There is a plaza in Berlin now called the Bebelplatz.  When it was constructed in the mid-1700s, it was known as the Opernplatz, because the State Opera house is on the plaza’s east side, but that is not why it’s famous.  I visited here a few years ago, not to see the opera, but for another important reason.  In May of  1933 this was the location where ritual book burnings began in Germany, led by the German Students Association, which, along with the Hitler Youth, the SS, and the SA (Brownshirts) were groups that grew out of the National Socialist German Workers’ (Nazi) Party.  The ritual burning on May 10th followed an inflammatory speech by Josef Goebbels, Hitler’s head of propaganda.

On the first night, 20,000 books from the library of the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft (Institute of Sex Research) were burned.  On other nights, thousands of other “unGerman” books, written primarily by Jewish authors, were burned on the plaza.  One of those authors was Albert Einstein.

On the site of those book burnings is a memorial that sits in the plaza.  Called The Empty Library, it’s a 16′ by 16′ below ground room surrounded by empty bookshelves that would hold the 20,000 books burned on that first night.  The ceiling is a glass panel so you can see it from the plaza above.  It is impressive.

If I could, I would charter an airliner from Texas to Berlin and put all the book banners on it, including Greg Abbott all the way down to that Little Shit Matt Krause (who briefly ran for Texas AG against a rogue’s gallery of weirdos trying to unseat Indicted for Fraud and Insurrectionist Ken Paxton).  It’s Krause who compiled a list of 850 books he wants banned from Texas schools which includes books by Pulitzer Prize winners.  These clowns need to see where their politics is going.

Texas has been under the control of Republicans since 1997 and the results are exactly what one would expect of a system rotten to the core like ours.  Wedge issues designed to keep the base stirred up are now fed in a continuous stream including the normal guns, God, gays, school vouchers, abortion, non-existent voter fraud, immigration, and all people not white.  The latest is now CRT, mandates, science, and books.  If you listen closely, you can hear the voice of Josef Goebbels and Adolf Hitler in the words of book banners.  The language of these wedge issues eerily echoes their language as they took over the German government and started killing what would end up being millions of innocents they deemed to be “unGerman” and unacceptable.

There is a plaque at The Empty Library that is inscribed, “Where they burn books, so too will they in the end burn human beings”.   Inspiringly, Texas students are not taking this latest move by finger wagging book banners.  Last week at a meeting of the Granbury ISD outside of Fort Worth, a high school junior told the panel,

“No government — and public school is an extension of government — has ever banned books and banned information from its public and been remembered in history as the good guys.”

Couldn’t have said it better myself.

This weekend I was reminded of Liz Cheney’s words at the beginning of the January 6th committee investigation that they had a responsibility “…to make sure that Donald Trump is not our nominee, and that he’s never anywhere close to the reins of power ever again.”  TFG was in the Houston area on Saturday grifting money from stupid and corrupt fans, playing his Top 40 hits of lies and hate.  This time, though, he added a new promise to the menu – to pardon the insurrectionists who’ve been charged, convicted, and jailed for attempting to overthrow the US government.  That’s right, folks, even after reversing himself on vaccines, which pissed off the base, he terrified everyone else with his promise to pardon the criminals who did his bidding on January 6th.  On top of that chilling declaration, he called for his supporters to demonstrate in New York and Georgia should prosecutors bring charges against him and his family.

TFG’s profound corruption is back on public display where he demonstrated that nothing at all has changed; he puts his own welfare and wallet in front of all other priorities, including the public welfare.  He doesn’t care if you live or die, as long as the lights are always focused on him and his followers do his bidding without question.

The stakes have never been so high as they are right now.

Phil Valentine; Jimmy DeYoung; Dick Farrel; Marc Bernier.  These four guys have several things in common – Syndicated hate radio talkers, anti-vaxxers, anti-science, racists, climate-deniers, religionists, and all dead.  Marc Bernier, who had dubbed himself “Mr. Anti-Vax” was the latest hate talker to have died after spreading disinformation on vaccines and conspiracy theories about the Coronavirus pandemic. His death, along with the others, not only demonstrates in real time the dangers of playing Russian Roulette with a deadly virus, but also lays bare the cesspool of disinformation they helped create and perpetuate.

Rush Limbaugh was the most significant figure in the rise of modern hate radio in the 90s, casting the Clintons as objects of hyper partisan hate, conspiracy theories, and grievance.  Remember the list of people that the Clintons supposedly murdered?  That vicious lie was so pervasive that it is now embedded in the DNA of political conservatives and formed the foundation of the idiotic Q Anon conspiracy theory culminating in a violent attack on the US Capitol in an attempt to overthrow the US government.

These four deplorables, included in a much larger group of deplorables like Alex Jones, feed a steady diet of anger, lies, distortions, gross exaggerations, conspiracy theories, and right wing red meat into a counterculture drowning in obsession and devotion to self-destruction.  Trump is one of the most successful politicians to tap into this counterculture which has formed the core of his base, dominating all of rightwing politics today and destroying what’s left of the Republican Party.  The ecosystem they enable has sickened millions, caused untold deaths, and is holding back the entire country from recovery from the pandemic.  These low budget hate talkers are the heartbeat of this ecosystem, pumping toxic disinformation into syndicated networks that is literally getting people killed including those doing the pumping.

I wish no harm to anyone, but it’s almost impossible for me personally to have any empathy for the self-inflicted death these hate talkers caused themselves and untold others, not to mention the financial burden of huge hospital bills left to their families to carry.  Is this the way nature cleans the gene pool?  That judgment is above my pay grade, but my observation is that this is exactly what’s happening; unfortunately they’re taking untold numbers of innocents with them, and that is nothing but tragedy in its purest form.  Perhaps all this senseless ignorance and death will drive at least some of their adherents to rethink their devotion.  We can only hope.

This photo has been circulating on social media this last week:

This is the cover of the July 1983 Moral Majority Report, a newsletter conceived and published by Jerry Falwell, the founder of the Moral Majority, a Reagan era mouthpiece of what has now morphed into the American Taliban.  At that time, the HIV crisis was arising, and predictably, right-wingers were judgmental about the outbreak, but worse, even then they got the virology wrong, donning masks in an effort to scare the shit out of people about a virus that didn’t transmit through the air, but by bodily fluids.

Back then, the mask was used as a weapon against science and one of their targets, the gay community.  Today, once again masks are being used as a weapon against common sense and science, but in the opposite of the use in 1983.  Back then, right-wingers donned masks to push their message; today they accost people wearing masks and rail against mask mandates to push whatever their message is today. The obvious conclusion is that conservatives are not only totally corrupted; they have been corrupted for decades, moving facts around to fit their narrative.  Add the cancer of Donald Trump, and the corruption is complete, and political conservatism becomes a toxic soup of lies, distortions, disinformation, and cruelty for the pure sake of cruelty.

The more things change, the more they stay the same, but in the case of the American right wing, it gets worse.

Last week we talked about the death of H. Scott Apley, Galveston city council representative and member of the Texas GOP executive committee from Covid-19.  Apley’s death was totally preventable, but the extreme far right activist was a loud voice against vaccines, science, and common decency.  He amplified lies about the virus and the vaccines on social media, and mocked those who wore masks and were relying on public health policy established using guidance from actual scientists.  He, his wife, and infant child all were infected.  He died 3 days after being admitted to a hospital in Galveston.

Apley’s foolishness was deadly.  Worse, his ignorance has very likely caused additional infections and possibly deaths.  The Republican party, led by the Orange Menace, has become mired in lies, reality bending, religiosity, and cruel public policy that has no reason to exist but for inflicting more cruelty.

Yesterday, the Washington Post used Apley as the perfect example of the chasm that has widened between normal people and the insanity of extreme rightwing politics.  It noted that even in the wake of his death, the Galveston County GOP was still posting bullshit about vaccines and didn’t even acknowledge how Apley died.  The madness has so engulfed the GOP that the party itself is a threat to public health and our system of government. It has truly morphed into the American version of the Taliban, and that’s not an exaggeration.

The FBI arrested Thomas Barrack today, who is a 30-year ally of Trump and chairman of his inaugural committee.  They got him on lobbying for the UAE without reporting it, then lying to the FBI about it.  The cover up is always worse than the original crime.  Apparently the indictment is well documented and damning.  They’ve got Trump on tape repeating Barrack’s rewrite of his speech about stopping Middle East terrorism (which was just a cover for filling Barrack’s pockets).

This one is going to be good, and signals that the DOJ is getting closer and closer to His Orangeness.