The ship of state is sinking. Why we ordered a flag to carry at the next protest. By Hal M. Brown and Ann Rutz

We went to a protest yesterday and carried a homemade sign with a quote from Justice Sonia Sotomayer. At the previous protest we had “No King!” signs.

Today this was the main page of HuffPost:

As you see, they decided to illustrate their two main front page stories with a photo of an American flag flying upside down.

By now everyone knows that flying an upside down flag is a symbol of distress. Below is the wesbite of American Flags.

Their article begins:

Typically, an upside-down American flag is a sign of distress or extreme emergencies. Some may also use it as a form of protest, which is protected as free speech under the First Amendment of the United States Constitution. Nonetheless, we’ll give a deeper explanation along with historic examples of when the flag was flown upside down.

Every Friday we have had a local protest at a big box grocery store on a busy street. As people drive by they see the protest with people carrying signs but it is difficult for them to take in and read all the signs. People following the the news about protests see photos of some of the more compelling signs but at an actual protest we decided that the upside down flag sends a simple and powerful message. We ordered one which will arrive tomorrow:

Until Trump’s election my guess is that most people who ordered and flew American flags were Trumpers. Now anti-Trumpers have begun to fly the flag either in the normal way or upside down. For example the man in the photo I took at a Hands Off protest a few weeks ago. 

He didn’t have to fly it upside down since it was clear what message he was sending.

When at a protest we think displaying the flag, whether upside down or not, is a good idea. Perhaps if there are enough people with flags having some right side up and the others upside down would send the message that we are all democracy loving patriotic Americans and we are in DISTRESS!

We plan to display our flag upside down so there’s no ambiguity in what we mean.

Addendum: If you don’t make it to local protests held in your areas regularly, don’t forget the National Day of Action Against Donald Trump Planned for May 1. Here’s What To Know.

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Hitler turned anti-semitism into a reason to demonize Jews, Trump is trying to turn fear of Hispanic gangs into reason to hate all brown skinned immigrants. By Hal M. Brown

 

The Nazis succeeded in demonizing Jews. Trump is doing the same thing with Hispanic immigrants. While the typical immigrant looks like a normal person who happens to have brown skin, conveniently for him gang members with the same color skin have tattoos all over their faces and bodies. 

While all, or perhaps most, members of Hispanic gangs aren’t violent, Trump wants to portray them as rapists and killers.

In many ways Trump has more going for him than Hitler did in turning Jews into the enemy of other Germans.

Some Jews may have had large noses making them look different but what made them easy to cast as enemies was the existing anti-Semisticism based on their religion and animosity towards them because many were successful members of the merchant class.

Even though other Germans had contact with Jews until they were segregated into ghettos and knew they weren’’t violent criminals” Nazi propaganda was successful in characterizing them this way. For example: 

The following is from an article in this U.S. Holocaust Museum website:

Demonizing the enemy is an effective technique for wartime propaganda. Hitler recognized this technique during World War I. Although most wartime propaganda demonized the political and military leaders of enemy countries, the Nazis went further. They considered all Jews—men, women, and even children—to be a deadly threat to the German people.

On posters and in speeches, newsreels, and radio programs, Nazis demonized and dehumanized European Jews. They depicted European Jews as carriers of deadly diseases such as typhus to justify segregating them in ghettos. They identified European Jews as a violent threat, calling them bandits and terrorists. Nazi propaganda held the Jews responsible for causing World War II, for which they would have to pay. All Jews, Hitler’s propagandists proclaimed, were accomplices in an international plot to enslave the non-Jewish world. Using such false claims, Nazi propaganda presented its war against Jews as a struggle between good and evil.

There were no Jewish criminal gangs in Germany in the 1930s, at least not in the way we describe a criminal gang. The Nazis wanted to cast them as criminals. This is from The Construction of “Jewish Criminality” in Nazi Germany:

This chapter shows that the right wing's essentialized construct of the Jew as criminal in the Weimar period was translated into policy and action in Germany after 1933. Until 1938, when the Nazis unequivocally embraced the guiding principle that “The Jew is outside the law,” they often took pains to charge individual Jews with specific crimes, usually focusing on technical aspects of tax laws and currency-exchange regulations. On the one hand, they sought to exploit the racist agenda and traditional anti-Semitic stereotypes. On the other, they wanted to give the impression that the Nazi State was simply zealous in applying the letter of the law.

Trump has lucked out. There are criminal American Hispanic gangs that can easily be depicted as the kind of people who would break into your house and do unpseakable things to you and your family.

Trump went from making the ludicrous claim that Haitian immigrants in Ohio were eating pet dogs and cats to lucking out because the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua is really composed of some real bad guys. Consider:

27 Members or Associates of Tren de Aragua Charged with Racketeering, Narcotics, Sex Trafficking, Robbery and Firearms offenses

The following fact doesn’t matter:

There's little evidence to support the administration's contention that large numbers of the deportees are members of the violent Venezuelan prison gang Tren de Aragua. Reporting by USA TODAY last fall found ICE, the FBI and law enforcement agencies in states with reports of the gang's activity had tallied fewer than 135 members of the gang, while the Trump administration says it deported more than 200 members to El Salvador last week alone. USA Today

The logical next step for Trump and his minions is to begin to plant the idea in public perception that anyone who has crossed, or is trying to cross, the southern border trying to make a better life for themselves will become a member of a violent criminal gang. 

Trump and minions like Tom Homan, Kristi Noem, and Pam Bondi have the perfect foil in Kilmar Abrego Garcia. They are trying to convince the public that although he may look like a normal nice family man he’s really a secret gang member. This does not bode well for him or any other person deported without due process ever returning home. If they can pull this off with him they will keep doing it with others. 

Plans to build a huge detention facility (aka prison) in Texas have been paused (see article), but I expect Trump will stop sending anyone to El Salvador due to public pressure and will eventually build facilities in the United States. We will end up with an American Gulag. They will provide lots of jobs for those who couldn’t meet the standards for thuggery to be members of ICE or other Trump Gestapos.

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Aloha, indeed! What do people in Germany think of the US when they read about what happened to these young German women? By Hal M. Brown Does Trump care? - Do you even have to ask?

The article in this German publication’s title translates to “Women in Rostock end up in Trump’s deportation net in the USA: “We feel so powerless.” (My additions to illustration.)

An article published in Beat of Hawaii on April 10th describes that what happened to these women: Why These Hawaii Travelers Were Jailed And Deported.

It took 10 days, but this story finally made it into our national news yesterday. For example, in USA Today: German teens detained and deported in Hawaii over missing hotel reservation and Newsweek, German Tourists Deported From US for Not Booking Hotel.

Does Trump care what people in Germany think about what happened to these women? Do you even need to ask? Does Trump care what people in the Hawaiian tourism industry think about this? Do you even have to ask?

Search just their names on Google and this is what you will see:

This is what people in India are reading: Handcuffed, strip-searched, deported: Shocking reason 2 young female travellers' Hawaii trip turned into worst nightmare. The headline writer in India certainly knew how to use clickbait. The same holds for the headline writer in the UK Telegraph: Teenagers ‘arrested and strip searched in Hawaii over badly planned holiday’.

They are young, they are pretty, and they didn’t have a chance to get a nice Hawaiian tan on their white skin. That’s probably the only thing that might bother Trump. It is impossible credibly to paint them as terrorists. 

Psst… don’t tell Trump and MAGA that the only true terrorists in the United States also have white skin. They look like the guy in this article:

However, they are German, and Germany is part of the European Union, and also part of NATO, and is one of the primary countries helping Ukraine fight Russia, so then Trump may just see them as inconveniently having attractive white faces. 

He’d rather they looked like the PhD student, originally from Turkey, who was snatched off the street by masked ICE agents:

A PhD student was snatched by masked officers in broad daylight. Then she was flown 1,500 miles away

She’s wasn’t a terrorist, but there’s no doubt that she was terrorized.

Tufts University PhD student Rumeysa Ozturk was walking alone Tuesday night to meet friends at a dinner where they would break their 13-hour Ramadan fast when six plainclothes officers suddenly encircled her on the street near her apartment in Somerville, Massachusetts, surveillance video shows.

The 30-year-old shrieked in fear when an officer in a hooded sweatshirt and hat grabbed her by the wrists as another pulled out a concealed badge on a lanyard and confiscated her cell phone.

Soon afterward, the swarm of officers who had surrounded her on the sidewalk pulled cloth coverings over their mouths and noses, some of them wearing sunglasses.

“We’re the police,” the officers said.

“Yeah, you don’t look like it. Why are you hiding your faces?” a person not seen in the video can be heard responding.

The masked officers handcuffed Ozturk and held onto each of her arms, the video shows.

One minute after the encounter began, Ozturk was led into an SUV and driven away.

For Trump, and many of those working for him, the cruelty is the point. As I wrote in this previous Substack, they are sadists who fit into the Dark Tetrad..

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Will Trump dump Petey Piranha? By Hal M. Brown - A normal president would fire Pete Hegeseth.

 

Here’s the article from RawStory speculating that Pete Hegseth may not be long for the top job in the Department of Defense. This is from RawStory:

'Full-blown meltdown at the Pentagon': Hegseth reportedly 'unlikely to remain in his role'

Here’s a Politico article about this:

It is significant to consider who wrote the following:

It’s been a month of total chaos at the Pentagon. From leaks of sensitive operational plans to mass firings, the dysfunction is now a major distraction for the president — who deserves better from his senior leadership.

President Donald Trump has a strong record of holding his top officials to account. Given that, it’s hard to see Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth remaining in his role for much longer.

The president deserves better than the current mishegoss at the Pentagon. Given his record of holding prior Cabinet leaders accountable, many in the secretary’s own inner circle will applaud quietly if Trump chooses to do the same in short order at the top of the Defense Department. (Read his entire article here)

It is by John Ullyot. He is a “former chief Pentagon spokesman and led communications at the National Security Council and the Department of Veterans Affairs in President Donald Trump’s first term. He resigned from the Pentagon last week. He was a senior communications adviser on Trump’s 2016 campaign.” He wrote:

I am a longtime backer of the secretary. In December, when his Senate confirmation was in jeopardy, I wrote an opinion piece arguing strongly that he was the best man to shake things up at a Pentagon in need of serious reform.

Hegeseth’s most recent fuck-up is his sharing Yemen attack plans with his wife and brother on a yet another Signal chat. This has been all over the news for two days. Along with the Pope’s death, it is the lead story on MSNBC this morning:

You can be forgiven if you don’t know who the Petey Piranha in my illustration is. He is…

… a large mutant Piranha Plant first introduced in Super Mario Sunshine. He is the leader of the Piranha Plants and a loyal follower of Bowser, often appearing as a boss in the Super Mario franchise.

He has multiple abilities that set him apart from other Piranha Plants, including spitting goop and the ability to create tornadoes. His leaf-like arms can also be used as wings, allowing him to fly. Petey Piranha also makes frequent appearances in sports and spin-off games, where his sheer size causes him to often be depicted as even stronger and heavier than regular powerhouse characters like Bowser and Donkey Kong. However, he often lacks stamina and his stubby legs make him very slow on the ground, while his massive head leaves him top-heavy and easy to knock over.

The above text is from the Super Mario Wiki and is available under a Creative Commons license. Attribution must be provided through a list of authors or a link back to the original article. Source: https://www.mariowiki.com/Petey_Piranha

I don’t need to highlight why I chose this nickname for Hegeseth.

How egregious does something someone Trump appointed have to be for the man with the monstrous ego to admit he was wrong? Hegeseth should be an embarrassment to Trump. He would be to a normal human being. But then again, RFK Jr. should be an embarrassment, but Trump has gone out of his way to show his support for him. Consider who had the “honor” of sitting just behind him at a cage fighting match the other day:

Ah, to be or not to be a normal human being, that is the question.

In the sense that normal often means both conventional and psychologically healthy, Trump is neither. You don’t have to go further back than yesterday, Easter Sunday, to find proof that Trump is not normal by reading his holiday post.

Considering that Pope Francis used his final speech to blast Trump’s policy on immigrants it is a wonder that he posted “Rest in Peace Pope Francis! May God Bless him and all who loved him!“ on Truth Social. I doubt he bothered writing this himself. 

It is considered newsworthy enough that this was a Hallmark card kind of condolence message for media like The Independent to title an article this way: Trump pays tribute to Pope Francis despite pontiff’s criticism of policies.

Normal people can admit they are wrong when there is overwhelming evidence that, indeed, they were wrong. Trump will not admit he was wrong about Hegeseth. Hegeseth could pull a Hulk Hogan at a Pentagon press conference and rip his shirt off and Trump would be hard pressed to use this as a reason to justify his being fired.

This doesn’t mean that Hegeseth will survive the week as Secretary of Defense. Since this is his religious belief, he could say he’s leaving to take a leadership role the major Christian Reconstructionist church, The Restored Church of God.

He could say something like “sometimes the Higher Power calls you to put God before country” although this might offend Trump.

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Phallocentrism, the ideology that the phallus is the central element in the organization, is central to the manosphere of Trump world. By Hal M. Brown

 If you click here you can hear the 1954 jingle promoting Manishewitz wine. I was 10 when it came out and I remember it well. Below is an article about the wine brand and how Sammy Davis, Jr., who had converted to Judaism, made commercials for it.

This has little to do with my topic today. It is just what popped into my mind because I was thinking that it could be adapted to be a jingle for Trump. “Man, oh Mano Trump, what a manly man” or something like that.

This photo below is from The NY Times article A Different Kind of F.B.I. Chief: Jet-Setting Patel Loves the Limelight.

Her’es a cutout enlargement:

We’ve all seen the fake pro-wresting photos of Trump with Vince McMahon (here).

This is an article in RawStory: 

That article includes this post from the deputy FBI director on X:

I know may of you refuse to look at X but sometimes it is worth it to see the replies:

The reply from Gary (above middle) is right out of the Trump phallocentric manoshere.

Here’s the Wikipedia entry on phallocentrisicm. Another similar concept is the manosphere. Wiki defines this as “a varied collection of websites, blogs, and online forums promoting masculinity, misogyny, and opposition to feminism.” While limited to the online community, the defintion can be expanded to include Trump and MAGA because they have created their own version.

You don’t have to be a male like a muscle bound Pete Hegseth, or a desperately trying to prove he still has manly man biceps RJK Jr., to be a manly man-ish member of Trump fawning flexing brigade.

Membership in the Trump manosphere does not require that one be born with a penis.

Read my two Substacks about this:

Trump's Hitlerian Henchwomen: Pam Bondi and Karoline Leavitt offer the feminine tone as their Führer sets the stage for sending people to the modern day version of concentration camps.

Kristi Noem does the blonde Trump Barbies one better by proving her malevolent sadism with an assault rife.

It wouldn’t surprise me to learn that the Trump turkeys we haven’t seen shirtless photos of with hard rippling muscles are busy buffing up at one of DC’s many weight lifting gyms or training with Marjorie Taylor Greene. I’m sparing you a photo of her pumping iron or doing pull-ups.

Poor Elon Musk, he probably doesn’t want to put in the actual sweaty work to avoid articles like “Elon Musk Responds to Viral Shirtless Pics: 'Free the Nip'.”

Somehow bulging muscles and attending fake or real grappling events has become a measure of the man in Trump’s world.

One of most ruthless dictators in modern history had this written about him:

Adolf Hitler was so squeamish about being naked in public, he even refused to have physical examinations. Reference.

You don’t see old photos of Stalin or Mao showing off their physique. While the often pictured shirtless Putin is a member of the more muscles the more powerful club, you don’t see photos of Kim Jong Un or Xi flexing.

While the concept of malignant narcissism fits Turmp and many of his cadre, there’s no term “malignant masculinity’ in the psychological literature. The term for this is toxic masculinity. This is from Wikipedia:

The concept of toxic masculinity is used in academic and media discussions to refer to those aspects of hegemonic masculinity that are socially destructive, such as misogyny, homophobia, and violent domination. These traits are considered "toxic" due in part to their promotion of violence, including sexual assault and domestic violence. Socialization of boys sometimes also normalizes violence, such as in the saying "boys will be boys" about bullying and aggression.

Self-reliance and emotional repression are correlated with increased psychological problems in men such as depression, increased stress, and substance use disorders. Toxic masculine traits are characteristic of the unspoken code of behavior among incarcerated men, where they exist in part as a response to the harsh conditions of prison life.

Other traditionally masculine traits such as devotion to work, pride in excelling at sports, and providing for one's family, are not considered to be "toxic". The concept was originally used by authors associated with the mythopoetic men's movement, such as Shepherd Bliss. These authors contrasted stereotypical notions of masculinity with a "real" or "deep" masculinity, which they said men had lost touch with in modern society. Critics of the term "toxic masculinity" argue that it incorrectly implies that gender-related issues are caused by inherent male traits.^[3]

The concept of toxic masculinity has been criticized by conservative writers and authors as an undue condemnation of traditional masculinity. In January 2019, conservative political commentators criticized the new American Psychological Association guidelines for warning about harms associated with "traditional masculinity ideology", arguing that it constitutes an attack on masculinity. Some feminists have argued it is an essentialist concept that ignores the role of choice and context in causing harmful behaviors and attitudes related to masculinity.

Google Trends search term for "Toxic masculinity" began a substantial increase in 2016, at the time of the campaign for the U.S. presidential election.

This Substack has become too long, so I won’t speculate on what is covered in this 2011 reasearch study: Relationship between penile size and body measurements. I’m resisting temptation to write about this. Use your own imagination to wonder if there is a certain amount of compensation going on with some of these men. I will, however, share this:

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