the attitude with arnie arnesen the friday edition jan 22

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Arnie Arnesen

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Jan 22, 2026, 7:59:38 PM (8 days ago) Jan 22
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Arnie Arnesen nha...@gmail.com

8:37 AM (11 hours ago)
to Bill, me, Stephanie, David
The Attitude with Arnie Arnesen
opening thoughts: a cop speaks to the murder of Renee Good and  HITLER’S GERMANY 1933 AND TRUMP’S AMERICA 2025
producers: Dave Scott and Stephanie Collins
Chloé LaCasse (the best of the attitude)
streaming live at wnhnfm.org noon EST on the dial-94.7FM Concord NH
opening thoughts: by Mel Goodman
 HITLER’S GERMANY 1933 AND TRUMP’S AMERICA Adolf Hitler’s first year in power offers a reminder of the damage that was  done by one man who rose to power legally following a series of political and economic crises in Germany,  Hitler was the leader of the Nazi Party, which was radically right-wing, antisemitic, anticommunist, and antidemocratic.  He falsely claimed that Jews and Communists were to blame for all of Germany’s problems. Hitler didn’t immediately become a dictator.  Rather, he manipulated the democratic political system to destroy Germany’s democracy and create a dictatorship.  He took power in January 1933, and within months he had transformed  the independent press into a propaganda tool for the regime.  The Nazis began book burnings in May that targeted “un-German” books, eliminated independent thought, and “purified” culture.  The Editors Law in October required editors and journalists to be registered with the state, excluding Jews and those with opposing views.

    In 1933, Hitler also introduced police power that was independent of judicial controls, which permitted the arrest—without judicial review—of real and potential opponents of the regime.  In one of the earliest antisemitic laws, Hitler purged Jewish and socialist judges and lawyers, and established special courts to try politically sensitive cases.  The Enabling Act in March 1933 allowed Hitler to issue laws without the consent of Germany’s parliament, creating the foundation for the Nazification of German society. By the middle of the year, the democracy of the Weimar Republic had been transformed into the police state of the Third Reich.

    Donald Trump is not Hitler, but it is noteworthy that his family invested heavily in hiding its German origins.  Trump’s father, Fred Trump, tried to conceal the fact that he was the son of a German immigrant, and tried to pass himself off as Swedish. He feared the anti-German sentiment in the United States after World War Two and wanted to avoid offending his Jewish customers.  In the “Art of the Deal,” Trump reaffirmed the myth of his family’s origins, writing that his grandfather came to America “from Sweden as a child.”  He didn’t embrace his German heritage until 1999, when he noted that “Trump Tower, 69 stories” were a long way from Kallstadt,” referring to his grandfather’s hometown.  Trump Tower is actually a 58-story skyscraper, and this is just one example of the lies that Trump indulges to make himself and his buildings larger than they really are.

    Trump has not been as ruthless or aggressive as Hitler, but it is noteworthy that he has targeted the same institutions: media, courts, judges, law firms, higher education, and the organizations of state security.  Like Hitler, he targeted museums and libraries; not even the Kennedy Center and the Smithsonian Institution could escape his ire.

    The Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation have been weaponized; the Pentagon and the intelligence community have been politicized; the Department of Homeland Security has turned Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) into a secret police force.  The fact that ICE police wear masks and don’t identify themselves is chilling in a democracy.  The current occupation of Minneapolis, where ICE forces outnumber the local police, and now Maine is similarly chilling.

    Trump’s use of force is unprecedented.  With Stephen Miller (Trump’s Joseph Goebbels) in command, Trump has federalized the National Guard; targeted civilians who pose no threat to security; ordered military troops into U.S. cities in Blue States; invaded Venezuela and arrested its president; and bombed Iran without consulting Congress.  

    Trump’s administration is currently trying to completely dismantle the Department of Education, and has rolled back diversity programs and civil rights protections in higher education.  He has undermined research at these institutions, curbed global education, and threatened serious limits on public funding.  Federal protections for gender identity and LGBTQ rights in higher education have been significantly restricted.  Too many universities have been restricting the right to teach in the classroom in order to please Trump.

    It’s important to remember that Caesar, Napoleon, and Hitler didn’t seize power illegally. They were introduced to a republic form of government that was used as a base for their transgressions.  Trump was elected, but the Congress has been neutralized; the Supreme Court has been derelict in its duties to restrict the powers of the president; and Trump has been left to pursue power at home and abroad in his struggle for absolute power.  As he warned, the only force that can limit him is “my own mind.”

part one:

In South Texas, local Republicans push for more wins as Latinos appear to sour on Trump Even as Trump's approval ratings fall with Latinos, a constellation of grassroots Republicans are working to secure wins in the midterms.  https://www.texastribune.org/2026/01/15/south-texas-republicans-latino-donald-trump-rio-grande-valley/

Nic Garcia is a proud Colorado native who fell in love with Texas. Born in Pueblo, he studied journalism at the Metropolitan State University of Denver. Nic began his professional journalism career at Out Front, a Denver-based magazine that is one of the oldest LGBTQ news organizations in the U.S. He went on to work as a reporter and editor at Chalkbeat, The Denver Post and The Dallas Morning News. Most recently, he was the politics editor at The Des Moines Register. Nic lives in Dallas and travels throughout the state as regions editor, overseeing reporters based in Lubbock, Lufkin, Odessa and McAllen.
part two:
opening thought2:

This is message from a former police officer friend that I admire and respect, Jim Shepard. He is speaking truth.
He writes:
These aren’t my words but they capture my feelings on the Renee Goode situation pretty well
“I wore a badge long enough to know the difference between a dangerous situation and a manufactured one.
What happened in Minneapolis wasn’t split-second chaos. It wasn’t a tragic accident. And it sure as hell wasn’t “necessary force.”
It was escalation. Illegal, reckless escalation—and any law enforcement official who tells you otherwise is lying, or hasn’t done the job.
From what we’ve seen so far, the encounter didn’t begin with a threat that justified lethal force.
There was no imminent danger to officers or the public that required bullets. There was time. There were options. There were off-ramps.
And they weren’t taken.
One of the first things you’re taught as a police officer is that force is not a punishment. It’s not a tool to assert dominance. It’s not something you use because someone doesn’t comply fast enough or says the wrong thing.
Force is a last resort governed by law. Period.
The standard is simple: Is there an immediate threat of serious bodily harm or death? If the answer is no, deadly force is unlawful. Full stop.
What we’re being fed now—by Trump officials, right-wing media, and the same law-and-order grifters who never hesitate to excuse police violence—is a familiar script.
They cherry-pick moments. They speculate about “what could have happened.” They inflate fear after the fact to justify an outcome that was already decided before any real threat existed.
That’s not analysis. That’s propaganda.
I’ve watched this play out too many times. A civilian is killed. The facts are inconvenient. So the story gets rewritten—fast. Suddenly the victim is on trial. Suddenly we’re told the officer “felt threatened.” Suddenly every rule of policing bends to accommodate the result.
But feelings don’t determine legality. The Constitution does.
If a cop “feels” scared but the objective facts don’t support deadly force, the shooting is still illegal.
Law enforcement isn’t vibes-based. It’s rule-based. Or at least it’s supposed to be.
The Trump administration knows this. They also know that if they repeat the lie often enough—if they shout “violent suspect” and “split-second decision” and “officer safety” into every camera—they can muddy the water long enough for accountability to disappear.
That’s the real pattern here. Not law enforcement. Not justice.
Covering your ass cause you just did something morally abhorrent and don’t want to admit it.
As someone who has been in violent confrontations, who has had to make real decisions under real pressure, I’m telling you this plainly: restraint is part of the job. De-escalation is part of the job. Walking away alive with everyone still breathing is the job.
When officers abandon that responsibility—and when the federal government rushes to excuse it—we don’t get safety. We get impunity.
And when the state lies to protect unlawful killing, it doesn’t just dishonor the person who died. It poisons the legitimacy of every officer who still believes the badge means something.
This wasn’t a tragedy without cause. It was a choice.
And no amount of propaganda can change that.”

part two: 
Bill Curry was a Connecticut state senator, comptroller and two time Democratic nominee for governor who served as Counselor to the President in the Clinton White House. He has written for Salon, the Daily Beast, the Huffington Post and the Hartford Courant and has provided commentary on National Public Radio, MSNBC and many other news outlets.  
Jamie Rowen is a professor of Legal Studies at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and the founding director of UMass' Center for Justice, Law, and Societies. Her work focuses on both domestic and international criminal law. Her book, Worthy of Justice: The Politics of Veterans Treatment Courts in Practice, has just been released by Stanford University Press
topics:
the great rethink..America's democracy is not reliable, frankly it is no longer a democracy but a fascist aligned system masquerading as a democracy- why would nations deal with a chaotic malignant narcissist leader like Trump emerging from a system that is incapable of exercising checks on power.


The US is due to officially exit the World Health Organization on January 22, in the face of warnings it will hit both US health and global health and also in violation of a US law that requires Washington to pay the UN health agency $260 million in fees that it owes

TRUMP-MAKING BILLIONAIRES WEALTHIER AGAIN!
“Billionaires across the country saw their collective wealth reach a record high of $8.2 trillion in the first year of the second Trump regime. Their total wealth increased from $6.7 billion, a 22% increase in 2025.”
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney delivered what I suspect will be recorded in future history text books as an era defining speech. It is profound, accurate, and very relevant to another "Middle Power" like Australia.
Here is the full text of that speech. I urge you to read it in its entirety:
"It’s a pleasure – and a duty – to be with you at this turning point for Canada and for the world.
Today, I’ll talk about the rupture in the world order, the end of a nice story, and the beginning of a brutal reality where geopolitics among the great powers is not subject to any constraints.
But I also submit to you that other countries, particularly middle powers like Canada, are not powerless. They have the capacity to build a new order that embodies our values, like respect for human rights, sustainable development, solidarity, sovereignty, and territorial integrity of states.
The power of the less powerful begins with honesty.
Every day we are reminded that we live in an era of great power rivalry. That the rules-based order is fading. That the strong do what they can, and the weak suffer what they must.
This aphorism of Thucydides is presented as inevitable – the natural logic of international relations reasserting itself. And faced with this logic, there is a strong tendency for countries to go along to get along. To accommodate. To avoid trouble. To hope that compliance will buy safety.
It won’t.
So, what are our options?
In 1978, the Czech dissident Václav Havel wrote an essay called The Power of the Powerless. In it, he asked a simple question: how did the communist system sustain itself?
His answer began with a greengrocer. Every morning, this shopkeeper places a sign in his window: “Workers of the world, unite!” He does not believe it. No one believes it. But he places the sign anyway – to avoid trouble, to signal compliance, to get along. And because every shopkeeper on every street does the same, the system persists.
Not through violence alone, but through the participation of ordinary people in rituals they privately know to be false.
Havel called this “living within a lie.” The system’s power comes not from its truth but from everyone’s willingness to perform as if it were true. And its fragility comes from the same source: when even one person stops performing — when the greengrocer removes his sign — the illusion begins to crack.
It is time for companies and countries to take their signs down.
For decades, countries like Canada prospered under what we called the rules-based international order. We joined its institutions, praised its principles, and benefited from its predictability. We could pursue values-based foreign policies under its protection.
We knew the story of the international rules-based order was partially false. That the strongest would exempt themselves when convenient. That trade rules were enforced asymmetrically. And that international law applied with varying rigour depending on the identity of the accused or the victim.
This fiction was useful, and American hegemony, in particular, helped provide public goods: open sea lanes, a stable financial system, collective security, and support for frameworks for resolving disputes.
So, we placed the sign in the window. We participated in the rituals. And largely avoided calling out the gaps between rhetoric and reality.
This bargain no longer works.
Let me be direct: we are in the midst of a rupture, not a transition.
Over the past two decades, a series of crises in finance, health, energy, and geopolitics laid bare the risks of extreme global integration.
More recently, great powers began using economic integration as weapons. Tariffs as leverage. Financial infrastructure as coercion. Supply chains as vulnerabilities to be exploited.
You cannot “live within the lie” of mutual benefit through integration when integration becomes the source of your subordination.
The multilateral institutions on which middle powers relied— the WTO, the UN, the COP – the architecture of collective problem solving – are greatly diminished.
As a result, many countries are drawing the same conclusions. They must develop greater strategic autonomy: in energy, food, critical minerals, in finance, and supply chains.
This impulse is understandable. A country that cannot feed itself, fuel itself, or defend itself has few options. When the rules no longer protect you, you must protect yourself.
But let us be clear-eyed about where this leads. A world of fortresses will be poorer, more fragile, and less sustainable.
And there is another truth: if great powers abandon even the pretence of rules and values for the unhindered pursuit of their power and interests, the gains from “transactionalism” become harder to replicate. Hegemons cannot continually monetize their relationships.
Allies will diversify to hedge against uncertainty. Buy insurance. Increase options. This rebuilds sovereignty – sovereignty that was once grounded in rules, but will be increasingly anchored in the ability to withstand pressure.
As I said, such classic risk management comes at a price, but that cost of strategic autonomy, of sovereignty, can also be shared. Collective investments in resilience are cheaper than everyone building their own fortress. Shared standards reduce fragmentation. Complementarities are positive sum.
The question for middle powers, like Canada, is not whether to adapt to this new reality. We must. The question is whether we adapt by simply building higher walls – or whether we can do something more ambitious.
Canada was amongst the first to hear the wake-up call, leading us to fundamentally shift our strategic posture.
Canadians know that our old, comfortable assumption that our geography and alliance memberships automatically conferred prosperity and security is no longer valid.
Our new approach rests on what Alexander Stubb has termed “values-based realism” – or, to put it another way, we aim to be principled and pragmatic.
Principled in our commitment to fundamental values: sovereignty and territorial integrity, the prohibition of the use of force except when consistent with the UN Charter, respect for human rights.
Pragmatic in recognising that progress is often incremental, that interests diverge, that not every partner shares our values. We are engaging broadly, strategically, with open eyes. We actively take on the world as it is, not wait for a world we wish to be.
Canada is calibrating our relationships so their depth reflects our values. We are prioritising broad engagement to maximise our influence, given the fluidity of the world order, the risks that this poses, and the stakes for what comes next.
We are no longer relying on just the strength of our values, but also on the value of our strength.
We are building that strength at home.
Since my government took office, we have cut taxes on incomes, capital gains and business investment, we have removed all federal barriers to interprovincial trade, and we are fast-tracking a trillion dollars of investment in energy, AI, critical minerals, new trade corridors, and beyond.
We are doubling our defence spending by 2030 and are doing so in ways that builds our domestic industries.
We are rapidly diversifying abroad. We have agreed a comprehensive strategic partnership with the European Union, including joining SAFE, Europe’s defence procurement arrangements.
We have signed twelve other trade and security deals on four continents in the last six months.
In the past few days, we have concluded new strategic partnerships with China and Qatar.
We are negotiating free trade pacts with India, ASEAN, Thailand, Philippines, Mercosur.
To help solve global problems, we are pursuing variable geometry— different coalitions for different issues, based on values and interests.
On Ukraine, we are a core member of the Coalition of the Willing and one of the largest per-capita contributors to its defence and security.
On Arctic sovereignty, we stand firmly with Greenland and Denmark and fully support their unique right to determine Greenland’s future. Our commitment to Article 5 is unwavering.
We are working with our NATO allies (including the Nordic Baltic 😎 to further secure the alliance’s northern and western flanks, including through Canada’s unprecedented investments in over-the-horizon radar, submarines, aircraft, and boots on the ground. Canada strongly opposes tariffs over Greenland and calls for focused talks to achieve shared objectives of security and prosperity for the Arctic.
On plurilateral trade, we are championing efforts to build a bridge between the Trans-Pacific Partnership and the European Union, creating a new trading block of 1.5 billion people.
On critical minerals, we are forming buyer’s clubs anchored in the G7 so that the world can diversify away from concentrated supply.
On AI, we are cooperating with like-minded democracies to ensure we will not ultimately be forced to choose between hegemons and hyperscalers.
This is not naive multilateralism. Nor is it relying on diminished institutions. It is building the coalitions that work, issue by issue, with partners who share enough common ground to act together. In some cases, this will be the vast majority of nations.
And it is creating a dense web of connections across trade, investment, culture on which we can draw for future challenges and opportunities.
Middle powers must act together because if you are not at the table, you are on the menu.
Great powers can afford to go it alone. They have the market size, the military capacity, the leverage to dictate terms. Middle powers do not. But when we only negotiate bilaterally with a hegemon, we negotiate from weakness. We accept what is offered. We compete with each other to be the most accommodating.
This is not sovereignty. It is the performance of sovereignty while accepting subordination.
In a world of great power rivalry, the countries in between have a choice: to compete with each other for favour or to combine to create a third path with impact.
We should not allow the rise of hard power to blind us to the fact that the power of legitimacy, integrity, and rules will remain strong — if we choose to wield it together.
Which brings me back to Havel.
What would it mean for middle powers to “live in truth”?
It means naming reality. Stop invoking the “rules-based international order” as though it still functions as advertised. Call the system what it is: a period of intensifying great power rivalry, where the most powerful pursue their interests using economic integration as a weapon of coercion.
It means acting consistently. Apply the same standards to allies and rivals. When middle powers criticise economic intimidation from one direction but stay silent when it comes from another, we are keeping the sign in the window.
It means building what we claim to believe in. Rather than waiting for the old order to be restored, create institutions and agreements that function as described.
And it means reducing the leverage that enables coercion. Building a strong domestic economy should always be every government’s priority. Diversification internationally is not just economic prudence; it is the material foundation for honest foreign policy. Countries earn the right to principled stands by reducing their vulnerability to retaliation.
Canada has what the world wants. We are an energy superpower. We hold vast reserves of critical minerals. We have the most educated population in the world. Our pension funds are amongst the world’s largest and most sophisticated investors. We have capital, talent, and a government with the immense fiscal capacity to act decisively.
And we have the values to which many others aspire.
Canada is a pluralistic society that works. Our public square is loud, diverse, and free. Canadians remain committed to sustainability.
We are a stable, reliable partner—in a world that is anything but—a partner that builds and values relationships for the long term.
Canada has something else: a recognition of what is happening and a determination to act accordingly.
We understand that this rupture calls for more than adaptation. It calls for honesty about the world as it is.
We are taking the sign out of the window.
The old order is not coming back. We should not mourn it. Nostalgia is not a strategy.
But from the fracture, we can build something better, stronger, and more just.
This is the task of the middle powers, who have the most to lose from a world of fortresses and the most to gain from a world of genuine cooperation.
The powerful have their power. But we have something too – the capacity to stop pretending, to name reality, to build our strength at home, and to act together.
That is Canada’s path. We choose it openly and confidently.
And it is a path wide open to any country willing to take it with us."

--
KEEPING THE POT STIRRED SO SCUM DOESN'T RISE TO THE TOP -  Anonymous 

D. ARNIE ARNESEN
15 Rumford Street
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nha...@gmail.com
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Host of "The Attitude with Arnie Arnesen"
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