Welcome to FASCIST DEMAGOGUERY 101

Here’s yet another one of those obvious questions I’ve encouraged you readers to start asking: Why must I keep writing such critical opinion editorials about Trump and his ongoing job performance?

That’s an easy one to answer.

I keep doing it because I’m a patriot who sees how vigorously and incessantly Trump keeps undermining our democracy. I keep doing it because I love my country. With all its problems and sometimes fragile freedoms, America is still my one and only home. And I hate what Trump has been trying to do to it and its citizenry and its innate idealism. He’s not trying to “Make America Great Again.” He’s trying to implode it from within.

This guy isn’t just an iconoclast. He’s a sociopathic iconoclast — not a good thing for democracy at all. At the rate he’s been going, though, he’s going to keep doing and saying more and more outrageous things until he officially and undeniably becomes America’s Dictator-in-Chief. In fact, he might be closer than you think to attaining that new job title. After witnessing this government shut-down that he and his cronies orchestrated, I’d say this improbability seems more and more like a real possibility.

I’m not alone with such an assessment, either. Scholar Naomi Wolf, humorist Bill Mahr, countless political scientists and historians — they’re all on the same page with me when it comes to Trump, the poor little rich boy who aspires to be mad King.

Let me put that another way by quoting an excerpt from How Democracies Die, written by political scientists Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt. (Really, that IS the actual name of the book.)

In the January 11, 2018 edition of “The New York Times,” their work was featured in the “BOOKS OF THE TIMES” column. Reviewer Jennifer Szalai made this insightful observation about their book — and what’s turning out to be Trump’s game plan:

“‘How Democracies Die’ is a lucid and essential guide to what can happen here. Levitsky and Ziblatt show how democracies have collapsed elsewhere — not just through violent coups, but more commonly (and insidiously) thorough a gradual slide into authoritarianism. Autocrats often come to power through democratic elections rather than at the point of a gun. Establishment elites can inadvertently assist would-be despots, as insiders delude themselves into believing they can invite an outsider into power and then pull the puppet strings. As one German aristocrat boasted in 1933: ‘Within two months, we will have pushed Hitler so far into a corner that he’ll squeal.’”

Hitler never did squeal. Neither will Trump. In fact POTUS #45 has been about as quiet as a mouse peeing on cotton. He knows he doesn’t have to make a sound as long as he keeps performing his “Misunderstood Liberator” act out in the open. He’s not going to stop doing that schtick until he frightens enough citizens into trading their freedoms for his ersatz security network. Does that surprise you? It shouldn’t. He’s been doing everything to indicate that was his plan all along, even BEFORE he got elected to the Presidency.

Trump’s Hidden Agenda?
It wasn’t The Wall
after all.
It was fear and might
hidden in plain sight.

Trump’s Real Endgame?
Absolute power though fear and destruction.

His plan is to destroy the very structure and fabric of American democracy until it gets so bad he’ll “have to declare” martial law…Or, he’ll have to use an executive order to declare a “National Emergency.” Either way, he can bypass both Congress and our Constitution so he can build The Wall. Either way, it’ll be bad for our democracy because it won’t be about building The Wall. It never was. It was always about flexing his muscles from fascist demagogue to dictator.

But as visionaries Levitsky and Ziblatt suggest in their book, it takes a village for a would-be despot to truly become all-powerful dictator. Frightened voters and smug GOP supporters not only had to elect him to power, they also had to give away their own powers as free citizens in a democracy. So Americans had to give away their own democratic rights to make this transfer of power happen…and a lot of them did.

So Trump isn’t the only guilty party here. No, Americans shouldn’t excuse Trump’s unmistakable power grab. But while they’re blaming him they should also blame the others who made his ascent to power so relatively easy. By now, you must know who they are. Senators Mitch McConnell, Lindsey Graham, Jeff Sessions, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Kellyanne Conway — the list is endless. Trump’s supporters, enablers, and unapologetic toadies must also take responsibility for their reprehensible actions.

I’d like to close with “God Bless The United States of America,” but as JFK once observed, “God’s work here on Earth must truly be our own.” So get ready. Time to clean the House — and the Senate and whatever else is buried in the Rose Garden.