Have You No Sense of Decency Sir?
Read Time:4 Minute, 27 Second
Our thoughts are free.
Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?
Old people remember Joseph Welch asking that of Senator Joe McCarthy and sadly some thought that hearing was a turning point for a country infested with domestic demagogues with their “principles” and their love of the law. We thought that was the end of the Roy Cohen style of attack and threat and bluster and lies to get what you wanted despite the law or ethics. It wasn’t. Cohen’s disciple was Donald Trump and like the Terminator, it’s back.
That nobody has yet today asked Trey Gowdy the same question isn’t surprising. Of course, he has no shame, he’s a Republican. You might as well have asked that of Tomás de Torquemada with his “principles;” asked him whether he was ashamed of the torture and murder of countless innocent people. Fake news and you can’t trust the Jews.
And of course, I remember a song, a German song Die Gedanken Sind Frei Its origins are quite old and Poet and Minnesinger Walter von der Vogelweide wrote a version in the Middle Ages. The most often sung version today was written by Hoffman von Fallersleben, of Deutschland über alles fame in the 1840s. It means that our thoughts are free, of course, and it’s become timely again as it did in the 1940s. a hundred years later when loyalty to Hitler was necessary. I’m humming it as I write. It keeps me from screaming.
Freedom of Thought I would venture to say was much on the minds of our fellow Americans and founding fathers back when you could be jailed for thinking ill of the king. No such loyalty to the president or a party or a religion or anything else was to be a test of fitness here, save perhaps a loyalty to our nation, its constitution, and laws. That our thoughts must conform to be trusted in America is the illegal immigrant from a past and ugly time and it’s arrived here on the slimy, wet back of our formerly conservative party. It seems to be the theme of those now trying to protect Trump from the law and its consequences today. You hate the president, so you must be an outlaw. Just as OJ was innocent because “the cops” hate black people and always fake the evidence. Never mind the facts.
Die Gedanken Sind Frei.
Somebody should remind the Republicans. Someone should, in my opinion, sing it to Trey Gowdy just before he’s disemboweled, drawn and quartered ( OK, it’s in my dreams) but as it is he’s being laughed at by the world.
To quote Walter Cronkite at a similarly humiliating time in our history: The whole world is watching. They may well be laughing or even cringing as well at this point, but getting back to the music, it’s time the GOP realized that we have freedom of thought as much as or more than we have freedom of speech and that exercising either does not make one a pariah. It’s been seen as a fundamental right of mankind since the beginning of the modern age, much to the annoyance of religious authority.
It’s not legally, ethically or morally necessary to love the president to do your job impartially. An FBI agent, CIA or Military person, officer or enlisted does not have to love or profess love or loyalty to the President to be able to do his job objectively without the presumption of criminal intent. One’s religion or politics or race or gender do not legally call into question one’s honesty or patriotism, and in the absence of any evidence that his personal opinions did not affect what he does in his official capacity, Peter Strzok should be left the hell alone and respected for the amazing job he’s done catching Russian spy rings. He doesn’t like Russian spies? Why does that make them suspicious?
That means Peter Strzok, seeing as there is no evidence of wrongdoing other than the political mistrust of someone disgusted by Trump’s horrifying campaign antics. He doesn’t like Trump for his humiliation of gold star parents and the disabled so he must be a liar and a traitor. So much for “principle” unless you consider the Devil principled.
Can you suppose that any law enforcement officer must pass a partisan political loyalty test? Any military officer, any judge, any elected official – and that it would be good for our freedom if they were forbidden to privately inform a friend of this? Do you agree that a judge should not be able to rule on matters concerning Trump because he’s the wrong race? If you do not, you are in the majority, you are in the right, not on the right and you have reason to reject the party that insists your thoughts are not free and your freedom is dependent on your love and loyalty to the President. Just like it is in Russia. It’s the facts that matter and if they’re trying to erase facts, obscure facts and tell you they aren’t facts at all, they’re admitting guilt.; Lock them all up.
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I also think of Tippi Hedron with birds coming at her from all sides. First thing I read this morning says the Fascists are getting ready to impeach Rosenstein, because he’s “anti-Trump” of course, not because Trump is as guilty as hell.
I saw that glenn. I think some of them are caught up in it also. Supposedly some congresscritter used information stolen to aid their campaign, so you know whoever it is, has to be shitting themselves right about now that they will be caught with their pants down.
I have only seen the red baiting thing in movies and old clips of news shows but the comparison is out there. Some news today is, anon blogger on dead Breitbart, Infowars puts some crap up on his or her site, Fox gets hold of it, tells dolt45 all about it, he tweets about it then Fox repeats what they just told dolt 45 about. It is enough to make my head spin like I am Linda Blair in a remake of the Exorcist.
Wow!
Nice piece Glenn (again).
I’m old enough to remember the Red baiting of the 50s and early 60s, not so bad in Britain as it was here, but we did think there was a possibility of getting blown to smithereens at any moment.
My father was an army reservist and was called up for duty in Korea. He was 40 at the time so things were getting pretty desperate. Younger men were being readied for a European ground war. By the time his retraining was over (he was a WWII vet) so was the Korean War. I remember him being gone for months, I was six years old but it has stuck with me all these years. Colored my thinking to this day.
McCarthy didn’t have a Fox News to promote his agenda, is why, I think Ed Murrow had a free hand in promoting his demise.
Fox News has been agitating for years and they have help create an atmosphere where Trump and Trump wannabes can thrive.
On another note, Trump gave an interview yesterday in the UK, in which he dismissed PM May’s Brexit policy and suggested Boris Johnson could do her job. The Sun newspaper interviewed Trump and guess what, Rupert Murdoch owns that newspaper along with Fox News of course. Disgusting abuse of power.
Fox News has a huge following here and I fear they may be the deciding factor in the battle between truth and the Republicans. There’s nothing they can’t explain away or distract from and nothing they say is challenged. Remember when we used to talk about the Iron Curtain? We’re the ones behind it today and its there to keep us from seeing out.
I watched Walter Cronkite for years, with my family, on the CBS Evening News. I don’t see anyone like him today, and I don’t remember seeing anything like the intensity of Fox News devastation until the advent of Trump. It’s truly state propaganda, and no one seems to much care. Guess there’s nothing to be done for it. First Amendment and all of that.
One difference however is that we heard the news from people like Cronkite and Edward R Murrow and there was no Fox News to whitewash, launder, re-interpret and lie like hell. Fox has already presented this as a Republican victory against the “anti-Trump” forces.
But thank you!
Brilliant. Just brilliant, and something I could easily read in the Washington Post, or The Times. I’m old enough to remember the McCarthy hearings, and your most adroit comparison to what is happening today in America is defining and on point. Bravo sir!