During the early years of the Bill Clinton administration, I was temporarily assigned by the Defense Logistics Agency to a major Pentagon project.  Our small civilian team included experienced personnel from all services and one Bill Clinton appointee lacking any logistics background.  We never figured out why he was there.  His prior job was managing a trailer park — no joke.  Our assignment was to benchmark private-sector aviation maintenance logistics processes to see if the military systems could be similarly streamlined to cut costs.  The project lasted nearly a year and involved extensive travel to numerous private-sector aviation parts-manufacturers, distributors, and customers.  Visits included Boeing, GE Engines, Bell Helicopter, Delta Air Lines, etc.

The research project cost several million dollars, and it was ultimately a failure.  We did not come up with the desired answer.  Our investigation proved that more depth of inventory was required for aircraft maintenance, not less like what Toyota was able to do with its just-in-time inventory for car production.  The SecDef ignored our recommendations and cut the acquisition funding anyway.  Aviation readiness deteriorated to new lows just in time for 9/11.

While I was on that assignment, the local D.C.-area news was focused on Hillary's questionable, extremely lucrative stock investments.  The Hooters restaurant chain sensed an opportunity to produce an attention-getting ad by jokingly stating that "Hillary had no Hooters" (implying stock shares, of course).  We out-of-towners on the project thought it was a hoot, but our Clinton appointee was highly offended.  Perhaps coincidentally, a few days later, Hooters was issued a legal action for discriminating against male waiters.  The Hooter's ad quickly vanished, but the costly lawsuit dragged on for years.  The legal action was most likely Hillary seeking vengeance for a perceived slight, but no one investigated.

It seems that even in the 1990s, the Dems were vengeful.  Now they have more power, more tools, and a much friendlier media.

The day after the Capitol stampede, the disappointing news drove me to watch anything but news.  An old 1940 black-and-white movie on TCM about 1930s pre-WWII Germany titled Escape was just coming on, so I got comfortable and watched.  In the movie, an American (Robert Taylor) travels to Germany to visit his ill mother, who retained her German citizenship and is living in Bavaria.  He is unaware that she had been sent to a concentration camp and was awaiting execution for some perceived slight against the party.  He is frustrated by the extreme lack of assistance and fear coming from his relatives when trying to locate her.  The Sgt. Schultz "I know nothing!" response is the feedback he always gets, except in rare instances, when far away from prying eyes and ears.  The ordinary German people in the movie seem to cope well enough by maintaining their silence with few exceptions.

The movie is realistic and suspenseful to the end.  I could not help but notice the parallels with America's cancel culture, with its zealous informants.  It hit too close to home for comfort.  The only difference I see today is the lack of dedicated concentration camps, Gestapo enforcers, and quick executions.

Today's leftist cancel culture has many new ways to silence or even destroy those who resist their agenda.  Social media bans are only the tip of our iceberg.  And this time, it is not only the Jews and political dissidents who are being oppressed.  Modern identity politics has reversed the roles and created entirely new and intertwined minority victim groups and self-flagellating woke white elites who become the hateful oppressors instead of the Aryan supremacists.  The new group being oppressed seems to include anyone supportive of Trump regardless of race, conservative Christians, orthodox Jews, constitutional conservatives, etc.  Their enemies list is long and subject to frequent change.

The current flood of resignations by Trump staffers and the apologies and concessions by weak Republican politicians will not save them from the left's vengeance.  The attempts to destroy Trump and his past and present supporters will only intensify after Biden/Harris take office and fully weaponize the DOJ.

Am I being too pessimistic?  Maybe, but there is no denying that the left is not shy about seeking vengeance.

Image via Max Pixel.