ONE VAMPIRE TOO MANY?

In his weekend e-mail to subscribers this past Saturday, Charles P. Pierce went on in detail at how the Good Guys should not accept one Richard Cheney, former Vice President of the United States, into the fight to preserve this constitutional democratic republic.

I don’t need to go into the details of his indictment of Mr. Cheney; we all know the charges. And yes, they are terrible things, and no one should think otherwise of promoting the kidnaping of people - many of whom turned out to have no involvement with the activities they were suspected of - more than a few of them turned over to the expert morons at Can’t Investigate Anything for the crime of having gotten on the wrong side of one of the thugs those who Can’t Investigate Anything believe are the right people to enlist in a war for the heart and soul of the world in favor of freedom and democracy. Many of my readers and certainly I myself would disagree with that. And I don’t disagree with Charlie’s description of Mr. Cheney.

I just disagree that all of that means I can’t say “Welcome” to the man when he is one of two members of his political party to show up at the House session on the anniversary of the greatest crime against this country ever committed, Donald Trump’s attempted coup d’etat against the United States of America, the constitution by which it is governed and the House of Representatives and the Senate where the people charged with representing all of us in doing that meet.

Say what there is to be said about Dick Cheney, you didn’t see him fomenting an attack on the transition of power to Barack Obama on January 20, 2009. It was very obvious he wasn’t happy about the situation, but on January 6, 2009, he performed his role as Vice President in affirming the election of Barack Obama and Joe Biden as the successors of himself and Beorge W. Bush, and he did it like a person who accepts responsibility, who respects and honors the office he holds.

I just happen to disagree profoundly with his view of what the words “honor” and “respect” and “responsibility” mean in the performance of his duties in that office.

But he met the one test that has any validity right now. That test has one question: Do you honor and respect the Constitution that governs this democratically-governed republic? The answer is “yes” or “no,” no “maybe” allowed. He answered “yes.”

Some of the more partisan authors of the e-mail newsletters and blogs I read went nuts over the weekend over the fact Nancy Pelosi and the rest of the Democrats in the House leadership had been polite and welcoming to Cheney when he showed up Thursday. One of the more talentless failed-writer/Perfesserator of Litterachoor bloggers (that’s such a “type” and when the individual in question is such a caricature of the type as this guy is, well...) who shows up as one of the usual suspects in a newsletter I get (I usually ignore him but this time I didn’t) went to far as to suggest that Liz Cheney is a “stalking horse” for her father, to get his “wing” of the party back in power after they take down Trump. One of the benefits of becoming a failed-writer/Perfesserator of Litterachoor is, you can keep your idiot beliefs from when you were 25 and didn’t know shit from shinola about anything when you’re 55, after a life spent piling it higher and deeper, and people think you’re “cool” because you didn’t “sell out.” Meanwhile, back in Reality...

Back in Reality, I hate to say it, but Charlie Pierce is wrong this time. (I know, Judes, it’s heresy, but... )

Eighty years ago, the only question on the test was “Do you oppose Hitler and the Nazis and all their works and will you devote your heart and soul to their total and complete destruction?”

Joe Stalin, despite being a more proficient psychotic mass murderer than Herr Paperhanger could ever aspire to be, answered “Yes.” And if he hadn’t, much of the world, if not all of it, might be goose-stepping and shouting “Sieg Heil!” today. It’s never been well-known here in the United States, but the truth of World War II is, 80 percent of those who died in the war, died on the Eastern Front. The entire death toll in the whole war for the United States was less than what the Soviets lost at Stalingrad. And despite being told our entire lives since that the United States won the war because we dropped two A-bombs on Japan, the truth is that on August 9 - the day we dropped the second bomb - that fact never made it into the discussions that day by the Japanese High Council of War - they spent the entire day worrying about the event that happened that day that was Actually Important: that the Soviets had invaded Manchuria and would likely be at the southern end of Sakhalin Island by the end of the month, able to invade Japan where it had no defenses by the middle of September - a good 6-7 weeks before the Americans would invade Kyushu, long enough for the Soviets to take the whole country. That was what scared the leaders of Japan on August 9, 1945.

On June 22, 1941, within minutes of being informed that Hitler had invaded the Soviet Union, Winston Churchill cabled Stalin, offering an unconditional alliance against the Nazis, and backing that up with a unilateral decision to divert badly-needed Lend-Lease supplies that were on their way to England, to the Soviet Union.

When an aide asked how he could do that, after having tried to strangle the Bolshevik Revolution in its cradle and commissioning five attempts to assassinate Stalin between 1919-24, Churchill replied, “If Hitler were to invade Hell, I should at least have a good word for the Devil.”

And Stalin, who knew all about Churchill’s five tries at killing him since he had blocked them all, said “Thank you, that sounds like a good idea” when he got Churchill’s offer.

My point is, both men knew that the other was their mortal enemy (and when it comes to killing people, there are folks in India who will point out that Churchill was no slouch in that respect, and they are right), but they were both supreme realists, and had no problem doing what was needed to fight the Existential Threat the Nazis posed. And despite all the Republican propaganda to the contrary that FDR didn’t know what he was doing, FDR knew who Stalin was. He also knew he wanted to defeat Hitler.

In 1937, the “That’s One Vampire Too Many!” strategy was played out and failed. That year, Stalin - who knew a threat when he saw one - saw Hitler and the Nazis for the threat they were, and proposed to the British and French that the three countries ally as they had before against the German threat. Had Chamberlain and Daladier said yes, World War II might have been averted. Hitler was not solidly in control of Germany; the conservatives he had defeated to take power were still numerous enough to take him down in a crisis - with outside help. The leaders of the German military knew they were not in position to win an extended war, and as late as 1938 at the Munich Crisis, there was a plot within the Wehrmact leadership to depose Hitler had the British and French stood up to Hitler and war had broken out. The British and the French might have acted differently at Munich had they had a powerful ally on the other side of Germany, threatening the always-dangerous two-front war every German militarist had always known couldn’t be won.

But Chamberlain and Caladier had turned down Stalin’s offer of alliance before Munich, and thus they capitulated, leaving the world to go to war a year later. And the German internal resistance disappeared since Hitler could devote his full energy to hunting them down.

I bring up all this World War II history because it has relevance today. Last night on CNN, Fareed Zakariah did a Special Report, which chronicled Hitler’s rise to power and compared it directly with Trump. He ended the report by saying “Now is not the time to allow policy differences to divide those of us who are opposed to this. We can have that argument after this battle has been won.”

He’s right on all counts. Trump is as existential a threat to the world as was Hitler. Hitler took control of one of the most technologically-advanced countries, and came damned close to winning. Trump holding the United States is a “Trump Card” the world cannot allow. It might take the entire rest of the world allying to defeat us, as was the case in World War II. That is not a prospect one wishes to consider in any way.

The German conservatives and liberals couldn’t bring themselves to ally in the face of Hitler. They looked at each other and saw too many old enemies, rather than seeing the Great Enemy.

UPDATE: A very good historian friend of mine dropped by and read this, and commented: “Let's remember that in Germany the socialists, communists, Catholic Center, republicans, etc., wouldn't cooperate with each other, so the Nazis won.” Words. To. The. Wise.

Right here, right now, there is only one question on the test: “Do you oppose Trump and the Trumpists and all their works and will you devote your heart and soul to their total and complete destruction?”

Everybody who says “Yes” is on our side.

Every. Body.

We can discuss who is and isn’t a vampire once we have defeated the real monster.

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