IT WAS ME – Bystanders To Fascism…Again

On February 27, 1933, Adolph Hitler was sworn in as Chancellor of Germany. Four weeks later the Reichstag Fire destroyed the parliament building in Berlin, and Hitler used the incident to claim a communist plot, prompting an emergency decree suspending civil liberties, freedom of the press and privacy rights. 

That’s how it started. Soon every aspect of daily life was to come under totalitarian control: mobility, association, information, wor-
ship, expression… 

A scant decade later the Third Reich had gained control of most of Europe and was well into executing the “Final Solution,” first stripping citizenship from millions of Germans it deemed undesirable and then slaughtering them.

One of the most haunting questions in history remains: How could the German public not have noticed what was happening to their country in that decade-long buildup to the Holocaust?

ADOLPH WHO?
The United States of America, long the envy of the world for its democratic principles, now sits in the same place Germany was during that infamous decade. Like those German citizens, Americans now face the same question: How can millions of us staunchly support a man who so clearly espouses the same malevolence, the same fascist principles that drove Hitler?

    How can so many of the rest 
    of us...still be questioning our 
    own instincts?

PHOTO: Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images

More importantly, how can so many of the rest of us—those of us who may feel uneasy about this tyrant, but aren’t quite sure he’s so bad—still be questioning our own instincts about him and his regime. Perhaps wondering if we shouldn’t be respecting, if not the man, at least the office of the presidency. Still willing to wait and see what happens.

THEY’RE HE-E-RE!
Well, my friends, I hate to burst your little bubble of faith, propriety or whatever you want to call your reluctance. It’s no longer a question of whether the USA might be leaning a bit too far to the right. We’re well past that tipping point where those Germans started wondering about Hitler, but realized it was too late.

Here’s the brutal truth, folks: the United States of America—right now—is no longer the Demo-
cracy with which most of us have been blessed our entire lives. In defense of which so many millions of our ancestors have fought and died. We are—right now—a full-out fascist dictatorship.

How can I say that? Here’s a list of the key historical descriptors of fascism, along with notes on how each applies to the USA—right now:

Fascist leaders and their regimes:

• Undermine confidence in democratic institutions: constitutional frameworks, free elections, judicial independence, human rights and public trust. BEING DONE NOW IN THE USA.
• Demand loyalty, first of party members and public officials, eventually of citizens. BEING DONE NOW IN THE USA.
• Incite an “us vs. them” mentality, turning citizens against one another and stirring anger and fear of a common enemy—minorities and immigrants are common targets. BEING DONE NOW IN THE USA.
• Co-opt unifying symbols like the national flag and religious icons—the cross and Bible for example—and flaunt them as their own. BEING DONE NOW IN THE USA.
  
  

  

  PHOTO: Patrick Semansky / AP

  
  
• Expand the military to: 1. Enforce a “My country first” foreign policy, and 2. Suppress domestic dissent. BEING DONE NOW IN THE USA.
• Coerce supporters to trade individual freedoms for servitude of ruling party’s demands. BEING DONE NOW IN THE USA.

• Glorify themselves (especially the leader): claiming credit for everything good, naming institutions for themselves, promoting their likeness or “brand.”  BEING DONE NOW IN THE USA.
  
  

  

  PHOTO: Washington Post

  
  
• Discredit and suppress legitimate news media and stoke cynicism about conventional definitions of truth itself. BEING DONE NOW IN THE USA.
• Replace higher education and science with self-serving, state-controlled institutions. BEING DONE NOW IN THE USA.
• Normalize vengeance, cruelty and violence. BEING DONE NOW IN THE USA.

WHO WAS IT?
So, if you still have any doubt whatsoever about the intentions of Donald Trump and the traitors who work for and enable him, you’re in infamously good company. 

To your descendants, to your compatriots, to everyone in coming generations who asks, as we have about those Germans in the 1930s, “Who could have been so blind, so callous, so treasonous to allow this to happen?,” here's your only honest reply.

This time, the shameful, inescapable answer will be: It was me. 

PHOTO: iStockPhoto

SHIT THE BED – MAGA’S Mine-Or-No-One’s Meanness

PHOTO: The Needling

It’s no secret the last couple of generations of working-class Americans have felt a growing sense of abandonment, discontent and, many of them, rage. They feel cheated out of what they see as the “American Dream:” that everyone born in this country (and no one else), whatever the choices they’ve made about their work, their education, their aspirations, is somehow entitled to prosperity.
 
Their wrath is so intense, their imagination so limited, that their response has been not to work harder, not to retrain, not to compete or evolve, but, like a spiteful two-year-old, simply to shit their bed.

PHOTO: Zero to Three

They've defiled the very Democracy that championed their parents' and grand-
parents' dreams.

HOARD MENTALITY
The little monsters have soiled the very nest that’s reared and protected them. Defiled the welcoming, opportunity-rich, rights-protecting Democracy that championed their parents’ and grandparents’ dreams and made their lives possible. 

All because of two obsessions. First, with what they've been told are invading hordes of immigrants pouring across our borders, stealing their jobs, sucking up government resources…oh, and they’re rapists. 

(These folks must see their jobs as pretty menial if such worthless losers from other countries can snap them up them so easily. Oh, and those government resources MAGA’s so afraid are being sucked dry by Manuel, Maria and Mohammed? Aren’t those the same services these “anti-government” Billy-Bobs have been insisting for decades they don’t want to pay for? Like education, healthcare, roads, utilities and fire fighting?

And, the greatest irony of all, these NIMBY nitwits don’t see the hypocrisy of bashing immigration when their own parents or grandparents were immigrants.)

         What raises their blood pressure even more is that 
         these fancy-pants do-gooders might look down on them.

SMART, MY ASS!
Besides their xenophobia, these poor victims are also possessed by a deep hatred of what they’ve termed our country’s “liberal elite,” those mostly well-educated, cultured snobs whose permissive, “woke” values they blame for giving away their God-given, America-first entitlements in the first place.

ILLUSTRATION: L.A. Progressive

But what raises their blood pressure even more is their sense that these fancy-pants do-gooders might look down on them. (I’ve postulated HERE that this resentment might actually stem from the MAGA cult’s embarrassment at being forced to confront just how ignorant they really are.)

Very simply, MAGA folks, driven by these peeves, would rather live in a pile of their own excrement than in the Utopia handed to them by generations of their forebears who’ve toiled to build it, and who’ve fought and died defending it. 

PHOTO: Joe Rosenthal

It’s Democracy, the bold experiment of an oppressed colonial people, the most successful system of governance ever devised, the envy of the world for two-and-a-half centuries. Very simply, the Pedophile President and his cult fume that if they can’t get their perceived entitlement to all its blessings, then no one should.  

         The true patriots—will eventually insist the bed be changed.

IMAGE: AdWeek

RESIST…AND HOPE
This is the MAGA movement. This is the Donald Trump debacle, the con man of our age validating and acting out his own and his devotees’ worst instincts: aggressive insecurity, hatred, racism, vengeance. 

This is why I resist…and why I hope. Hope more and more Americans—the true patriots—will eventually insist the bed be changed, washing away forever the filth these temper-tantrum traitors have unloaded in the bed of American decency.

Protest on your lawn, in the streets, on bridges…anywhere. Pressure Congress to grow a pair and rein 
in TinyHands’s fascist agenda. Write opinion pieces 
and social media rants. Encourage fellow resistors. Donate to effective resistance organizations—like the Women's March, Indivisible or the Visibility Brigade.

…and keep the faith!

THE TRUMP CARD – How Smart Tyrants Play Wannabes

Donald Trump was raised and schooled to be a manipulator. His father, his mentor Ray Cohn and any number of vile men he’s tried to emulate drilled the lessons into him: Do whatever you want. Ignore the wishes of others. Flout the law. 

Prior to committing a despicable act, accuse your intended victim of committing the same act. If anyone objects, double down. If they persist, destroy them—if slander fails, sue them out of the water. If that fails, keep appealing till you end up before a judge whom you’ve bought and paid for.  

Never, ever admit defeat.

This is how Donald Trump lives his life. One might say it’s genius. It is not. There’s not one shred of intellect, no reason here; it’s pure rote. The way any predator acts.

PHOTO: AnimalsTime.com

NUTTY PUTTY 
And the ultimate payoff for a man leading such a life? In Trump’s case, it’s as shallow and transparent as every other aspect of his raison d'être. He’s merely an emotional adolescent desperate to feed his insatiable lust for attention.

We know Donald Trump. He’s made quite sure we do. But the scarier thing is, so do men like Vladimir Putin and Benjamin Netanyahu. Say what you might about such tyrants, but both these men have shown themselves to possess some emotional and intellectual depth. Both are capable of insight, nuance, managing complexity and strategic thinking. 

Trump has none of these capacities, and these clever despots know it. In fact, they know Trump better than he knows himself. They know how wretchedly insecure he is, how gaudy and artificial the ruse of his power. And how easy it is to manipulate him.

  If your schmear hits eight figures—I appoint you to my cabinet. 

DOUBLE-DEALER
There are two kinds of “deals” Trump makes. First is what I’d call the kiss-my-ass deal. This is the kind he makes with the little people in his world, the Rudy Giulianis, the Mike Lindells. Oh, and also with his gutless Trumpublican lackeys in Congress: You brown-nose me and I hold off on “primarying” you or shitting all over you in the media. You’re soiled in my feces, but I let you survive.

Even if you’re a nobody like those MAGA goons he incited to desecrate the Capitol on January 6, as long as you commit your crimes in my name, you’re off the hook.

The second kind of Trump deal is the “business” deal. You give me something I desperately want—praise, campaign funding, my name on a new building, women…and, oh, I don’t know…the Nobel Prize—and I let you stand near me at the inauguration, share state secrets with you, maybe even—if your schmear hits eight figures—appoint you to my cabinet. 

PHOTO: Bloomberg

      This ninny presents no less a threat to our national security 
      than 19 radical Muslim terrorists at the controls of four 
      commercial airliners.

SACRED BUST
Donald Trump has put the sacred trust with which this country has endowed 45 presidents up for sale to the highest bidder. He’s not just hawking influence, not just feeding his ego, but monetizing national-treasures. Everything’s up for grabs: endangered wildlife and habitat, the National Parks, even the White House itself, branded with his gaudy, fools-gold veneer.

Most often, the deceit enriches him and his little tyrants-in-training, Don Junior, Eric and Ivanka. But blood bonds aren’t necessary to claim a slice of the pie; million-dollar bribes-cum-campaign donations will do just fine.

AI IMAGE: Western Standard

The evidence of Trump’s corruptibility just keeps mounting: 
  • his push to reward Putin for his aggression against Ukraine 
  • his “deal” to honor Netanyahu’s Gaza genocide in exchange for Trump’s “ownership” and commercial development of Gaza
  • his pardoning of Saudi Crown Prince bin Salman’s gruesome murder of an American journalist to keep the wheels greased for the $50 million in business deals struck by the Trump family cartel
  • his acceptance of a $400 million-dollar bribe—a Boeing 747, no less—from shrewd Qatari leader Emir Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani. 

Meanwhile, as Despot Light counts his coins and compliments, the real heavyweights laugh it up over the easiest exploitation they’ve ever wrangled. It’s like some young hotshot chess cheat taking on Garry Kasparov; they’re wiping the floor with him.

OUTRAGE TO ACTION
This ninny and his warped transactional MO presents no less a threat to our national security than 19 radical Muslim terrorists at the controls of four commercial airliners. Thoughtful Americans must unify, as we did after 9/11 and other national tragedies, in confronting the threat. He must be stopped.

LETHAL LUNACY – The Death Toll of Donald Trump’s Madness

There are many ways one might measure Donald J. Trump’s performance as President of the United States of America: Campaign promises kept versus broken. Percentage of documented truths versus lies told. Health and growth of the economy. Standard of living for average Americans. Number of indictments and convictions. Number of staffers and cabinet members facing criminal charges. Billions added to the national debt. I could go on…

But there is another measure, one not yet cited by the media, but which the judgement of history will surely employ, of this beastly little man. 

The death toll.

With the threat of full-blown fascism looming on our own soil, we simply cannot afford to wait for that reckoning. 

ILLUSTRATION – Stable Diffusion

Trump has already inflicted a malignancy on our country and the world. One which, for want of early, aggressive treatment, is strangling freedom and relegating this once-noble nation quite rapidly to third-world status. 

The urgency, the gravity, of the threat facing our precious Democracy—and our essential humanity— demands our immediate attention. One can only pray it’s not too late.

The gravity of the threat facing our precious Democracy—and our essential humanity— demands our immediate attention. 

COVID? WHAT COVID?
Death tolls can be difficult to determine. Just ask any public official trying to assess the impact of a natural disaster or epidemic. Seldom is there a simple stack of bodies to count. Not everyone succumbs at the same time. Some suspected victims may have died from unrelated causes. Some are collateral damage, dying months or years later from complications of the original horror. Some victims are never found.

So for Trump’s reckoning let’s start with one of the easier tallies, that of deaths attributed to his regime’s utter failure to manage the original COVID pandemic. In the U.S. alone the estimates vary from around 100,000 “unnecessary deaths” to 400,000 and more.* One thing’s certain: it’s a big number.

Then there’s the wider, global impact of the Crimbecile’s ham-fisted stabs at public health crisis management. His denials of COVID 19’s very existence. His ridiculing of vaccines. His withdrawal from the WHO and cessation of funding for USAID. His purging—just yesterday—of CDC Director, Susan Monarez, who dared stand up for the truth about vaccines. 

These blunders will eventually kill millions of human beings—starting, as all such affronts seem to, with the poorest.

THE KILLING FIELDS
So, that’s just the count for one front in this moron’s deadly assaults on Democracy and decency. The Trump death toll is already mounting in nearly every sphere of the human condition. 

There are just so many failings that tracking them is exhausting (part of the guy’s M.O., by the way). But here’s my—this non-statistician’s—bullet-point outline of the killing, both current and projected.

~ THE ENVIRONMENT
Trump wasted no time abdicating the US’s already-timid environmental-science leadership, dropping out, in his first term, of the Paris Climate Agreement, the world’s best hope for progress in combatting climate change.

Meanwhile, of more than 600 reported extreme weather events in 2024, 148 were classified as “unprecedented,” displacing 824,000 people and killing about 1,700.

PHOTO – Jesse Winter, Reuters

His long-asserted denials of human-caused climate change, his scuttling of institutions charged with monitoring and regulating environmental impacts, and his alignment with corporations and the billionaire buddies who finance him are already killing people—thousands and thousands of them—through natural disasters, polluted air and water, and unsafe working conditions. 

According to Google’s AI overview of vast amounts of data, global deaths attributable to extreme weather events average 40,000 to 50,000 people per year. So, a rough estimate for the years since 2017, when Trump decided climate change wasn’t sexy enough for him, totals roughly 315,000 deaths.

I’ll leave it to you to approximate how many of those lives could have been spared if Trump had exerted any leadership whatsoever. Whatever the tally, it will surely climb precipitously, as global climate change surges past the tipping point long forewarned by climate scientists.

       His deep-seated appetite for flattery represents 
       a green light to our enemies’ ambitions. 

~ FOREIGN POLICY

Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs

Trump’s fawning support of Russian and Israeli warmonger tyrants is nothing short of evil. Vladimir Putin’s Ukraine War death toll is nearing half a million—some 13,500 of those innocent civilians. In Gaza, over 60,000 Palestinians have been killed to date. Countless more deaths from starvation and disease are on the horizon as Netanyahu, with Trump’s complicity, pursues his thinly-veiled genocidal goal.

What’s more, Trump’s defunding of the Agency for International Development (USAID) and disengagement from the World Health Organization (WHO) are invitations for further aggression around the world, amounting to a virtual death sentence for countless victims. 

~ NATIONAL SECURITY
Trump’s mishandling of classified documents, his politicization of intelligence and his purging of career officials he’s deemed disloyal have hobbled our national security endeavors. He’s methodically sabotaged time-honored alliances with even our closest friends and neighbors. 

His renouncement of America’s iconic generosity of spirit, his clumsy “America First” mantra, his embarrassing antics on the world stage, and his deep-seated appetite for flattery all represent green lights to our enemies’ ambitions. 

PHOTO: Getty Images

Debacles like this inevitably lead to wars…and countless more deaths.

~ DOMESTIC TERRORISM
Unconscionably, Trump has pardoned at least 1,500 members of his MAGA cult who'd been charged with deadly crimes during the January 6 insurrection. Projecting his persecution complex, the felon-in-chief has also pardoned at least five convicted murderers.**

PHOTO – Newsweek

He’s also granted clemency to many individual and corporate fraudsters, tax cheats, anti-abortion activists, corrupt politicians and elections officials—virtually anyone who’s committed crimes abetting his own personal and political crimes. 

By endorsing domestic terrorism perpetrated in his name, while at the same time clamping down on anyone—including peaceful demonstrators—who dare defy him, he sets the stage for more violence and death. 

     Trump’s assault on immigrants—many of them here 
     legally—has subjected families to unbelievable suffering.

~ AIRLINE SAFETY
Trump’s decimating of Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) staffing and budgets, including DOGE’s dull-edge slashing of Air Traffic Control staffing, have already impacted the safety of flying, leading, some charge, to 67 fatalities in last January’s mid-air collision near Reagan National Airport. Many more deaths are inevitable.

~ IMMIGRATION

PHOTO - Genaro Molina, Los Angeles Times

Trump’s outrageous assault on immigrants—many of them here legally—has subjected families to unbelievable suffering. And those arrested—often by unidentified ICE goons in unmarked vehicles with no probable cause nor legal recourse for suspects—face abhorrent conditions whose 2025 death toll (14 so far) has already surpassed that of 2024. ***

Internment of those arrested in a rapidly-growing number of ICE prisons (like the already infamous Alligator Alcatraz), and deportations to Gulags in countries like Uganda, where defendants have no family or cultural ties amount to virtual “disappearances.” 

The death toll from abuse, neglect, murder and, most certainly, suicide, will be, by design, obscure.

~ GUN VIOLENCE 

PHOTO - The Telegraph

Donald Trump staunchly rejects any limits on the possession and use of firearms. (Interesting, since because he’s a convicted felon, Trump currently cannot legally possess a gun.) Even though he claims to have been targeted in two assassination attempts, he boasts to his gun-toting, Billy-Bob groupies that he’s “done nothing” about the national glut of weapons. 

Every day, 125 people in the United States are killed with guns and more than 200 are shot and wounded. ****

That’s approximately 45,000 Americans shot to death annually, including hundreds who are victims of mass shootings (the latest just yesterday here in Minneapolis). Though hard to quantify, a significant percentage of these deaths must be called what they are: collateral damage from Trump’s acquiescence to the powerful gun lobby.

~ CIVIL RIGHTS
Donald Trump is expropriating state and local policing authority at an alarming pace. It’s all under the very thin guise of public safety, but what it really is is building his regime’s ability to quickly quell protest. He just recently declared the deployments—in Washington DC, Los Angeles and Chicago so far—are to quash “civil disturbances.” 

PHOTO – David Swanson - Reuters

No one doubts what that means. I and all freedom-loving Americans must now realize that, as we take to the streets, we’re putting our very lives on the line ! There will be casualties.

        His infantile, Monopoly-game take on war 
        and diplomacy puts our military at great risk.

~ CONSUMER PROTECTION
Trump’s removal of Federal Trade Commission (FTC), Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) and other consumer protection regulations, staffing and budgets will subject Americans once again to the very abuses those entities were established to rein in. 

The halfwit’s consistent siding with corporate interests—including his own—over those of consumers will cost lives, from both the public health and product safety effects.

~ VETERANS AFFAIRS
Veterans of the U.S. military are committing suicide at an alarming rate of over 1,600 annually—that’s 17 deaths per day in the United States.***** 

Trump—the confirmed draft-dodger—has consistently disparaged our county’s esteemed military veterans and their families. 

PHOTO - @GovCox / X

Adding to the insult, he continues to trivialize our national honor—not to mention putting our military at great risk—with his infantile, Monopoly-game take on war and diplomacy. Not to mention his obvious admiration of despots who are our country’s sworn enemies. 

The cost of such contempt, such weakness? Still more lives.

~ HEALTH
Starting with Trump’s foolhardy cuts at CDC, NIH, NSF and other public health programs and agencies, his regime appears determined to address America’s public health crises as it has other challenges: if not by denial, then by voodoo medicine.

As elsewhere in his administration, Trump has jettisoned all public health experience, competence and reason in favor of rank hacks whose only qualification is loyalty—like Robert F. Kennedy Jr., his Secretary of Health Human Services, an avowed anti-vaxer and conspiracy-theorist wacko.

Discrediting proven, life-saving vaccines; scuttling health and wellness initiatives; promoting unproven folk remedies; wholesale cuts to HIV/AIDS research and prevention funding; systematic dismantling of the nation’s capacity for dealing with the inevitable next pandemic… 

While such reckless incompetence in confronting COVID alone killed hundreds of thousands, it’s no stretch to say the toll for the whole health-care calamity wrought by the Crimbecile on this and future generations could number in the millions.

          A kind assessment would call him an amoral 
          hyper-capitalist; a less charitable one, a fascist. 

~ POLITICS
Donald Trump is an insurrectionist, a traitor. He’s a bigot. A sexual predator. A pathological liar, manipulator and con man of the first order.

A kind assessment would rate him an amoral hyper-capitalist; a less charitable one, a fascist. 

It’s not just his own values and behavior that are deadly. His entire political identity rests on validating his MAGA base’s worst instincts. While they elected him to be their hit man on immigrants, minorities, women, GLBTQ folks and the poor, they’re emboldened to be his assassins too.

The victims: the Capitol Police officers who died from injuries and later suicides stemming from the Trump-instigated Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection; the peaceful protesters mowed down in Charlottesville by a white-supremacist neo-Nazi; the 22 innocents shot and killed by an aggrieved anti-immigration terrorist in El Paso; Melissa Hortman, the Minnesota legislator, and her husband assassinated by a pro-Trump, anti-abortion political extremist.

PHOTO - Ryan M. Kelly, The Daily Progress

Make no mistake, there will be more carnage from Trump’s implied consent of racist, anti-Democracy, neo-Nazi and religious-fanatic violence.

TIME WILL TELL
I’ll say it again. Calculating death tolls is hard, even for statisticians. So my wild reckonings here serve merely to account for general categories of causes and the rough scale of their effects. 

What is not difficult to assess is the extent of the responsibility Donald J. Trump must bear for whatever those effects. His willful ignorance, his emotional retardation, his megalomania, are killing people…lots of people. And only future historians—if any are still allowed to tell the truth—will quantify the carnage.

*  Michael Riordan – Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists - September 30, 2020 
    Lancet Commission on Public Policy - February 11, 2021

** Full List of Donald Trump Pardons During His Second Term - Newsweek - May 28, 2025

*** U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) website

**** “Gun Violence In America” - Everytown Research - November 7, 2024

***** Rand - May 22, 2025