Retrieving the Truth From Bill Barr’s “Memory Holes”

“It is impossible to carry out democratic elections, try cases at court, design and enforce laws, or indeed manage any of the other quiet business of government when agencies beyond the state also have access to violence. For just this reason, people and parties who wish to undermine democracy and the rule of law create and fund violent organizations that involve themselves in politics.” - Timothy Snyder, On Tyranny, #6 “...we make a great mistake if we imagine that the Soviet NKVD or the Nazi SS acted without support. Without the assistance of regular police forces, and sometimes regular soldiers, they could not have killed on such a large scale.” - Timothy Snyder, #7

“The past...had not merely been altered, it had been actually destroyed. For how could you establish even the most obvious fact when there existed no record outside your own memory? - George Orwell, 1984

“Of course it was a great ego trip to have it in the (New York) Times, but it’s been a year since anyone edited my stuff, and I had that same cold-water-to-the-face feeling: god-dammit, why do they always rip out the best stuff?” - Molly Ivins

“It surely was true that the press was not always lovable, and in not loving it (Franklin) Roosevelt was at one with the vast majority of politicians through all of Washington’s history. But for the American people there always remained the question: if their politicians behaved as poorly as many of them did with the press keeping some kind of eye on them, what would they be doing with nobody watching?” - David Brinkley, Washington Goes to War

“We are not here to kill people, we are here to restore calm and order.” – Platoon Sergeant, 82nd Airborne, April 5, 1968 (24 hrs after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.) – Edward Lotterman, Bismarck Tribune, 6/14/20

“New York Governor Andrew Cuomo...signed sweeping police reform bills into law, notably banning chokeholds and repealing a hotly contested state law known as 50-A, which kept officers’ disciplinary records confidential. The repeal of 50-A means police disciplinary records can be made public – including complaints against officers that have not been substantiated, - The legislation also gives the state attorney general power as a special prosecutor in cases of police-involved deaths and bans false, race-based 911 calls. Another bill requires state police troopers to wear body cameras. “Cuomo also issued an executive order Friday requiring local governments and police departments to develop a plan to modernize police strategies and programs. The governor said each plan must address specific topics...use of force, crowd management, de-escalation tactics and bias training with input from the community. Local governments must pass their plans into law by April 1, 2021 in order to be eligible for state funding. Cuomo said, ‘We’re not going to be, as a state government, subsidizing improper police tactics.’” - CBS, June 12, 2020

“When the people change, the palace cannot hold.” - Naomi Alderman

With the New York Times ownership deciding that it’s no longer “fit (for their editorial board) to print” racist ravings of a southern Senator like Tom Cotton (R-AR) as equivalent to reflections of U.S. Generals, Admirals, Civil Servants, Congressmen and Justice officials that it is their duty, and that of every police officer, to be guardians of every American citizen, regardless of color, not warriors against them; it is clear that a new day is dawning in the United States. However, it would be a mistake to credit Times leadership with courage of day-to-day journalists who risk their jobs and lives in exposing falsehoods and tyrannies. The big NYT honchos still suck up to (U.S. Attorney General) Bill Barr, either from admiration, fear, or lack of moral compass.

Media moguls can sniff the direction of the wind just as well as politicians. The New York Times, after years of suppressing the better angels of their reporters and rank and file editorialists, has finally been served notice that the vast numbers of white people of all ages in the streets, as demonstrators, supporting oppressed folks of color, are not going to just aid their elected officials in defunding militarized aspects of public safety. As voters, on November 3, 2020, they are going to aid the Democrats in defunding racism and the Republican Party.

From Times management’s point of view, Tom Cotton is much worse than a racist. He’s a losing racist. He, and fellow Republican cowards in the Senate, have, in fact, long been little more than seething droplets of past and present hatreds and fears, wrapped up in wads of money. But that was enough to intimidate the New York Times, and other “masters of the media,” until now.

The Times turnabout is almost as astounding on behalf of “movers and shakers” in this country as NASCAR’s decision to ban the Confederate Flag from their races on behalf of the rest of us, “the moved and the shaken.” Compared to these two events, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell’s apology for tolerance of President Trump’s racist rejection of Colin Kaepernick’s devout kneeling gesture in honor of “Black Lives Matter,” is thin soup. He can be believed only if Kaepernick gets a tryout with NFL teams that really need a backup quarterback, like the Minnesota Vikings or the other five that are looking him over, and Goodell takes a knee with coaches and players at every NFL game throughout the upcoming season, whenever it occurs.

Most interesting of all, however, is the exposure of Attorney General William Barr’s treason to the legal profession, his failure to represent his client, the American people, instead of the cowardly sociopath who occupies the White House. I would not know such things, of course, beyond their availability in my local paper and media, were it not for conversations with my growing KGB renegade menagerie assembled in Mandan, ND.

High Plains Reader: I understand, Mr. Swamp Fox, that you have overheard more mutterings from “Benito” Bill Barr, Trump’s Badass Barracuda Barrister (B-6th power), in consultation with his alligator allies in the White House Swamp.

Mr. Swamp Fox: Yes. And I have brought along my friend Jim Crow XV, who has been listening in on the Senate Republican Caucus. Somewhere between the original Jim Crow among Democrats in the South in the 19th and 20th Centuries, and the Republican Jim Crows all over the country in the 20th and 21st Centuries, after Civil Rights Acts of the 1960s, our 15th Generation Jim Crow broke away from serving racism and genocide like the rest of us.

Jim Crow XV: Majority Leader “Rich” Mitch McConnell makes similar laments as Barr, that their “divide and conquer” game has been exposed by a combination of Trump’s stupidity and cupidity, and the revelation of a confederacy of white policemen, masquerading as labor unions, determined to snuff out the lives of Americans they deem guilty of “breathing while black.”

Mr. Swamp Fox and I heard them complain that inconvenient truths were escaping Orwellian “Memory Holes” faster than they could cover them up. Even worse, Trump’s (Supreme Court) Justice, Neil Gorsuch, was favoring statutory over situational law.

Rich Mitch: You did such a great job of sabotaging the Mueller Report, Bill, but can’t you unleash your alligators on the press and the public as before? I now have to take (Senator) Mitt Romney (R-UT) seriously! And John Bolton is going to blow us up with his book. He knew he couldn’t swing enough votes in the Senate to dump Trump. I had those wimps by the short hairs.

B-6th power: You know yourself Mitch, that Trump is the problem. You should have convicted him when you had the chance. Now I have to mop up after him and Stephen Miller. I envy (VP) Dick Cheney. He peddled racist and fascist merchandise under President George W. Bush, and Wall Street got rich, after ruining the middle class and making things for poor people and folks of color that much worse. President Barack Obama and the Democrats cleaned up the mess Republicans made, and violent crime went way down after 9/11, but, thanks to the Tea Party, white cops who still wanted to kill blacks had happy hunting grounds in rural areas as well as the cities. The New York Times and the Washington Post just sat back while Trump peddled his Birther poison, leaving it to Msnbc’s Lawrence O’Donnell to put his job on the line by exposing it. Now I have to sit Trump’s sorry ass down and get him to sign an anti-police-criminality order with some teeth in it, so he can veto your watered down version of a House Bill with a full set of shark’s choppers.

Rich Mitch: It seemed like a good idea at the time to let Trump be President. Look at all those tax breaks and right wing judges we got. Who ever thought that a critical mass of white people of all ages would figure out that we were targeting them as much as we and they were targeting people of color? Trump has just been too obvious, with his incompetence, as well as his racism.

Alligator #1: Hey! Don’t blame us. We didn’t create Mother Nature’s Covid-19 or your indifference to human suffering other than your own. We just eat flesh, like you eat souls.

B-6th power: Nah. It’s those damn I-phones. How the hell do we cover up things now?

Alligator #2: You can’t, if people are no longer afraid of the brutal truths about murderous lies, as well as murderous cops, that video cameras reveal. Undaunted citizens, and a Congress more responsive to their demands, mean that your manipulations are the beginning of the end of Trump’s Republican Party, and you know it. You already threw Trump under the bus by indicating that he actually did hide out in the White House bunker during the height of the demonstrations. Wasn’t that a bit too transparent?

B-6th power: I blamed Secret Service and the demonstrators so he could avoid responsibility.

Rich Mitch: Trump and his dwindling base may be dumb enough to believe it. Nobody else does. And even though President “Bonespurs” behaved himself at West Point this weekend, every rank in the U.S. Military, from Private to General, hates his misuse of their loyal service. In addition, your scam to spring (Convicted former National Security Chief) Mike Flynn from his treasonous conduct with Russia and Turkey is coming undone, and Trump is going to have to pardon him, if you can’t get other judges in D.C. to intervene.

B-6th power: And you will be so busy trying to save your ass in Kentucky, you won’t have time to spare for your melting Senate Majority in the other States. Even voter suppression might not be enough in battleground States. Ordinary judges of election still have to face their neighbors.

Jim Crow XV: That’s quite a conversation, isn’t it! Even ordinary Municipal, State, and Federal Judges, no matter how conservative or right wing, still have to face their peers in communities and Bar Associations around the country. Local reputations matter as much now as they always have, and as black lives should have mattered all along.

HPR: Does that mean that Trump, Barr, and Rich Mitch are screwed no matter what they do?

Chicago Dog: Probably, but only if Democrats, liberals, independents, recovering Republicans, voters under 30 (for a change) massively do what has never been done on a national scale: register themselves; register others; make sure absentee ballot applications get to everyone who wants one; make sure those applications are in the mail; and challenge, with their host of lawyers, each and every local, state, and federal attempt by Republicans to suppress voting.

Jim Crow XV: Covid or not, people should vote in 2020 as if their lives depended on it, because they do, and always have. The Trump-Barr-Rich Mitch “axis-of-evil” just makes it more obvious. The killing of yet another unarmed black man, Rayshard Brooks, in Atlanta by undisciplined white policemen took place one day after New York State issued a blueprint for police reform in all 50 States, but 5 and 7 months before it can reign in the White House.

Ms. Recovering Republican Lap Dog: President Cry Baby labels a 75yr old white guy, put into intensive care by Buffalo, NY’s “finest” Storm Troop re-enactors, as an “antifa agitator,” and then expects a medal for his costly “photo-op” at West Point, and postponing his race baiting rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, by one day. I’m sure Barr really enjoys pimping for Trump by now.

Mr. Swamp Fox: You can be sure that B-6th power still has some tricks up his sleeve to avoid accountability, but there are signs from the Department of Justice (DOJ) that he is running out of options, legal or illegal, and running out of patience with his moron Boss.

Jim Crow XV: I managed to snatch some scribbling on toilet paper from a DOJ bathroom, that indicates B-6th power’s real thoughts while at stool. I cleaned them up a bit, titled, and resigned them for your reading pleasure:

Barracuda Bill’s Lament
“If Donald dimwit thinks I’m just a hack;
A gun for hire, that he can throw away.
He’ll surely rue the coming, awful day
That stupid Stephen runs him off the
track.

He had it made. I rigged the Senate’s
voice To maximize their cowardice for
Mitch; And now I have to lift him from
each ditch He digs to worsen each and
ev’ry choice.

Executive supremacy had ring Of grandeur, when I did it for each Bush; But Trump has foiled my clever
master plan To end Democracy and place a King Upon a throne of fools that I could push Around. But now,
I am the hunted man!?!” - Torquemada