"No-one Has The Right To OBey!" - Hannah Arendt

 

"No One has the Right to Obey"

As of this morning, Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey continues to hold the U.S. Senate floor, exposing what the Trump Administration has been doing to the country. His finger points blame primarily at the president and his hired non-government representative Elon Musk for their cutting and dismantling of vital services like Social Security. Senator booker is calling out republican colleagues, inviting them to "act according to one's conscience, when faced with orders when they are unjust."

While watching Senator Booker "yielding to questions while retaining the floor," I was encouraged to pose my own question for the senator to ask his Republican colleagues:

How can U.S. Senators and Congressmen continue to carry out Trumpian orders that hurt American citizens and go against the U.S. Constitution? Did not all legislators swear an oath to "Uphold the Constitution" and serve all Americans? Remember, "I do solemnly swear . . ."

The late political theorist and author Hanna Arendt in response to WWII Nazi SS officer Adolf Eichman, while he was on trial for crimes against humanity invoking the so-called Nuremberg Defense (I was only following orders), said this:

"No one has the right to obey"

meaning - subordination doesn't justify abdication of responsibility

emphasis - resisting unjust orders, rather than following them blindly

So, how is it so many of our well-meaning American representatives, voted into office by trusting American citizens, are turning their backs on civic duty while obeying unconstitutional and un-American presidential orders? Lord have mercy, that someday after this presidential crisis has passed, these representatives will cowardly invoke the Nuremberg Defense to avoid accountability and punishment as accomplices in their dereliction of duty while serving.

This American would like to hear Senator Cory Booker pose Hannah Arendt's comment in the context of a question to Trumpian Republican legislators:

Do you Senator or Congressman -fill in the blank- believe you have the right to obey orders knowing they will bring down long-standing American Institutions and hurt American Citizens and Families?

'I was only doing my job'. No-one has the right to obey | Cambridge Network

RaiderLegend: Hannah Arendt - Author of "The Origins of Totalitarianism

Hannah Arendt - Wikipedia

MLB Game Changer

 

Yes, the New York Yankees introduced a new style of baseball bat this weekend. Now, after the "Torpedo Bat" produced 9 Home Runs yesterday for the Yanks, the baseball world is going . . . Batty!  

Come'on Man! Changing the design of baseball bats brings the end to an era of America's Pastime. How do you compare hitters if a "Bat on Steroids" is crushing balls out of the park at a higher rate than standard bats? Will use of the new bat affect players eligibility for the Baseball Hall of Fame? Is there any advantage for batters using the new bat? Is Elon Musk behind this, in an effort to maybe justify downsizing bullpens and replacing highly paid starting pitchers? What is going ON!

If they're going to allow changes in bat design to help hitters hit, wouldn't it justify allowing pitchers to change size and/or stitching of a baseball in order to help improve their throwing velocity or accuracy? 

Rice U.'s high-tech baseball

I am all for modernizing our sports if leagues find the change will improve the game. But let's carry out the change in a more calculated and equitable way so that all competitors have a chance to prepare and make adjustments to change. After all, Baseball is an American Pastime. And unlike impulsive decisions being made by the U.S. Department of Government Efficiency, responsible and level-headed baseball leadership are not new to running an organization. 

So, relax baseball fans, and expect cooler heads to prevail in this curveball thrown at us over the weekend. 

If anyone knows where I can get a torpedo bat, please leave a comment below . . .

Damn the Torpedoes- Full Speed Ahead

SF Giants Spoil Reds Opening Day

Mar 27, 2025; Cincinnati, Ohio, USA; San Francisco Giants designated hitter Wilmer Flores (41) high fives catcher Patrick Bailey (14) after hitting a three-run home run in the ninth inning against the Cincinnati Reds at Great American Ball Park. / Katie Stratman-Imagn Images

Yes! Yes! Yes!  The San Francisco Giants won game 1 of a 162-game regular baseball season. They did it by shocking the Reds in Cincinnati with a come-from-behind 9th inning rally. The Giants were looking nothing like the team from spring training who led the majors with a 21-6 win/loss best. 

But what did follow them from the Scottsdale desert was a "Never Quit, Never Surrender" fighting mentality. Of those 21 wins this spring, a number of them were won late in games where they battled back from deficits. I know this is only one regular season game win, but I got out of it exactly what I wanted to see; proof that Hope continues to Spring Eternal for this squad of Giants. This team is no fluke, and they have that camaraderie (mutual trust & friendship), as well as faith in each other to make this 2025 season something special.

With new president Buster Posey leading the way today on his 38th birthday, there is something about this team that shouts "look out cause here we come" to the world of baseball. They are well aware of the 2024 Champions who dwell in their NL West division. But it already seems they believe they can hold their own against the highest paid baseball team on the planet, or any other club favored by sports experts to participate in the Fall Classic World Series.

I say, if you wanna watch and bet on an underdog in baseball this season, look no further than the San Francisco Giants. Just ask the Cincinnati Reds what it feels like to have your opening day celebration snatched away one out from victory. Giants Patrick Bailey and Wilmer Flores gave Reds fans a ninth inning they simply didn't see coming and will never forget.  Because there's something about Opening Day games that carry a special place in baseball fans hearts. The thrill of victory and the agony of defeat seem to ruminate stronger and longer from games played on Opening Day. Possibly because of the long winter hibernation from the game. Excitement and expectations seem so much higher. For players, coaches, fans and sports analysts. Baseball is Back Baby!

Rest Well Reds! You'll have Friday off to get it together before having to face these Giants again this Saturday and Sunday. 

Final Score

Giants 6

Reds 4

Thrill

SF Giants dugout goes berserk celebrating Flores' game-winning homer

Wilmer Flores' go-ahead homer gives Giants Opening Day win

Agony

Reds look improved on MLB Opening Day. Until they needed one more out

The Winter Walk At Noon

 

Here the heart
    May give an useful lesson to the head,
    And learning wiser grow without his books.
    Knowledge and wisdom, far from being one,
    Have ofttimes no connection. Knowledge dwells
    In heads replete with thoughts of other men;
    Wisdom in minds attentive to their own.
    Knowledge, a rude unprofitable mass,
    The mere materials with which wisdom builds,
    Till smoothed and squared and fitted to its place,
    Does but encumber whom it seems to enrich.
    Knowledge is proud that he has learned so much,
    Wisdom is humble that he knows no more.
    Books are not seldom talismans and spells
    By which the magic art of shrewder wits
    Holds an unthinking multitude enthralled.
    Some to the fascination of a name
    Surrender judgment hoodwinked. Some the style
    Infatuates, and, through labyrinths and wilds
    Of error, leads them by a tune entranced.
    While sloth seduces more, too weak to bear
    The insupportable fatigue of thought,
    And swallowing therefore without pause or choice
    The total grist unsifted, husks and all.

excerpt from William Cowper’s “The Task : Book VI” 

The Negro's Complaint, by William Cowper (1731-1800)

Social Security Defended, Not Defunded

 

Rep. John Larson breaks down exactly how and why Elon Musk and the Trump Administration are attempting to dismantle the current Social Security system. He calls out the party of government who are complicit in carrying out a plan of cutting government. He also asks these sycophant congressional constituents to get on board and remember exactly what duty they chose to uphold when taking their oath to serve in the legislative branch of the United States of America.

Within hours, the social security administration abandoned plans to cut phone service access for millions of Americans filing retirement and disability claims. Phone service access for social security benefits is a service "73 million Americans have relied on for decades." 

Privatization Exposed!

Republican Congress Called to Duty

If American citizens have been wondering where are the legislative voices they voted into office who oppose this administration's dismantling cuts to so many established U.S. institutions, Rep. John Larson is a comforting voice, shining light out of the darkness and directly onto the current U.S. governmental cuts. Let's hope other U.S. legislators follow in Rep. Larson's footsteps and speak out loudly and truthfully about what our executive branch is trying to accomplish with government cuts and who it is utilizing to carry out its plan.

Legislative loyalty to the U.S. branch of government who's three main duties are:

1. Making Laws    2. Regulating Commerce    3. Overseeing Government 

Case and point, it is the Legislative Branch who oversees the Executive Branch, which includes the Presidency, ensuring accountability and limiting its powers through various mechanisms like investigations, hearings, and the power of the purse.

So, it is easy to see why any President/Chief Executive seeking unlimited power, would want blind loyalty from U.S. Legislators. It could grant him the unlimited power he cherishes by removing "checks and balances" put in place by the Founding Fathers of the United States to protect the country and its constitution. 

Should the U.S. Legislative Branch become loyal to a U.S. President, replacing their oath to uphold the laws of the U.S. Constitution, such President could dismantle and restructure Supreme Laws outlining the structure and power of the federal government and protection of citizens' rights. In other words, a President without oversight of legislators paves the way for him becoming a dictator as chief executive of these United States of America, accountable only to himself and above all law.

The Constitution was created to establish a republic with a system of checks and balances to prevent any one branch of government from becoming too powerful. God Bless those founding fathers...

Article I - Legislative Branch | Constitution Center

mar-a-lago monarch

the lying king by Alex Beard

note: not to be confused with THE LION KING

Now firm in power,

His goals took a turn.

The king lied to steal

What he couldn't earn.

He called the most honest

"Cheaters" and worse,

All the while padding

His own golden purse.

                                                                                (excerpt from The Lying King)

Here is a very clever American children’s parable that will hopefully rub off on all parents. It teaches young kids who are so innocent and trusting, about right and wrong, truths and falsehoods, honesty and dishonesty. The story uses animals to drive home the sick, deceitful cowardice of liars as well as the gullible, unsuspecting believers they target. 

In the end it took courage for those bowing down to the lying king’s zeal, to open their eyes and see what was real. They had been duped by a lying pig who incited confusion and disunity amongst all the animals as a means to rule over them and steal.

 “And so in the face of his numerous lies, the animals finally opened their eyes. They came to agree on a single true thing .  .  .  A lying pig should not be king.”

Make America Strait Again. For there is a Crooked Warthog who thinks he is king.

Criminal Minds Voted Into Power

The Overview Effect: How Seeing the Earth from Space Changes You

History Books are written to inform, educate, document, and if necessary, forewarn. The saying "those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it" is proven true time and again throughout history. Mankind has the gift of hindsight when working toward improving the ways and means of living together and sharing in the gifts this planet Earth provides us all. It only seems natural to me that Earth was meant for "Inclusive Inhabitants" as opposed to exclusive ones. And if man is an intelligent, enlightened species, he has a responsibility to maintain an environment conducive to life on Earth for all species of plants and animals living here. He should not feel obligated but honored to be "his brother's keeper."

Civilization, through centuries of trials and errors, today stands closer than ever to attaining harmonious balance amongst its various peoples as well as with Earth's natural environment (land, water, air and living things). And yet the very things that have threatened humankind's existence throughout history are still coming out of the depths to grasp civilization by the throat, strangling the peace and progress humankind has struggled so long toward achieving.

War, famine, pestilence and disease have not been annihilated from Earth's surface. Mankind's greed and selfishness still overwhelms his empathy and philanthropy toward others. He can still become "beastly" in his treatment toward his fellow man and woman, in the name of survival. He has yet to learn from hindsight how not only the strongest, but the wisest and most communal survive to live life to the fullest (see Ant and Bee colonies.) He must be fit in mind, body, and spirit if he wants to avoid the pitfalls that have befallen past civilizations. As of this posting, "Rome is Burning!"

Below I have listed a review on the book "Before The Deluge: A Portrait of Berlin in the 1920's." The review, written in 2009 by Bob Kitchin and posted on his blog "The View From The Blue House," highlights what he found the book made very clear about the rise of Nazism and the collapse of the Weimar Republic.

Saturday, July 25, 2009

Review of Before the Deluge: A Portrait of Berlin in the 1920s by Otto Friedrich, published by HarperPerennial (1995, originally 1972)

I got interested in Berlin before the war through reading Philip Kerr’s Bernie Gunther novels (I’ve also recently read the excellent The Real Odessa: Smuggling the Nazis to Peron's Argentina by Uki Goni after reading book five in the series set in Argentina). It’s taken a while to read as its been my breakfast book and I’ve read a fair few novels whilst this has been on the go.

Before the Deluge is a social history of Berlin during the Weimar Republic from 1919 to 1933, covering traditional politics, economics, social conditions, cultural politics, the arts, and the lives of ordinary Berliners and the movers and shakers. It’s rich, dense, insightful, and full of interesting commentary and anecdotes based on the author’s experiences, documentary research, and interviews with key actors still alive in the late 1960s.

Rapidly expanding in population size, Berlin during the 1920s was a city of turbulent and vibrant change – governments coming and going; unions and the army vying for power; communists, socialists and fascists fighting running battles, assassinating rivals, and waging propaganda wars; the currency crashing to worthlessness followed by an economic boom and then another crash; cabaret, theatre, movies and music flourishing; social order becoming liberalized with widespread naturism and promiscuity at the same time that antisemitism grows steadily; crime, prostitution and drug taking becoming rife; and the intellectual elite in psychoanalysis, physics, architecture and other disciplines flocking to the city.

What Friedrich’s book makes very clear is that there was nothing predestined about the rise of Nazism and the collapse of the Weimar Republic. It was the culmination of a complex set of contingent, relational process, not some teleological inevitability, and in Berlin the National Socialists never received more than 25 percent of the vote despite Goebbels best efforts (nor more than 44 percent nationally). Criminals have always found a route to political power. Usually, it is through some kind of coup. Hitler tried this in the earlier 1920s and failed. Where he succeeded was through the democratic process. Ultimately ordinary, innocent people voted criminal minds into office thus ensuring the end of democracy and the descent into megalomaniacal nationalism. What that has tended to do is blind us to the fact that Germany was a cauldron of competing ideologies through the whole period of the Third Reich – we fall into the trap of seeing Germans at that time as a monolithic nation of fanatical fascists. And that’s what is so refreshing about Philip Kerr’s novels - Gunther is an anti-Nazi cop trying to get by in a corrupt regime.

If you want to get a sense of Germany in the 1920s and the path to fascist power, then Friedrich’s book is a great place to start.

Great review and assessment. I like the the phrase "Ultimately ordinary, innocent people voted criminal minds into office....".
People get desperate in an economic depression and follow politicians offering easy solutions and vulnerable scapegoats.

July 25, 2009 at 10:53 AM

Amazon Review: Before The Deluge

frankd

5.0 out of 5 stars Learn from history or suffer the same consequences.

Reviewed in the United States on October 7, 2011

Verified Purchase

A wonderful analysis of Germany and Europe in the years leading up to Hitler. Germany experienced a period of ferment that was evident in the arts, theatre, philosophy, design, architecture that was destroyed by the evil Nazis and has never again appeared. It was as though the intelligence of an entire generation blossomed only to be ground down under the Nazi jackboots. There is a message here for us today to avoid all fanaticism of any kind from right wing ultra conservatism to the mindless faith-based religious false prophets. Protect your intelligence and better nature from the new Nazis who have nothing to offer but catch phrases and empty promises. It all happened before and if you don't recognize the threat, we'll end up with the same Götterdämmerung.

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