THE STORM IS COMING

by Vijaya Chandrasoma

“The devil whispers to the warrior slyly, can you withstand the coming storm. The warrior responds, ‘I am the storm.” Anon.

Hurricane Ian, predicted earlier last week to reach Category 4 levels, hit Florida on Wednesday morning, wreaking catastrophic damage to life and property. By the time it made landfall in the shores of southwestern Florida, the severity of the storm was downgraded to Category 3. But in that time, it had claimed at least 19 lives, a number that is certain to rise.

It continues to cause great damage to environmental structures, homes and property, and power outages. Although the eye of the hurricane has begun to diminish in Florida, it is still packing an increasingly formidable punch as it moves across the state of Florida towards South Carolina.

President Biden pledged on Wednesday that the federal government will be with Florida and South Carolina “every step of the way to help the states clean up, rebuild and get them moving again”. An encouraging reassurance that we now have come to expect from a President of all states of America, Red and Blue.

Beyond human tragedies, the ultimate damage caused by Hurricane Ian will be in the region of $20 to $40 billion dollars. These numbers will increase exponentially as it continues its catastrophic path north towards South Carolina.

Politically, the USA has been experiencing a perfect storm in the White House over the past six years, following the perfect lull of the Obama presidency. During which the nation had enjoyed eight years of integrity, decency and a thriving economy, in spite of having inherited the war-torn, near recession economy left by the Republican Bush administration in the early years of the 21st century.

Eight years when we could look up to the American Dream, when the son of an African immigrant/student and a white woman from Kansas could rise to the highest position of the land. And a descendant of an African slave could aspire to being the First Lady. A president who delivered the greatest scandal-free and prosperous two-term presidency the country has ever seen. Who, together with the First Lady, raised two daughters who grew up in the White House so gracefully from pre-teens to beautiful, highly educated young ladies without a trace of scandal. A family we could all look up to as a role model for the world.

Just after Obama’s presidency was announced in November 2008, Jon Stewart, comedian, satirist and then anchor of the popular TV Daily Show, made, at the end of the live show after the election, this memorable statement: “At last, we are now what we always said we were.” His meaning was obvious; The nation had finally shed its racist fetters of white supremacy and embraced cultural diversity and inclusiveness. Man, was he wrong!

A totally different type of storm has been engulfing the nation ever since the questionable election of the most dangerous, unhinged lunatic to the presidency in 2017. An election which confounded the optimism behind Jon Stewart’s words. The USA was not getting less racist and more inclusive with the election of a black man to the presidency. In truth, it was the complete antithesis.

The USA has, till the middle of the 20th century, been a racist nation of a majority of white supremacists, desperate to maintain their control over people of skin colour different from their anemic pink/orange. But after the Civil Rights Act of 1965, that racial hatred was driven below the surface. Unfortunately, Jim Crow was not dead. He has just been driven into hiding.

Systemic racism and white supremacy combine to threaten the nation with the worst storm of violence in centuries. A storm that will break with the inevitable arrest of Trump and his acolytes, sooner than later, for their attempt to destroy democracy after the 2020 elections. The restoration of accountability will result in an explosion of random violence not seen since the Civil War. And for the exact same reason – the retention of white control and supremacy over dark skinned minorities.

“We are the storm” is the slogan of the Republican Party of Texas, which the New York Times described as “an unusually visible example of the Republican Party’s dalliance with QAnon.” This was one of the catchphrases of the QAnon cult, along with other rallying cries of American and global fascists, known simply as “The Fourteen Words” or “14/88” – 14 words – “We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children”, followed by the secondary slogan, “Because the beauty of White Aryan woman must not perish from the Earth.” The numbers 88 refer to a repetition of the eighth letter of the alphabet – HH – Heil Hitler.

It is a little known, well concealed, fact that the threat of Nazism in the United States in the 1930s was far more in evidence than we are taught today. The narrative is that America entered the War after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, stepped in to turn the tide for the Allies and helped save the world from fascism. This narrative ignores the fact that there was a considerable minority of Americans who were rooting for Nazi Germany. “America First” was a slogan of the pre-war, pro-Nazi American isolationist movement, now reborn as a slogan for the neo-Nazi cult of former president Trump.

QAnon is a radical right political movement, consisting of racists espousing far right conspiracy theories, who crawled out of the woodwork in 2017 after the election of Donald Trump. The core QAnon conspiracy theory is “that a cabal of Satanic, cannibalistic sexual abusers of children, operating a global child sex trafficking ring, are conspiring against Trump, claiming that this cabal (read Democrats, progressives) has been conspiring against Trump in a continuing “witch hunt” since the beginning of his presidency. In their demented minds, Trump is still the president of the United States, the Chosen One, who has been chosen by the Christian God to lead America into its destiny of White Aryan domination. Aryan Shades of the 1930s of Hitler and pre-WWII Germany.

From its inception, Trump has been denying any connection with, indeed ignorance of, this lunatic fringe of the Republican Party. He said at a public rally that he had no connection, indeed no knowledge of QAnon, except that “he has heard that they really like me.” He also denied all connection with violent white supremacist groups like the Proud Boys and, the Oathkeepers, until he used them to incite the insurrection of January 6, 2021.

It would have been difficult to top the accusation and conviction of a defeated president for the crime of sedition, of inciting a violent insurrection against the legally elected government carrying out its constitutional duties at the citadel of American Democracy, the Capitol.

But nothing vile is beyond Trump. He has now been accused of stealing 28 boxes of classified documents from the White House, and storing them in an unsecured basement room at his resort/club in Mar a Lago, Florida. On being informed of this theft, the FBI requested that all documents be returned to the National Archives, where Top Secret and classified documents are stored in a Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility (SCIF). Such documents are accessible to only those with the highest security clearance.

Trump’s lawyers returned 15 of these boxes, with a signed statement that these contained all the documents removed by Trump when he left the White House. The FBI received information that more boxes containing documents were still at Mar a Lago. When Trump’s lawyers denied this, they obtained a search warrant, signed by a Trump appointed Judge, to search the Mar a Lago resort. During the search, conducted in the presence of Trump’s lawyers, 13 more boxes were found, again in an unsecured location, accessible to any tourist/guest/member at the resort.

Trump has said that all the documents were his, mainly newspaper clippings which would be needed when he was writing his memoirs. They were not. They were classified documents, more than 100 containing the title: Top Secret SCI (Sensitive Compartmented Information), a heading given to documents of the highest secrecy. Some of these documents gave details of the nuclear capabilities of allies and adversaries, and CIA and Secret Service operations.

Trump said that he had declassified all the documents found at the White House. When it was pointed out to him that no evidence of such declassification was available, Trump, remaining true to his image of narcissism, ignorance and complete denial of the rule of law, said that he had declassified the documents in his mind, telepathically. I kid you not.

Of course, this is most credible when we read some of the ignorant statements made by Trump during his presidency. The choicest of these were that “disinfectant is a cure for Covid” (of course it is, death is a certain cure of all ailments), that “the noise of windmills causes cancer”. And the winner, that Puerto Rico is “an island surrounded by water. Big water. Ocean water!”

What completes escapes his criminal mind is that the stealing of ANY White House documents, classified or unclassified, and storing them in an unauthorized location is a felony, tantamount to espionage and treason. These documents belong to the people of America, and are stored in National Archives.

What was Trump’s motive in stealing these documents? Ever the grifter, ever the criminal, he planned to sell them to the highest bidder. Evidence is emerging that he has already sold some of these Top Secret documents, especially when it was found that some documents in folders marked Top Secret were missing.

Attorney General Garland is closing in on Trump on both the insurrection, espionage and treason charges. The District Attorney of New York last week brought a $250 million civil lawsuit against Trump and three of his children, Donald Jr, Eric and Ivanka, for tax evasion, insurance and bank fraud. The Attorney General of the state of Georgia is said to be finalizing its case against Trump, Lindsay Graham and Rudi Giuliani for election fraud in 2020. And the January 6 Special Congressional Committee has unearthed video evidence showing Trump minions, headed by felon Roger Stone, planning the overthrow of the results of the 2020 presidential election in June, 2020, a full four months BEFORE the election they were sure Trump was going to lose. This incriminating video was supposed to be shown at a public hearing of the Committee last Wednesday. The hearing was postponed because of the hurricane, and will be aired next week.

Trump has at last realized the inevitability of his conviction for multiple civil and criminal crimes: tax evasion, bank, insurance and election fraud, extortion, obstruction of justice, and the biggies – sedition, espionage and treason. In desperation, he has publicly aligned himself with the radical right, violent organizations like QAnon and others, hinting at violence if any legal action is taken against him. He is now wearing QAnon lapel pins in public, overlaid with white supremacist phrases “The Storm is Coming” and “WWG1WGA”, an acronym for “Where We Go One, We Go All.”

It has taken a long time to come this point, especially as there has long been overwhelming evidence against Trump on felony counts of fraud, obstruction of justice, sedition, espionage and treason. The USA is fast becoming the Land of the Free – Felons.

Attorney General Merrick Garland is a very patient and cautious man who has, in the past got convictions by gathering indisputable evidence. He is acting in character, and consensus is that he will indict Trump very soon.

And the violence that will be wrought by Trump’s white supremacist allies on his arrest will be swiftly quelled by the National Guard, with weaponry that will make these thugs’ AR 15s look like mousetraps. A National Guard which will be immediately called to action by a President totally dedicated to preserving the safety of all citizens of the nation.