headlines and shocking new revelations with which to flesh out their daily news schedules. And for many common ordinary people, it seems all too technical and obscure to attract their interest. But this is major news and it has happened, fait accompli, right under our noses.

I am referring here to the so-called Genius Act, which, with little fanfare, passed in the Senate by 68 to 30 on June 17, and, after grueling marathon debate, passed in the House 308 to 122 a month later. Donald Trump, with unaccustomed low-key publicity, signed it into law on July 18, a day after it passed in the House. In both houses of Congress it had obvious support from lawmakers on both sides of the aisle, despite having the Trump GOP’s fingerprints all over it. But seen from a critical viewpoint, this cannot, by any stretch of the imagination, be considered a law with bi-party support based on its clear-cut benefit to everyone. In all honesty, this is a law that provides yet another leg up to tech giants and the wealthy, as if this administration were not already doing their bidding to an enormous degree. And I’m going to attempt to explain why it is so dangerous, in terms that everyone can understand.

Known as the Genius Act, the actual name of the law is The Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for US Stablecoins Act. The original bill was introduced in the Senate by Bill Hagerty, a Republican from Tennessee. The ostensible aim of the law is to provide a regulatory framework for so-called “stablecoins”. Stablecoins are basically a cryptocurrency supposedly backed by “reliable assets”, such as commodities or strong currency.

Stablecoins are typically used as a vehicle for transfers between other types of cryptocurrency. The core idea of the Genius Act is to ensure that US stablecoins are backed by dollars on a one-to-one ratio, or by “other low-risk assets.” Prior to the Genius Act’s  passage into law, stablecoins weren’t subject to rules regarding one-to-one backing by “low-risk assets”.

That all sounds pretty straight-forward and positive. But one of the first red flags raised to its passage came from a major nonprofit consumer group, Consumer Reports. According to their study of the law, its provisions not only fail to provide sufficient consumer protection, but also hand a blank check to Big Tech to engage in activities that compete with commercial  banking, but which are not subject to the stringent standards or practices to which banks must adhere.

This would be alarming enough, but it is only the tip of the iceberg. While the alleged aims of the Genius Act include the fostering of innovation and decentralization, it will, in effect, promote shifting control over the monetary system from public to private hands, but often in collusion with the short-term political goals of individual administrations.

How so?

First, the Act clears the way for “further study” of digital dollar frameworks—basically meaning government-backed cryptocurrencies. The problem with that is that this opens the path to the complete replacement of traditional cash with digital coins that the Treasury or Federal Reserve would presumably issue. But here the role of Big Tech firms as government partners and contractors is as yet unclear.

Additionally, the law calls for “modernization of the monetary system,” making use of accounting technologies that would provide for real-time tracking, surveillance and management of all digital transactions. These are aspects that are completely absent from current cash transactions. And if cash is phased out, digital will be the only sort of transactions available.

Further complicating matters is that, while stringent government control over digital transactions is the apparent aim, the law nevertheless calls for public-private partnerships to develop crypto tools. What this means in practical terms is that Big Tech firms will have a key to national monetary policy and infrastructure.

At a grassroots level—how the law affects you, the individual—in  the absence of cash money, every single transaction you make will be subject to oversight, presumably not only by the government, but also by its crypto business partners. In short, everyone would end up being subject to a surveillance-based financial system in which any presumed right to privacy would go right out the window.

Another consequence would be the marginalization of unbanked and underbanked populations. No one would have the freedom to remove credit card type activity from their life, or to merely have a savings account and operate on a day to day basis with hard cash. You may think no one does this either intentionally or because of their particular social situation any longer. But in fact, government statistics show that the unbanked and underbanked population in the US totals nearly six million households.

These are mostly people who are, in some sense, already marginalized to a greater or lesser degree. These people are, for instance, the elderly, low-income wage-earners, rural residents, and undocumented immigrants working in a variety of American sectors—farming, hotels, packing, etc. Already vulnerable, these people would simply be written off by an all-digital system, since they rely on cash for their daily needs, and the Genius Act does little or nothing to protect them and their way of life.

The law also does little to mitigate the risk of government overreach. On the contrary, it opens a door to it. And in an autocratic climate like the current one, and in an era in which the Executive has ever greater power in detriment to the other branches of government, this feels like a major vulnerability. Suffice it to say that, in any “politically sensitive” context, government policy could very well program spending restrictions in accordance with political goals, a restriction that is impossible when cash is freely available and usable.

Nor does the Genius Act provide, within the context of eventual cash restrictions, for the preservation of tools such as ATMs, cash-handling services (PayPal etc.), or even cash-acceptance mandates for businesses. Clearly, this has the makings of a catalyst for banks and retailers to accelerate the removal of cash operations, permitting them to cite “modernization mandates” espoused by the Genius Act.

Also of no little concern are cybersecurity and stability issues. If all money is rendered “electronic,” the entire monetary system would become vulnerable to such threats as algorithmic errors, power outages and hackers of all sorts. Unlike cash, which is undeterred by war, natural disasters, blackouts, etc., solely digital systems are eminently vulnerable to any and all of these contingencies.

In short, a crypto-based financial and monetary system promises to further undermine civil liberties, exacerbate state control over people’s personal finances, and vastly increase inequality. And, bottom line, whoever manages to gain control over the monetary system will also have control over the distribution of wealth, in a world where some people are already clearly “more equal” than others.

 

A DAY OF MOURNING FOR PARADISE LOST

Today is the Fourth of July. There is no more American holiday.  It is a day of which I have fond memories from my childhood, which, even back then, filled me with both the festive air of a summer holiday, and a patriotic pride at its deeper meaning. That day when American patriots rebelled against the oppression of colonialism and began spilling their blood for the initiation of a bold new experiment in democracy, justice and the rights of the individual.

Today on my FB feed, I published a picture of a marble slab on which the fate of the fifty-six signers of the Declaration of Independence is recounted. So strong was their belief in the new nation that they were founding through bloody revolution that they pledged everything they were and everything they had to the defense of their cause.

And, indeed, it was not an idle vow. Nine died in the ensuing Revolutionary War. Five were captured and imprisoned. The wives and children of some of them were abused, killed, or left penniless and destitute. A dozen of these first patriots had their homes burned to the ground. Seventeen lost everything they owned. But not one of them defected from their pledge to fight for and build a new, free, and democratic nation.

It is a devastating fact that not a single Republican member of Congress, cabinet member or conservative majority Supreme Court justice is willing to stand up for those founding values and stop the headlong fall into tyranny that the United States of America is experiencing as we speak. It is even more shameful that they excuse, embrace, or fail to recognize their responsibility for delivering the nation into the hands of a clearly recognizable authoritarian, who is lawless, cruel and unrelenting. 

I would like to be able to rediscover that swelling feeling of my youth, those times when I, like most other Americans, believed that, despite its flaws and human errors, ours was an unshakable system of laws and guarantees that, because of our carefully preserved regimen of checks and balances, was immune to tyrants and opposed to fascism, totalitarianism, and authoritarianism in all of their forms. Indeed, our own fathers had fought, and bled, and died on foreign soil to defend that principle, to not only enjoy our democratic system at home, but also to defend other democracies that fascism had placed at imminent risk.

We had so much to be proud of back then, even despite the darker chapters in our history. We were, after all, truly, the land of the free and the home of the brave. We were a nation of people born into a legacy of freedom and democracy that was the greatest of its kind in world history, and for the preservation of which, so many before us had fought, made supreme and sacred sacrifices, and often died in the process.

What our elected representatives are not only allowing to happen, but are actively supporting and defending, spits on the graves of those patriots, dishonors the sacrifices of our own fathers and grandfathers for the cause of freedom and democracy, and makes a grotesque mockery of American patriotism, and of the celebration of this most sacred of all American holidays.

Yes, I would like nothing better than to feel moved, to feel the swelling pride of being an American in my breast once more, and to celebrate this day with true joy in my heart and pride in that heritage.

But I cannot. I am in mourning today, and feel sad, exhausted and angry. I have a knot in my throat and bitter rage in my heart.

And it is made worse because these are no longer my times. I am nearing the end of the trail, and all I can do is issue warnings daily on what I’m seeing and what my long professional experience with authoritarian regimes has taught me about them. All I can do is issue these daily admonishments, and hope that even a handful of people will be inspired to shrug off the general lethargy that I now observe every day, and, perhaps, be moved to stand up and fight. Because the legacy that is being allowed to dwindle away is worth fighting for. Nothing should hold more value in the hearts of true American patriots.

 

POTENTIAL RESULTS AND CONSEQUENCES OF US AIRSTRIKES ON IRAN

President Donald Trump’s unilateral preemptive strikes—codenamed Midnight Hammer—on Iran’s nuclear facilities this past weekend have been met with both praise and criticism, but by far more of the latter. Polling in the aftermath of the strikes, which made use of weapons never before deployed on the battlefield, demonstrates that a sound majority of Americans disapprove of Trump’s handling of the action against Iran.

Along party lines, and as per usual, Republicans and Democrats are pretty evenly divided between yays and nays at about eighty-odd percent of Republicans “for”, and eighty-odd percent of Democrats against. But where the rubber meets the road is in the middle of majority sentiments. Independents smash the two-party tie with a full sixty percent opposed. In total, fifty-six percent of Americans apparently disapprove of Trump’s actions. Worse still for the MAGA camp, only thirty-eight percent of Independents trust Trump to make appropriate decisions in dealing with Iran in the future.

That said, there are both clearly plausible logic and firmly based facts on either side of the argument. The first, in favor of Trump’s clearly uncounseled action, is that nobody with any sense wants to see Iran, under its current leadership, get its hands on nuclear weapons. It is a radical theocracy known as the world’s greatest supporter and exponent of international terrorism. At the core of its radicalism is the idea that “infidels” are free game and that Western democracy is an axis of evil that should be destroyed.

In that sense, there is a great deal of logic in taking steps to dismantle and/or destroy the current Iranian regime’s nuclear capabilities. But before we cheer for President Trump, it is worth pointing out that diplomacy had already gone a long way toward not only curtailing the advancement of Iran toward becoming a nuclear threat, but also toward becoming a less hostile and more integrated member of the concert of nations. President Barack Obama and America’s Western allies successfully negotiated a nuclear deal with Iran that went a long way toward ensuring that it became trustworthy in terms of making only peaceful use of its nuclear capabilities.

With one fell swoop of his Sharpie, Trump, in 2018, arbitrarily trashed the aptly named Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA)—e.g., the Iran nuclear deal— in a reckless move that not only left US allies stunned and confounded, but that also caused Iran to immediately go back on the promises it made in that accord and to start intensifying, even more than before, its development of a path to nuclear weaponry. In other words, it is largely the fault of Trump’s actions during his first term in office that we have reached this juncture with Iran in the first place. This is typical of Trump’s ham-handed approach to diplomacy, such as it is, which relies more on threats, insults, bullying and humiliation than it does negotiation and compromise. This seems ironic, since Trump has long considered himself a consummate negotiator and deal-maker. Truth be told, at least in his governance techniques, there is precious little evidence of this alleged skill.

But putting that aside, there are factual reasons on  which supporters of last weekend’s airstrike can hang their argument. Some of these include the following:

Ø Experts seem to agree that the airstrikes have substantially delayed—though not definitively detained—Iranian nuclear development. It is worthwhile noting that Iran’s original efforts toward obtaining a military nuclear device were largely in response to Israel’s nuclear arms development, which extensively predates Iran’s program. Israel began nuclear weapons development already in the 1950s, shortly after becoming a country, and it is thought to have had a deliverable nuclear device already in 1966 or 1967, while Iran still does not have a nuclear arsenal.

Ø  For better or for worse, Trump’s move, in concert with the bombing raids already being carried out by Israel, sends an unequivocal message that the current US administration is willing to use military force in order to curtail nuclear arms proliferation, be it Iran or any other nation entertaining the idea of becoming a nuclear power—something very likely making other bad actors like North Korea sit up and take notice.

Ø The preemptive move against Iran’s nuclear arms program could strengthen US ties with allies like Israel, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States that have been watching Iran’s nuclear development with understandable concern. None of them wants a nuclear-armed Iran.

Ø The at least temporary destruction of its nuclear arms program is bound to limit Iran’s regional influence and to undermine its leverage in any future diplomatic negotiations.

Ø The airstrikes may have a broader effect on Iran’s military-industrial capabilities as a whole, making it less of an aggressive, belligerent presence throughout the region.

Ø Principally, the strikes will undoubtedly put hobbles on Iran’s ability to produce weapons-grade fissile materials. Those strikes have thus achieved the non-proliferation goals of the US, at least in the short term. According to David Albright, a former UN weapons inspector, whether the mission was a complete success in wiping out Iran’s ability to reach its nuclear arms goals is debatable. But its facilities sustained at least very significant damage. Albright calculates that if indeed Iran manages somehow to recover from the strikes, it will take it “at least a year or two” to retool and reinitiate its nuclear arms development.

But while all of that may be well and good seen from the viewpoint of hawks, who always tend to prefer might over diplomacy, there are other very real and very negative factors to be taken into account. These include the following:

Ø As Albright indicates, backed up by prior US intelligence community assessments and reports, the airstrikes will, in all likelihood, only manage to delay, not halt, Iran’s advancement toward its nuclear arms goals. This is especially true considering that intelligence reports suggest that the Iranian government managed to load up at least part of its already substantially enriched uranium supplies and to move them to an unknown location. That means that if Iran can manage to quickly rebuild its nuclear infrastructure, in some more secretive or hardened location, it could continue the enrichment process from an already advanced stage. It could, therefore, have a nuclear device within a relatively short time span. And the US bombings, in support of Israel, with weapons never before used in war, could give the Iranian regime a very real incentive to do so.

Ø The unprecedently aggressive move by the Trump administration provides Iran with the incentive to further deepen its ties with,  and to seek the cooperation of other potential US enemies. The two that stand out, while not the only ones, are North Korea and Russia. Iran and North Korea maintain strategic ties, characterized by a history of cooperation in areas like arms deals and missile technology, and they are united by a shared opposition to US influence in their regions and the world. The US has designated both nations to be sponsors of international terrorism, a fact that aligns them philosophically and materially against US foreign policies. Russia, meanwhile, is indebted to both the Iranian and North Korean regimes. Both have provided substantial military aid to Vladimir Putin in his war of aggression on Ukraine, and, in the case of Iran, in its other war of aggression against the people of Syria, and in favor of the bloody regime of former pro-Russian dictator Bashar al-Assad that oppressed them. Russia and North Korea are both technically and politically capable of providing Iran with help in reaching its aggressive nuclear goals sooner rather than later.

Ø Finally, there is the inherent threat of direct Iranian retaliation. Indeed, Iran has made it clear that it plans to take revenge. Considering that the current Iranian regime is one of the world’s most dangerous purveyors of anti-American and anti-Western terrorism, since the bombings the US has potentially become a considerably more dangerous place, as has international travel and residence for Americans in certain parts of the world. Furthermore, US military and embassy personnel in the region surrounding Iran and within reach of its missiles and drones have been placed at considerably higher risk than before the airstrikes were carried out. There is also greater incentive for Iran to heighten its backing for international terror groups such as Hezbollah and Hamas. All of these things create more fertile terrain for expanding instability in the Middle East, and for the eventual need for US boots on the ground. Trump’s aggressive action has singlehandedly created those conditions, despite the fact that Americans as a whole, and even a core of MAGA Republicans have no appetite for another protracted war in the Middle East. There is also concern that any retaliatory action by Iran to hamper shipping in the Strat of Hormuz could send oil (and thus fuel) prices skyrocketing, a factor which would have a significantly negative effect on both the US and global economies.

Beyond all of these considerations, there are domestic and, as usual under Trump’s governance, constitutional issues that are of no small concern. Trump has once again placed at risk the system of checks and balances that protects and upholds US representative democracy.  To begin with, under the US Constitution (Article I, Section 8), only Congress has the power to declare war. Unilateral military action without congressional approval circumvents this constitutional check.

Trump’s move also is in apparent violation of the 1973 War Powers Resolution. Although this piece of legislation provides presidents with a sixty-day window in which to take limited military actions without congressional intervention, that authorization is necessarily subject to prior notification of Congress at least forty-eight hours in advance of any such action.

Trump apparently provided an informal heads-up to legislators from his own party—a message that at least one Republican described as “cryptic”—but failed to give any notification at all to Democratic members of Congress. Under these conditions, last weekend’s preemptive strikes were in apparent violation of this legal constraint intended to maintain the balance of power between co-equal branches of government.

The unilateral and un-consulted way in which the president ordered the strikes has further advanced Trump’s attack on co-equal governance and bolstered his campaign to vastly expand authoritarian executive power, by effectively weakening Congress’s constitutional ability to oversee executive actions and its influence on foreign policy and the employment of the country’s armed forces.

His action has also undermined principles of co-governance with the third branch of government by completely bypassing judicial review. If the courts are unable—or unwilling, due to pressure from a Department of Justice that, under Trump, has lost all independence—to review such actions because of executive invocation of the so-called “political question” doctrine or of “national security privilege”, this then limits the judiciary’s role in checking unconstitutional or otherwise illegal uses of force.

In short, conducting such military strikes without full transparency or consultation reduces interbranch deliberation and public accountability, while centralizing all authority in the executive. This is behavior typical of authoritarian regimes and has no place in US representative democracy.

All things considered, we are witnessing a disproportionate shift of power to the Executive Branch, one that significantly weakens the Constitution’s intended purpose of creating a system of inviolable checks and balances. Unfortunately, by handing the president congressional and judicial powers on a silver platter, the Republican majority in Congress is complicit in the relative success that Donald Trump is having in his bid to turn the US into an oligarchic authoritarian regime.

 

THE RICH GET RICHER

 

If you believe MAGA propaganda, you probably think Elon Musk made a huge sacrifice to be a uniquely autonomous part of the Trump administration, losing money hand over fist while helping Trump "make America great again."

But if that’s what you think, you would be dead wrong. Trump is no longer tweeting about Elon, and Musk himself is suddenly keeping a low profile. Maybe that's because year-over-year reports have begun to come out regarding just how profitable his time with Trump has been, while he has been busy putting thousands of Americans out of work and throwing state agencies into utter chaos.

Here's the lowdown: Depending on the source quoted, just since Trump's election in November of 2024, from which time Musk became an even more high-profile figure in the administration than his boss, Elon increased his net worth by an estimated $83 billion or more. Year-on-year between April of last year and April of this year—a year in which he was a central figure in Trump's campaign, election victory, and the first one hundred days of the Trump administration—his fortune increased by somewhere between $132 billion and $186 billion.

In fact, Musk, who was already the richest man on earth, has now broken even his own record for just how filthy rich one man can be. His net worth is currently calculated at right around $350 billion. Let’s put that amount into perspective: $350 billion is the annual GDP of the Czech Republic, one of the most advanced economies in Central and Eastern Europe, and one of the EU's most manufacturing-intensive economies.

White House reporters claim that, despite the sudden muting of his previously boisterous profile, Musk is still very much in the picture in Trump World. And he is still reaping the benefits of his close link to the Trump administration, and of the MAGA crowd’s infatuation with making billionaires richer.

Nor is he alone in garnering the benefits of the bedlam and confusion that is Trump’s trademark smokescreen for keeping America’s eye off the ball. Statistics show that, year-on-year since April of last year, the top ten American billionaires, including, Musk, have increased their combined net worth by between $365 and $500 billion (in other words, each of their fortunes on average has burgeoned by a hundred million dollars a day in the last year).

Meanwhile, average Americans have seen their 401(k) accounts ravaged and inflation remain out of control, despite Trump campaign promises to rein it in. To understand the inequality of accumulation at the top of the American wealth pyramid, it’s worth noting that ten average American workers—making $66,000 a year, which few middle-class workers actually earn—would have to work approximately fifty-five thousand years each and not spend a dime in order to scrape together the combined amount by which the ten top billionaires in country augmented their wealth in a single year.

And if the GOP manages to pass Donald Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” into law, billionaires further stand to benefit. The bill, as it stands now, includes provisions that could significantly lower taxes for high-income earners and corporations. More specifically, it includes proposals to make permanent the tax cuts enacted under the first Trump administration, which included lower corporate tax rates and increased tax deductions on capital gains.

And although that tax bill presumes to lower taxes for average Americans as well, it is noteworthy that only the higher average wage-earners will benefit in real terms.

According to Professor Martha Gimbel, executive director and co-founder of the Yale Budget Lab, a research center that analyses government policy, "This is a bill where the positive impacts are really tilted toward rich Americans. It doesn’t really matter if people at the bottom are getting relatively small tax cuts if they're losing their health care, they're losing their SNAP benefits and they're having to pay more money in tariffs."

In other words, cuts that the bill proposes in Medicaid and food stamps will not only wipe out any tax-cut benefits to workers making less than thirty thousand dollars a year, but will also put an increased burden on their already strained finances.

In short, as the old song goes, “There's nothing surer /The rich get rich and the poor get poorer.”  And never has that been truer in the US than it is today.

THE DUNG BEETLE THEORY

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent says Trump getting a luxury jet from Qatar is the same as the United States receiving the Statue of Liberty from France. 

In my opinion, anyone who can make that comparison with a straight face doesn't have the critical-thinking ability of a dung beetle.

ABOUT THIS DAMNED PARADE

 In a private group that I belong to, someone posted this query:

I have a question for any of the veterans in this group who would be kind enough to educate me. First of all, Thank You for your service.
And I am not making any judgment calls on this. I am just very curious. What do you think about the military parade that is supposed to happen in June? As a veteran, do you feel honored by this parade? I am not a veteran. And neither was my husband so I do not have a really good understanding of how this type of event would make you feel.

This was my response:

As a Regular Army vet (and former Spec 5) from the seventies, and as the son of a WWII sergeant who won four bronze stars in the fight against fascism in Europe, I feel angry that Trump is usurping the 250^th anniversary of the Army to celebrate, not the Army, but himself. It is especially upsetting when he is a serial draft-dodger, and someone who has repeatedly disparaged us and our brothers-and-sisters-in-arms both living and dead.

A man who said Navy pilot John McCain, held and tortured for years on end in Vietnam, wasn't a hero because he got caught; a man who referred to Army fallen in a French war-dead cemetery as suckers and losers; a man who stood in Arlington beside a decorated Marine general who had lost a son of his own in combat and said, "I don't get it. What was in it for them."

This man isn't fit to pronounce the NAME of the US Army, let alone be its commander-in-chief, and less still to hitchhike on an Army day of celebration and respect to hold a narcissistic, self-serving celebration for his own birthday, in which thousands of troops are forced to participate. This is especially true when the 250th anniversary of the US Army should be a celebration of democracy and of the hundreds of thousands who have defended it with their lives, patriotism and sacrifice, not a day of sadness on which he rubs our noses in the authoritarian regime that he has created.

 

That's how I feel about it.

THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION’S LATEST ATTEMPT TO RADICALIZE AMERICA

I saw this meme recently and decided to fact-check it. What I found out was that the news is even worse than it indicates. Under Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s supervision, more than three hundred eighty titles have been removed from the Nimitz Library at the US Naval Academy in Annapolis. The titles all have to do with issues regarding race, gender, sexual orientation, ethnicity, social injustice, and related topics.

While this move to suppress all progress made in the past century regarding diversity, equity and inclusion—in other words, civil rights—is one of the most detestable policies imposed by the pro-authoritarian Trump regime to date, what is as equally shocking as what the government has removed from the Nimitz Library is what it hasn’t. The cherry-picking nature of the administration’s raid on a broad cultural approach to forming future naval officers seems bent on stripping the academy’s library of an honest look at race and gender in America, while conserving works that promote fascist ideals and white supremacy.

That is not to say that those titles should be suppressed either. A place like the Nimitz Library, the idea of which is to help form the leaders of the future, should be an oasis of free expression. It is condescending to think that higher-education scholars should be directed to read only specific ideologies or authors. Reading broadly is how intellectuals develop critical thinking. You can't know what is behind Nazism, Marxism, fascism or any other political ideology without reading the original dogma. Otherwise you are only left with what you've been told by others who, more often than not, pretend to know because they too are working from second hand. 

Similarly, you can't know about the struggle for civil and human rights, the price of freedom and the cost of maintaining and extending democracy and ethnic equality without reading the works of those who have made those sacrifices. Nor can you understand why, in the face of such injustices, there is no such thing as reverse racism when compared to the overwhelmingly evil force of white supremacy. Unfortunately, that's the whole idea behind this regime's library purges.  

According to the Legal Defense Fund and LAMBDA Legal, an organization founded by Federal Judge and Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall in 1940, which sent a letter of protest and concern to Hegseth and to Vice-Admiral Yvette M. Davids, Superintendent of the Annapolis academy, “the US Naval Academy evaluated its book collection in Nimitz Library following the verbal order” (apparently by Hegseth) “demanding compliance with President Donald Trump’s Executive Order 14190.” LAMBDA Legal reported that, “the Naval Academy reviewed nine hundred titles to screen for what it claims are ‘diversity, equity, and inclusion’ topics. The list of three hundred eighty-one titles removed from circulation almost exclusively touch upon topics pertaining to the experiences of people of color, especially Black people, and/or LGBTQ people, including:  I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou, Stone Fruit by Lee Lai,  The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas, Lies My Teacher Told Me : Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong by James W. Loewen, Gender Queer: A Memoir by Maia Kobabe, and Democracy in Black: How Race Still Enslaves the American Soul by Eddie S. Glaude, Jr.

LAMBDA Legal and the LDF point out that, “At the same time, the collection retained other books with messages and themes that privilege certain races and religions over others, including The Clansman: A Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan by Thomas Dixon Jr., Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler, and Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad” (a novella considered a literary classic in which Conrad sharply criticizes the devastating nature of European colonialism, but in which his nineteenth-century view of Africans as inferior savages has been called into question by modern-day scholars as decidedly racist).

In their letter to Hegseth and Davids, Lambda Legal and the LDF make clear their objection to any sort of censorship imposed by the government as a whole or by any specific administration. They underscore that the fact that it is “the constitutional responsibility of the US Naval Academy to protect cadets’ right to receive information and the danger of censoring materials based on viewpoints disfavored by the current Administration.” They also emphasize the importance in intellectual development of reading and engaging with varying viewpoints from diverse authors, “particularly writers from historically marginalized communities,” as a key to developing critical thinking, empathy and intellectual agility. They point out that this is the only way to properly prepare future officers “to engage thoughtfully and responsibly with topics that reflect the rich diversity of our nation.”

In their letter,  LAMBDA Chief Legal Officer Jennifer C. Pizer and LDF Director of Strategic Initiatives Jin Hee Lee, warn that  “the decision of the Naval Academy to strip the Nimitz Library of diverse voices and viewpoints, especially those written by and/or about Black and LGBTQ people, constitutes unconstitutional censorship of politically disfavored ideas in direct conflict with a functioning democracy.” They add that, “such censorship is especially dangerous in an educational setting, where critical inquiry, intellectual diversity, and exposure to a wide array of perspectives are necessary to educate future citizen-leaders.” LAMBDA Legal and the LDF point out that the US Naval Academy “is tasked with educating and cultivating cadets to be leaders of a pluralistic nation,” and conclude that, as such, “it has done a disservice to cadets by preventing access to critical information.”

The complaint formulated by these two respected American legal organizations sheds light on the culture war the Trump administration is waging, mostly unspecified and behind the scenes. It serves to demonstrate that the warnings being issued since 2016 by journalists and liberal academics regarding a sharp turn toward extreme-right, pro-fascist ideals in the Era of Trump is not “fake news fabricated by the liberal mainstream media” or “lies made up by Democrats” to discredit what is clearly a white-supremacist cult of personality surrounding Donald Trump. Rather, it is hard evidence—in addition to such actions as the gutting of American public schools, bullying premier civilian institutions of higher learning, and the shuttering of the Department of Education—of an intentional policy by the administration to censor any but the most extreme far-right ideals within the nation’s education system.

As I’ve mentioned here a number of times, the Era of Trump is guided by a blueprint that, in the president’s previous term as, to a far more extreme degree, in this one would almost seem to take its cue from some of the most chilling dystopian novels ever written: notably, George Orwell’s 1984 (in which every aspect of society is dominated by an all-powerful dictator known as Big Brother), Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale (in which women are stripped of all rights and become the submissive wives, loyal jailers and brood mares of a patriarchal society), and now, Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 (in which “firemen” start rather than put out fires, and what they burn are books, and the homes and buildings where clandestine libraries are stored).

Considered a sub-section of “sci-fi”, this type of dystopian literature has proven prescient, escaping the bounds of the realm of frightening irreality, and coming home to roost as the new reality of the Era of Trump 2.0 in America. Only time will tell if Americans will rise up and rebel against the trend or, if like the beleaguered citizens of the grim dystopian worlds of fiction, they will submissively “wait and see” until it is too late to halt the organized destruction of a two-and-a-half century-old once-great democracy.  

 

 

 

 

 

CRIMEA: LET’S LOOK AT THE FACTS

When Donald Trump came to office last January, it was with the promise that he would have the war in Ukraine over with in twenty-four hours. Like much of what Donald Trump says and promises, this statement too was empty, hyperbolic and always undoable.

Since then, however, he and what I call his non-negotiators—principally Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Vice-President JD Vance and Special Envoy Steve Witkoff—have sought to quickly end the conflict by scandalously siding with Russia’s Vladimir Putin and vilifying Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky. This approach ignores completely the fact that the Ukraine War is a war of aggression perpetrated by Russia’s totalitarian leader against a sovereign nation. It also disregards the direct challenge Russia’s aggression poses to NATO, and to the sovereignty of the nations of both Eastern and Western Europe.

The Trump administration’s stance further ignores the fact that Russia is a natural enemy of the US and of the West as a whole, engaged ever since World War II in an ideological and geopolitical struggle for worldwide influence and power that is opposed to the West’s own world leadership goals. There has only been one brief period of rapprochement following the fall of the Berlin Wall. But since the start in 1999 of the reign of Vladimir Putin, alternating between the offices of prime minister and president, the focus of the Kremlin has been on reviving Russian imperialism and on the reestablishment of a bipolar world.

Incredibly, considering this environment, the officials handling Trump’s virtual capitulation to Putin’s whims are now quoting a Russian talking point as the basis for their “negotiations”. Namely, that the war is not Russia’s fault at all, but Ukraine’s for seeking a place as a Western ally within the framework of NATO. Here, my friends, is where we should be seeing a huge flashing sign reading: What’s wrong with this picture?

What I mean by that, in case you’ve let yourself get confused about who Putin is and who the US is supposed to be, is that Ukraine’s wanting a closer relationship with the West is now, and should always have been, a good thing, not a fault. Ukraine is a key piece in the geopolitical puzzle, the very terrain which stands between Russia and renewed domination of Eastern Europe. In case you’re getting lost on the map, if Ukraine’s wanting to be in NATO sparked Russia’s war of aggression, letting Russia have Ukraine is the same as opening a gaping hole in Western defense against a repeat of Russian post-war imperialism, and of the czarist imperialism that preceded it.

In the manner of Herod making a reluctant gift to Salome of John the Baptist’s head, Trump administration officials conducting these non-negotiations are starting from a position of abject weakness by kneeling before Putin with Crimea on a platter. Their sorely uneducated notion is that Crimea has always pretty much been Russian anyway, and besides, Putin grabbed it a decade ago, so, hey, finders keepers.

But is that really the case? The answer is, no.

The fact is that prior to Russia’s original imperialist advances, Crimea was inhabited by various ethnic groups, but principally the Crimean Tatars. They were a Turkic people who established the Crimean Khanate in the fifteenth century. Indeed, the name Crimea is derived from the Turkish root word Qirim. Crimea was a vassal khanate of the Ottoman Empire from 1478 to 1774. The Ukrainian region was, then, part of the Ottoman Empire’s broader sphere of influence, not that of the Russian Empire.

It was only through conquest, not by legal or consensual means, that the Russian Empire annexed Crimea in 1783, following the Russo-Turkish War (1768–1774).  At the end of that war, the Ottoman Empire had granted Crimea independence through the Treaty of Küçük Kaynarca (1774). So the Russian annexation nine years later was the first instance of Russia’s simply grabbing sovereign Crimea for its own strategic purposes. It was that annexation that marked the start of a Russian presence on the peninsula, but contrary to Putin’s narrative, that presence wasn’t based on any inherent or historic Russian claim to Crimea.

Crimean Tatars

The Putin myth echoed by Trump officials that ethnic Russians have always formed the population of Crimea is also spurious.  While it is true that Cossacks traditionally formed part of the Crimean population, along with the native Turkic Crimean Tatars, and while it is also true that Cossacks took part in Russian military campaigns throughout history, the Cossacks cannot be counted as Russians. They were a diverse group of predominantly East Slavic people. A mix of peasants, escaped serfs, and some nobility, they emerged as a nomadic society in the fifteenth century, banding together for mutual protection. They were a quasi-military and semi-nomadic society that primarily inhabited the Ukrainian steppes, venturing as well into Southern Russia. While the Cossacks still exist, with various levels of organization and activity, their communities have been reconstituted and adapted to modern society. 

Highly independent and of autonomous spirit, while not strictly mercenaries, the armies of the Cossacks often fought for a variety of regional powers, including Russia, in exchange for self-governance and a free lifestyle. They played a significant role in the history of the region, including participation in conflicts with various states in resistance against foreign invaders. But they formed part of no other nation.

Cossacks - quasi-military, semi-nomadic people

Nor is the term "Cossack" Russian. It is derived from the Turkic word kazak, which, literally translated, means adventurer or free man. Furthermore, East Slavs, the ethnicity to which the Cossacks pertain, were once part of a federation of principalities known as Kyivan Rus', a medieval state that existed from the late ninth to the mid-thirteenth century. It emerged as a powerful confederation with the city-state of Kyiv (today the capital of Ukraine) as its capital, and its territory encompassed much of what are today Ukraine, Belarus, and parts of Russia. 

That said, the Cossacks weren’t indigenous to Crimea. Having taken  part in Russian military campaigns in the area, some of their number eventually settled on or near the Crimean Peninsula, but their presence does not give Russia a legitimate claim. Especially since some of the campaigns the Cossacks took part in where Russian efforts to subjugate and/or displace the native Crimean Tatars.

As for the Tatars, they were the dominant ethnic and political group in Crimea for centuries, and still formed the majority of the population until 1944, when Soviet strongman Joseph Stalin engineered their mass deportation. It was, then, through an act of what is today known as ethnic cleansing, rather than through any legitimate transfer of sovereignty, that the Crimean region’s demographic balance was tipped toward a predominantly ethnic Russian population.

Stalin's deportation of the Tatars

From a strictly legal standpoint, ten years after Stalin’s annexation of Crimea in 1944, the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet (governing body of the USSR) transferred the peninsula back to Ukraine in 1954. Basically, the Supreme Soviet removed Crimea from the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR) and placed it once more under the original control of Ukraine (at the time, the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic). Ukraine’s claim to Crimea was never questioned after that, until Putin’s decade-long challenge to Ukrainian sovereignty—not by the Russian Federation after the fall of the USSR in 1991, nor by any international body.  

What is more, International law recognizes Crimea as part of Ukraine. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Ukraine inherited Crimea as part of its internationally recognized borders. Russia itself recognized these borders in multiple treaties, including the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, in which Russia agreed to respect Ukraine’s sovereignty in exchange for Ukraine giving up its nuclear arsenal.

Bearing all of this in mind, Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea and its armed invasion of other parts of Ukraine’s sovereign territory, using devastating military force, are violations of international law, and have sparked the largest major ground war in Europe since World War II—one involving a world-class nuclear power. Russia’s war of aggression on a sovereign country has drawn widespread condemnation in the international community. The United Nations has passed a resolution (R68/262) reaffirming Ukraine’s territorial integrity and declaring invalid a referendum held by Russia in Crimea to try and justify its annexation.

Crimean Tatar children in traditional dress

In short, Russia’s claim to Crimea and all other areas of Ukraine that it has usurped by military force since 2014 is historically, ethnically, legally and morally illegitimate, and the Trump administration’s attempts to justify Russia’s actions based on some “might makes right” theory that forms part of Trump’s authoritarian view of the world, fly in the face of international law, of respect for the sovereignty of free nations, and of America’s traditional role as the erstwhile leader of the Western world.

Worst of all, Donald Trump admires authoritarians. It’s a schoolyard philosophy, a bully’s attitude of joining other bullies in ganging up on the weaker kids in order not to have to stand up to the other bullies himself.  It’s a stance that not only makes the US Russia’s vassal, but which is also tantamount to appeasing a dangerous, megalomaniacal imperialist.

It is easy enough to understand if we stop pretending this is business as usual and start realizing that Trump identifies with Putin because Trump has megalomaniacal expansionist delusions of his own when it comes to our neighbors. There is all too obviously no difference between Trump’s feverish, openly-stated ambition of taking over Canada and making it a state, and Putin’s realized dream of invading Russia’s sovereign neighbors and making them part of his empire.

Appeasing bullies has never worked. There is no better example to quote than that of another megalomaniacal expansionist who invaded his neighbors prior to World War II. The US and Europe alike appeased Germany’s Adolf Hitler when he took over Austria. They turned a blind eye as well when he went on to invade Czechoslovakia, apparently hoping if they let him violate the sovereignty of a couple of nations, he would somehow get it out of his system. It was a fatal mistake, one with the most catastrophic consequences the world has even known.

Western Europe needs to stop appeasing not only Vladimir Putin, but also Donald Trump, if the US itself continues to fail to rein in its rogue leader. European leaders must stop hoping against hope that Trump will have some sort of epiphany and suddenly begin exercising the kind of pro-Western leadership the US consistently produced before the Era of Trump. For as long as Trump is leading it, the US is no longer a reliable ally, and does not have the best interests of the free world in mind. If anyone is to save Europe from the new wave of Russian imperialism—which, make no mistake, will not end in Ukraine if Ukraine is abandoned to its fate—it will have to be Western Europe itself, and the time to step up, sideline Trump, and draw a line in Ukraine is now.