Vengeance and Vermin: The Dark Heart of Trump

Over the weekend former President Trump hit the campaign trail in New Hampshire. In an alleged speech supposedly honoring veterans Trump went into a pathological screed reminiscent of Adolf Hitler. Following the remarks of Stephen Miller, confirmed last week that Trump and his team were planning to build camps for millions of people who he round up using the military, Trump went full Hitler.

After criticism of Trump’s speech and Truth Social post, in which numerous people compared it to those of Hitler and Mussolini, Steven Cheung, a Trump campaign spokesman, told the Washington Post: “those who try to make that ridiculous assertion are clearly snowflakes grasping for anything because they are suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome and their entire existence will be crushed when President Trump returns to the White House.”

The use of the word vermin in particular was concerning, as it was a common word that Hitler, Mussolini, and other Fascists have used to dehumanize their enemies. The term is used to desensitize followers to first accept that their opponents are not fully human, and then to commit atrocities against them. Trump and his henchmen have now openly stated the open secret that was evident to anyone as early as the day Trump announced his candidacy for President in 2015.

James Spader’s character in the great television drama, the Blacklist, Raymond Reddington once said: “We become who we are. We can’t judge a book by its cover… But you can by its first few chapters, and most certainly by its last.” 

I understand the people who did not understand the brutal authoritarian nature of Trump before his 2016 election as most Americans do not routinely study dictators and dictatorships. In 2016 most people, including many Democrats did not comprehend the malevolent nature of Trump, and chose not to judge the book by its cover.

However, today in light of everything that he did in his first term, the January 6th, 2021 attack on Congress, and his ever increasing threats against judges, prosecutors, former subordinates, political opponents, military officers, minorities and many others, there is no excuse. When have seen too many chapters of the book of Trump not to have an excuse.

But some did in 2016. One was Yale Historian and Holocaust expert Timothy Snyder warned in his book On Tyranny, 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.”

That is something I understood since Trump first announced his candidacy in 2015. On October 21st, 2016, two weeks before his election in 2016, I wrote this on my now legacy blog. It is unedited and the link is provided.

“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.”  The link to that article for doubters is here: https://padresteve.com/2016/10/21/the-venomous-vulgarian-donald-trump-and-the-alt-right/

Back then I compared Trump more to Julius Streicher than Hitler because I had not yet seen Trump as President. Well before his term ended I was apparent to me that Trump was very much like Hitler. On November 1st, 2020 just before Trump’s election defeat at the hands of President Biden I wrote:

Trump may be ignorant of many things, but that does not mean that he is stupid. I think that most of us assume that he is. He does what he does for specific reasons. His bankruptcies, divorces, fraudulent business dealings, and everything else he has done in life have been to enrich himself at the expense of others or feed his megalomania, and desire for absolute power. What he has done throughout his Presidency is proof of that: his cooperation with Russia to win election in 2016, his attempts to destroy our alliances and to undermine allies on the border of Putin’s Russia, his wanton destruction of the guardrails of our republic, his trampling of the Constitution, and his willingness to sacrifice the lives of Americans during the Coronavirus 19 Pandemic are all proof of his lack of character and the evil in his heart, are not proof of his stupidity; but proof of his ruthlessness and cold blooded cunning to make people underestimate him. Yes, when it comes to basic knowledge of our Constitution, history, science, philosophy, religion, economics, foreign policy, literature or anything else that has enriched Western Civilization, the President is an ignoramus of astounding proportions.

However, when it comes to the art of manipulating people and getting them to do things and support polices that harm them he is probably in the league of Hitler, Stalin, and Chairman Mao. His image is based on a fictionalization of his “successful businessman” persona that he played on “The Apprentice.” It is all fiction, but he plays to the basest beliefs of his base. He knows them better than they know themselves. 

If he finds a way to remain in power, he will exploit it even at the cost of the lives of his opponents, but also his supporters; especially the latter, because they believe his lies as much as they believe the Gospel. They will willing sacrifice themselves to keep him in power. The fact is that his only loyalty is to himself.

That might be difficult for some people to stomach, but it is the truth. Trump and his cabal of Fascist henchmen and his theocratic Christian Nationalist supporters are hell bent on getting back in power and not giving it up, as was his intent in 2020 as his former lawyer Jenna Ellis admitted to the Fulton County Grand Jury.

We need to really start contemplating the result of another Trump presidency, which despite all of his pending trials that include Trump being charged with 91 felony charges, is possible. Snyder wrote:

“The European history of the twentieth century shows us that societies can break, democracies can fall, ethics can collapse, and ordinary men can find themselves standing over death pits with guns in their hands. It would serve us well today to understand why.”

With that I wish you the best and please stay safe.

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