November 1, 2019: Since this essay was first published 17 months ago, things have changed. We have a new attorney general who believes his job is to protect the president.
Democrats control the House of Representatives. New Speaker Nancy Pelosi is methodically unfolding what soon will become articles of impeachment.
Michael Cohen, the president’s fixer, is in prison. Felix Sater, Cohen’s childhood friend, has disappeared off media radar screens.
Despite the rapid rate of change, Billy Lee’s essay has never been more timely. America is in a race against the clock. Trump and his allies are unraveling America at a frenetic pace. Clocks are ticking, and time is running out.
The Editorial Board
Our president seems to be working against our country, not for it.
He started a trade war. He’s bullying our trading partners.
He insults allies. He breaks treaties. He threatens fire and fury, then coddles our enemies.
Get out of the stock market ASAP, I’m thinking. Trump is going to trash the country and mess up the world for freedom lovers. Not much time before all illusions shatter, it feels like.
Don’t do denial. Don’t go there. It will do no one any harm to protect cash and property from those billionaires who will steal it anyway from anyone stupid enough to give them a vehicle.
Trade wars can and do work for business owners but no one else. They wipe out the little people by driving up prices and reducing goods and services. Don’t be a little person, Billy Lee. Not this time.
Greed-hogs root-snouted America’s financial institutions in 2008 and took a big chunk of 401K money intended for ordinary folk’s retirement.
Does anyone remember when the GOP spent vast sums on wars & drugs to help their friends in weapons manufacturing and pharmaceuticals? GOP added fuel to the fire by reducing revenues — they created tax loopholes for the wealthy. When markets went south, they emptied the nation’s retirement piggybanks (called 401Ks) to cover their losses.
They did!
They crashed the United States of America like a plane into a skyscraper. USA was hours away from becoming a third-world country when Congress approved a rescue that involved massive transfers of wealth from the middle-class to the wealthiest families in America. It was called the Great Recession of 2007-2008.
Who says it can’t happen again?
Interest rates are sure to rise; GOP will empty social security and Medicare. They have no choice because USA won’t have tax revenues enuf to cover high rates on the national debt. Republicans passed another tax cut for oligarchs a few months ago.
Surely, someone remembers.
It’s not about making America great again. It’s about making America break again.
Why? Because they can.
Billionaires don’t really care about us. They never will. Michael Jackson produced a song about it. They killed him.
Americans have to push the GOP (who are defenders of billionaires) out of government ASAP. Everything about our future depends on it.
Republicans are afraid of Russian oligarchs — the ultimate mob bosses. Russian oligarchs are the richest men on the planet. Aren’t they intelligence operatives who carved up the Russian corpse after Reagan drove their empire into bankruptcy?
Republicans are paralyzed by the fear of foreign mob bosses with Boris Yeltsin accents. They seem incapable of doing the heroic things that need doing to defend & save our country.
It’s true.
GOP leaders are holding onto hope they can get their families through this takeover; things will be set right someday, somehow, by somebody. They are dead wrong.
If not them, who? If not now, when?
Remember Germany and World War II? The silent ones ended up cooked, eventually — poisoned by gas and shot in trenches, bodies burned in ovens to hide the evidence.
This is no time for cowards. It’s time everyone let go of fear and play the heroes we must become to protect everything & everyone we care about.
If they take away our right to vote by subverting it, we will deal with it then.
For now, it seems we are able to vote and have our votes counted, at least somewhat accurately. Yes, the last national election showed evidence of voter suppression — tampered vote counts around the edges in states like Michigan, Wisconsin, and Illinois, some said.
The GOP stopped investigations into irregularities and statistical anomalies. No one seemed to care.
Nevertheless, voting is what we must do until we no longer can. It’s the only recourse. Everyone pray for Reality Winner, NSA heroine, who rots in jail with no prospect of bail because she tried to alert Americans to terrors coming from sabotage of elections and loss of freedoms.
If the day comes when America can’t save itself by voting, it will be hard to avoid Civil War. The last war didn’t go well for anyone on either side. Difference this time is foreign agents crawling over our institutions & media.
These agents don’t like us. They foment civil unrest. They crave violence. Many play the role of patriots. They quote Bible passages — like Two Corinthians.
Don’t be fooled.
We have a lot to attend to, but the State Department and most other parts of government are being systematically dismantled. Here are three things among dozens to look after:
1 — China, Russia, and their allies are working furiously to overturn the global financial system. The plan is to leave USA and EU in the cold. It’s what bit-coin schemes are about. Think about it. USA financial clout is scary. Certain state-actors want to make impossible USA financial extortion of their leaders through sanctions and trading bans.
2 — Japan is accumulating the world’s largest inventory of bomb-grade plutonium. It built infra-structure to weaponize. It has developed modern missile systems. Focusing on Korea’s nuclear weapons means nothing. Are Koreans buying fissile material from Japan? It takes ten pounds to make a bomb. Japan has 47 tons and is adding 8 tons a year. Does anyone know for sure what the hell is going on? Is some samurai cult making a killing?
3 — Russia has developed a new generation of high-speed multiple-warhead missiles impossible to see or shoot down. They bragged about it on state TV. What happens if we attack North Korea and Russia comes to their defense like they did last time during first Korean War? What if China joins in, like last time? Read T. R. Fehrenbach’s book, This Kind of War. It could become a war where we get our pants handed to us — like last time.
Problems Russia presents go far beyond Korea; they extend to the Middle East certainly but also to the Americas where Russians have built military bases in Cuba and Venezuela. USA state and national elections are drowning in Russian interference according to intelligence agencies.
Media is powerless. It does not protect our country. It protects billionaires. We cannot expect to look to media, whether right or left, for insight or guidance. At its end, takedown of America is not going to be televised. The military is led in many instances by good-ole-boys from states of the Confederacy like Louisiana, Virginia, and Mississippi. It’s not ideal circumstance that leads necessarily to unity.
Current leaders, some of them, have proved to almost everyone they are haters. Many are white supremacists. The attorney general isn’t the only cabinet member with a reputation for racial bias. Members of the current administration behave like wolves in sheep’s clothing who hide their intentions between the covers of Bible and American flag.
Does it have to be this way?
Since WW2, USA killed millions of Koreans, Japanese, Arabs, Asians, Germans, Native Americans, and Africans. People around the world aren’t blind. They see USA’s love affair with guns, mass shootings of preschoolers, and extra-judicial executions of civilians by militarized police.
Rabid people like NRA gun nuts say the dead had it coming. Gun lovers have a duty to kill bad people to protect the world and our values. The way to stop bad persons is give good persons guns. Some say number of executions by USA gun-toters exceeds sixty-five million during modern era alone. Carnage flowing back to slavery & Indian Wars is incalculable.
People fear our leaders, and they should. America is a handful of countries short of conquering entire world. Under current leaders chances are good every country will fall under our power sooner, not later.
Like ancient Rome, USA has blood on its hands. We incarcerate millions of our own citizens in ratty prisons; tens-of-thousands rot in solitary confinement.
We have moral obligation in victory to become better people as we rule the world and force our values on people who do not necessarily share them 100%.
We have unmatched power; America is on cusp of living its destiny in total victory even as it dominates a world divided against itself, which is road to ruin according to Christ Jesus — who our political leaders say they worship, many during Congressional prayer breakfasts.
Yes, the president tried to get Speaker Ryan to fire the congressional chaplain. Yes, he canceled traditional Easter services at the White House. Well, they weren’t traditional. Black Muslim Obama started them. So, it’s all good, right? Can we get an amen from the White House press corps?
Because USA possesses unmatched power, the stable genius who leads may risk World War III. The writer of Trump’s masterwork, Art of the Deal, said if anyone starts nuclear war, it will be the Donald.
Is anyone certain when that war ends, it will be USA who counts bodies of the dead and writes their history? What if the other side counts our dead and writes our history? What then?
One thing about war is certain. The outcome is never certain. That chilling line from the screen play No Country for Old Men echoes in my head. In the contest between man and beast, the outcome is never certain. Rancher shoots cow. Bullet ricochets off cow’s head and kills rancher. Cow fine. Rancher dead.
No one ever really wins at war. If history teaches anything, it teaches that war solves nothing. Yes the victor gets first dibs on spoils, but in war to come spoils will be irradiated — poisoned by heavy metals.
Short of nuclear war, what can break America?
We have warriors on our side who are among the most powerful and dangerous who have ever walked planet Earth. Imagine the scariest ISIS terrorist. We have agents on our side who are scarier.
Felix Sater speaks fluent Russian because he was born and raised in Moscow, Russia. He says he and Michael Cohen became best friends after he & his sister were able to emigrate to America from Moscow via Israel when he was eight. During process of switching countries Felix changed his Russian family name to Sater. Who knows why? Michael Cohen is president’s fixer and attorney, right?
Felix changed his last name as a kind of joke, I think. In Kabbalah numerology, Hebrew letters for Sater add to “666”. It’s the only Hebrew root that adds to 666, so it’s easy to identify and remember.
It’s a word that means contrary, disheveled, or chaotic. The number was made infamous by book of Revelation in the Christian Bible. Chaos shares the number of the anti-Christ, apparently. Look it up.
The president’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, bought “666 Fifth Avenue.” He and Sater may think it funny to own a building so named. Maybe it is.
God doesn’t scare them, is what they want folks to believe. They’re bad boys, and they’ll mess up anyone who crosses them. It’s what they like everyone to think, maybe. When they hurt little people, God looks the other way. They seem sure.
Felix smashed a piece of cut glass into someone’s face during a bar-fight. He spent year in prison for it. So yes, he can be scary. He bilked investors out of 40M dollars in Wall Street scams. I watched him apologize on national television to all he ruined while insisting that today he loves and serves America. He is a changed man.
He might be. I’m not saying he’s a liar but when I listened to his explanation, he reminded me of Michael Corleone in the movie, God Father Part Two, when he testified before a congressional committee.
In the movie, some readers might recall, Michael was a Marine combat veteran, defender of everything American, he told investigators. His reputation meant everything. Then again, he was a fiction invented by writer, Mario Puzo.
Sater is friend to the president. It’s true. Trump has powerful friends; some are family. His sister is judge who sits on second highest court in America — second only to the Supreme Court. His late uncle was an MIT professor.
NOTE BY EDITORS: In April 2019, Judge Maryanne Trump Barry retired from her position as federal appellate judge for the state of New York.
In the 1960s and 70s, government waged war against the Mafia. People got hurt. Many switched sides and made deals to stay out of prison.
This cooperation started after Castro came to power in Cuba in the 1960s. The CIA teamed with Sicilian families who had lost casinos in Cuba. The idea was to overthrow & assassinate Castro and various leaders of the revolution. They had some success.
Revolutionaries who were murdered are not known to most Americans so it’s pointless to name them. Readers can click on links at end of essay to learn more.
CIA didn’t need the mafia to kill Che Guevara. They and 1,800 special forces they trained in Guatemala were able to carry out that particular hit-job all by themselves with only the tiniest bit of encouragement from Rene Barrientos, president of Bolivia where Che was found.
I’m not picking on Felix. He didn’t start cooperating with FBI until after war with Sicilian mafia was mostly won. He has proved since he is untouchable and able to engage & influence most any power player on world stage. But in a fight for the survival of our republic and the freedom it promises ordinary people, are folks who seem to have no limits the best we have to defend us?
Are we truly defended, truly, for real, or are we undercut and subverted? Does right make might, or is it the other way around? I honestly don’t know. No one tells truth about anything anymore, it seems.
Rome was an empire unchallenged for a thousand years. It’s in the history books, right? The empire fought its wars on its frontiers to protect its heart, as does USA. In the end Rome fell because a mob of barbarians walked into the capitol city with clubs & broom handles and were hailed liberators.
The wealthy, most of them, lost everything because the army that defended Rome ran like rabbits from heroes who scared them with their hairy bodies, bad skin, and missing teeth. It took centuries for civilization to recover from that ancient catastrophe. Who knows if it’s true?
In the modern world, biological, chemical, & nuclear weapons will make meltdown harder to endure. Who agrees?
I’m taking a knee, hands folded, head down. I’m believing that in the gut of every thinking person is fear that no weapon in this world can protect any of us from what’s coming next.
Whatever it is, wherever it comes from, it’s moving fast.
It’s strong.
Scary.
Birds in sand cherry tree outside chirping like monkeys…
It’s morning already. Bevy Mae at the open window. She says sun is bright. Supposed to rain, according to Siri.
How is it I haven’t slept and the time for sleeping is past?
Stay up all night again? Bevy Mae asks.
I feel good. I’m not tired.
I reach for my wife. She pushes me away then messes my hair.
Mona Lisa smile.
I feel hope.
Billy Lee