I Have A Question Going All The Way Back To 1939 November 16, 2023 But first: > How the next Republican president could stop most abortions without Congress. > Mick Mulvaney Changes His Mind. Trump’s ex-C.O.S. is a supporter no more. > Journalism professor’s six-word mantra is a blueprint for how news outlets should cover the 2024 race: “NOT THE ODDS, BUT THE STAKES.” It’s quick read that segues nicely into this, by the retired managing editor of Stars and Stripes, no less: The Death of the New York Times Ever since Trump and his Republicans attack on our country and subsequent coup attempt in 2021, I have been calling for The Times and ALL major media companies to establish Democracy Desks in their newsrooms. . . . If the Republicans are successful in taking down our Democracy and installing an authoritarian regime in Washington, one of the very first things to go will be our freedom of the press, and THEN where will The Times be? It is ludicrous that their readers aren’t being educated everyday about what the Republicans have in mind and how devastating it would be to the citizens of this country if they ever got back into the White House. For one thing, it’s fair to posit there would never be another election again — at least not one that would be remotely fair. Ever since the disaster in November, 2016, just enough Americans have risen up and gotten active stamping out the flames of fascism Republicans have so frantically been fanning. But we could use a little help. . . . That would start with knocking it the hell off with these stupid polls that predict nothing, and start dealing with our terrifying realties. Which terrifying realities segue (at last) into my question: Given the Republican front-runner’s admiration for dictators . . . and his increasing use of language like “vermin” and “communists” to describe anyone who opposes him . . . language that comes straight from the book he for years kept by his bed . . . . . . which side would he have been rooting for in the early days of World War II, before Pearl Harbor? The Germans? Or the French, Poles, Czechs, Russians, and British? It may sound like a stupid question now (except, perhaps, to some of the “very fine people” who marched with torches in Charlottesville); but back then, an awful lot of Americans were rooting for the German dictator. Are we sure, had he been alive in 1939, Trump’s sympathies would not have aligned with these patriotic Americans gathered in Madison Square Garden? And do we think that today, in 2023, he hopes Putin is defeated in Ukraine? That autocracies around the world give way to democracies? I have come to doubt it.