Thursday, September 10, 2015
8:30 pm
Pittsburgh @ NEW ENGLAND (-7) 52
During the late 1930’s, Joseph Stalin tried to add a veneer of legitimacy to his “Great Purge” by employing Andrey Vyshinsky as Prosecutor General. Vyshinsky was a sycophantic toadie who carried out the “Man of Steel’s” directives without delay or discretion.
In just two years, ….. Two million people were arrested and approximately 700,000 were executed. An incredible rate of 1,000 executions per day. He was a big advocate of torture & prioritized any sort of coerced confession as golden. He attended the Nuremberg Trials alongside Stalin, headed the Soviet legal delegation and was said to be bored & impatient with the “Unnecessary Accountability of Western Justice.” In 1949 he served as Minister of Foreign Affairs till Stalin’s death in 1953.
He employed gratuitous courtroom rhetoric when referring to defendants & enemies of the state. Many of his official descriptions became cliches in numerous languages and are still used today, even though they were originally spoken or written in Russian: “Dregs of Society,” “Decaying Humanoid Carrion,” “Terrorist Thugs,” “Dogs of the Fascist Bourgeoisie” and “Lowlifes of the Gutter.”
His most famous quote: “Show me a man and I will find the crime.”
Vyshinsky’s work has left a substantial legacy. Much of his pioneering legal framework was the basis for much of the framework of North Korea’s much admired justice system
In Nazi Germany throughout the 1930’s and even through World War II, Adolph Hitler had a far more tenuous hold on the reins of power than Stalin. Hitler had hundreds of internal threats to his reign including over forty documented assassination attempts.
To justify the actions of the Third Reich he constantly employed sophisticated propaganda through the state controlled media & all the institutions of government. To counter these perilous hazards he felt it was still imperative to concoct a convincing facade of legitimacy to inform the public he was doing the right thing and to speed along Nazi solutions.
Hitler was a big admirer of the administration of Stalin and lamented that he didn’t quite have the same degree of unfettered power in his own dictatorship. He often remarked that the Nazis needed their own “Vyshinsky” to expedite their wishes. Set up outside the German Constitution, the Nazi’s Kangaroo Court; “The People’s Court” was the vehicle waiting for just such a man.
In 1942, fanatical anti-Semite and vehement Nazi Roland Freisler was promoted to President of the People’s Court after the former head was promoted to Reich Justice Minister. Freisler excelled at the position, and quickly facilitated convictions at a rate surpassing all his predecessors, ……. far beyond Hitler’s wildest dreams.
Freisler convicted 98% of the defendants before him. An incredible 95% were handed death sentences. Over 5,000 Germans, many for purely minor political reasons as well as those who were actual threats to the Reich were executed. Freisler usually wrote the formal ruling and sentencing out before the actual trial began. Most famously, he oversaw the trial of the plotters in the July 20th 1944 plot to assassinate Hitler as depicted in the movie Valkyrie.
Freisler screamed from the bench at the hundreds of defendants throughout the proceedings like a rabid hyena, employing demagoguery & hyperbole at a level likely never before witnessed in legal history.
However, the Nazis had arrested so many people and folded them into the plot, that even with Freisler’s express-lane courtroom, scores of defendants had not yet been tried by the winter of 1945. On February third of that year, Freisler was overseeing the trial of Fabian von Schlabrendorf, a key participant in the July 20th attempted coup. During the proceedings, a bombing raid caused the courtroom to be evacuated. Freisler, obsessed with details & his legacy stayed in the courtroom to gather up his extensive files.
A direct hit destroyed the court and killed Freisler. As a result, von Schlabrendorf fell through the bureaucratic cracks, his trial was postponed and he survived the rest of the war in various concentration camps and ironically later became a judge in West Germany.
Although their is some dispute as to whether it was a British or American bomb that hit the courthouse that day, it serves as further irony that the United States air raid was headed by Lt. Colonel Robert Rosenthal, …… a multi-decorated war hero and Jewish American.
NFL Commissioner Robert Goodell never saw the need to employ a hatchet man like Vyshinsky or Freisler to oversee football’s version of the kangaroo court. His ego appointed himself Judge, Jury, Executioner & Court of Appeals Magistrate.
How’s that been working out?
With the arbitrator ruling Tom Brady’s four game suspension overturned last week, Clarence Darrow Goodell has once again had his judgement condemned and many questioning his overall competency to run the League. His track record of reversals & suspension reductions would have a normal lawyer disbarred and any sitting judge removed due to incompetency.
If he keeps his job, ( and we’re pretty sure he will, since he makes everyone in the League a lot of money and was just following the directive of many influential owners to go after the Patriots ) Roger should really look into getting his own personal straw-man hanging judge appointed as Vice President of Discipline to occupy an office next to him at 345 Park Avenue New York. Then when NFL rulings go south, Goodell can at least maintain the optics of arm’s length neutrality.
Maybe someone along the lines of the late Al Lewis { Grandpa Munster } who as Judge H.H. Harrison in the movie “Used Cars.” He paid little attention to the proceedings in his own courtroom and alleviated the boredom by playing with working model gallows & guillotines next to his gavel.
Tom Brady, Belichick, Kraft, the Patriots and their fans are feeling pretty good right now and are all touting the cleansing tonic of redemption and innocence.
Good, because they are just about the only ones who believe that they are guilt free. Of Course they are a great franchise, arguably a dynasty. They are also devious cheating pond scum with no shame and a legacy of deceit. This makes you wonder why they can’t exploit that common ground and makeup with Mr. Goodell and all just go back to printing money.
We have a feeling this year will mark the start of the decline of the Patriots. The Egyptian, Persian, Greek, Roman, Mongol, Ottoman & Gambino empires all eventually ceased to prevail over their domain. The grinding of the Patriots into the turf is inevitable.
The clock is running out on the Kraft-Belichick-Brady Triumvirate. The lawsuits, divorce rumors & receding hairline issues have been especially hard on Golden Boy Tom Brady. Early season rust, a lousy preseason & the exhaustion of tilting at too many windmills to preserve his legacy mean the GQ Quarterback is set up for a sub par outing.
Steelers cover.
