I was in London recently, participating in something quite spectacular at Abbey Road Studios but that’s a story for another day.
I stayed in St. James’s not far from the ‘Churchill War Rooms’, now a museum, at the east end of St. James’s Park.
The sacrifice, heroism, leadership, tragedy and ultimately, victory for freedom-loving nations is neither forgotten or faded in memory of those who felt the force of fascism on their own shores.
Those who suffered the bombs and bullets of despotic rulers bent on invading their neighbors and remaking the world in their bent and brutal image based on a toxic ideology.
‘Churchill War Rooms’ have been left virtually intact - as they were when the great man stood up with steely resolve and led his nation and it’s allies to victory over the imperialist and genocidal vision of Adolf Hitler and his band of broken men.
As evil a coterie as we have known in the modern age and unfortunately one whose ideology and iconography is finding new life on the far right.
The ‘War Rooms’ serve as a stark reminder of what can happen when appeasement and self-serving greed allows certain nations, led by cowardly and corrupt men, to become isolationist (or worse) in their vision.
A fate we avoided when the United States eventually entered WWII and destroyed the Nazis’ armed forces and liberated those sovereign nations that had become victims of Hitler’s barbarism and brutality.
Lessons like that are not soon forgotten: there is an absolute need for living reminders that serve to teach subsequent generations the scope of the sacrifice.
A much needed bulwark against the convenient amnesia that has seemingly settled in among the reactionary forces that have taken hold in western democracies.
The true measure of the sacrifice and horror can never be truly known unless you lived it but education and empathy can go a long way.
Especially in the United States of America where a too large portion of people have fallen, for nearly a decade now, under the sway of Donald Trump.
A man who comes from a long line of cowards who seem genetically averse to any form of sacrifice or selfless service. Trump’s paternal grandfather was kicked out of Germany for refusing mandatory military service.
Trump’s father received FHA loans to build housing for low-income families and returning G.I.s - using the opportunity to cheat on his taxes and build a racist real estate empire designed to screw over his tenants and fill his own pockets, with a convenient side-hustle of laundering money for NYC area mobsters.
A tradition Donald carried on by branching out further into Manhattan and building gaudy skyscrapers with help from his pals in the Genovese and Gambino clans before settling on the Russian mob as his preferred benefactor and business partner.
Sacrifice and service mean nothing to men like Donald Trump.
Greed and retribution are their North Star and will remain so no matter the cost to our freedoms and the safety of our country and its allies.
Ironic since Trump leads a political party that is notorious for waving flags and starting wars that somebody else’s son or daughter will have to fight.
The folks who cheer his awful rhetoric are the ones most likely to bear the brunt of his dangerous vision.
Trump’s boast about telling a European president of a NATO member nation that he would let Russia ‘do whatever the hell they want’ unless he were to pay Trump a vig are the words of a mob boss.
Any attempt to paint them otherwise is a dangerous misperception.
Putin prosecutes his wars by attacking civilians and encouraging his soldiers to use rape as weapon.
He is every bit as evil as any monster that has ever ruled over a people and in him Trump sees a role model.
Trump was obsessed with Russians going back to my days on ‘Celebrity Apprentice’ when the after-parties would be stuffed with Russian mob types and their molls, wearing fur coats in May and working the room with various Trump kids sucking up and schmoozing.
It was an odd sight then but now, through the lens of memory, it is downright horrific.
A mob mentality makes sense to Trump because that is the world he was raised in and has been rewarded by for most of his adult life.
All of his interactions in the White House were transactional, from his sucking up to Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergey Lavrov in the Oval Office, where Trump’s obsequiousness was written all over his face.
To his attempted shakedown of Ukraine’s President Zelensky, “I would like you to do us a favor though”.
The brutality and ruthlessness (and bottomless coffers) that Trump first found to be an intoxicating and attributable to Russian mob tactics have calcified his outlook on world affairs, as modeled on Vladimir Putin.
A man Trump was obsessed with getting to know well before he became POTUS in 2016 with Putin’s help.
Going so far as to send fawning fan letters to Putin long before he ever even thought about running for president.
“I’m a big fan of yours”; inviting him to be a guest of honor at a ‘Miss Universe’ pageant held in Moscow in 2013.
Disgusting stuff by any measure but now it’s long past very dangerous.
His own daughter, Ivanka, even sat in Putin’s chair behind his desk at the Kremlin, while on a family business excursion to attempt to solidify Trump’s dream of building a hotel in Moscow: that hotel’s plans obviously something Trump pursued and lied about well into his presidential campaign.
Trump’s attraction to Putin and other vicious strongmen is rooted in his finding violence and depravity deeply intoxicating.
He takes sadistic pleasure in recounting the suffering of others, even if it’s only theoretical, such as his recent comments about NATO comments at MAGA rallies.
Or when it’s not theoretical, as in Ukraine; there’s no way to look at the actions of Trump’s administration as anything other than preparing and softening the battlefield for Putin’s invasion.
The sort of suffering Trump offered up with a grin the other night to the cheers and laughter of his assembled hordes was nothing short of stomach-churning for anyone with even a modest grasp of history.
As someone who has been around the man, it’s very much in keeping with the deranged and violent personality of someone who was allowed to push his con on the American people with impunity - and so far still seems to get away with it.
When all is said and done, Trump will be seen as the greatest threat to democracy our country has ever known and a bigger traitor than Benedict Arnold, who was at least gallant in battle before his turn at treason.
Trump’s NATO threat, delivered with glee (while standing like a drunken, cantilevered Minotaur, buzzing from a head full of amphetamines with a benzo-back; comb-over shellacked into what resembles a dead ferret and painted a shade of burnt umber that had the quality and consistency of dollar store deck sealant) was received with audacious stupidity.
We are talking about a former POTUS, who happily recounts how he dangled and ENCOURAGED invasion of a sovereign nation by a hostile authoritarian, while American troops are stationed across Europe.
As they have been since the end of WWII, most notably in Germany where our bases have, along with NATO itself, worked to preserve the hard won peace.
I feel like the full impact of how ignorant and dangerous Trump’s comments were hasn’t completely registered, his disparaging and taunting international post-war political infrastructure designed to prevent and protect against the very type of unlawful aggression he himself was suggesting.
Tens of millions of lives were lost in Europe alone and the fact that this most ignorant of men could utter such a thing and be cheered is indicative of a larger problem in the United States.
His remarks of course set off a firestorm of critiques online and some well-earned outrage in the European press but have gone wholly unrebutted by members of his own party.
The same GOP he lords over like some sort of awful bloated king.
Just in the past week, Trump has used his malignant power to signal to sycophants on Capitol Hill to kill a bipartisan border deal that was both months in the making and much needed.
But it would benefit President Biden and send aid to our allies, including Ukraine, who Trump has twisted arms in the Republican party to kill off support for since his first impeachment so he ordered a legislative hit his capos in the GOP were only too happy to carrry out.
Trump of course blames Zelensky for not ‘giving him dirt’ on Biden in advance of the 2020 election (which he lost and tried to overturn and has yet to be held fully accountable for and most likely will not before next election).
The border deal died in the US Senate without so much as small fight by soulless men like Mitch McConnell, a man who at his core probably understands the danger of this moment but is too deep in the muck and sludge of the modern GOP to do anything substantive about it.
They collect their checks from the Koch brothers and hand over legislative progress to a drug-addled retiree in Palm Beach, while he simultaneously uses the judiciary as a weapon to run out the clock on his criminal trials and tip the scales of democracy enough to regain power.
We are in dire straits as a nation and the fallout is spreading to our allies.
Ukraine may not be able to continue their brave fight against Putin’s aggression thanks to the lack of support in the GOP ordered by Trump and bolstered by any number of conservative cranks from Carlson to Musk.
It’s a scary time, indeed.
But as the darker clouds seem to gather on the horizon, it feels as if the air is always thicker where the rain will actually fall.
I was well aware of this as I wandered the beautiful streets of Mayfair a week ago.
A place where tradition meets modernity in a way that you can clearly see the present both superimposed on and integrated with the past.
A certain comfort comes from progress that acknowledges where it has come from and the lessons it has learned.
A lack of history, or worse, a rewriting of it, allows ignorance to fester in a people and bad men to manipulate them.
I visited old haunts in Kensington, including a mandatory stop at Churchill Arms for a plate of pad thai.
It’s a beautiful old pub, built in 1750 (Churchill’s grandparents were customers) that has become a living memorial of sorts to WWII-era Britain.
Winston stares down at you seemingly from every direction.
His somber and serious gaze almost a comforting reminder of a time of serious men but also an unspoken warning of sorts of the dangers of the unscrupulous and the appeasers.
While the unremitting truth can be a beacon and a buoy.
You want leaders who understand this - and although they are in short supply - the world has a habit of finding them at just the right moment.
The pub has all sorts of WWII-era memorabilia attached to every surface.
Above me hung a sign that pointed out the shapes of German and British planes as seen from below - so folks could identify them and know when it was time to run for the shelters.
The war in Europe was part of everyday life and not something being fought only on distant lands across oceans.
The pub gives one both a sense of pragmatism and a ‘keep calm and carry on’ spirit that so defines a people who not only endured and sacrificed but emerged victorious and aware enough to never lose sight of the true cost of war.
Peace is never promised, it is earned and protected.
We must be vigilant and clear-eyed about what we are facing in this hour.
Not just for ourselves and our country’s future but for our allies in Europe and beyond.
They will potentially bear the brunt of the cost for ignorant statements like Trump’s NATO comments and the appeasement of Putin.
At the same time, we should make no mistake about what any further aggression by Putin in Europe would mean for us here at home.
We would do well to heed the warnings from our friends overseas and allow the wisdom that can be gleaned from observable history illuminate this moment as much as possible.
In fraught times it is the freedoms we still posses that may be the keys to our future. Use them wisely.
Absolutely essential information far too many Americans have either forgotten or not learned in school. Thank you Noel for providing us with this wisdom to make an informed voting choice.
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