I have said this many times, that history is a great teacher and those that fail to learn from history are apt to repeat it. Here is something to think about as it pertains to factual past US history and factual recent history concerning Donald Trump.
In 1943 in the heart of the USA’s war against Japan our nation’s submarine fleet was having great success against the Japanese merchant fleets. The Navy had determined that our latest subs, the GATO class, were able to submerge to a depth of just over four hundred feet which was one hundred feet deeper than the Japanese believed they could dive. Therefore, the Japanese set their depth charges to a maximum depth of three hundred feet. This diminished the damage they could do to our country’s subs. In that year, 1943, US Congressman Andrew May toured our Pacific fleet headquarters in Pearl Harbor Hawaii and was provided the information on the depth our subs could dive and how that benefited them when attacked by the Japanese. Representative Andrew May served as Chairman of the House Committee on Military Affairs in 1943. Afterwards Representative May held a press conference where he told the gathered press the Japanese were setting their depth charges to shallow.
Soon after this American sub losses increased in the Pacific. Vice Admiral Lockwood, commander of the U.S. submarine fleet in the Pacific, estimated that May’s security breach cost the United States Navy as many as ten submarines and eight hundred crew members killed in action. Loose lips sink ships, as the saying goes. Representative May was voted out of office in the next election.
How does this relate to current events?
In April of 2021, shortly after leaving office, Donald Trump shared classified information about US nuclear submarines with a billionaire Australian businessman at his Florida private members club, Mar-a-Lago. This has been reported by not just US news media (including Fox News), but also international news media.
The Australian businessman has been identified as Anthony Pratt, who heads one of the world’s largest packaging companies. It has been reported that Pratt later shared sensitive details about the US submarines with “scores of others, including more than a dozen foreign officials, several of his own employees, and a handful of journalists”.
American defense and intelligence authorities say this will endanger the country’s most critical defense resources, our nuclear submarine fleet, and endanger the country’s national security.
Federal prosecutors have now interviewed Pratt twice and he will likely be called by prosecutors to testify against Trump in Trump’s classified documents trial, which is due to start in May.
It is reported Trump revealed at least two critical pieces of information about the tactical capacities of US submarines, including “how many nuclear warheads the vessels carried and how close they could get to their Russian counterparts without being detected”.
For all of this…..Donald Trump swore in his oath of office to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic”. With his grandstanding for Pratt, Donald Trump has put our country’s security and that of our navy and our sailors at risk.
He is not worthy of another term in the White House where he can further harm our country, our citizens, our institutions, our agencies, our armed forces, and our allies. The saying “four and no more” was true in 2020 and even more true in 2024.
Category: National Security
-
-
What would you think if one of the political parties developed a plan to subvert home rule, seeking to have local officials appointed by the state rather than elected by the people? For clarity, “home rule” allows local governments the right to self-govern, to set their governance on taxes, education, health, etc. It also protects the local government from state intervention. Think about that.
What would you think if one of the political parties began circumventing legislation by taking over a state’s judiciary and adopting amendments to a state’s constitution, which effected widespread policy changes, including lowering the number of judges on the State’s Supreme Court and then putting the lower courts and local governments under the control of the state legislature? Think about that.
What would you think if one of the political parties began rescinding the votes of certain non-felony types of prior convicted criminals or mandating who might attend which schools, both private and public? Think about that.
What would you think if one of the political parties enacted laws affecting personal relationships, who could socially gather, or what might take place in the bedroom between consenting adults? Think about that.
What would you think if one of the political parties enabled a state legislature the power to modify or nullify any local government? Think about that.
I think, most of us, would agree these acts, if they took place, would be un-American and damaging to our democracy. These actions would directly undermine the foundations of our American democracy. These acts would violate our democratic principles of Representative Government, Rule of Law, Consent of the Governed/Popular Sovereignty, Justice, Liberty, and Equality.
There is a saying that those that forget history are apt to repeat it. For those of you thinking this could never happen in the USA, it has happened. From the 1870’s until the 1920’s, throughout the old Confederacy, these acts were manifest across the South. These are well documented having happened in North Carolina and duplicated elsewhere. Villages, towns, and cities had their elected governments abolished with the states taking over their governance, laws were passed outlawing interracial relationships, bills were passed taking away the right to vote from specific groups of people, schools were closed, schools were segregated, judiciary systems were taken under direct control of governorships or state legislatures with the courts then “packed” with political appointees. In hundreds of cases (thousands?) duly elected individuals were forced out of office by Governors or state legislatures.
You might say, “But this took place at another time, from one hundred fifty years to one hundred years ago. It could not happen today.”
Think again. It is happening today…. only today in a groundswell……but how quickly could it turn into a tsunami. We have a governor in Florida who has removed locally elected officials; locally elected prosecuting attorneys and judges, a state legislature in Florida who has removed independent board of directors at public institutions of learning, new judiciary oversight boards created and populated by political appointees. There have been numerous state level voting district maps that have been determined to undermine specific group’s ability to impact local, state, and federal elections, all of these directed at Black voting districts. In the state of Texas, the state legislature passed a bill, House Bill 2127, that kneecaps the ability of cities to self-govern. The bill was primarily focused on “blue” cities, whose local politics have been dominated by Democrat party elected officials. The law is so broad that it takes away local communities’ ability to determine how they govern commerce, welfare, taxes, etc.
Where are we headed with all of this? History is a great teacher….and from that we should all be drawing caution signs. There are danger signals in these actions and we have a political candidate who has already stated his campaign will be one of “retribution and vengeance” and releases of plans being drawn up on his reelection show a designed purpose to further centralize power through a Federal government that will be organized to attack that candidate’s “political and personal” enemies list. Who is helping to forge the strategies and the plans? It is rumored that the Heritage Foundation has created a strategy paper called” Project 2025” where Trump would expand presidential authority over even nonpolitical levers of the federal government.
Think this would never happen in the USA? It is….………
-
My entire life, even as a teenager, I have been a conservative and a Republican. Yet over the past thirty some years the Republican Party has moved away from the party of my childhood and the party of the majority of my adult life. Today it seems as if the Republican Party can only use political brinksmanship in it’s actions. It seems no longer to be the party of ideas, the party able and willing to put it’s proposals on the table and then negotiate outcomes that move the country forward. It seems to me it has become the party of “No”, the party against “things”, the party that has resolute “litmus” tests that it cannot breached. It also seems to be the party that cannot do anything without the use of brinksmanship, taking our economy or our nation’s security to the very edge of an abyss. This is happening again with the funding for Ukraine, and funding support for Israel.
The continual use of “brinkmanship” within Congress, more specifically, the Republican controlled House is reaching the level of self-destruction.
Sounds too alarming?
Think of the budget crisis that was manufactured by the Republican controlled House, even after their elected Speaker – Kevin McCarthy – had negotiated in good faith an agreement with the White House administration. The disruption that followed, including the expulsion of the Speaker from his role (never done before in the history of the USA) led to a downgrade of our country’s credit rating. No big deal you think? That downgrade made it more expensive for the government to borrow funds, the interest on those borrowings will haunt the USA for years to come, costing each one of us if we go to get a car loan, a home loan, credit card debt. Those costs will stay with us for years.
Now we face another act of brinksmanship concerning the funding and aid to both Israel and Ukraine. The Republican controlled House is refusing to fund either country unless they can wring concessions on border security. At least for some of the Republican House members. And that is understandable, to a degree. Our immigration laws are at fault here. Challenges in Central America to the populations in three countries in crisis are the basis for the extraordinary efforts for people to seek refuge in the USA. Yet for many Republican House members they blindly wish to cease any funding to support Ukraine. For those, they are ignorant of history, ignorant of the USA’s most critical security bulwarks (Europe’s security is a bulwark supporting US security, it is a barrier to dire security threats to our economy, our wellbeing, and a barrier to the threat of a much greater conflict which will put our military and our country on a path of direct engagement on the ground in Europe). What is worse, their ignorance is willful ignorance, intentional ignorance – and that ignorance puts all of us at risk. Putin wishes to reestablish the Soviet Union, by conquest or by dominion over the following states: Ukraine, Moldova, Hungary, Poland, Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, Romania, Bulgaria, Bosnia, Serbia, Montenegro, and Kosovo. This is not a short list and represents a reconstituted Russia and an expanded sphere of influence. If Putin succeeds in Ukraine, the likelihood of his success in all these other countries goes up exponentially. To this date not a single American service members has died in this conflict. We have provided Ukraine around FIFTY BILLION in military aid and another THIRTY-SIX BILLION in financial aid. Of that EIGTHY-SIX BILLION dollars sixty percent (60%) are loans to be paid back. Only THIRTY-FOUR billion is direct aid and that represents LESS THAN FIVE PERCENT (<5%) of our military budget of nearly NINE HUNDRED BILLION. In the meantime, the Russian military has seen their military capacity nearly cut in half. Should Putin succeed, even without direct involvement of US military, the USA’s military budget will expand to over ONE TRILLION FIVE HUNDRED BILLION within three to five years due to increased security threats and a weakened security structure in Europe. Imagine the cost to our economy, to YOUR TAXES to support that necessary increase in military spending. And all of this does not consider at all the China is watching and should the USA fail to continue to support Ukraine it will provide them a GREEN LIGHT to take military action against Taiwan. And another risk of USA direct military engagement – which would be sharp, and costly in men and material.This Republican brinksmanship on the continued support and funding of Ukraine is not just short sighted, but it is destructive of the most basic USA security arrangements that have stood the test of time over the past seventy plus years. Their current brinksmanship is a threat to each and every one of us.
Sitting In No Man's Land 