Adolph Hitler (one of Donald Trump’s wannabe authoritarians, along with Vladmir Putin and Viktor Orban), systematically disabled and then dismantled his country’s democratic structures and processes in one month, three weeks, two days, eight hours, and 40 minutes from the date he was appointed Chancellor.[1]
Despite his pre-election, patently false statements that he knew nothing about it, much less who wrote it,[2] Trump is presently using the 900-page Project 2025, chapter and verse, to do exactly what Hitler did in Germany, only to our own American government and democracy[3]— dismantle and destroy our government, its system of checks and balances, and its Constitution.[4]
This Constitutional crisis[5] has become daily news, as he and Elon Musk (Trump’s version of Hermann Goring) run roughshod and mindlessly through every government agency and department firing career federal employees who have tirelessly and faithfully done the dog-work of government for years, and, all the while, dismantling those agencies and departments in favor of – oligarchical, fascist tyranny.
Though not quite as quickly as Hitler destroyed his Country’s government, Trump and Musk are doing exactly the same thing to ours.
Where did American go wrong? In 2024 voters elected to the Presidency the most mentally deranged, self-centered, incompetent, toxic, venal, draft-dodging, and corrupt insurrectionist ever to serve in that office. America elected to the highest and most powerful public office on earth, a man with the emotional maturity of a spoiled two-year old; a self-proclaimed dictator; a man who refers to our wounded and dead veterans as “suckers” and “losers;” a man who defiled Arlington Cemetery for a photo-op; a President whose oval office is now decorated to look like the foyer of a cheese and sleaze brothel—but then, aptly so, as it turns out.
Donald Trump is neither a leader nor a governor. Rather he is a ruler who dictates by fiat and order, and by trashing the norms, sideboards and protocols that have epitomized—and controlled–Presidents since George Washington. He makes a mockery of the rule of law as a matter of habit and on a daily basis.
Tellingly, every time after he signs one of his silly orders or edicts with his big sharpie, he displays the document for photo-ops like some three-year-old holding up a refrigerator picture for his mother’s approval: “See, I put 200,000 people out of work today and ruined their worthless lives. I’m a Big Boy now! I’m a dictator just like Adolph, Vladmir and Viktor.”
While Trump is usually wrong, he is never in doubt. And, he has surrounded himself with incompetent loyalists, sycophants and lickspittles whose main job is to stroke his massive ego and tell him what he wants to hear.
In truth, though, four things motivate each and every decision Trump makes: (1) Will it make me look good? (2) Will I make money doing it? (3) Will it make me more powerful? And, (4) Can I punish my enemies doing it?
And, God help us, he is toying with a way to be elected to a third term—even though the 22ndAmendment to the federal Constitution forbids it.
In the final analysis, however, Trump—obviously no believer in history—should take note that every dictator from Mussolini on has been either forced into exile, assassinated, or arrested, tried, convicted and imprisoned or executed. It’s just a matter of time.
Indeed, against every fascist regime from Mussolini on there has been a resistance movement fighting the imposition of tyranny and authoritarianism.[6] There will be one against Trump and his “unified Reich,”[7] too. Count on it.
The official motto of United States is “In God we Trust.”[8]
Now’s the time to do so–because we can’t trust America’s Hitler.
Notes.
[1]
[2]
[3]
[4]
[5]
[6] See, generally, Strongmen, Mussolini to the Present, by Ruth Ben-Ghiat,, W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., New York, 2021, 2020.
[7]
[8]
