Monday, June 18, 2018

…And there will have to be many trials ahead




At the time of this writing, June 2018, the occupying presidential regime is accelerating its machinery of cruelty and despair, in earnest. It has initiated the concentration camp process to be used against immigrants, their families being separated at the U.S.-Mexico border. The images of the terrified children are quickly becoming a familiar sight on TV and in the newspapers.

From her dishonorably exalted Fox News platform Ann Coulter has intoned: “These child actors weeping and crying on all the other networks 24/7 right now—do not fall for it, Mr. President…”

Ten or fifteen years ago, Ann Coulter had to settle for directing, in an ambiguous way, her lowly miscreant supporters to commit disruptive and even, violent acts and the liberal establishment she despises. Like the time in the mid-2000s when one such lowlife mailed fake Anthrax powder to Keith Olbermann, among other Democratic Party media personalities, as well as politicians. Attached were letters promising death to them all. The man was later confirmed to be an ardent Coulter supporter. Olbermann wisely determined Coulter’s responsibility for this affair, pointing out that she had often made comments about executing traitors “in order to physically intimidate liberals, by making them realize that they can be killed too.” He drew a parallel to Henry II’s immortal utterance “Will no one rid me of this troublesome priest?” This had been the English king’s roundabout exhortation to his knights to murder Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Beckett.

Today, Coulter’s ambitions and schemes are no longer as modest. She has the ear of the President of the United States. Instead of directing violence committed outside the law, she can organize state-sanctioned violence, with military, paramilitary, and municipal resources to bear.

Last September, Coulter laid out a vision for America’sFinal Solution to the Liberal Problem: “There’s the organizing the death squads for the people who ruined America, because there will be no more hope…” Think about it. Death squads loyal to the Trump administration for all his critics, and anyone else deemed enemies of the state. Back in the 1970s and 80s, Major Roberto D’Aubuisson, formerly of El Salvador’s military, rose overnight to be the chief organizer of the Salvadoran right-wing death squads, responsible for the mass slaughter of thousands of people—and not all of them leftists. In one particular instance, D’Aubuisson acted in a manner that is easily echoed by AnnCoulter’s tactics: He went on television, accusing one moderate political opponent of being a communist. The unlucky politician was found murdered just days afterward, and D’Aubuisson could easily claim to have plausible deniability for the direct act. Does Coulter wish to be the Major Roberto D’Aubuisson of the United States?

Is Donald Trump the grand master— the helmsman of a burgeoning dictatorship who employs all the Ann Coulters of this country as his multitude of propagandist hatchet men? Or are Ann Coulter and her compatriots the true Gepetto pulling Trump’s puppet strings, commanding him to execute the profane domestic policies that they have advocated for years? Not a question one can answer right away, but for the moment it barely matters.


One thing is definitely for certain, now. We can no longer treat Ann Coulter as either an amusing gadfly, or even as a repugnant provocateur who is speaking well within her rights. Whether or not all her proclamations become implemented as lethal policy, she has crossed the line into criminality. It is criminal facilitation of human rights violations. We must treat her as a full-bore criminal, to be prosecuted for crimes against humanity in a coming trial… And there will have to be many trials ahead.