Prescience Revealed

Wednesday's events demonstrated that Bill Maher may be on his way to being proven right. On Friday night he had observed

 If historians want to look at an example of "we've been here before," look at this picture (shows massive Nazi rally). This is not Nuremberg in 1934. And here's the Garden in 1939 after Hitler had done some pretty awful things and yet 22,000 Americans were cheering him on (shows picture of huge numbers giving Nazi salute).

I'm not saying Trump is Hitler- Hitler volunteered for the army. But Trump is a wannabe dictator and he does have a knack for getting what he wants to be.

President Trump, as all were aware, had long wanted Attorney General Sessions to be gone because he recused himself from Robert Mueller's probe. And now he is, because Trump; has a knack for getting what he wants to be. The President has requested, and received, Sessions' resignation, replacing him with Matthew Whittaker, a GOP appartchik and conspiracy-monger who has called the Special Counsel's probe a "witchhunt." Strong legal mind.

The Washington Post has reported

The White House suspended the press credentials of CNN reporter Jim Acosta on Wednesday, hours after President Trump took issue with questions Acosta asked at a news conference.

The move to punish Acosta by removing his access to the White House is believed to be unprecedented. The Trump administration barred another CNN reporter from attending an open media event in July but until now has not gone as far as removing a credential, known as a “hard pass,” which enables a journalist to enter the White House grounds.

Press secretary Sarah Sanders cited Acosta’s brief confrontation with a White House press aide during Trump’s midday news conference as the reason for suspending his press pass “until further notice.”

Evidently that was inaccurate becaue

During the 90-minute session at the White House, Trump snapped at Acosta after the reporter asked whether the president had “demonized immigrants” by calling a caravan of Central American migrants “an invasion.” After a lengthy and tense back-and-forth, a female White House intern tried to take the microphone from Acosta.

Acosta held onto it and raised an arm to shield it, in the process making contact with the aide. “Pardon me, ma’am,” he told the woman.

Wherein "Sarah Huckabee" and "other people" are proxies for "me"

After their exchange, Trump told Acosta: “CNN should be ashamed of itself having you working for them. You are a rude, terrible person. You shouldn’t be working for CNN. You’re a very rude person. The way you treat Sarah Huckabee is horrible. And the way you treat other people are horrible. You shouldn’t treat people that way.”

Then Press Secretary S. Huckabee Sanders tweeted out a shortened video, apparently made by an editor of the far-right conspiracy site Infowars, of the interaction.   David Frum responded

Who will break the news to @PressSec that there’s video of the event she’s misrepresenting here? https://t.co/9OKNhKDJUp

— David Frum (@davidfrum) November 8, 2018

But dishonesty is the currency of wannabee dictators, and so it will not bother the regime that this was the full interaction:

Reverend Martin Niemoller, in a poem though distorted by history, nevertheless captured the cowardice of German institutions (especially the churches) toward the rise of Adolph Hitler. He did note that the Nazi persecution of Communists, trade unions, and Social Democrats met little resistance because "all of that was not our affair" and "the Church did not concern itself with politics at all at that time."

 Termination of the Attorney General and curtailment of freedom of the press took place fewer than 24 hours after polls closed Tuesday. If they had taken place before the election, when they undobutedly were planned, they probably would have cost Trump's Republican Party its Senate majority. Even a wannabe dictator must pick his time and place carefully.

In the USA in the early 21st century, religious institutions bear some responsibility to resist the slow-moving coup Maher has long recognized,  However, organized religion is in serious decline and political leaders and the media must fill the breach. It has now come, first to CNN, but eventually will come to others because, Trump claims, they are the "true Enemy of the People." There is still time to prove Bill Maher wrong, as he hopes he will be. Time, though, is fleeting.

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