Is America Caught Between Arrogance and Hypocrisy?
Election Day: Point, Counterpoint, and Rebuttal
NOTE: I put together an Election Day Point-Counterpoint-Rebuttal from three reader submissions. Politically, I don’t completely agree with any of them (with the caveat that I most agree with Hector Morea: the Democrat Party is the party of extremism in America, and the FBI has become their secret gestapo).
All three submissions come from people who live in deep blue states (two from Connecticut and one from New York), locales which I believe may already be lost to the Communists and the Statists. The justice systems of these and the other blue states, particularly the family courts, are notoriously corrupt. These governments are run by the Democrat-UniParty oligarchs, the elitists who possess 75% of this nation’s wealth. There, justice is for sale. Political influence can easily be bought.
They siphon the wealth of the middle class, steal children from protective parents, allow poison in our food, kill innocent animals, and then defend their indefensible actions with their “legal fiction” in the courts. If you dissent, you will be canceled by their woke mobs or useful idiots and removed by one of their multiple Departments of (In)Justice, which go by many names: DCF, CPS, OCA, and DCPP … to name a few.
We deserve better. Our country deserves better. Our children deserve better.
Pray for America. Pray for our families and friends. Pray for Peanut the Squirrel.
If you have opinions or original materials to submit to be considered for publication, please send them to richard.luthmann@protonmail.com.
By Peter Szymonik, Mary Lou Hollow, and Hector Morera
POINT: The Arrogance and Hypocrisy of the Democratic Left
Peter T. Szymonik
Constitutional and Civil Rights Activist
Glastonbury, CT
I have been applauding the growing numbers of conservative Republicans who have spoken out against Donald Trump and warned Americans that he is unfit to be in the Oval Office. Many of these Republicans were part of his former administration.
They worked with him every day and saw firsthand who Trump is and the danger he represents. Any doubts about this should have been put to bed after the events of January 6th, yet the majority of the Republican Party remained silent about this.
NOTE: According to footage obtained from the Department of Justice, the U.S. Capitol Police not only let protesters inside the building on January 6th but actively escorted them.
To the point where today, the Republican Party and everything it used to represent and stand for has been completely co-opted by a megalomanic and his increasingly unhinged rantings. A man who pats murderous thugs and tyrants across the globe on the back and praises them. Because he wants to be one of them.
The Republicans who have and are now speaking out against Trump, and in the face of the open threats he has and is making against them and their safety, deserve credit for putting our country and our democracy first and ahead of their party. (Or what’s left of it.)
If the Democrats should win the Oval Office, they, and our country, will owe thanks to these courageous Republicans. Because they acted like true patriots.
If the Democrats should lose the election, they can continue to point the finger at MAGA extremism, but they also need to take a very long and hard look in the mirror.
Because much of what fuels Donald Trump and his MAGA movement is not based on divisive and false Fox News or NewsMax news stories but the Democratic left’s myopia and their sheer inability to understand the depths of their party’s own hypocrisy. Especially when it comes to issues of individual liberties, personal freedoms and parental rights.
As examples:
A core Democratic principle is a woman’s right to choose and control her own body.
All well and good. Founded on the principles of individual rights and personal freedoms.
Yet, why do Democrats believe this same fundamental right does not extend to parent’s ability to choose and have control over their own children and what happens to their bodies? Does the state know better than parents and medical professionals do regarding what’s best for their children and their medical care?
A core Democratic principle is freedom of speech and personal expression.
Yet why have Democrats on a state and federal level openly worked with industry to censor online speech? Especially speech, which calls into question issues involving state control over children’s and families' lives.
A core Democratic principle is adhering to and recognizing the importance of the ‘rule of law.’
Yet why do Democrats remain dead silent when our government agencies and judicial systems routinely and openly flaunt and violate fundamental rights and the federally recognized rights of parents? And engage in what amounts to the state-sponsored trafficking of children by our country’s broken and corrupt “family” courts and multi-billion-dollar CPS/DCF systems?
Why do Democrats remain dead silent when our government agencies and judicial systems routinely openly flaunt and violate federal disabilities laws?
The list goes on.
To be clear, as egregious and dangerous as these hypocritical acts by the Democratic left may be, they do not rise to the extreme levels portrayed by Donald Trump and the MAGA movement. But they most certainly feed them and influence public perceptions of the truth.
There is no “left truth” or “right truth”. There is only THE truth.
The reality and truth is that the Democratic left in this country is as guilty as those on the extreme right they point their fingers at when it comes to violating fundamental rights, individual liberties, and personal freedoms.
Until this is first addressed and made a priority by both political parties, very little will change in this country.
Regardless of which party wins the Oval Office in this upcoming election.
COUNTERPOINT: CHARACTER MATTERS: Trump’s Arrogance and Hypocrisy
Mary Lou Hilow
Rome, NY
What Fortune 500 company would hire the likes of Donald Trump? Let’s look at his track record.
From 1991 to 2009, he declared bankruptcy for casinos, hotels, and entertainment resorts six times.
Trump has historically disparaged women, including Vice President Kamala Harris, using derogatory epithets and vulgar slurs. Dating back to the 1970s, about two dozen women have accused Trump of sexual misconduct—forcibly reaching under their skirts, kissing them without consent, and inappropriately walking in changing rooms for beauty pageant contestants.
In January 2023, the Trump Organization was hit with $1.6 million in fines when a New York judge sentenced it for running a 15-year tax fraud scheme. Prosecutors said top executives at the company acted out of pure greed.
On January 26, 2024, a Manhattan jury awarded E. Jean Carroll $83.3 million for sexual assault and defaming her in the years since she accused him of sexual assault—$7.3 million in emotional damages, $11 million in reputation-related damages, $65 million for punitive damages. Ms. Carroll was awarded $5 million more in a second defamation case.
Before the 2016 Presidential race, candidate Donald Trump paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to porn star Stormy Daniels and Playboy model Karen McDougal to keep them quiet about his extramarital affairs. Trump was at the center of public cheating scandals with all three of his wives.
The MAGA Republicans control the U.S. House of Representatives, which has been called the least productive in decades. They voted 749 times this year, passing just 27 bills into law. Donald Trump killed a bipartisan border and immigrant bill providing reasonable solutions to the immigrant problem. He prefers to run on a problem than allowing a Democratic administration to fix the problem.
Trumpian Supreme Court Justices who ignore ethical and professional responsibility have issued political rulings striking down Roe v. Wade and women’s health and reproductive rights and granted absolute criminal immunity for official acts of presidents.
He’s a serial liar. The Washington Post Fact Checker team reported that Trump had accumulated 30,573 untruths during his presidency, which is about 21 erroneous claims a day. Fox News hosts continue to propagate his lies even though Fox News paid Dominion Voting Systems $787.5 million for broadcasting false statements about Dominion. This was the largest known media settlement for defamation in U.S. history. Lies about election fraud and winning the 2020 election have led to the loss of faith in the government.
He’s a cheater. In her book, Trump’s niece says he paid someone to take the SAT test for college. MAGA Republicans engage in gerrymandering, drawing congressional districts for political reasons, giving the Republicans the national popular vote in the 2022 House elections.
MAGA voter suppression includes increasing vote ID requirements, polling place closures, reducing early voting and voting hours, poorly trained poll workers and partisan election administrators, and creating at-large local offices to limit the influence of minority communities.
He’s a scammer. Trump paid a $25 million settlement to students who said they were duped by Donald Trump and Trump University, which promised to teach them the “secrets of success” in real estate.
Trump and JD Vance say Trump saved Obamacare when, in fact, he tried to repeal it several times. In the debate, Trump said he had a “concept” of another plan. Over the last decade, nearly 50 million Americans have been covered through the Affordable Care Act’s health insurance.
Truth matters. Moral turpitude lies (depraved, vile, and deliberate) have consequences. He is responsible for lying about Haitians eating dogs and cats in Springfield. A Haitian organization has filed criminal charges against Donald Trump and JD Vance for making wild accusations, disrupting public services, making false alarms, committing telecommunications harassment, committing aggravated menacing, and other offenses. Trump lied and spread misinformation about FEMA workers not giving aid to the victims of hurricanes, which undermined their faith in the government, added to their misery, and led to fearful victims not applying for help.
Trump repeatedly calls climate change a “hoax” and is pushing a MAGA agenda that would dismantle basic environmental protections and end tax relief to lower energy costs for working families. On June 1, 2017, President Trump pulled out of the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change mitigation. He contends the agreement would undermine the U.S. economy and put the U.S. at a permanent disadvantage.
MAGA Republicans who take money from the International Rifle Association (IRA) refuse to pass common-sense gun control laws.
President Trump slashed taxes disproportionately on the very wealthy and profitable corporations, severely reducing federal revenues and resulting in an explosive rise in the national debt by almost $7.8 trillion.
President Trump ignored abundant warnings regarding the Coronavirus and failed to proactively mount a focused whole government/society response to an intensifying public health threat. He failed to prepare America to deal with the virus, refused to listen to health experts, and repeatedly played down the seriousness of the virus, resulting in over 175,000 people dead, five million infected, and our economy reeling. Trump was ill-equipped to manage a crisis, and after doing nothing other than predicting the virus would disappear, he suggested maybe if you drank bleach, you might be okay.
Trump disagrees with the U.S. as a committed NATO ally and alliance leader. He believes allies and alliances impose an outsized budgetary burden on the U.S. President Trump formally withdrew from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA)—known as the Iran Nuclear Deal.
Trump has pleaded not guilty to the 91 charges in four cases in New York, Florida, Georgia, and Washington, D.C., and desperately wants to be president to avoid jail.
Trump was indicted and charged with 40 felonies for improperly storing 300 classified documents, enlisting aides and lawyers to help him hide records requested by investigators, and showing off a Pentagon plan of attack and classified map in his Florida estate, which created profound threats to national security.
On August 1, 2023, Trump was indicted by a federal grand jury in Washington, D.C., on four counts of allegedly attempting to subvert the results of the 2020 presidential election. Trump has called the January 6 insurrection “peaceful” and a day of “love.” More than 1,200 insurrectionists have been charged, and more than 460 have been incarcerated for their role in the Capitol attack. About 140 police officers were assaulted on January 6 including about 80 from the U.S. Capitol Police and about 60 from the Metropolitan Police Department, six people died and there was approximately $1.5 million worth of damage of the Capitol building.
On August 14, 2023, Georgian prosecutors alleged that Trump led a criminal racketeering enterprise. He and other defendants (including his lawyers) joined a conspiracy to unlawfully change the outcome of the 2020 U.S. presidential election in Georgia in violation of Georgia’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) statute, which carries a penalty of five to twenty years in prison.
He’s a felon. A New York jury found Donald Trump guilty on all 34 felony counts of falsifying business records—the first time a former U.S. president has been convicted of a crime. He will be sentenced after the election.
Former Defense Secretary Mark Esper calls Trump a “threat to democracy.” Former national security adviser John Bolton has called him “unfit to be president.” Former Vice President Mike Pence has refused to endorse Trump because of “profound differences.” He said he “cannot in good conscience” endorse Trump because of January 6 and other issues. Sarah Matthews, a former Trump aide who testified before the House January 6 Committee, says—it is “mind-boggling” that so many members of his senior staff have denounced him and called him unfit to serve as president.
Former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the Trump administration, General Mark A. Milley, has warmed Trump is a “fascist to the core” and “the most dangerous person to this country.” When he retired last year with more than four decades of U.S. military service, he delivered a retirement speech that included: “We don’t take an oath to a king or a queen, to a tyrant or dictator—or wannabe dictator.” He was referring to Donald Trump.
Donald Trump continually pays homage to and praises thuggish dictators: Russian President Vladimir Putin, Chinese President Xi Jinping, Turkish President Recept Tayyip Erdogan, North Korean Kim Jong Un, and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban.
In 1973, Trump, his father, Fred, and Trump Management were sued by the Justice Department for racial discrimination because he would not rent apartments in one of his developments to African Americans. He made sure his employees understood that was the policy.
Trump repeatedly states that immigrants are poisoning the blood of our country. “Poisoning the blood” is the language used by white supremacists and Hitler, who infamously wrote about “blood poisoning” in his book “Mein Kampf.” He has escalated his xenophobic and racist rhetoric against migrants and minority groups, which he states are genetically predisposed to commit crimes. The government separated more than 2000 children from their parents at the border.
Trump demonizes his political opponents and has promised to pursue revenge, retaliation, and retribution by weaponizing the U.S. Department of Justice.
On January 28, 2017, President Trump signed an executive order blocking refugees and travelers with passports from seven Muslim-majority countries, Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen, from entering the U.S. for 90 days. Syrian refugees from the U.S. were banned indefinitely. The ban was cruel, inhumane, and violated international law.
Trump, who has promised to be a dictator only on day one, has vowed to root out his political opponents from within who “live like vermin” using the language of past fascist dictators like Hitler and Benito Mussolini.
NOTE: Thousands of Jewish people showed up at Trump’s rally last month in Madison Square Garden.
If Trump loses the election, he will spread his big lies about widespread election fraud, encourage subversive protesters to engage in violence, and enlist MAGA administrators to refuse to ratify the electoral votes.
Trump has refused to be interviewed by 60 Minutes hosts because they routinely fact-check. He also refuses to debate the Vice President because he lost the first debate badly.
If you are supporting Donald Trump you are saying that 91 criminal indictments, sexual assault and bank fraud guilty verdicts, stealing from his charitable foundations, avoiding the Vietnam draft because of a bone spur excuse, telling over 30,573 untruths during his presidency, voting against women’s reproductive and health rights, referring to dead and wounded soldiers (like John McCain) as losers and suckers, siding with Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, lying about a stolen election, inciting and encouraging an insurrection and threatening to terminate parts of the Constitution don’t really matter to you. Maybe you have misplaced your moral compass.
According to a quarterly survey by The Wall Street Journal, most economists are upbeat about the economy’s prospects and think inflation, interest rates, and deficits would be higher under Donald Trump's policies in a second administration than under the optimistic policies proposed by Vice President Kamala Harris.
Trump attacks the rule of law, whereas Kamala Harris embraces it as a “fundamental principle to be held sacred.”
The character of the President of the United States matters. Kamala Harris has shown she values morality, honesty, the Golden Rule, respect, integrity, compassion, and empathy for women, minorities, immigrants, veterans, caregivers, the handicapped, and the poverty-stricken. Listen to her campaign speeches. Her positive policies reflect her concern for all constituents, including Republicans and Independents.
She has been a public servant for 31 years as an Assistant Prosecutor and District Attorney for San Francisco, Attorney General of California, a U.S. Senator, and a Vice President. Compare her with Trump. A self-centered Donald Trump has been labeled narcissistic, deranged, delusional, confused, egomaniacal, deceitful, incompetent, crude—holistically unfit to be president of the U.S.
Imagine if he applied for a job as the CEO of a Fortune 500 Company and went to one of the interviews and talked about Arnold Palmer’s anatomy, or Haitians eating dogs and cats in Springfield, Ohio, or disparaged his more qualified rivals by calling them stupid or suddenly started dancing to Ava Maria and YMCA. McDonald’s would not hire Donald Trump for a crew or maintenance job because of the following question on their application: During the last 5 years, have you been convicted of a crime?
REBUTTAL: The Democrat Party is Responsible For the Worst Extremism
Hector Morera
Glastonbury, CT
I mostly agree [with Peter], but [he is] so wrong about the level of extremism to which the Democrat Party is capable.
In the past 17 months, I've been subjected to:
Several violent attacks (some life-threatening, think Silkwood) by violent Black FBI agents who are angry at me because I got one of their corrupt colleagues in trouble for extremely inappropriate behavior. The only mistake I made was not having a cell phone with me to record this spoiled brat Black FBI agent's conduct outside my local Panera. Only by the grace of God am I still alive.
My home was broken into and vandalized numerous times.
My video camera was stolen in the apparent hope of getting dirt on me. They did not find anything, and they never will.
Someone created a fake Instagram account in my name using a real old FB profile photo that someone must have downloaded. Instagram closed that account last week for TOS violations. Who knows what horrible things were posted on that account falsely in my name?
I've been illegally stalked by angry Black Townies who give me dirty looks as they have been told lies about me. After 25 years of living in the ghettos of NYC, I never in my wildest dreams would've assumed that Black townies existed. But apparently, they sadly do. I got my first job as a janitor when I was 9 years old. I got out of the ghetto through hard, hard work. Sadly, some lazy persons prefer to sell their souls to the Democrat Party for a political patronage job and do their political master's bidding, however unscrupulous. One day, when I was 13 years old while buying a buttered roll for breakfast before going to work at 7 am on a Saturday, I saw a man, obviously intoxicated, buying a Colt 45 with Food Stamps. True story. I was livid as I was going to work, and he was living off the largesse of the Democrat party. This is what Trump's followers are mad about. They just sadly are not presenting it in specific terms, so their general allegations come out as racist rants. On top of that, countless White people live off the largesse of the Democrat party, so sadly, Racial Equality at the government level appears to mean that any wrongdoing a White govt person commits and gets away with should also apply to a Black govt person. That's not equality. That's anarchy.
Despite sticking my neck out for a number of Black self-represented litigants, I've been Karened in retaliation for standing up to a bunch of corrupt Black FBI agents who appear to have received their government jobs through the same political patronage process that is used in the Family Courts. I do not have an ounce of Racism in me. I treat everyone the same whether or not they like it.
This ALL appears to be happening with the Blessing of the Democrat party.
This is not the first time the Democrat party has turned a blind eye to Black on White violence when it suits their needs.
In the early 1990s, there were some very ugly, violent construction wars in NYC. The Democrat party there turned a Blind eye to groups of very large, violent Black men beating up Construction workers at every construction site in NY.
Google the NY Times article about an Architect thrown down the stairs and broken some bones by these violent thugs.
If the Construction industry was discriminating against Blacks, then it would've been the DOJ's responsibility to sue them. But they didn't because the DOJ knew it was a hard case to prove. WHY ??? I was working on one of these construction sites. I'm a first generation Hispanic who grew up in the South Bronx of the 60's/70's - not a fun place at that time.
It took me 14 years of hard work to earn a spot on that construction site. My first boss out of college was a Black engineer from Malawi who survived violent oppression in his country to earn a spot on these construction sites.
On top of that, there were MBE/WBE/DBE quotas on many of these construction sites. In 40 years of being in the engineering/construction profession, I've only worked with 1 Black MBE. This is FREE money. GCs need to meet their MBE/DB/WBE goals. But it's a lot of hard work to open up an MBE/WBE/DBE, so most of them are owned by off-the-boat persons who do not mind putting in the hard work for only 10% max profit.
Sadly, many Americans (BOTH White and Black) do not want to wait that long, they want the quick buck and selling their soul to the Democrat party facilitates that.
So, NO! The Democrat party appears to be very capable of extremist acts. They're just not stupid enough to do it so openly as Trump did in 2021.
How sad for this country.