It can happen here, right? RIGHT!!! Start by asking what kind of monsters put children in cages and go from there. By Hal M. Brown, MSW

 

Thinking of this, which I often do, evokes a feeling of horrow beyond words. I see in my mind the well known photos of the the entrance to Auschwitz. (Photos and captions from Wikipedia)

Above: A doctor, center, with the 322nd Rifle Division of the Red Army, walks with a group of survivors at the entrance to the newly liberated Auschwitz I concentration camp in January 1945. The Red Army liberated the camp on January 27, 1945. Above the gate is the motto "Arbeit macht frei," which translates to "Work sets you free."

I think of pictures like these:

Above: Jews are deported from Würzburg, 25 April 1942. Deportation occurred in public and was witnessed by many Germans.

Below: I think of Heinrich Himmler (second left)  visiting Auschwitz where he witnessed the gassing of Jews:

I think of these happy looking NAZI officers:

Who are they? The are three SS officers socializing on the grounds of the SS retreat outside of Auschwitz, at “Solahütte”, 1944. From left to right they are: Richard Baer (Commandant of Auschwitz), Dr. Josef Mengele and Rudolf Hoess (the former Auschwitz Commandant).

I was think of trying to write about this as I fell asleep last night. This morning I read this essay by S.V. Date who is the senior White House correspondent for HuffPost (bio). The article says much of what I planned to write about.

It Can’t Happen Here, Right? RIGHT???

Jan. 6... Terminating the Constitution... Rounding up 21 million people.... America, we’ve got some bad news.

It begins:

Nine decades later, that “it” is also what dozens of Republican donors, campaign consultants, pollsters and others interviewed by HuffPost say cannot possibly happen. They scoff at any analogy between former President Donald Trump, a man they support with varying degrees of enthusiasm, and the infamous dictators of the past. They insist that worries about Trump remaking the country as an autocracy are overwrought and designed solely to keep a Democrat in the White House.

“This will be a short period in history and we will swing right back to the middle,” said Hugh Culverhouse, a Miami lawyer who so far has given $500,000 toward Trump’s reelection effort.

While authoritarianism experts and democracy advocates hope Culverhouse is right, they worry – deeply – that he is not.

It is, of course, impossible to know for certain what a second Trump presidency might bring or whether, should he manage to seize absolute power, his rule would come anywhere close to the depravity of the tyrants of the last century.

Still, no other presidential nominee in United States history has behaved with the contempt for democracy that Trump has already demonstrated or even hinted at the sorts of autocratic actions Trump promises if he is returned to power. 

Could the predictions laid out in this article come to pass if Trump wins? Consider this Axios article:

Excerpt: 

Former President Trump, if elected, would build a Cabinet and White House staff based mainly on two imperatives: pre-vetted loyalty to him and a commitment to stretch legal and governance boundaries, sources who talk often with the leading GOP presidential candidate tell Axios.

Why it matters: Trump would fill the most powerful jobs in government with men like Stephen Miller, Sen. J.D. Vance of Ohio and Kash Patel — with the possible return of Steve Bannon. If Trump won in 2024, he'd turn to loyalists who share his zeal to punish critics, purge non-believers, and take controversial legal and military action, the sources tell us.

Trump and his prospective top officials don't mince words about their plans:

• They want to target and jail critics, including government officials and journalists; deport undocumented immigrants or put them in detainment camps, and unleash the military to target drug cartels in Mexico, or possibly crack down on criminals or protesters at home. 
• They want to scrap rules that limit their ability to purge government workers deemed disloyal. 

Hitler had his inner circle of 10 top lieutenants including Himmler, Göring, Goebbels, Bormann, and Speer, and Trump will have others you've heard of and others who are just as evil who most of you aren't familair with. 

Is there be a difference between them?

You say tomato, I say tomahto... let's hope the title and verse from the song holds true for the United States: 

Addendum:

Do Trump and his MAGA minions who want a lily white colored Christian country welcome the following people?

There were about 47.8 million immigrants in 2023. This represents approximately 14.3% of the population, or about 1 in 7 residents in the United States. Immigrants are defined as foreign-born residents. As of 2022 there were nearly 731,000 Haitian immigrants residing in the United States, comprising the country's 15th largest foreign-born population. There are about 3.5 million Muslims residing in the United States.

The most recent census (here) shows that the United States is becoming a multi-ethnic country.

The pale skinned MAGAs may put up with Jews, Black, and Asian people being part of society, but clearly they would like to see the others disappear.

Yesterday's blog.

Thursday blog is related to today's blog:

Read previous blogs.

Let's say the new $100,000 Trump watch is worth $100,000, why the hell does Trump think it is a good idea to sell it now? By Hal M. Brown, MSW

 

In case you haven't heard it being discussed on MSNBC (read'$100,000 for that?" MSNBC's Morning Joe panel loses it over Trump's watch offer)
 or elsewhere, Trump is now selling the Trump watch for $100,000.

This is from Wired:

If you read RawStory there are two articles about it: 

and

There are other $100,000 watches semi-rich watch aficionados can buy or already have in their collections. For example, these are from 

Five of the Top Watches That Cost Around $100,000

Of course they don't have Trump's name on the front and "fight, fight, fight" engraved on the back.

I say semi-rich because the rich rich can buy watches like these that cost millions.

Here's a dandy example. 

Nothing screams "I'm filthy rich" more than wearing a watch that costs as much as this golden super yacht. (Article)

As this is going on we have Melania making the news this way: 

Trump Sells $100K Gold Watches on Same Day Melania Insists People Can’t Afford Basic Necessities

Excerpt:

On the same morning (as Trump introduced his watch), Melania Trump appeared on Fox & Friends to promote her new memoir. Speaking with Ainsley Earhardt about Vice President Kamala Harris replacing President Joe Biden at the top of the Democratic Party ticket, Melania Trump said people are not able to buy “usual necessities” due to high inflation and her husband was “great for the country.”

“How I see it is, the record speaks for itself. The country is suffering. People are not able to buy the usual necessities for their families,” Melania Trump said. “We have wars going on around the world. Soldiers are dying. They were dying under this administration because of weak leadership. The border is open and dangerous.”

She added that people were “prospering” more under her husband’s administration and argued that everything is “great” when it comes to Donald Trump, but that you’ll have to accept some “strong tweets.”

“I think the American people need to decide what they really want. Maybe some strong tweets, but everything else great for this country,” she said. “SoHe' it’s all in the American people’s hands on November 5.”

It isn't that there aren't a few people who want to curry favor with Trump who will buy these watches. After all, it costs $200,000 to join Mar-a-Lago. This is about narcisstic messaging. However, Trump is supposed to be a master of messaging. 

Trump said "It has almost 200 grams of gold and more than 100 real diamonds. That's a lot of diamonds. I love gold. I love diamonds. We all do. Owning one puts you in a very exclusive club."  Who can relate to this?

Come on numbnuts, really, who is this message aimed at? How many of these watches does he need to sell to even make it worth his while? He'd need to sell 10 to make a million dollars minus the cost of the watch. The world of Trump is crazy but are there even 10 people willing to shell out 100 grand for.. well... for what exactly?

There may actually by a few MAGA cultists who, for example,  bought the golden sneakers or stock in Truth Social who learn about this and realize that they were suckers and that Trump cares about as much for them and their well-being as he cares for a kale salad.

This grift could backfire on Trump like some piece of crap junker car:

Yesterday's blog:

Read prevous blogs.

 

It happened in Germany and Russia. If Trump wins It could happen here, by Hal M. Brown, MSW

 

It is fitting that the photo I used as a background shows people giving what could be decribed as a Heil Trump salute. It was used to illustrate an article in The Atlantic. Here's the full photo.

Here are the covers of two books that I've been thinking about:

Why did I use the two books aboout ordinary Germans in the above illustration? Chauncey DeVega lays it out in detail here:

He begins his column:

Donald Trump and his surrogates are continuing to channel and amplify Nazism and Adolf Hitler. This is not random or happenstance. It is part of a strategy. “Feral politics” made even more explosive and toxic by adding blatant white supremacy, racism, and antisemitism. Occam’s razor, as it often does, provides the most simple and compelling proof of how Trump and his campaign’s feral hate politics strategy is very intentional: He and they have increased their antisemitism, racism, and white supremacy (and misogyny and hostile sexism) greatly in the last few weeks as the polls and other metrics show him tied with if not behind Kamala Harris, a Black South Asian woman, in the presidential election.

Adolf Hitler is one of the most evil leaders in recorded human history. Hitler and his Nazi regime are responsible for the systematic, industrial-scale mass murder of six million Jewish people and millions of others (including Black Germans). World War II, the deadliest in human history, resulted in the deaths of tens of millions of people around the world (estimates range from 50 million to 70 million or more). Almost 80 years after the end of World War II, Nazism and the various forms of racial fascism, and the other antidemocratic and illiberal political belief systems and ideologies in its orbit have not been fully vanquished. They are resurgent in the form of Trumpism, American fascism, and the larger global antidemocracy movement.

This very brief history lesson about the evils of Hitler and Nazi Germany is necessary given the broken state of America’s schools and a society where amnesia and organized forgetting are the norm. For many Americans of a certain age (and older,) Hitler and the Nazis have been reduced to the stuff of internet and social media memes from the movie “Downfall,” generic characters to kill in video games, or perhaps in their most real and frightening form as outliers in American society who rampaged in Charlottesville or commit hate crimes.  

Trump, with Vance ready to step in should he no longer be able to serve, may be the leader of ordinary Americans about whom books may be written five decades from now. Hitler's Willing Executioners was published in 1996. Hitler’s True Believers: How Ordinary People Became Nazis was published in 2021.

Like me, some of you won't be around 50 years from now if books like "Trump's Willing Executioners" and "Trump's True Believers: How Ordinary People Became MAGAs" are published. Even if Trump wins there's no way to know that he'll be able to achieve his Project 2025 goals which will turn us into a modern day version of Nazi Germany or post-revolution Russia. There's no way to predict whether these books could even be published in the United States. Similar books could never be published in Russia.

After World War II  half of Germany became a democracy (technically a  democratic and federal parliamentary republic) and the other half was socialist and closely allied with Russia. It was only unified as a democracy in 1990. 

On the other hand, consider that the Soviet Union was formed as a result of the 1917 Russian Revolution with Lenin as its leader. Stalin led the Soviet Union from 1924 until his death in 1954. Then there were a series of dictators:

Click above to enlarge image.

Who knows what a list of American leaders will look like 100 years from now? Will we have a list of dictators or of fairly elected democratic leaders? 

Recent blogs:

Adding together what may become of the United States under Trump and what may happen in Israel there aren't words to describe the horror.

Will Trump go down like Gotti?

Cluck, cluck, cluck: Trump has to suffer the consequences of his refusal to debate Harris a second time

Ethnonational fascism or Nazism, Trump and Vance have made it clear this is the America they want and many are hatefully happy about this

Trump and his Elvis obsession shows he is delusional and possibly demented

Sarah Huckabee Sanders vying with Vance for publicity in stand against childless cat ladies

It's naive young voters who may either make the country into a dictatorship or keep our democracy

Read previous blogs here.

Adding together what may become of the United States under Trump and what may happen in Israel there aren't words to describe the horror, by Hal M. Brown, MSW

 

After I check my email I usually look at HuffPost first thing just to see their top story and this is what I saw today:

This was the lead story in both The NY Times and The Washington Post. With MSNBC's Richard Engle reporting from a bomb-safe hospital...

 ... I looked at RawStory, the next website I go to, which summarizes breaking news in American politics being reported on in other media:

The English langauge is replete with words to describe horrible things. One of the definitions of replete, by chance, is "filled or well-supplied with something: sensational popular fiction, replete with adultery and sudden death."

I recall President Biden using the phrase "that's not hyperbole when I say..." In fact, as this and other articles has said, this has been one of his most used sayings:

Hyperbole is another way to say sensationalization. How do we describe something real that is so beyond the pale ordinary words don't suffice to descibe it? There are prefaces like calling something "mega-" which means "extremely" but there is no single word. There is no word to describe a unique in history event like the Holocaust. 

There are times when images rather than words convey the awfulness of a situation. Here's another example this clip from Apocalypse Now"

If someone is equally horrified both by what may happen in the United States and what may happen in Israel there are no English words to describe what a doubled horror is or what it feels like.

Sometimes we may need images like Guernica by Picasso and the most reproduced part of Jan van Eyck's Crucifixion and Last Judgement diptych.

Most recent blogs:

Will Trump go down like Gotti?

Cluck, cluck, cluck: Trump has to suffer the consequences of his refusal to debate Harris a second time

Ethnonational fascism or Nazism, Trump and Vance have made it clear this is the America they want and many are hatefully happy about this

Trump and his Elvis obsession shows he is delusional and possibly demented

Sarah Huckabee Sanders vying with Vance for publicity in stand against childless cat ladies

It's naive young voters who may either make the country into a dictatorship or keep our democracy

Read more prevous blogs.

Will Trump go down like Gotti? by Hal M. Brown, MSW

CLICK IMAGES TO ENLARGE

Trump's been called Teflon Don by both his critics and, as the NY Post cover and t-shirt below show, by his supporters.

It must be noted that Teflon and other non-stick coating evently wear down and stop working (reference) and that the original Teflon Don was John Gotti.  This is from Wikipedia:

Gotti became known as "The Dapper Don" for his expensive clothes and outspoken personality in front of news cameras. He was later given the nickname "The Teflon Don" after three high-profile trials in the 1980s resulted in acquittals, though it was later revealed that the trials had been tainted by jury tampering, juror misconduct and witness intimidation.

He was one of the most powerful and dangerous crime bosses in the United States. After his trial James Fox, Assistant Director in Charge of the FBI's New York Field Office, announced at a press conference, "The Teflon is gone. The don is covered with Velcro, and all the charges stuck. 

He ended up in prison where he spent most of his time in solitary and once was beaten badly by another prisoner. He died in a prison hospital at the age of 61.

For comparison, Gotti was chilln' while Trump was scowln' for his mugshot.

John Gotti eventually lost his power, his Teflon, after being convicted by a court. If this happens to Trump it will because the court of public opinion, a jury of millions where the vote doesn't have to be unanimous, which convicts him for the "crime" of being unfit to be president. 

Trump doesn't like being compared to John Gotti. Consider :

Donald Trump Rages After Being Compared to Mob Boss in New Book - Newsweek

 

This is what Trump posted: "Crooked Hillary Clinton's lawyer, radically deranged Mark Pomerantz, led the fake investigation into me and my business at the Manhattan D.A.'s Office and quit because D.A. Bragg, rightfully, wanted to drop the 'weak' and 'fatally flawed' case," Trump said on Sunday evening. "Now, Pomerantz got himself a book deal, and is obsessively spreading falsehoods about me. With all of this vicious disinformation being revealed by a 'prosecutor,' how can I ever be treated fairly in New York, or anywhere else? End the Witch Hunts!"

I expect that Trump hated this comparison because he knew what eventually happened to John Gotti.

-----------------------------------------

This is a follow-up to what I wrote yesterday here. 

I wrote about this yesterday but then this morning read this article in RawStory:

This is what he said about his first debate with Kamala Harris:

"Well, I thought that she had a debate which was interesting, because she wasn't answering any questions," Trump said. "And I thought it was a great debate for me. I thought it was one of my best debates that I've ever had. And some people disagreed, but I felt it was the strongest debate I ever had."

Objective armchair psychologists will say that this is further proof that Trump is delusional. In fact one person quoted in RawStory hit the nail on the head saying this:

Geographer Linda Stevens replied, "Narcissists are delusional. They make up alternate realities to fit their warped views of themselves."

"They have to if they don’t, they collapse," she added Saturday.  

I am not sure Trump is clinically delusional. He says things that suggest that he is but this can juts be an expression of his grandiose narcissism and denial. It is quite possible that Trump is aware that he not only blew the debate but that he is not capable of winning a second debate especially when moderators will have new questions that will put him on the spot. For example they would be likely ask him about his and Vance's lies about Haitians eating pets but will also  nail him on his support for Mark Robinson and the denaturalization process and mass deportations of both undocumented immigrants, those here legally, and even of naturalized American citizens his pal Steve Miller is saying Trump "turbocharge" on if he's reelected.

Trump may be well aware that he just can't dodge these questions the way he dodged the draft, recently dodged a bullet, and got away with one grift and lie after another for his entire adult life. 

Most recent blogs:

Cluck, cluck, cluck: Trump has to suffer the consequences of his refusal to debate Harris a second time

Ethnonational fascism or Nazism, Trump and Vance have made it clear this is the America they want and many are hatefully happy about this

Trump and his Elvis obsession shows he is delusional and possibly demented

Sarah Huckabee Sanders vying with Vance for publicity in stand against childless cat ladies

It's naive young voters who may either make the country into a dictatorship or keep our democracy

Read prevous blogs.