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In the incredible amount of midterm elections news, there were totalitarian sounding words of Ellissa Slotkin, Democratic senator from Michigan. Her comments were a clear threat to make the lives of young people who aspired to and took jobs in the President Donald Trump administration miserable, were but a momentary blip in the 24-hour news cycle.
However, what she said and the manner in which she spoke was both revealing and frightening since Democrats either knowingly or unknowingly very often fall into the psychological defense mechanism called "projection" which involves accusing someone else of a behavior or activity that you are already up to.
To begin, who is Slotkin? Until very recently, while I had heard the name, I have paid no attention to her career. Upon investigation, I found she is a learned woman with a bachelor's degree from Cornell and a Masters of International Affairs from Columbia University. In addition, she is fluent in both Arabic and Swahili. Following 9/11 she was recruited by the Central Intelligence Agency as a Middle East Analyst and served three tours in Iraq over a period of five years.
Following that she served on the National Security Council during the George W. Bush Administration and was asked to stay on during the President Barack Obama Administration. She later served in senior leadership roles at the Department of Defense, eventually serving as the Acting Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Affairs. Until 2019 Slotkin had mostly been known as the daughter of Curt Slotkin the inventor of the famous "Ballpark Frank" the kind that ” plump when you cook ’em.” But in 2018 Slotkin ran for and won election to the House of Representees, serving from 2019 until 2025 and then won a highly competitive race for the Senate defeating Rep. Mike Rogers.
During her political career, Slotkin has been controversial but after remarks made at a political forum at the University of Chicago on Oct. 13, she rose to new heights of controversial speech. She advocated pursuing what she called "signature cases" involving President Trump and those around him. She said, "I want to look at these signature cases not focusing on the president but on the people who enabled him. Continuing, she said that she wanted young people considering jobs in the Trump administration to worry that doing so "might be buying myself a ton of problems that I don't want. I want that deterrence message sent"
Sounding like a disciple of Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels it seems she envisioned hauling these young people into court based on some pretext connected to her "signature cases" with the aim of impoverishing them for life with legal fees and blacklisting them so that they can never get a good job. Her ex-husband brought two grown daughters to that marriage, but she has no children of her own, which is a good thing because her threats against young people indicate that the Senator is totally lacking in maternal instincts.
A complaint that was filed with the Senate Ethics Committee cited a provision in the Senate Ethics Manual that allows discipline for conduct that "unfavorably reflects on the institution as a whole," even outside of official duties. It also points to the expectation that senators demonstrate "a proper respect for the principles of ethics and morality." It appears that the senator may have opened herself to sanctions by the Senate.
Senator Mike Lee (R-UT) said of Slotkin's words that "it is absolutely disgraceful to threaten young Americans for participating in politics and serving their country." Slotkin's response to Lee was an attempt to make herself the real victim of a weaponized government. She said she and several other Democratic senators were targeted by President Trump and Republican members of Congress when they were attacked after they issued a blatantly seditious statement telling members of the military not to follow any what they described as illegal orders that might be issued by the Office of War. In wartime such a statement would likely have been considered a gross act of sedition.
Slotkin conveniently forgets that Democrats and their hitmen like Jack Smith and Letia James who weaponized politics through the infamous "lawfare" for the last 10 years to destroy Trump, his family, and businesses and to hamstring his administration at every opportunity with compliant Democratic appointed federal judges. She also forgets Biden's politicized FBI that surveilled parents who spoke out at school board meetings against transgender boys in girl's locker rooms and Catholics who picketed abortion providers.
I also suspect that she harbors presidential ambitions, and I have added her to my list of Democrats who are not Presidential material where she joins Kamala Harris, Gavin Newsom, Pete Buttigieg, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.