Perhaps It's Time for A Fifth Indictment of Donald Trump

 Editor's Note:  This blog post was originally written on February 13, 2024, and published at that time. It is republished now.

 

Summary: speaking on February 10, at a rally of his disgraceful supporters in South Carolina, Donald Trump delivered threats to the NATO allies. He would, he said, encourage Russia to do “whatever the hell they want” to any NATO member country that doesn’t meet spending guidelines on defense.Naturally, the European allies met this statement with considerable shock, and Pres. Biden clapped back against it fairly quickly. What Trump has done, however, is not an exercise of First Amendment rights. There is no right under constitutional law to betray this country. Trump has committed actual, actionable, treason, and should pay the penalty therefor.

Cathedral City, February 13, 2024 -- last Saturday, former Pres. Donald Trump addressed a number of his supporters at a "rally" in South Carolina. Now much of what is said at Trump "rallies" is foolish nonsense, the kind of thing that is designed to appeal to the poorly educated among the Trump base. But this time, Trump went considerably further than his usual boorish utterances.

Trump informed the rally-goers, incorrectly as it turns out, that the European nations of the NATO alliance were not "paying their bills," so to speak. And Trump promised his rally-goers that he would encourage Russia to do "whatever the hell they want" to any NATO nation that did not pay two percent of its gross domestic product to NATO, presumably meaning the United States, apparently to pay the United States for defending them. 

Now, the two percent figure here is not a bill due and owing from NATO nations to the United States. It is rather a guideline which the NATO nations have agreed among themselves is appropriate spending on defense. The United States, of course, spends considerably more than 2% of its gross domestic product on national defense. But there is no particular clause in the NATO treaty which requires this country, or any other NATO country, to spend two percent of its gross domestic product on defense. Nor, under the NATO treaty, is the two percent figure some sort of monetary obligation that NATO allies are required to pay to the United States. Trump's misunderstanding of this, while unfortunate, and certainly redolent of the mob boss tactics which Trump has always used, both internationally and domestically, is in and of itself not criminal.

However, what may be criminal, and gravely so, is his appeal to Russia to "do whatever the hell they want" to any NATO nation that, in Trump's mind, does not cough up what Trump expects of them.  Indeed, what Trump may have done in that rally in South Carolina is to commit treason against the United States, and indeed, treason against each of the United States.

 Treason is the only crime defined in the United States Constitution:  

"Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court.

The Congress shall have Power to declare the Punishment of Treason, but no Attainder of Treason shall work Corruption of Blood, or Forfeiture except during the Life of the Person attainted."

18 US code § 2381 defines Treason as follows:

Whoever, owing allegiance to the United States, levies war against them or adheres to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort within the United States or elsewhere, is guilty of treason and shall suffer death, or shall be imprisoned not less than five years and fined under this title but not less than $10,000; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States.

The constitutional and statutory definitions of treason basically track the language of the Treason Act, 25 Edw. 3 Stat. 5. c. 2 [1351]. That enactment,the first statutory definition of treason in English history, provided that one was guilty of treason who, among other things: 

"When a Man doth compass or imagine the Death of our Lord the King, or of our Lady his [X3Queen] or of their eldest Son and Heir; or if a Man do violate the King’s [X3Companion,] or the King’s eldest Daughter unmarried, or the Wife (X4) the King’s eldest Son and Heir; or if a Man do levy War against our Lord the King in his Realm, or be adherent to the King’s Enemies in his Realm, giving to them Aid and Comfort in the Realm, or elsewhere...."

Both the 1351 Act and its American derivatives contain absolutely no requirement that the King's realm or the American nation be in any kind of declared state of war for treason prosecution to lie. For example, numerous treason prosecutions were held in England while the kingdom was at least nominally at peace. Granite, of course, most of these treason prosecutions occurred during the Henrician Reformation during the early 15th century, but the Treason Act still is entirely innocent of any requirement that the United Kingdom be in a state of war declared by Parliament. Similarly, in this country, both the constitutional definition of treason and its statutory equivalent in 18 U.S.C. §2381 contain absolutely no requirement that the United States be in a Congressionally declared state of war.

Nonetheless, most treason prosecutions in the United States have occurred during some kind of state of war.  Indeed, the last three treason trials to be held in the United States, those of Herbert John Burgman and Iva Toguri D'Aquino, in 1948-9, arose out of the activities of both as broadcasters for the Third German Reich and the Empire of Japan, respectively. It is worth noting that at the same time, Great Britain was prosecuting William Joyce, a quondam Brooklyn-born American for treason under the 1351 Act. All three were convicted of treason, and Joyce, better known as Lord Haw Haw, was hanged At Wandsworth Prison on January 3, 1946. 

Burgman and D'Aquino were luckier. Burgman was sentenced to six to 20 years imprisonment, and died in prison. D'Aquino served six years in Alderson prison in West Virginia, was paroled, And in 1977 received a free and unconditional pardon from Pres. Gerald Ford. The final trial for treason in this country was of Kawakita Tomoya, who was convicted of treason in the Central District of California 1947., Kawakita was sentenced to death, but his sentence was commuted and, in 1963, Pres. John F. Kennedy commuted, Kawakita's life sentence and banished him to Japan, where, as of 1993, he still lived.

Of all of the prosecutions that are taken place for treason in American history, however, none has involved a traitor of such high magnitude as Donald Trump. Of course, Trump's treason is similar to that of Joyce, Burgman and D'Aquino; all three of them have engaged in treason with the intent to serve the interests of enemies national and to rile up part of the American base.

Trump can be, and Trump should be, indicted a fifth time, for treason inasmuch as his utterance gave aid and comfort to an enemy national, that is, to Russia. It does not matter that the United States was not in a declared state of war. The United States indicted Adam Yahiye Gadahn for treason in 2006, though the United States was not in a declared state of war. Now, Gadahn himself met his end in a Hellfire attack while he was in South Waziristan, in Pakistan in 2015,, actively participating in military hostilities against his own country. But, the precedent remains. By the same token, Aaron Burr was indicted and tried for treason in the year 1807. However, the procedural precedents of the borough prosecution are not persuasive. The fact of the borough prosecution, together with the indictment of Adam Yahiye Gadahn, or highly so.

Of course, one might ask whether Russia is an "enemy national" whose status as such would support a prosecution of Donald Trump. The answer, on sober reflection, must be "yes."

 

 

Facebook's Ongoing Double Standard

 Summary:  Facebook, the largest social networking apparatus in this country, and possessing a worldwide reach, makes a routine practice of censoring posts, comments, and profiles that allegedly violate its "community standards." Yet, from a 10-year-plus users perspective, Facebook's application of its community standards has become a weaponized in the service of Donald Trump and the conservative "movement." Whether this is the result of Mark Zuckerberg's personal preferences, whether it is Zuckerberg's apparent fear of Donald Trump, or whether it is the result of possible foreign actors intervening in the process, the fact remains that Facebook has become weaponized for Donald Trump.

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Cathedral City, January 23, 2024 -- it is primary day in New Hampshire. The race of greatest interest is that between Nikki Haley and Donald Trump, which at this point, Trump appears to have won. President Biden is not participating in the Democratic primary in that state, partially because of the President's decision to boycott the New Hampshire primary as part of an effort to bring the Granite State to heel. Nevertheless, on both sides of the gulf between the Parties, which we can no longer call an "aisle," inasmuch as a partisan divide has opened far too wide to be crossed in the simple manner that one crosses an aisle, social media outlets are burning up with news and blogs and commentary. However, on Facebook, easily the largest social networking apparatus in this country, if not in the world, censorship of the process will be fairly heavy.

Facebook can be expected to censor posts and comments that "violate its community standards." Unfortunately, as many of us who have spent any time in "Facebook Jail" can testify, those so-called community standards are applied in anything but an evenhanded fashion. While conservatives, who traffic in a constant litany of victimhood, claims that Facebook "discriminates" against them, the truth is rather different. 

 A number of prominent news outlets in the "normal" media ecosystem (which does not include Fox News, One America, any of the Sinclair news outlets, or any other outlet in the conservative media space,) have run articles showing Facebook's conservative preferences:

"But, owing that conservative content on Facebook receives significantly greater engagement than other content. The New York Times’ Kevin Roose has shown that the top-performing link posts on U.S. Facebook pages are dominated by conservatives like President Donald Trump, conservative podcaster and Daily Wire co-founder Ben Shapiro and Fox News contributor and conservative news aggregator Dan Bongino. In fact, the examples that conservatives give of alleged censorship are usually just examples of individuals breaking the rules or not knowing how social media works." "https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/facebook-twitter-don-t-censor-conservatives-they-hire-promote-them-ncna1245308

 NPR, for example, has noted that "If anything, there is a bias in favor of conservative content." "https://www.npr.org/2020/10/05/918520692/facebook-keeps-data-secret-letting-conservative-bias-claims-persist

In fact, Facebook's lobbyists in Washington all tend to be from conservative backgrounds. Indeed,

"Executives at Alphabet, Facebook and Twitter have all reportedly cozied up to Republicans in the last four years.... Facebook in particular has a long history of caving to right-wing pressure — going back to 2016. Facebook executives have held multiple meetings with top conservatives, made Breitbart a trusted news partner and changed the Facebook algorithm to avoid cries of censorship from the right. They even went so far as to intentionally suppress news from progressive sites like Mother Jones on the Facebook news feed in order to elevate conservative sources."

Facebook's right-leaning posture has continued even under the Biden administration. There is little doubt that Facebook and its proprietor, Mark Zuckerberg, have been putting their thumbs on the scale in favor of Donald Trump for at least the nine years since Donald Trump descended his escalator in Trump Tower to announce his candidacy for president back in 2015.There is no other rational explanation for Facebook's involvement with Cambridge Analytica and with the admitted (by Putin henchman Yevgeniy Prigozhin) Russian intervention in the 2016 election to help Donald Trump.

 Of course, in addition to Facebook's cozying up to the Russian foreign intelligence services and to Donald Trump, Facebook has also systematically sought to exclude progressive sources from its newsfeed, and to send to "Facebook Jail" users whose commentary takes an unacceptably progressive tone. Indeed, much of this can be laid squarely at the feet of Mark Zuckerberg. Brought up in the lower Hudson Valley suburbs north of New York City, Zuckerberg has apparently imbibed from that upbringing a conservative outlook of neo-Victorian prudery and Philistinism.

A few examples should suffice:

In September, 2016, smack in the middle of its efforts to tip the scales in favor of Donald Trump, Facebook got into a spat with the Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten, which escalated into a row involving the Royal Norwegian government. Specifically, Aftenposten had published a copy of Nick Ut's Pulitzer prize-winning photograph of a nine-year-old girl, Phan Thi Kim Phuc, running, naked, napalmed, and terrified, down a country road in South Vietnam, As part of a piece on the terrors of war. Facebook, apparently acting on direct orders from Zuckerberg himself, not only removed the photograph, but contumaciously doubled down on its position, even going so far as to delete a Facebook post from the Norwegian Prime Minister and banishing her to "Facebook Jail." Facebook and Zuckerberg caught a great deal of well-justified flak for doing so, Zuckerberg also included in his banishment list the Norwegian author Tom Egeland, who had posted an entry on Facebook about, and including, seven photographs that changed the history of warfare, among them the photograph of Kim Phuc.  

The following day, according to British newspaper The Guardian,

"[...] Following widespread criticisms from news organizations and media experts across the globe, Facebook reversed its decision, saying in a statement to the Guardian: 'After hearing from our community, we looked again at how our Community Standards were applied in this case. An image of a naked child would normally be presumed to violate our Community Standards, and in some countries might even qualify as child pornography. In this case, we recognize the history and global importance of this image in documenting a particular moment in time.'"

In short, Facebook and Zuckerberg, appreciating that they had laid a public-relations egg, backed down, rather than face potential retaliation from an angry Norwegian government, and possibly even from King Harald V, and potential ramifications from other Nordic monarchies, including possible tax consequences which Mark Zuckerberg and his accountants did not -- and do not-- want to face.

In addition to their public relations gaffe with the image of a terrified Vietnamese girl, Facebook also committed another series of public relations faux pas described in Wikipedia:

[Examples cited include]: Venus of Willendorf, (c. 28,000–25,000 BC), Naturhistorisches Museum (Vienna); Giambologna's bronze statue of Neptune (1560s), the symbol of the city of Bologna; Caravaggio's painting Amor Vincit Omnia (Love conquers all,1602), Berlin, Gemäldegalerie, (2016); Edvard Eriksen's The Little Mermaid (1913), which is the most photographed artwork in Denmark. [citation] The most famous case is that of French educator Frédéric Durand, whose account was deleted "without warning" because he posted Gustave Courbet’s painting The Origin of the World (1886). [,which depicts from an oblique angle, a woman's genitalia.] After seven years of deliberations, a French court ruled against Facebook, though it granted no damages to Durand, [citation]. Art Historian Ruben C. Cordova's account was "permanently deleted" after he posted 16 images of John De Andrea's hyperrealist Self-Portrait with Sculpture (1980), featured in the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s exhibition Like Life: Sculpture, Color, and the Body, though his account was ultimately restored. ^[[citations]

In 2019, Facebook invited twenty artists and curators to discuss a 'reconsideration' of Facebook and Instagram guidelines, but three years later, artists think nothing has improved. Moreover, instead of 'Nudity' violations, some artist have received 'Adult Sexual Solicitation' notices, which means 'that artists are now not only trying to defend their subject matter, but the premise of their practice.' [citation]" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_by_Facebook

Moreover, aside from its remarkably neo-Victorian prudery with respect to allegedly "nude" images, Facebook has been remarkably disingenuous, even duplicitous, in the application of its content moderation policies, also known as "community standards." Indeed, Facebook, and/or its "artificial intelligence" instrumentalities have been remarkably inconsistent in their content moderation.  For example, Facebook turns a blind eye to the most lurid and threatening rhetoric from the American right, while routinely censoring content from progressive users, and "Facebook Jailing" or banning those users altogether for commentary that is not nearly as over-the-top as that which emanates from many Republican accounts. Moreover, Facebook has an apparent, but unstated, policy of ignoring referrals for violations of "community standards" from users whose accounts manifest progressive tendencies. Put another way, if a progressive-appearing user comments badly on Donald Trump, he or she can expect an immediate 30 day suspension, while if a conservative-appearing user comments in a fashion that is laudatory of Donald Trump, or contains threatening, harassing, or just spam rhetoric, that user will not be touched, no matter how many reports or referrals Facebook receives concerning that users' content. Similarly, Facebook will readily delete progressive -appearing commentary or accounts, while taking no action at all against right-wing trolls or bots.

Facebook also turns a blind eye to certain types of live-streaming content that harms people whom Zuckerberg does not like. During the Mosque Massacre in Christchurch, New Zealand, In March, 2019, Facebook ran live-stream video of the shootings, and had to be threatened with criminal prosecution by Her Majesty's New Zealand Government if Facebook did not take down the video, which it finally did. That, however, has not prevented a number of Islamic organizations from suing Facebook for having live-streamed the attack. Zuckerberg's hostility toward the Islamic ummah also was on full display in Facebook's complicity with the military junta in Burma (Myanmar) in encouraging genocidal violence on Facebook against the Rohingya minority in Myanmar's Rakhine State.

What we can see from Facebook's behavior is little more than a reflection of Zuckerberg's upbringing. His remarkable philistinism, and his remarkable hostility toward American progressives, toward the Islamic ummah, and toward American Democrats has resulted in an unfortunate combination of events and trends which may ultimately lead not merely to Congressional regulation of Facebook, but to its ultimate demise.

Facebook, in short, may be the single best and largest argument against the kind of social media that it, Twitter (now known by the single letter X,) and Reddit have come to represent.

JUST PLAIN TACKY: The Postmortem Vilification of Queen Elizabeth II

Summary: The postmortem vilification of Her Late Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II, has come from a variety of sources. Some of them are predictable; the stridency of so-called anti-monarchists and “socialists” was perhaps to be predicted. So, too, were many of the angry denunciations that streamed in from Africa, South Asia, and even from the Caribbean. What was less tolerable were the maledictions and vilifications from a great many voices in the United States. Some of them had simply never got over the disdain for George III that is part of most American’s DNA, but which most of us have managed to overcome. Others vilified the memory of the Queen because of some kind of “Pro-native,” anti-colonialist anger that has apparently been simmering for years. Either way, not one of the angry vilificators of Elizabeth Alexandra Mary, Mountbatten-Windsor, neé Windsor seems to have taken the first fragment of a moment to consider –or to have any compassion for– the very real grief of the nearly 68 million people of the United Kingdom who have lost the only sovereign the majority of them had ever known.

Cathedral City, September 14, 2022 – the vilification of Elizabeth II began while her body was still warm and still resting where she had died, at Balmoral in the Scots Highlands. It took various forms and came from various sources. Some, native to the United Kingdom, called themselves anti-monarchists, “socialists,” “anti-Royalists,” or, simply, anarchists. Their vilification of the memory of the Queen who had been Britain’s sovereign for 70 years took such churlish, childish, forms as painting the words “parasite” or even “whore” on statues of the late monarch.

Of course, that kind of vilification is adolescent, even infantile. Graffiti, after all, can be painted over. But other denunciation, evidently prepared and written while the Queen was still alive, was more hurtful because it was committed to legacy and social media, much of it by writers of whom many of us had thought much better than that they would lend themselves to so unseemly an enterprise.

Most of these denunciations as their starting point the inescapable fact of the Queen’s death. From there, they almost inevitably descended to a catalog of all the evils, real, imagined, or fictionalized, of the British Empire over the centuries. From there, most of these vilification pieces would include nonspecific examples of what those awful British people did. Whippings, burnings, beatings, castrations, and other various happenings were all blamed on the Queen, personally, as if she had been present at every one of these alleged enormities, and that she had committed each and every one of them, laughing as she did so.

Now is true that the British Empire, like every Empire throughout world history, has many transgressions for which it must render account. But by comparison with the enormities of relatively contemporary colonial empires, the record for Britain is fairly milquetoast. The record of the Belgians in Africa, for example, cannot bear examination. The Republican Empire of France was guilty of terrible wrongs in Africa and in Southeast Asia. The Italians in Eritrea and Libya had to leave because World War II forced the dismantlement of their corrupt colonial empire. The record of the Dutch in the East Indies, of the French in Africa and in Southeast Asia, of the Portuguese in Brazil, Mozambique, and Angola, of the Spanish in the Philippines and in the Caribbean, of the Japanese during their brief period as an imperial power, and even the record of the Russians and Soviets in their Empire -particularly in Ukraine- makes the British record look pale.

Nor should we Americans be wagging fingers at the mother country. Our record with our own indigenous peoples is awash with the blood of our Indian tribes. Thus, those who seek to vilify the memory of her late Majesty Queen Elizabeth II ought to take a close look at their own history. In equity, there is a principle that “he who comes into equity must come with clean hands.” Who, then, are we to demand that the British people should now grovel and apologize to other peoples, whose records may be be equally, if not more, tarnished? That includes, but is by no means limited to, the records of white colonizers, of native conquerors, and of indigenous grabbers of other people’s territory.

For while it may be fashionable in some quarters to vilify the memory of the late Queen, there are a couple of facts which cannot be gainsaid. Unlike the Belgians, the French, the Italians, the Dutch, the Portuguese, the Spanish, and the Japanese, Britain managed to divest yourself of her empire with a surprising degree of nonviolent grace. Though the United States and Aden required wars of national liberation before the British were induced to depart, the pattern of British imperial leavetaking was originally developed in 1947 with the grant of independence to India and to Pakistan, and continued ten years later, under Elizabeth II, with the grant of independence to Ghana. After that, Britain steadily divested itself of its empire largely free from the kind of colonial wars that had bedeviled the Dutch in the East Indies, the French, whose defeat at Dien Bien Phu shocked all of Europe and precipitated the fall of the Fourth French Republic, the Portuguese, whose ultimate defeat in Mozambique and in Angola led to the fall of Salazar’s so-called Estado Novo in Portugal, the Spanish, whose monarchy never quite recovered from the Spanish-American War, and the Japanese, whose hopes of Empire vanished in the bright atomic sunlight of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

But, while the other imperial powers tried to hold on to their empires, at great peril to themselves, Britain, which under King George VI had won a victory in World War II at such a “dear price,” as Winston Churchill put it “as to be almost indistinguishable from defeat,” had the good sense to realize that it was better to let the Empire go gracefully, and to try to create in its place a Commonwealth of Nations wherein the former colonies of the Empire might still find some degree of common ground, and some degree of shared values.

For the most part, the British plan has come fairly well to fruition. The Commonwealth continues to endure, even if a number of Commonwealth countries, starting with India in 1950, have opted to become “Republics Within the Commonwealth.” Even countries which had not been part of the British Empire, such as Rwanda, Mozambique, Gabon, and Togo, has become members of the Commonwealth. Moreover, the Commonwealth accommodates both Commonwealth realms which acknowledge the monarchy of Charles III, other realms within the Commonwealth under their own monarchs, and the aforementioned Republics within the Commonwealth. In short, the Commonwealth has managed to make the transition from the British Empire to a Commonwealth of states which may or may not have had a traditional connection to the British Empire with not inconsiderable success.

Much of this was due to the character of the Queen herself. Elizabeth knew from young age that she would be the sovereign of the British Empire. Yet, she also knew that hers was a ceremonial sovereignty, in which she possessed what Walter Bagehot referred to as the residual rights of the British monarch, “the right to advise, to be consulted, and to warn,” as long as she did so discreetly, privately, and in a fashion that was within the bounds of Britain’s peculiar unwritten Constitution. Across the 70 years in her reign, Elizabeth fulfilled her function. And she did so with grace, with humility, and when the occasion demanded, with dry, wickedly funny humor.

She also was buttressed in fulfilling her constitutional functions by her husband, the sometimes prickly but ever-dependable Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh. His death in 2021, knocked a significant prop out from under the Queen. While under one of Henry VIII’s Various Treason Acts, it is treason to discuss the death of the monarch, speculation as to Elizabeth’s inevitable passing became more of a “thing,” during the last year and a half.

Yet, unlike the somewhat austere Philip, Elizabeth had become what the Prime Minister of Papua New Guinea referred to as “Mama Queen,” a grandmother, an abuela, as we say in the American southwest and in California. And when the person to whom the king referred as his “dearest mama,” the grandmotherly figure who had been the monarch so long that most of the 68 million inhabitants of the United Kingdom could remember no other sovereign, it is perhaps understandable that there would be a wave of nationwide morning and worldwide grief. Even in the United States, where Elizabeth was “our” Queen in that way that citizens of a republic often take a beloved monarch into their own hearts, we sense a loss, and feel real grief, notwithstanding what various “woke” anti-Royalists, anti-monarchists” self-proclaimed Socialists and Communists, and those who imagine that they cannot proclaim their solidarity with the oppressed peoples of the world without unloading the vials of wrath upon this dutiful woman may think.

So, despite the criticisms of the “woke” brigade, who have, apparently, no sense of empathy, no sense of respect for others’ grief, and no regard for humor or optics, most of us will ignore the angry ones, but we will remember their uncouth behavior in the future, because it's just plain tacky.

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Paul S. Marchand is an Irish-American lawyer, with a culturally French name, who lives in Cathedral City and works in the adjacent Republican retirement redoubt of Rancho Mirage. He is not, to borrow the words of the English actress Helen Mirren, a pro-royalist, but like Ms. Mirren, he is a pro-Queenist. He will give King Charles III benefit of a lot of doubt, however. And like many other Americans, he will fly the flag at half staff until Her Majesty is interred, for like many other Americans, he, too, mourns the passing of an extraordinary human being.



                        

A WORLD IN SYNCOPE: THE PASSING OF QUEEN ELIZABETH II

Summary: Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II passed away this morning at Balmoral at the incredible age of 96. She was for the vast majority of her subjects, the only monarch they had ever known. She was one of that Greatest Generation whose members are passing into eternity at a rate of approximately 1100 per day. We knew this day would come. As much as we might have fondly hoped in our hearts that The Queen was eternal, our minds reminded us of what we now know to be true. Elizabeth Alexandra Mary was not eternal. But while she lived and reigned, she gave to Great Britain, to the Commonwealth, and to the United States a kind of stability that we must now hope King Charles III can continue to embody. God save the King.
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Cathedral City — September 8, 2022. The world is in syncope this afternoon. The girl once known as Elizabeth Alexandra Mary, the daughter of the then-Duke of York and his Duchess, Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, and known for more than 70 years as Elizabeth II, by the Grace of God of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and of Her Other Realms and Territories Queen, supreme Governor of the Church of England, Defender of the Faith, Head of the Commonwealth, passed away this morning at Balmoral Castle in the Scots Highlands.

Her Majesty died at the incredible age of 96. Her husband, Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, predeceased her, dying at the equally incredible age of 99. While we may wonder at the genetics which made possible two such seemingly eternal lifespans, we should also wonder at the stability Elizabeth II represented, and the often astonishing strength of Her Majesty’s character.

As an American, I am candidly more caught up in the constitutional crises buffeting my own country. I note with pleasure this day that the Department of Justice has decided to appeal the order of the Trump-appointed federal judge that essentially hamstrung the departments investigation of Trump’s astonishing - and completely unlawful - retention of White House records - many of them highly classified. But I know that the appeal may not succeed in the Trump-dominated 11th circuit, or in the hopelessly right wing Supreme Court. President Biden may have no choice but to use extraconstitutional means to defend the Constitution itself. However, that is the topic of another blog post.

Still, for all the constitutional crises besetting my own country, I can still take a few minutes to mourn, in my American way, the passing of woman whose not only Britain’s Queen, not only the Queen of the Commonwealth Realms, but in a way our Queen, too. For The Queen showed us, across 96 years, some fundamental truths about character, about forbearance, about perseverance, and about bearing up under great and terrible pressure and hardships. In a time in which we seek the soothing balm of scandal to assure ourselves that those horrible elites are “just like us,” The Queen was having none of it. 

There were, to be sure, certain “scandals” during her reign. Yet, most of those “scandals” involved her children or the institution of the monarchy itself. Across the 96 years of her life and the 70 years of her reign, Elizabeth Alexandra Mary herself gave the chattering classes very little “scandal” to chatter about. Indeed, even the scandals surrounding her children or her grandchildren have been largely the kind of familial issues which we Americans ought to be loath to point fingers at, particularly given the enthusiastic manner in which millions of Americans uncritically and unhesitatingly supported that porcine prick Donald Trump.

Indeed, perhaps the only American President in recent years who could compare in terms of personal rectitude to Her Majesty the Queen was the man upon whom Donald Trump opened the vials of his petty wrath and hatred, Barack Obama. President Obama, by comparison with Donald Trump, President George Dubya Bush, or even President Bill Clinton, was a man of unimpeachable, unquestionable, unalloyed decency. So too, during her 70 years as Queen was Elizabeth II. 

She was to many of us, on both sides of the Pond, especially during the 21st century, what we in much of the American West might call an abuela, a kind of grandmother after a fashion. Someone who could be formidable, someone who could throw a chancla in private to discipline a wayward child, but also someone who could be loving, affectionate, and above all, or rock of stability in her family and to her nation.

Today, many families and many nations mourn her passing. Indeed, the majority of Britain’s population, and the majority of the world’s population, has never known another British monarch. With her passes the last great leader of the Greatest Generation. With her also passes the first British monarch who could, and who did, do so much to heal the deep, theretofore unbridgeable divide between Great Britain and Ireland. I particularly mourn her for what she did to help make peace between two island peoples so inseparably joined by propinquity and yet so joined and so rent asunder at the same time by history. By traveling to Ireland, the first British monarch to do so since before the Republic was proclaimed, and by a simple act of respectful remembrance at the memorial to the Irishmen and Irishwomen who were lost during the independence struggle, Elizabeth II helped ring down the curtain on 700 years of Anglo-Irish feud. As the Irish might say, Herself did good.

It was Elizabeth II’s fate to preside over the recessional of the British Empire. During her reign Britain has gone from being sovereign over a quarter of the surface of the planet, On which "the sun never set," to being the small “European” country she was during the reign of Her Majesty's namesake Elizabeth I. Yet, that recessional of the British Empire has been accomplished largely without bloodshed, and largely civilly and with good feeling on both sides. Indeed, Britain, under Elizabeth II, has taught the rest of the world the art of gracious Imperial withdrawal. 

Very few countries have learned that lesson well. Indeed, even Great Britain has not managed it with entire freedom from “acrimonious divorce,” from time to time. The withdrawal from Aden is a particular example. Yet, when all is said and done, one of the hallmarks of Elizabeth II’s reign is the relatively peaceful disestablishment of the British Empire, and its replacement with the Commonwealth of Nations, which has succeeded well enough that it now includes countries which were never part of the British Empire to begin with.

Of course, nostalgia for the British Empire or for any Empire is a dangerous thing, as Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin may be learning with his foolish war in Ukraine. You cannot rebuild an Empire; the tides of history and the anger of oppressed peoples, such as the people of Ukraine, will inevitably militate against such an effort. Elizabeth II and each of the 15 men and women who served as her Prime Ministers, understood that reality. Yet, Elizabeth II and the Iron Lady, Margaret Thatcher, understood that there were times when the British lion still had to roar.

When Leopoldo Galtieri and the other members of the Argentine junta tried to recoup their failing popularity by invading the Falklands in April, 1982, they expected the British response to take the form of a pro forma, tepid protest in the United Nations (which the Argentines confidently expected the Soviet Union to veto) and a few toothless economic sanctions which would in due course expire. They also expected support from the Reagan Administration in the United States.

Instead, what they got was what Newsweek magazine not inaptly described on a cover depicting the aircraft carrier HMS Hermes sailing down the Atlantic: “The Empire Strikes Back.” In 100 days of naval, air, and ground combat, Her Majesty’s Government won a decisive military victory, set in motion a train of events that led to the overthrow of the Argentine junta, and, in the words of Admiral Sir John Woodward, the overall British Falklands commander, fired a shot across the bow of Moscow and Beijing that the mettle of the West was still powerfully extant.

The British response in the Falklands and the American invasion of Grenada the following year did indeed send a message to Moscow and to Beijing that the West was quite prepared to fight. Indeed, the events at Port Stanley may have helped set in train the coming of Mikhail Gorbachev and the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Yet, when British control was restored in Falkland Islands, the British field commander sent this message, this very traditional message, back to HMG: “the Falkland Islands are once again under the form of government desired by their inhabitants. 

 God Save the Queen.”

God save our gracious Queen,
Long live our noble Queen,
God save the Queen!
Send her victorious,
Happy and glorious,
Long to reign over us,
God save the Queen!

O Lord our God arise,
Scatter our enemies,
And make them fall!
Confound their politics,
Frustrate their knavish tricks,
On Thee our hopes we fix,
God save us all!

Not in this land alone,
But be God’s mercies known,
From shore to shore!
Lord make the nations see,
That men should brothers be,
And form one family,
The wide world o’er.

From every latent foe,
From the assassins blow,
God save the Queen!
O’er her thine arm extend,
For Britain’s sake defend,
Our mother, prince, and friend,
God save the Queen!

Thy choicest gifts in store,
On her be pleased to pour,
Long may she reign!
May she defend our laws,
And ever give us cause,
To sing with heart and voice,
God save the Queen!

Rest eternal grant to her, O Lord, may light perpetual shine on her, may her soul and the souls of all the departed, through the Mercy of God, rest in peace, and may they rise again in Glory at the Last Day, through Christ our Lord, Amen.

And now with our world in syncope, we may say God Save King Charles III.

Bomb Away! The Moral Conundrum of Preventing 100 Million from Dying Together

Summary: Seventy-seven years after Japan’s formal surrender aboard the battleship Missouri, in Tōkyō Bay, bringing hostilities in World War II to an end, we still find ourselves conflicted over the morality of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. While it may be fashionable in some circles to characterize the use of nuclear weapons as nothing more than a morally inadmissible act of mass murder, we dare not ignore the reality that as the Pacific War wound down, and as Japan braced for a land invasion, diehards within the Japanese high command were seriously advocating that the Japanese people should commit what amounted to national suicide. To the extent that their mantra, “One Hundred Million Die Together,” was known to Allied planners, as it was indeed known, it presented the Allies with a moral conundrum. Which is the least worst option? To incinerate between 100,000 and 200,000 individuals in an atomic bombing, or become complicit in a planned act of national self-genocide? 70 years on, the descendents of those One Hundred Million who did not die together are alive because leaders like Harry Truman swallowed (hard, we hope) and gave the green light to the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and of Nagasaki.

A little more than 77 years ago on August 14, 1945, Japan’s Shōwa Emperor broadcast his famous Gyokuon-hōsō, or Jewel Voice Speech, announcing to a stunned nation his country’s government’s decision to surrender to the Allied powers and thus bring to an end the Second World War.

Nine days earlier, ironically enough on the Feast of the Transfiguraion, what Shōwa characterized in the surrender broadcast as “a new and most cruel bomb” had been dropped on the southwestern industrial city of Hiroshima. Three days after this first atomic bomb, known as “Little Boy,” had fallen on Hiroshima, a second atomic bomb, “Fat Man,” had been dropped on the Kyūshū port city of Nagasaki.

The atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki represent the first, last, and, thus far, the only combat deployments of nuclear weapons in history.

Yet, the deployments of Little Boy and Fat Man have been contentious across the nearly eight decades. Generations of Americans and Japanese alike have been born, lived their lives, and died under the shadow of nuclear terror. As former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger has observed, we have yet to adequately integrate the reality of nuclear weapons into our thinking.

And because we have yet to get our mental arms adequately around the potentialities, vel non, of nuclear weapons, it has become disturbingly easy to have recourse to simplistic thinking about the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings, particularly in the Moscow Kremlin.

Indeed, it has become a virtual trope on the American and European Left to see the Hiroshima and Nagasaki operations as morally indefensible acts of “mass murder,” singular and sui generis.

Yet, at the acknowledged risk of being flamed to a well done Hiroshima-like crisp for so saying, permit me to suggest that the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, while singular and ominous, may actually have had a moral dimension that we shudder to contemplate and quail from thinking about.

The Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings have often been justified in American political discourse by noting that a land invasion of Japan would probably have cost somewhere in the vicinity of a million American dead and wounded. A land invasion of Japan might well have cost this country more casualties than she suffered in all of her other wars combined.

Yet, for many on the academic and historical Left, even speaking of potential American casualty numbers has been held inadmissible because ostensibly racist. So, permit me to preempt any claim of racism in sketching out a moral case for the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by taking the Japanese point of view.

By the late spring and early summer of 1945, it had become clear to the upper reaches of the Imperial government and the military high command at Imperial Headquarters that the war had taken a catastrophic turn. If, as Professor Akira Iriye has suggested, the primary emphasis of Japan’s diplomacy after roughly November, 1942 was to bring about an end to the war on the best possible terms Japan could obtain, then the Japanese record on that score must be accounted one of utter and complete failure. To borrow the Shōwa Emperor’s unforgettable euphemism from the Gyokuon-hōsō surrender broadcast, “the general war situation ha[d] developed not necessarily to Japan’s advantage.”

Putting aside the euphemistic tone of the Court Japanese in which the Gyokuon-hōsō surrender broadcast was drafted, Shōwa was speaking an understated but powerful truth. Japan’s Outer Defense Perimeter had been shattered. Saipan, the front gate of the Empire, was gone, taken almost a year prior by the Americans. Iwo Jima, an island under the direct jurisdiction of the City of Tokyo, had been in American hands since March, 1945. Okinawa Prefecture had fallen to the Americans in the latter part of the spring.

Above Japan, the Imperial skies were now the happy hunting ground of the United States Army Air Force and the United States Navy. Incendiary bombings had leveled much of Tokyo and carried off scores of thousands of Edokko (Tokyo residents). And if the Americans controlled the skies over the Empire, they also controlled the waters off its coasts. By the late spring of 1945, US battleships were carrying out routine coastal bombardments of targets from Hokkaidō south to Chiba Prefecture.

A land invasion was expected in short order. East of Tokyo, where Imperial headquarters expected the initial landings to occur, defenses were being built along the beaches at Kujukurihama, but little actual work had been accomplished.

So, if the Empire lay so open to invasion, why, then, would Washington have opted to go forward with using nuclear weapons? Some in the Left have suggested that the use of nuclear weapons was intended as a shot across the bow of the Soviet Union. Yet, what makes such a view unsustainable and even borderline racist is that it does not take into account the culture of Japan, only the politics of Iosif Stalin’s Soviet Union.

Again, looking at the situation not from the point of view of the Soviets, or from the point of view of cosseted Manhattan Mensheviks or Berkeley Bolsheviks, but from the point of view of the Japanese themselves, there existed strong reasons for the Allies to want to bring the war to a close by administering what could be called a shock to the Japanese system. If, as a common cliché holds, it is easier and less painful to take off a Band-Aid quickly, then it would be easier to bring the war to an end by deploying a weapon against which the Japanese had no powers of resistance.

For Washington was well aware of Japan’s potential powers of resistance to a land invasion of the home islands of the Empire. Having before it the examples of Saipan and Okinawa, where Japanese civilians had destroyed themselves in appalling numbers, the US government cannot have looked forward with equanimity to the prospect of a similar hecatomb occurring in the Japanese homeland proper. By way of example, it is almost impossible to go boonie stomping in Saipan, even today, without coming across the skeletal remains of Japanese civilians who opted to take their own lives rather than face the possibility of capture or bits of unexploded American or Japanese ordnance.

And Washington’s concern was also justified by some of the more unhinged rhetoric that had begun to emerge from Imperial headquarters. As Japan faced the possibility of invasion, some of the more over-the-top diehards within the Japanese government and military began to entertain seriously the idea of national suicide, that “one hundred million die together.”

One. Hundred. Million. Die. Together.

Who, in Washington or London, might even dare to contemplate, let alone become complicit in, so vast and wanton an act of national self-destruction? Who, in Washington or London, might not actually take seriously such rhetoric and believe that the Japanese might actually choose so horrifying a Götterdämmerung, going out in a blaze of Yamato Damashii (Yamato Spirit)? Something had to be done, therefore, to talk the Japanese off the metaphorical ledge, to preempt the possibility of self genocide. Forasmuch as the civilization of the West abhors the concept of suicide or genocide, and tends to prefer to preserve life when and where possible, the prospect of 100 million Japanese dying together on a national funeral pyre was not one even the most bloodthirsty war planners on the Allied staffs were prepared to deem admissible.

To that extent, given the facts that had developed at Saipan, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa, US planners realized that the successful Trinity atomic bomb test at White Sands, New Mexico, had given them a tool by which the self-destruction of One Hundred Million Japanese might be averted. Certainly, it may seem bloodless and calculating to think in terms of trading the lives of 100,000 for those of 100 million, but can we truly say that it is immoral and inadmissible to accept lesser casualties to avoid greater ones?

Of course, it can and should be argued that the calculus of sacrificing a few lives to save many creates a moral conundrum. Yet, to all intents and purposes, the theology of the West is based on exactly such a swap. Christian theology has long postulated that God became Incarnate in Jesus Christ Who offered Himself upon the cross, a perfect sacrifice, oblation and satisfaction for the sins of the whole world. Now it may not be politically correct or rhetorically fashionable to invoke the death of Christ upon the Cross, but as unfashionable as such an invocation may be, it is so deeply rooted in the Weltanschauung of the West as to have become a philosophically convenient shorthand. Under such circumstances, we cannot really count it immoral to accept casualties on the magnitude of a Hiroshima or a Nagasaki to countervail the possible destruction of the Japanese people altogether. Descendents of the One Hundred Million who did not die together opposing an American land invasion of the Empire may owe a debt they cannot even realize to Harry Truman, who swallowed (hard we hope) and gave the green light to the Hiroshima and Nagasaki operations.

And so, while we look at the historical facts from the Japanese point of view, as persons of the West, we must ultimately judge the morality of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the standards of the West; with the power to bomb comes the duty to explain, to give account, and to justify before God and the planet.
 
To save the One Hundred Million and to prevent appalling American and allied casualties, we may have had little moral choice but to rip the metaphorical Band-Aid away as quickly as possible. Because in the end, all life matters, even if we must from time to time acknowledge that not all life can be saved.

Still, while the one time deployment of atomic weapons to bring the Pacific War to an end and to terminate the appalling suffering of the planet may have had some moral justification, there can be no justification whatsoever for doing it again.

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Nothing in the foregoing is intended as and nothing in the foregoing should be construed as, legal advice of any kind or character.

 

THE NEVER-ENDING SAGA LOS ANGELES POLITICS: WHY THIS FORMER ANGELEÑO ENDORSES KAREN BASS FOR MAYOR

Summary: about every eight years, Los Angeles, and the Southern California region which is its economic hinterland, gets itself into a swivet over who will be the next mayor of the so-called City of Angels. Time was, that El Pueblo Real de Nuestra Señora de Los Angeles del Río Porciuncula was a small, partly Midwestern, partly Latino city whose politics merited scant discussion even in Sacramento. Those days came to a screeching halt when World War II came to the United States. In the 80 years since America’s entry into the Pacific War, Los Angeles has outpaced the so-called Windy City as the second largest city in the United States. What Los Angeles’ Mayor says can now cause ripples all over the world. As Los Angeles prepares to replace the termed-out Eric Garcetti, voters face a choice between the Trumpian multi-zillionaire Rick Caruso and the African-American Congresswoman, and former Assembly Speaker Karen Bass. Bass is by far and away the better choice for mayor of Los Angeles.

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Cathedral City, May 23, 2022 – about every eight years, the City of Los Angeles goes through the almost operatic exercise of choosing a new mayor to replace whatever incumbent has been termed out. After the late Tom Bradley served for an unprecedented 20 years from 1973 to 1993, California voters, succumbing to the blandishments of Republicans led by sometime County supervisor Pete Schabarum, adopted a rather foolish term limitation initiative that, by all accounts, was intended by Schabarum to punish Bradley for his 20 years of mayoralty in Los Angeles and Willie Brown for his similar degree of control over the speakership of the California Assembly.

In 1993, Los Angeles voters chose the white, wealthy, well-connected, Republican Richard Riordan over the Asian American Democrat Michael Wu. As a relatively new lawyer at the time, and as a Democrat, I naturally supported Wu, though, as a West Hollywood resident at the time, I could not vote for Wu. In fact, the vagaries of geography are such that my last vote for mayor of Los Angeles was an absentee vote for Tom Bradley in 1989.

I should, I suppose, be hesitant to, or not weigh in at all,  on the subject of who will be the next mayor of Los Angeles. After all, I myself am technically speaking no longer an Angeleño. But, Los Angeles is still the city of my birth; it is still metaphorical 800 pound gorilla in whose economic hinterland all of us;  even people in such large cities as Dallas, Houston, Denver, and St. Louis must take close account of what happens in the city through whose port, along with that of Long Beach, handles a very considerable proportion of America’s seaborne trade. In short, most of the United States west of the Mississippi, most of Canada west of Hudson’s Bay, and most of northern Mexico are within the economic hinterland of  El Pueblo Real de Nuestra Señora de Los Angeles del Río Porciuncula, that small, insignificant little Colonia of mestizo farmers planted by the Spanish crown near the Tongva settlement of Yang-na/Yaanga on September 4, 1781.

Since then, the growth of Los Angeles has been phenomenal. Indeed, in the last 25 years, since I relocated to the Coachella Valley, Los Angeles has come to occupy a larger and larger space, both economically and politically. Indeed, part of the reason, I think, why the late Greg Pettis and I were both elected to the city Council here in Cathedral City is because of our connections with Los Angeles. Greg was originally from the San Gabriel Valley east of downtown, while I spent much of my life in the Hollywood Hills or in the so-called gay Vatican of West Hollywood. Both of us were aware, both as businessmen and as councilmembers, of the importance of the city of Los Angeles to every other city in Southern California. Indeed, the seemingly outsized influence of Los Angeles itself may have called forth the creation of the Southern California Association of Governments (SCAG), as a partial effort to offset the enormous size and influence of the City of the Angels.

Thus, my continuing involvement with the politics, operatic though they may be, of the City of Los Angeles. In 1993, when Richard Riordan and Michael Wu squared off for the mayoralty, my natural support for Wu was not simply a function of reflexively supporting the Democrat in the race. Rather, I had paid close attention to Richard Riordan and to Richard Riordan’s proclivities. Indeed, I had eaten several times at Mr. Riordan’s restaurant in downtown Los Angeles. I found Mr. Riordan to be, with 2020 hindsight to be sure, an eerie prefiguring of that other millionaire turned politician, Donald J. Trump. I found both men to be overbearing as only rich men can be. I found them to be surrounded, and willfully so, by sycophants and yes-men, by suckers up who would tell the boss what ever the boss wanted to hear. I didn’t like it from Richard Riordan in 1993, and I didn’t like it 23 years later from Donald Trump.

I have met both Richard Riordan and Donald Trump. While Richard Riordan is more polite than Donald Trump, I nevertheless consider him complicit in the rise of the billionaire politicians who seek to remake America in their own, often fascist, image. Indeed, for that reason, I’m profoundly thankful to God that Elon Musk and Peter Thiel were not born in this country, and thus are constitutionally debarred from election to the presidency.

I have the same misgivings about Rick Caruso that I had about Richard Riordan and Donald Trump. I have only met Mr. Caruso once, in passing, when he wanted something from SCAG. Our conversation was relatively brief, but it left me with an impression very similar to that which I had received from my meetings, admittedly brief ones, with Richard Riordan and Donald Trump. It was an impression that Mr. Caruso, like Richard Riordan and Donald Trump, was too much a “businessman,” rather than being a public servant. Like Riordan and Trump, Caruso impressed me as not being ready for prime time, or as a former law partner of mine put it, he is just “too twisted for color TV.”

Karen Bass, on the other hand, has everything in a public servant that appeals to me. I first met Karen Bass in 2007, when she was a member of the California Assembly from the then-47th district. I met her a few times thereafter, most notably shortly before she became speaker, in May, 2008. Karen impressed me as being someone who could listen, and as someone who could understand that the issues affecting us, here in our little City of Cathedral City, where the same issues that affected her constituents in her assembly District in south-central Los Angeles. She was concerned about things like the crack cocaine epidemic, LGBT rights, and other matters with respect to which she took her concerns to Congress when she joined that body in 2011, after being termed out of the Assembly. In both Sacramento and Washington City, Bass has developed a reputation for being a progressive bridge builder who can talk to both sides of the aisle.

That political résumé is exactly what is needed in a mayor for Los Angeles.  Note, I did not say a mayor of Los Angeles, but a mayor for Los Angeles. The turned out incumbent, and would be ambassador to India (that is, assuming Chuck Grassley, who represents fewer people that live in the city of Los Angeles, can be induced to stop meddling) Eric Garcetti, has been an effective mayor. But, Los Angeles is ready for the kind of leadership that can only come from a bridge building, progressive, woman of color.

Karen Bass is the right person at the right time to be a mayor for Los Angeles. As an Angeleño by birth, and as a member of the political nation in Southern California, I have no hesitation at all endorsing Karen Bass to be mayor for Los Angeles.

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Paul S. Marchand, Esq.  is an attorney lives in Cathedral City and practices law next door in the Republican retirement redoubt of Rancho Mirage. He was born in Los Angeles’ San Fernando Valley when it still shared the 213 area code with the rest of the city. Mr. Marchand has been practicing law in California for just shy of 32 years. He is a registered member of the Democratic Party, and a former member of the Cathedral City city Council, as well as having been a member of the Riverside County Democratic Central Committee and a founding member of Desert Stonewall Democrats. He is not a member of the Republican tribe.

IT’S TIME FOR FACEBOOK TO TAKE THE SIDE OF MORALITY AND PATRIOTISM

Summary: Facebook has a choice to make. Quite simply, Facebook needs to consider very carefully whether it proposes to continue functioning as a cheerleader for Russia and her dictator, Vladimir Putin, or whether Facebook instead will find the patriotism it should have found long ago. Will Facebook stand with United States, with our NATO allies, and most importantly at this hour, with Ukraine?  Will Facebook stop facilitating Russian disinformation on its platform. Will Facebook block and ban thosewho cheerlead for Putin, those who are cheerleading against vaccinations, and those who continue to propagate the Big Lie that Donald Trump somehow “won” the election of 2020. The correct, patriotic answer, ought to be simple. That being the case, Zuckerberg will probably do the wrong thing.

By: Ivan Lopakhin, special to Cathedral City Observed

Huntington Beach, March 5, 2022 – With this country, the United States we all profess to love, involved in an undeclared war with Russia over that country’s grotesque invasion of Ukraine, the time is at hand for Mark Zuckerberg to begin to have a serious discussion about where Facebook’s loyalties need to lie.

Do Facebook’s loyalties lie with Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin, who after all just shut Facebook down in Russia (and we may expect Putin’s henchman and puppet Aleksandr Lukashenko to do the same thing in Belarus before much longer, if it hasn’t happened already) or is Facebook prepared to repent of its errors and acknowledge its dependence on a West that has permitted it to flourish so that over the last two decades, Mr. Zuckerberg has become, shall we say, an oligarch?

But, even oligarchs ultimately find themselves dependent upon the goodwill of the constituency they have cultivated. The cultivation of that constituency also necessarily involves the cultivation of those entities which can regulate the activities of oligarchs. Mr. Zuckerberg has a great deal to account for. His flirtation with Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin in 2016 is just one of the things for which Mr. Zuckerberg can be faulted. His enabling of the junta in Burma when they chose to engage in deliberate genocide against the Rohingya in Rakhine State is another. The numerous activities for which he has been called out by a variety of whistleblowers are still another.

Now, Mark Zuckerberg faces what could be an existential threat, not a mere “flirtation” with Vladimir Putin or Cambridge Analytica, or with the Burmese junta. Zuckerberg now faces the very real possibility of being investigated by the Justice Department, the British Ministry of Justice, the German and French ministries of justice, and a whole variety of democratic state Justice Departments in this country for having facilitated treasonable communications.

Zuckerberg has a rather malodorous reputation for banning comments with which he or his moderators disagree. Indeed, Zuckerberg and his moderators have experienced some fairly embarrassing content moderation screw ups in recent years. 

In Norway, Zuckerberg and his moderators found themselves during the summer and fall of 2016 on the absolutely wrong end of a publicity war with the Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten over Facebook’s decision to censor an article from Aftenposten which contained a photograph depicting Phan Thi Kim Phúc, the Vietnamese girl who had been napalmed and was running, terrified, naked, down a Country Rd. In South Vietnam. Facebook, which seems to have all of the hangups of a schoolmarm holding forth in a late Victorian drawing room, deleted the piece. The Prime Minister of Norway, Erna Solberg, weighed in by reproducing the photographs on her own Facebook page, which was also censored. Only after a major flap did Facebook back down, blaming, as always, lower ranking human beings in their so-called Community Standards department for the “misapplication” of their so-called Community Standards.

Facebook experienced similar foolish issues when it attempted to censor a photograph of the famed Venus of Willendörf, a mesolithic statute that is the oldest piece of figural sculpture anywhere in the world, and was actually sued in a Paris Court over its ham-handed blockage of a photograph of Gustave Courbet’s iconic painting L’origine du monde, which offended Zuckerberg’s neo-Victorian sensibilities by depicting a woman’s reproductive organs.  After eight years of back-and-forth wrangling, Facebook had to agree 1) that the French courts have jurisdiction and 2) that the French schoolteacher plaintiff should had his account restored.

Facebook also experienced similar embarrassment when it attempted to censor a photograph of The Little Mermaid, the iconic sculpture in Copenhagen harbor, Denmark. Facebook’s explanation for its prudish approach to the Little Mermaid was the same as its “explanation” for its other hand handed prudishness: “some audiences within our global community may be sensitive to this type of content.” In other words, Facebook doesn’t want to expose misogynistic Muslims or hyper Orthodox Jews to content that they might not like to see. In short, Facebook, like many Victorians, prefers to infantalize the vast majority of its users rather than acknowledge that most Facebook users are rational, mature adults.

Unfortunately, Facebook, which loves to talk out of both sides of its mouth, likes to go on at great length about how it believes strongly in “protecting” other forms of speech. 

In other words, you can talk treason on Facebook.

You can disseminate anti-vax disinformation on Facebook.

You can sing the praises of Donald Trump and his co-conspirators on Facebook.

You can engender genocide on Facebook.

And you can push Putin’s propaganda on Facebook, without any fear of censorship or moderation.

But what you cannot do is any of these things if Facebook’s moderators decide to block you, to censor your comments, or to “send you to Facebook jail.” I have been sent to Facebook jail for a variety of posts critical of Donald Trump; of the January 6 insurrection; of the anti-vax movement; of the so-called freedom convoys made up of angry truckers who don’t like being told they have to vaccinate, like everybody else; and most recently, for posts criticizing Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin and standing up for the much put-upon people of Ukraine.

Many of my friends and compatriots, in both the Russian and Ukrainian diasporas, and many of my friends in Europe and in the United States, had had the same experience. One of them, in fact, was thrown off Facebook for 30 days for the offense of suggesting that Vladimir Putin should be arrested and hauled before a war crimes tribunal. What treason, what madness, what disloyalty to the West, and to the United States such a block represents. In fact, Vladimir Putin and his Siloviki, the hardline “military solution” fanatics now in charge in Russia all merit prosecution for war crimes in the same way that the Adolf Hitler, his Gauleiters, his executioners, and his exploiters of occupied territories all merited war crimes trials.

If Mark Zuckerberg, himself an Ashkenazi Jew, cannot understand why Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin and his Siloviki merit war crimes trials, then perhaps Gospodin Zuckerberg merits an extended visit to Buchenwald or to Auschwitz Birkenau for education in what a war crime is. He should follow that up by a visit to Nürnberg, after which he should visit the Ukrainian Holocaust Memorial at Babyn Yar’ (or what is left of it, after it was missiled by the Russians). Perhaps by studying the Holocaust, and the Holodomor, the Soviet-era genocide of Ukrainian people, gospodin Zuckerberg might begin to understand why Facebook’s moderators should be moderating in a Ukrainian direction, not a Russian one.

After all, the democratically elected President of Ukraine is an Ashkenazi Jew, a man who lost relatives in the Holocaust. Vladimir Putin, on the other hand, is a former KGB officer whose monomaniacal desire to reconstruct the former Soviet Union has now led to tens or even hundreds of thousands of deaths and the displacement of almost 2 million refugees. I would think under such circumstances that the preferential option of the civilized world should be for the Ashkenazi Jew who is President of Ukraine, and not for Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin and his gang of thugs.

In this country, we have our own gang of thugs, the Trumpists who, from Donald Trump on down to the meanest, lowest, most contemptible, most deplorable MAGAT, have made common cause with Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin. They have gone out of their way, like Tucker Carlson, like Ted Cruz, like the Murdochs, and their ilk, to praise gospodin Putin, and to take the Russian side in this war. That pretty definitively moves their cause into the dangerous, malodorous, offensive realms of treason. And under various British and American statutes dealing with treason, treasonable speech is it self treasonable. Because treasonable speech gives aid and comfort to the enemies national. Treasonable speech divides the nation, splitting the population and causing us to become vulnerable to the attacks of our enemies.

The government can, the government should, and indeed, the government has, articulated a compelling interest in squelching treasonable speech, a compelling interest with respect to which no less drastic means will accomplish the goal, even to the extent that narrowly tailored regulations should be used. Those narrowly tailored regulations, intended to advance a compelling interest in inhibiting treason, should include Facebook’s cracking down and clamping down on treasonable speech. Facebook, after all, is a Delaware corporation domiciled in the state of California. California can, and California should, lower the hammer on Facebook if Facebook will not lower the hammer on the treasonable utterances it has thus far permitted on its platform; treasonable utterances designed to aid and comfort Putin, the Russian Armed Forces, and the Russian Siloviki.

I am not suggesting that Facebook should make itself an assistant of the FBI or of the California Department of Justice and California law enforcement agencies. We all see what can happen when agencies in the private sector are deputized to perform law enforcement functions. However, such agencies can be expected and required to ensure that they themselves do not wind up complicit in lawbreaking activities. Mark Zuckerberg needs to understand that the time has come for the corporation he heads to stop hiding behind prudish, Victorian attitudes about nudity such as only obtain among hyper Orthodox Jews or certain Muslims, and that instead, the time has come for the corporation he heads to understand that as long as Facebook (or Meta as it has now rebranded itself in service to Mr. Zuckerberg’s ego) is an American corporation, it has duties to this country, to its state of incorporation, and most importantly, to its state of domicile here in California.

The time is at hand, therefore, for Mark Zuckerberg to stop acting like a prude and start acting like a patriot. That means clamping down upon the pro-Russian, pro-Putin, anti-American claptrap he routinely permits the posted on his platform. He went partway by banning Donald Trump. Now he must go the whole way, and ban Trump’s and Putin’s supporters, too. Not only will Facebook do what is right by the Ukrainian people, but Facebook will also begin to reclaim some degree of reputation for patriotism to the country whose amazing talent for innovation made Facebook possible in the first place.

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Ivan Arkadyevich Lopakhin is a native of the Hero City of Leningrad (now called St. Petersburg). His ancestry is both Russian and Ukrainian. Born in 1956 in Leningrad to a Russian father and an American mother (herself of Ukrainian descent), Ivan spent the first 11 years of his life as a child of the nomenklatura, the relatively privileged caste of the then-Soviet Union. Ivan was a Young Pioneer and was deep-selected for advancement to Komsomol. However, in 1968, his father Arkady, a Hero of the Soviet Union who had, as a young officer in the Red Army, bought his way into Berlin with the First Ukrainian Front, died of cancer in a Leningrad clinic. Ivan, his mother, and his brother Stepan, took advantage of his mother’s status as an American citizen, and their own status as American citizens as well, and moved from Leningrad back to Huntington Beach.
    Ivan and Stepan (who quickly Anglicized his name to Stephen, with a ph) assimilated fairly quickly to life in a Southern California beach town. Both of them learned to surf, to hang out, and to make themselves understood in clear, unaccented, Californian English, while at the same time holding on to the language of Pushkin, of Tolstoy, of Mandelshtam, of Pasternak, and of Yevtushenko. Ivan still lives in Huntington Beach with his wife Susan and their two children. Stephen (with a ph) lives in the Hollywood Hills with his husband and their three dachshunds. Both were active in the Joe Biden/Kamala Harris presidential campaign.