THE DUOPOLY WATCH | Steven Jonas, MD, MPH
In the Spring of
1918, the Prussian Army launched what proved to be its last major offensive on
the Western Front. It happened that
since the Russian Revolution on October 25, 1917 [November 7, new calendar] and
the departure of Russia from The Great War, Germany faced only one front. But even it proved to be too much for an
exhausted army, and the offensive failed.
Also, the British naval blockade had been proving to be increasingly
effective in depriving Germany of both military and civilian goods, and
food. And so, the government began
the negotiations with the Western Powers that eventually led to the Armistice of
November 11, 1918, and then after that to the Versailles Treaty, which proved to
be so disastrous for the whole of Europe, in the long run.
However, the two
leading commanders of the Prussian Army, Generals Paul von Hindenburg (later the
Weimar Republic President who appointed Adolf Hitler as Chancellor on January
30, 1933) and Erich Ludendorff (who was a Hitler supporter from the mid-1920s),
did not like the movement to end the war.
They thought that somehow Germany could fight on and did not only because
the civilian government was weak-kneed and thus decided to implement the policy
to bring the War to an end. That
the civilian government, especially the Social Democratic Party that was part of
it, undertook this policy, after the War, and especially after the imposition
the onerous Versailles Treaty, came to called, by the German Right, the “Stab in
the Back.” It was used,
over-and-over again, to justify the development of various right-wing parties in
Weimar Germany, most especially the Nazi Party. Hitler and Goebbels were still using the
phrase in speeches in the 1930s.
As everybody in the
United States and indeed around the world who has any interest in the U.S.
Presidential elections knows, Donald Trump, at the end of the last Presidential
debate, on October 19, 2016, said that he would not necessarily accept the
result of the vote on November 8.
If he thought that “something was going on” (a phrase that he uses
constantly to describe supposed conspiracies of all sorts [of course without
defining them, much less proving their existence]), he would not do so. In the past several weeks he and his
surrogates have been ramping up the claim that the election is somehow “rigged,”
somehow by the Clinton forces, by the media, and by the very new claim that
there will be massive voter fraud, by the millions. This fraud will, of course, occur only
in “certain neighborhoods,” “you know which ones I’m talking
about.”
It is well-known
that the standard Republicans have already begun the plotting to obstruct a
Clinton Presidency to the greatest degree possible. Senator John McCain has already announced that should the
Democrats fail to gain 50 seats in the new Senate, that the Repubs. will block
any Supreme Court nominees she proposes.
Since the oldest members of the Court are liberals, this would mean that
eventually the reactionary Court majority would be re-established, by
attrition. (Would it come to be
called “Court Unpacking?” But
that’s another story.) But back to
Trump.
Click here for the full article.
Source: The Greanville Post
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