Op-Ed Pages #11: der Feuerteufel…
The title here is the German’s nickname for Donald J. Trump, “the fire devil” (NY Times editorial page, July 25 edition). I still like my own nicknames, Narcissus le Grand and Il Duce (he of the imperial sneer), but you have to create bad nicknames for the jerk because he does it to everyone else.
In this blog, I’ve often commented on how America nowadays is looking a lot like 1930s Germany, and others are getting on board with that idea. Trump is a fascist and a wannabe dictator, and our whole country is his Reichstag as he makes his plans to torch it.
But the Germans are too nice. Let’s summarize some other qualities that have created the cult of personality of Trumpism and made him into the archetypal fascist:
Trump is a racist. His reaction to Charlottesville pleased bigots and racists, and Trump wants you to believe he loves Jews because his son-in-law is one and his daughter became one—Ivanka converted before marrying Jared. And if Mary Trump’s book only succeeds in exposing the racist tradition in Trump’s family where the n-word was common place, it has done its job. Any black or brown persons who vote for this man with a sick mind either has buried their heads in the sand or explicitly accepted his racism. In either case, it’s a vote for bigotry.
Trump is not religious. He panders to white, fanatical, right-wing Christians, ready to help them impose their beliefs on all Americans to get their votes. These people are anti-LGBT rights, anti-women’s reproductive rights, anti-Catholic, anti-Jew, anti-Muslim, anti-black and anti-brown, and all for a state religion as long as it’s theirs…so Trump panders them by espousing those same beliefs. (Sometimes SCOTUS gets in the way of that agenda, but not often enough.) These people often make Nazi Jew-haters look tame, call the pope the Anti-Christ, and tolerate just about anything as long as they get what they want. And Narcissus le Grand, whose only God is himself, gives it to them. Standing across from Lafayette Park and holding up that Bible was pitifully stupid (there are claims that it was upside down, as if Il Duce were a practicing warlock), an affront to three great religions. As I’ve argued before in these pages, Trump has no moral backbone at all. A true Christian would never vote for him.
Trump is a sexual predator. I guess the Access Hollywood tape wasn’t enough evidence for Trump’s stupid supporters. Of course, the Christian right has had their share of reverent sexual predators, and Trump’s other supporters seem to look the other way too. Add to that the payoff to a porn star and Playboy bunny and other women complaining about his attempts at molesting, and you’d think people would get the idea. He’s also a misogynist. He hates the squad, Nancy Pelosi, and other female politicians, both for their unyielding attacks against home but also because they’re strong women. (Can you name one female leader of a country he actually admires?)
He can’t stand strong women. Apparently they can’t stand him either. Liz Cheney and Lisa Murkowski, members of his own party, have stood up to him (although Liz might just be looking to rebrand her family name—her father wore a virtual mask over his fascist face all the time he was VP). Hypocritical Melania and hell, maybe even Ivanka, are examples of weak women who go along with his perverted behavior within his own family (his exes were smart enough to show him the door). Again, I can’t understand why any woman would vote for Trump.
Trump is a hypocrite. All of the above can be summarized nicely by this statement. Hypocrites abound in America now—that group of old dinosaurs awaiting the asteroid, AKA the Good Ole Piranhas, is the most prominent group of hypocrites—so it’s not so unusual that their leader deserves this label. He’s the hypocrite-in-chief. He contradicts himself all the time, a badge of shame for hypocrites everywhere. There’s no consistency in the muddled, diseased mind of Donald Trump. And in that lies the danger for America…and the world.
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Comments are always welcome.
Soldiers of God. This is a good novel for the Christian right in America. It considers what kind of nation we might be becoming. It’s a bridge novel between the “Clones and Mutants Trilogy” and the “Chaos Chronicles Trilogy.” An FBI agent and a priest are out to stop a fanatical religious group’s terrorist attack plans. In the background, a maniacal industrialist is pulling the strings, using religion to further his agenda. Will they succeed? This is one of my evergreen books, and it’s available wherever quality ebooks are sold.
Around the world and to the stars! In libris libertas!
