Tag Archives: Election 2016

Beware Of Darkness

we-the-people

Vote, but don’t vote in fear. Ignore the thugs who intend to intimidate.

If alarm guides your trip to the polls, clarify what frightens you. Whether it’s authoritarianism, climate change, or even attacks on our democracy, pull yourself together and vote with thoughtful purpose.

The former president thrives on doubt, lies and chaos.

While the GOP points to crime, and minorities as a threat, understand this distraction provides cover for greed and incompetence. This crowd is motivated by power, not service to country.

Many high officials have been indicted for conspiring to hack the 2016 Presidential election. This is not theory, it is fact. Of those thirty-five, four convicted conspirators “flipped” and were cooperating with Federal Prosecutors to shorten their sentences. These scoundrels rescinded their agreements and the previous Attorney General supported that effort. At the end almost all were granted a presidential pardon.

That is a concern.

Russia, under Cold Warrior and former KGB operative, Vladimir Putin, has unleashed powerful ‘oligarchs’ to perpetrate cyber sabotage against the United States. Never forget that. This is treason-providing aid and comfort to America’s enemies. At this writing the GOP have declared if they retake Congress they will give Ukraine to Russia.

To silence his critics, Putin has quite publicly dispatched hit squads of assassins, at home in Russia, and abroad. For example, executioners brazenly used military grade nerve agents to silence opponents. Though the Russian leader has denied authorizing any such thing, the former president willfully refuses to accept that, all too, obvious fact.

That is a grave concern.

Friendship extended from that White House to other totalitarian regimes similar to Putin’s. Kim Jong Un, North Korea’s butcher of  not only family members, but masses of his own people, Rodrigo Deterte of the Philippines, who has pursued extralegal measures to kill “criminals,” and Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey who demanded Trump deport a  Turkish journalist, critical of the strong arm regime in Ankara.

The previous president’s family still maintains business ties with the Saudi Prince, MBS, despite the grisly murder of a Washington Post journalist by Saudi assassins.

That is a concern.

Then came January 6th, that violent crescendo of the Trump years. This party is a plague.

Fear is a powerful and toxic impulse to rush the polls on Election Day. However, we must all understand what we fear. Do we focus on the bedlam promoted by that defeated administration, or do we ignore the noise and pinpoint the real threat?

Vote like a boss.

Gail Chumbley is the author of the two-part memoir, “River of January” and “River of January: Figure Eight.” Both books are available on Kindle. Chumbley has also penned two historical plays, “Clay” concerning the life of Kentucky Senator Henry Clay, and “Wolf By The Ears,” and exploration of racism and slavery in America.

gailchumbley@gmail.com

Lest We Forget

This new year begins with Americans caught in a moral quagmire. Traditional beliefs such as love of country and confidence in leadership seems to suffer from vast divisions. Our American experiment in self government has been turned on end, and what was once seen as threatening, is now open to a sliding scale of opinions. Our national values are, as sung in the musical Hamilton “Upside Down.”

I came into the world as the Cold War simmered between the US and the USSR. Khrushchev had replaced Stalin, and nuclear missiles rested uneasily, waiting for one wrong move from either side. America, caught up in the Red Scare convicted and executed suspected spies, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. The House on UnAmerican Activities Committee, (HUAC) became the equivalent of political show trials, publicly ruining the reputations of citizens, suspected as secret Russian collaborators.

Real covert agent, Klaus Fuchs, stole nuclear secrets from the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos. David Greenglass, a physicist, turned Russian agent, and brother of Ethel Rosenberg, worked also on the Manhattan Project. English MI6 agent, Kim Philby, worked for a time in the offices of the OSS, (later the CIA) only to defect to the USSR, with all he knew of American and British secrets. American Communist and union organizer Eugene Dennis, was sentenced to five years for his affiliation with the Kremlin. Soviet spy, Whittaker Chambers renounced his Russian allegiance and became the darling of the conservative right, naming State Department official Alger Hiss as a Russian operative.

Whether true or not, many other Americans were stained with suspicion of acting as Communist agents. Joe McCarthy made a name for himself as a Commie hunting Senator. Caught in the fear were playwright Arthur Miller, screen writer Dalton Trumbo, actor Larry Parks, stage actor, Zero Mostel, movie star, Sterling Hayden, who all found their careers in tatters. Refusing to name others, HUAC branded these unfriendly witnesses as“Fifth Amendment Communists.” These accusations, for many of the accused, never washed off.

The 1950’s were dangerous years for political nonconformists.

So it is no small wonder that many Americans of a certain age are flummoxed by the denial of Russian election hacking at the highest levels of our government. This new president has repeatedly demonstrated absolutely no concern for our democracy, for fear it undermines his legitimacy. In other words he is more worried about his own hide while the most direct and sinister Russian attack ever, has infected our elective process. And worse, his band of true believers gloss over the breach as well, buying into the propagandized term of “Fake News.” Is this president truly more important than the country and people he was elected to serve? Does he understand the prime objective of Russian apparatchiks is to undermine the United States of America?

As for the members of Congress who know more of this breach, and still enable this president- is protecting your party more important than saving our democracy? Are your partisan priorities more vital than the oaths you swore to uphold the Constitution? If the answer is a blind yes, then what was the point of the suffering of that earlier generation—the ruin of artists and free thinkers, the brutal crimes of the guilty? The 33,000 loyal Americans who died fighting Communism in Korea? Or the 58,000 boys who were killed fighting the pro-Communists in the jungles of Vietnam? Are these past sacrifices meaningless in light of current political expediency? Are you going to shout ‘fake news’ while giving away our sovereignty?

America has a vibrant, if not an often difficult history. We who love our country would like a future, as well.

*It wasn’t the Ukraine, either.