Knowingly Empowering A Corrupt Person Makes You Responsible For Their Crimes
Voters who ignored Trump’s atrocious character, thinking that electing him would be good for them, are responsible for what he’s done.
[NOTE: This is a very heavily revised version of a column I originally published on September 22, 2020]
By David Grace (Amazon Page — David Grace Website)
You Are Responsible For Those Whom You Knowingly Enable
If you make a known embezzler treasurer of your company, you are responsible for their thefts.
The bishop who transfers the known pedophile priest to an unsuspecting parish in order to protect the church from the cost of the priest’s crimes is personally responsible for the suffering endured by the next child that the pedophile priest rapes.
The people who knew that Donald Trump was a lying, untrustworthy, narcissist megalomaniac, (which is everyone with even half a functioning brain) and nevertheless chose to vote for him anyway, cannot escape responsibility for the savage attacks Trump incited on January 6, 2021.
The weak claim that they did not know he was that bad is no excuse at all. Trump was a known, blatant, narcissist, sociopath megalomaniac. What the hell did they expect him NOT to do in order to hold onto power?
When you knowingly choose to place a corrupt person in a position of great power, you cannot escape your share of the responsibility for their crimes.
Germany In The Early 1930s
In the early 1930s Germany’s economy was a mess. People were desperate for stability, jobs and prosperity. They craved regaining their lost dignity and the world’s respect. They had been humiliated and longed for Germany to be great again.
And along came Hitler who promised them all those things.
He would invigorate the economy by rebuilding the military. A militarized Germany would be a power to be reckoned with. He would punish the Jews for supposedly betraying Germany and causing it to lose WW I.
Hitler offered everything the German people wanted:
- Respect
- Revenge
- Power
- Wealth.
By January 1933 the Nazi Party had won the largest number of seats in the German parliament but it had failed to win a majority of the seats.
The Reichstag Fire
On February 27, 1933 the German parliament building, the Reichstag, burned down. The Nazis accused the Communists of setting the fire, and Hitler convinced President Paul von Hindenburg to issue an emergency decree suspending civil liberties.
Pursuant to that decree, all communists, including the communist members of the German parliament, were arrested.
With the communist members of parliament in jail, the Nazi party gained majority control of the parliament. With the communist members gone and many members of the Social Democratic Party either under arrest or in hiding because of threats against them by Hitler’s SA, The Enabling Act, giving Hitler the right to rule by decree, was passed by the German parliament on March 23, 1933, effectively making Hitler the dictator of Germany.
Gestapo archives in Moscow that became available to researchers in 1990 indicated that the fire was likely started by a commando group of at least three and at most 10 Nazi SA men, led by Hans Georg Gewehr.
The Assault On The Capitol Building
On January 6, 2021 a joint session of Congress was set to count the various states’ certified electoral votes and formally declare Joe Biden the winner of the 2020 Presidential election.
Several times prior to January 6th, Donald Trump publicly called on his Vice President, Michael Pence, to refuse to count dozens of certified electoral votes cast for his opponent so that in their absence Pence could instead declare Trump the winner of the election.
By a letter dated January 6, 2021, Pence refused to reject the certified electoral votes won by Biden.
In response to Pence’s refusal to declare him the winner of the election, on the morning of January 6, 2021 Trump told a large crowd of his followers that he had summoned to Washington:
“… you’ll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength, and you have to be strong. . . . When you catch somebody in a fraud you are allowed to go by very different rules. . . . I hope Mike is going to do the right thing. I hope so. I hope so, because if Mike Pence does the right thing, we win the election. . . . We will not take it anymore, and that is what this is all about. And to use a favorite term that all of you people really came up with, we will stop the steal. … You will have an illegitimate president. That is what you will have, and we can’t let that happen. . . . We fight like hell, and if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore. Now it is up to Congress to confront this egregious assault on our democracy. And after this, we’re going to walk down, and I’ll be there with you. … We are going to the Capitol . . . .”
At the end of that speech the mob marched on Congress, broke into the Capitol building, and chased the Senators and Congressmen into hiding, thus halting the counting of the Electoral Votes that would have ended with Biden being declared the winner.
If they had been a bit faster or the Congressional clerks a bit slower or more distracted, the crowd might have succeeded in seizing and destroying the physical ballots thus making it impossible for Congress to declare Joe Biden the winner of the election.
In 2021 Trump came that close to achieving a coup by mob violence similar to the one Adolph Hitler succeeded in achieving by arson in 1933.
Back To Germany In 1933 — The German People Lied To Themselves
The German people knew what Hitler and the Nazis were. They knew what they were going to do. But they wanted what they were offering, so they lied to themselves: they told themselves that the Nazis weren’t really that bad.
The businessmen who controlled Bayer, Mercedes, BASF, Merck and the rest were sure that they held the real power and that when push came to shove Hitler would do what he was told. The generals thought so too.
The social elite and the academics dismissed his rhetoric as just the nonsense politicians say in order to get the rabble to support them. They were sure he wasn’t really going to do all that stuff.
The average person was sure that he was a great man who would do the right thing for the country. He would make Germany great again.
Sure, Hitler’s plans seemed a bit extreme, but that was just Hitler being Hitler. He wasn’t really going to do all that stuff, and even if he did, the Jews deserved it didn’t they? Besides, as long as you weren’t a Jew it wasn’t your problem, right?
The Germans gave themselves a million excuses to ignore what the Nazi party was and what it was going to do. The German people engaged in a massive exercise in willful disbelief. They wanted Germany to be great again, and they were sure Hitler was going to get that for them.
Nothing else mattered.
For A While The Germans Got Everything They Were Promised
And you know what? Hitler did make Germany great again, for a while.
I think karma set that poisoned apple in front of the German people as a test, just to see if they were stupid enough and desperate enough and morally bankrupt enough to pick it up and take a bite. And they were. And they did
Hitler was the hot and willing girl at the bar, the sleazy rep ready to give you that big order for the right bribe, the crooked building inspector offering to sign off on your shoddy wiring.
And Hitler delivered. He got the economy humming. Everybody got a job. Germany became powerful again. The Jews were punished for their supposed betrayal.
And Then Karma Presented The Bill
And within fifteen years after the German people made their deal with the devil the entire country was utterly destroyed. Destroyed.
Karma’s a bitch.
So, let’s not pull any punches here.
Back To America Today — We All Knew Who Trump Was
- We all knew that Donald Trump is a pathological liar.
- We knew that for personal political gain he deliberately misled the American people about the danger from the COVID virus to the tune of over 313,000 dead as of the joint session of Congress on January 6, 2021.
- We knew he’s somehow in Russia’s pocket.
- We knew he loves dictators.
- We know that for political purposes he ramped up a trade war with China.
- He enacted his own laws by executive order as if he were a king.
- He tried to banish private businesses with the stroke of a pen.
- He sabotaged the Post Office in order to interfere with mail-in voting.
- He politicized the CDC into giving medical advice that matched his political rhetoric.
- He talked about serving a third term in violation of the Constitution.
- He politicized the Justice Department and interfered with the courts in order to help his criminal friends.
- Everyone with even half a working brain knew he was a dishonest, untrustworthy, demagogue, narcissist, sociopath, megalomaniac.
But he’s promised to give his supporters what they want, and it looked like he delivered.
- He claimed he was the reason the stock market was doing well.
- He bitch-slapped the disliked Chinese.
- He promised to stop the dirty Mexicans from getting into the country.
- He did all he could to make sure everybody could get their own unregistered assault rifle.
- He worked to take medical insurance away from millions of Americans.
- He appointed judges who will make abortion and gay marriage illegal again.
- He promised to keep taxes low on rich people.
- He worked to keep labor cheap and workers poor so businesses could make higher profits.
The Lies We Tell Ourselves
I heard my educated, intelligent friends give me the same sorts of self-serving excuses why they voted for Trump that the Germans used to justify supporting Hitler:
- Sure, he’s a little crazy, but he cut my taxes and the market is up.
- Sure, he lies all the time, but he’s standing up to our enemies
- Sure, he’s mean and nasty, but he’s appointed conservative judges.
- Sure, six times he ran his companies into bankruptcy and screwed everyone who dealt with him, but he’s going to keep a lid on those lawless black people.
- Sure, he’s somehow in Russia’s pocket, but he’s going to get rid of all those pollution laws and business regulations.
- Sure, he thinks he’s above the law and wants to run the country by executive order as if he were king, but he’s going to stop the liberals from taking all my money.
Trusting A Scoundrel Is A Fool’s Game
When you drill all the way down to Trump’s supporters’ bottom line, to their justification for voting to put him back in the White House again, it’s always the same:
- “It doesn’t matter how bad a person the President is. The only thing that counts is that he’s going to run the country the way I want it run.”
- “A President’s character doesn’t matter. His integrity doesn’t matter. His decency, honesty, fairness, truthfulness, none of that matters. The only thing that counts is that I think he’s going to give me what I want.”
How well did that plan work out for the Germans?
The American people were tempted and tested. Trump is our poison apple.
- You may think that putting a thoroughly amoral, sociopathic megalomaniac in control of America is going to work out well for the country, but it won’t.
- You may think it’s going to pay off for you, but it won’t.
You’re playing a fool’s game.
I have four truisms and one rebuke for you:
- Be careful what you wish for.
- Only a fool trusts a scoundrel
- Those who lie down with dogs get fleas.
- Karma’s a bitch.
- You should have known better.
— David Grace (www.DavidGraceAuthor.com)
