Dear Progressive Reader,

The week began with an eerily familiar scene in the capital city of Brasilia in Brazil—hundreds of rioters stormed the nation’s government buildings claiming that their candidate, the former authoritarian president Jair Bolsonaro, had been robbed of his victory in a fraudulent election. Well, he wasn’t, and now hundreds (including several current and former government officials) have been arrested for their role in destroying property and damaging art and artifacts.

As Jeff Abbott reports, “The group was mobilized by nationalistic and proto-fascist ideologies, singing the national anthem, and flying the country’s colors as they rampaged.” But, slightly different from the response to January 6 here in the United States, Abbott continues, “On January 9, thousands of Brazilians mobilized to show their widespread rejection of the attack on the government buildings by Bolsonaro’s supporters. Tens of thousands marched across the country under the banner ‘no amnesty,’ demanding that those who participated in the invasion be prosecuted for their attack on democracy.” It is also important to note, that this did not occur in a vacuum: “The myth that the 2022 Brazilian election was stolen from Bolsonaro also received significant support and spread from those close to ex-U.S. President Donald Trump,” Abbott tells us. “This includes ex-Trump adviser Steve Bannon, who spent the past two months denying the results of the Brazilian election.” As Congressmember Jamie Raskin (Democrat of Maryland) noted in his epilogue to the January 6 committee’s report, as published by The New Yorker earlier this month, “We are facing a full-scale frontal assault on democracy—not just in the mob . . . but in the form of more systematic threats to majority rule.”

Speaking of threats to majority rule, Representative Kevin McCarthy (Republican of California) was named Speaker of the House after conceding a great deal of his power as Speaker to a small minority in the House last week. Cartoonist Mark Fiore illustrates McCarthy’s situation this week, noting, “at least Kevin McCarthy will have his dream job! (That is unless any one member of the Crazy Caucus decides to give him the boot.)” But McCarthy and his supporters got an unexpected boost this week in their quest to open a series of investigations into President Joe Biden and other Democrats: The discovery in November and December of two caches of classified documents in Biden’s former office building in Washington, D.C., and in his garage in Delaware. An additional document was located in Delaware this week. This looks very bad for Biden’s credibility, especially after he had said that former President Donald Trump was “totally irresponsible” for keeping documents at his Mar-a-Lago resort.

The situations are, of course, very different. Washington Post associate editor Jonathan Capehart perhaps put it best when he told PBS NewsHour “This is apples and basketballs. I mean, these two . . . objects are spherical in nature, and that's all they have in common.” The volume and sensitivity of material taken from unlocked storage at Mar-a-Lago was certainly an order of magnitude greater, but even more so, it may reflect the cavalier attitude that Trump regularly took with classified information. It reminds me of a section I quoted in my 2020 review of The Grifter’s Club, by Miami Herald reporter Sarah Blaskey and her colleagues: “ ‘Mister President, I shouldn’t know this,’ someone heard the performer [who was entertaining Trump and then-Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe when they received news of a North Korean missile test] say. Trump shrugged. ‘It’s just nukes,’ he said. ‘Sing us a song.’ ”

Also this week, Ed Rampell reviews the brand new film, On Sacred Ground, about the Standing Rock protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline in 2016. Mike Ervin looks at New York’s new policy to involuntarily round up and hospitalize people living on the streets of that city. And Bruce Mirken pens an op-ed suggesting that now is the time for everyone to dump Twitter.

Donald Trump, even though he is now allowed to return to Twitter, appears to agree. Humorously, Trump drew a large Twitter response when he posted on his own social media platform Truth Social this week: “Importantly, I have single-handedly shown the American Public how Crooked and Corrupt our Government is.” The post (called “truths” rather than “tweets” in this looking-glass world) appears to have since been deleted—but not before the Twitterverse exploded with derision. “He certainly did that every single day he was in office,” tweeted former federal prosecutor Ron Filipkowski. “It’s the only thing he actually excelled at,” responded another user.

Finally, tomorrow marks the ninety-fourth birthday anniversary of the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. It will be celebrated with a national holiday on Monday, as it has been since 1986, but that honor was a long time in coming as I wrote a few years ago. King is often remembered for some, but not all of his beliefs. His quest for true economic justice, and his advocacy for world peace, are often swept under the rug. But, as Yohuru Williams reminds us, with a full reading of all that King had to say to us, “The civil-rights leader’s words can help us build a democracy that reflects our ideals, not our ugly history.”

Please keep reading, and we will keep bringing you important articles on these and other issues of our time.

Sincerely,

Norman Stockwell
Publisher

P.S. - The new 2023 Hidden History of the United States calendar is now available. You can order one online and get it mailed in time for the holidays.

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