CommentsONE MAN’S OPINION-Trump did not invent the new American value of betrayal. He is merely the most publicly acknowledged example.
“The thought is father to the deed,” said Sigmund Freud. One need not believe in psychoanalysis to recognize that people’s thoughts and beliefs result in their actions.
England’s Charles I (1600-1649) truly believed in the Divine Right of Kings, and hence, he did whatever he wanted to do with everyone else be damned or put to death. The German Nazis believed that the world should be Judenrein, and hence, the mass extermination of 6 million Jews. California’s Supreme Court believes that Article VI Section 10 of its constitution gives judges the right to exclude Jews from hearings and to alter evidence offered by Jews. Hence, “troublemaker” Jewish attorneys are removed from cases, their appeals are dismissed without being heard, court records are altered, and judges have ex parte communications with friendly attorneys.
When outrageous betrayal of our core values becomes an acceptable thought, we should not be surprised that Trump gives the green light to ethnic cleansing of the Kurds and the possible start of another genocide by Turkey. That will be averted only if the rest of the world takes action.
Trump, the Narcissistic Histrionic, Is No Great Thinker
As a histrionic, Trump has a talent to play to the cheering crowd. Ninety-nine percent of Americans fail to comprehend how Trump’s defective mind operates because as a people we have betrayed our belief in facts and the core values of truth and justice. When it comes to significant issues -- like health care, housing, the judicial system, immigration, and climate change -- the Fourth Estate, i.e., the media, has abdicated its duty to provide facts.
The media is called “The Fourth Estate” because the other three estates (the legislative, executive and the judiciary) cannot properly function unless the media provides the public with accurate information. The media has known for years that Donald Trump is mentally ill; yet, it suppressed this knowledge. Two basic factors caused the sell-out of American journalism: (1) the public does not care about facts, and (2) the 1% has turned the media into a non-stop propaganda machine.
For the most part, our American media has betrayed the trust which We the People placed in it with freedom of the press. Implicit in that constitutional guarantee was the media’s promise to ferret out the truth. The Republic can exist only as long as the public has reliable information. A media that peddles lies and myths has broken that covenant.
Why Does Los Angeles, and the Rest of the Nation, Have a Homeless Crisis?
The most disgusting part of the local media pro-developer agenda is that it’s pretending to hold the corrupt officials accountable. Watch KNBC Channel 4's newest advertisements about its Streets of Shame series and how it holds public officials accountable. Accountable? Ha! On a scale of 1 to 10 with 10 being worse, LA’s media merits as 12+. Its most recent repulsive example is KABC’s fawning coverage of Garcetti’s skid row women’s shelter for 100 homeless battered women. All the TV stations follow the same game plan: unquestionably cover Garcetti’s photo-ops, hype the extreme dangers the criminal and deranged homeless present, and emphasize the need to pay developers hundreds of millions of dollars to construct “affordable housing.” Never report how Garcetti’s Manhattanization has caused and continues to cause the crisis.
The greatest betrayal by the LA media lies in its concealing not only the cause of the current homeless crisis but covering up how the city increases homelessness daily by the destruction of more rent-controlled apartments. Ironically, the city’s number of homeless people increased last year by the same amount as the number of destroyed rent-controlled apartments.
You can be certain LA’s media will not analyze the actual cause of homeless crisis which is Garcetti’s “New Urbanism” that promotes increased profits for the 1% by excessive densification in urban cores. Densification always increases houses costs. Thus, each time the city promotes an affordable housing project in the Basin, it is generally increasing housing costs. The media will never admit that sprawl reduces homelessness and spreads the wealth, while densification increases homelessness and concentrates wealth in the hands of the 1%. (Real sprawl means all land use, including offices and manufacturing move outward, not just bedrooms.)
The Betrayal of Truth, Justice and the American Way Has Ruined the Judicial System
As an increasing number of people are realizing, the courts are rigged. As long as voting whites kept believing that the criminal courts were only railroading black and brown people into prison, they were copasetic with the eradication of due process. The first public persons to feel the incipient backlash over the use of lying jailhouse informants were former Orange County District Attorney Tony Rackauckas and former California Attorney General Kamala Harris (whose polls numbers dramatically fell when her role as Queen of the Jailhouse Informants was brought forth by Sen. Tulsi Gabbard on the 2020 presidential campaign trail).
As more people witness family court judges destroy families and see probate and conservatorship judges steal property from the elderly, the more people realize that the California judicial system has become a nearly endless betrayal of American values. What is a person to do? If elderly people do not agree to the court taking their property, there’s the threat that judge will declare them incompetent, and force them to pay the fees of the court-appointed attorney who arrange for the thefts. People familiar with the legends surrounding Sodom and Gomorrah will recognize that this is what these biblical judges did: abuse the poor and then charge them for the privilege of being abused.
While one hears similar stories of corrupt judiciaries from around the nation, Los Angeles County appears to be particularly out of control. Judges alter evidence, threaten attorneys into abandoning their clients so that the judge’s buddy can take over a case. With help from judges, the court system has often become a racket for attorneys to fleece clients. One hopeful sign of a reversal of the wholesale betrayal of Truth, Justice and the American way is that the California legislature has opened the statute of limitations for victims of sex abuse enabling them to sue the predators. Also, the Feds stepping into the Ed Buck prosecution is a possible harbinger of reform.
Revenge inspired by betrayal tends to be irrational, bloody and insatiable. Those who think that they may run roughshod over others with impunity would do well to remember Charles I. Eventually, the vast judicial corruption may render up an American Madame Lafarge. Right now, there is still time for the betrayers to pull back, voluntarily adhere to the Constitution and cease perverting our institutions for their personal aggrandizement.
(Richard Lee Abrams is a Los Angeles attorney and a CityWatch contributor. He can be reached at: [email protected]. Abrams views are his own and do not necessarily reflect the views of CityWatch) Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.
