Learn From History or Perish

While this article deals a bit with what is happening in the United States today. It is more of a reflection on history and a warning should we fail in stopping Donald Trump from completely destroying our democracy, overthrowing our Constitution, destroying our liberties and becoming a dictator in word and deed. He is already perilously close to doing that just over three weeks into his second term of office. In this he has been aided and abetted by a large number of followers, who are frequently called by the abbreviation of Trump’s propaganda phrase Make America Great Again, MAGA. His followers have the devotion of a religious personality cult, and the Republican Party has become nothing more than a party beholden to him more than the party of a western democracy since the Nazi Party was to Adolf Hitler.

Former Speaker of the House John Boehner said these words on 26 October 2019 “There is no Republican Party, only the Party of Trump.” That my friends is why we are here today.

In his little book Why Don’t We Learn from History, the English military historian and theorist B.H. Liddell-Hart made some poignant observations about dictators. I believe that Donald Trump is assuming the role of a dictator, so I will break Liddell-Hart’s comments down into manageable bits with my own observations interspersed. His words are in bold.

They soon begin to rid themselves of their chief helpers, “discovering” that those who brought about the new order have suddenly become traitors to it. Now think of his early supporters who he has ditched, thrown under the bus, or fired them from his first cabinet. He has no loyalty to anyone other than himself.

They suppress criticism on one pretext or another and punish anyone who mentions facts which, however true, are unfavourable to their policy. If his first term in office those included Putin’s Russia, the COVID19 pandemic which killed over one million Americans, and what has happened to every member of his staff, the GOP establishment, or member of Congress who openly criticized him, including senior Justice Department, State Department, National Security Council Staff, the Military, the Judiciary, and on and on and on.

They enlist religion on their side, if possible, or, if its leaders are not compliant, foster a new kind of religion subservient to their ends. Trump would not have come to power in 2016 or regained power in 2024 without his willful collaborators of the Christian Right who for all intents and purposes have become his personal religious cult, more devoted to him than the God that they claim to worship.

They spend public money lavishly on material works of a striking kind, in compensation for the freedom of spirit and thought of which they have robbed the public. Trump constructed nothing lavish, or of any cultural value during his first term, but he Did built portions of a very expensive and ineffective border wall, which since has fallen into disrepair and ruin.

They manipulate the currency to make the economic position of the state appear better than it is in reality. During Trump’s first term he did this with his tax overhaul of 2017 which benefited the most wealthy and improved the stock markets, followed by the malfeasance of the Treasury Department to prop up the markets by purchasing stocks and bonds without regard to long term economic growth or security.

They ultimately make war on some other state as a means of diverting attention from internal conditions and allowing discontent to explode outward. This did not happen in his first term, despite much bluster and many threats, mostly because of his isolationist foreign policy. But in this term he has threatened to invade Panama to retake control of the Panama Canal, use the military to attack Mexican drug cartels, force Canada to become part of the United States, threaten to invade or purchase Greenland, take over the Gaza Strip and “evacuate” over two million Palestinians to other locations without allowing them the right to return to their homes, and according to recent reports attack Iran’s nuclear sites.

They use the rallying cry of patriotism as a means of riveting the chains of their personal authority more firmly on the people. Since his announcement of his first candidacy Trump has made the distinction that his supporters are “Patriots” and those who do not are traitors. He amped that up every year of his first term, and much more after his loss to Joe Biden in 2020 which culminated in a failed bid by his supporters to overturn his electoral defeat by attacking the Capitol, attempting to kill Congressmen and Senators, along with his Vice President, Mike Pence. Now he is simply ignoring the law and threatening his political opponents.

They expand the superstructure of the state while undermining its foundations by breeding sycophants at the expense of self-respecting collaborators, by appealing to the popular taste for the grandiose and sensational instead of true values, and by fostering a romantic instead of a realistic view, thus ensuring the ultimate collapse, under their successors if not themselves, of what they have created. During his first term the President has expanded and not cut the government, especially in the areas of police powers, while appointing men and women who were dedicated to protecting him and not the Constitution, laws, or people as heads of agencies. Now he is working to ravage the legitimate departments of the government which defend the country, secure our national security, protect the civil liberties, health, and economic well being of citizens, while expanding the police powers of the government against citizens through executive orders.

This political confidence trick, itself a familiar string of tricks, has been repeated all down the ages. Yet it rarely fails to take in a fresh generation. Sadly it has taken in yet another generation, but such is no surprise to anyone who seriously studies history.

But Liddell-Hart wasn’t the only one to warn us of such leaders, those who come to power legally and the work every day to destroy the democratic systems that brought them to power. In fact this was a concern of our founders who in the Declaration of Independence noted: “A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.”

I cannot think of an American President who these were more pertinent to, then Donald Trump. He is the man who Alexander Hamilton warned us in his words and in the Federalist Papers: “Of those men who have overturned the liberties of republics, the greatest number have begun their career by paying an obsequious court to the people, commencing demagogues and ending tyrants.”

Yale Historian and Holocaust expert Timothy Snyder warned after Trump was elected in 2016:

”The mistake is to assume that rulers who came to power through institutions cannot change or destroy those very institutions—even when that is exactly what they have announced that they will do.”

This is where we are today. What President Trump and his appointees are doing is in direct contravention of the Declaration, the Constitution, U.S. Code, the intents of our Founders, and anyone that values liberty for all, not the few.

That is something I have understood since Trump first announced his candidacy in 2015. Two weeks before his election in 2016 I wrote this:

“As I watched and listened to Donald Trump before and after the third and thankfully final debate of the 2016 Presidential election, I was struck with just how viscous, vulgar, and venomous this man is. I cannot remember anyone in American politics at the national level, Republican or Democrat, or for that matter even Whig, who ever managed to immerse himself so deeply into the amoral, unethical, and undemocratic sewer that Trump has bathed himself, the Republican Party and this nation.

Trump’s toxicity is unparalleled in American politics. Everything and everyone who has ever had anything to do with him is poisoned by his touch. Wives, business partners, contractors, employees, political advisors, and supporters have all been stained by the Mustard Gas that Trump emits on a minute to minute basis. Maybe the most stained are the Evangelical Christian church leaders who have not only endorsed and defended Trump, but who positively described his character as Christian and said nothing about Trump’s words and actions, which if an opponent had uttered, or had been accused, they would have excoriated with a particularly “Christian” self-righteousness. Their actions have stained the witness of the church for at least the next generation and it is no wonder that young people are fleeing the church. I specifically use the imagery of Mustard Gas, not just because of its toxicity, but because of its persistence. The battlefields of World War One France and Belgium are still contaminated by it, and the toxic residue still injures people today.

That my friends is the poisonous and corrosive effect of Donald Trump on this country. He is a toxic and persistent threat to everyone, even his most devout followers. Race baiting, misogynistic, narcissistic, vulgar, and ignorant, Trump spews his vile venom of conspiracy theories wrapped in fiction, and coated in lies, and buttressed with near pornograpic misogyny in every direction. He has given his supporters in the heavily armed Alt-Right, the neo-Nazis, Klansmen, and White Supremacists the boldness to come out of hiding because he has normalized their hate, something that no Western statesman or politician has done since before the verdicts at Nuremberg.

I have long felt that Trump reminded me of Nazi leaders, but frankly most of them, while every bit as toxic as Trump were both more intelligent and were better able to cover the darkness of their amoral souls with a modicum of respectability, with the exception of one; the publisher of the infamous newspaper Der Sturmer, and Gauleiter of Nuremberg, Julius Streicher.

Robert Jackson, the Associate Justice of the Supreme Court who served as the Chief American Prosecutor at Nuremberg referred to Streicher in his summation:

“Streicher, the venomous vulgarian, manufactured and distributed obscene racial libels which incited the populace to accept and assist the progressively savage operations of “race purification.”

Is that not exactly what Trump has done during his seventeen month campaign to stir up race hatred against Mexicans and Arabs, not to mention Asians and Blacks? Of course it is, which is exactly why the leaders of the Alt-Right claim him as their candidate, the man who in their perverted minds has made them respectable again and ready to assume their place in Trump’s new order. Anti-Semitism and racism runs rampant in the words of his closest collaborators such as the Breitbart News chief Steve Bannon, as well as Alt-Right Neo-Nazi and KKK leaders like David Duke, Richard Spencer, Jared Taylor, and Peter Brimalow.

My friends, what you see in Trump is what you get. Unlike Hitler and Goering, but much like Streicher, Trump has no capability of maintaining any sort of respectability. He has been stoking the fires of violence by claiming that the election is rigged and pumping up his followers for violence if he loses.”

So until next time. Be safe and watch your six.