“The Mask” in orange...

“Somebody stop me!”

Donald Trump is “The Mask” in orange!

We don’t learn from history! The fall of the Roman Empire, the rise of Hitler in Germany - both are applicable today. We have a narcissistic incompetent as our president. With complicity from the gloating power hungry, thinly veiled libertarians who hijacked the Republican Party our nation is heading for a come-uppance.

We had a cautious detente with Iran, tore up the nuclear treaty and proceeded to crush their citizenry with sanctions. Their leaders still remember the CIA deposing Premier Mossadeq and reinstalling Shah Pahlavi in 1953. Under the umbrella of our endless war against “terror” we are insulting our European allies and antagonizing Iranian leadership into a shooting war.

Trump’s love for the despot playbook has him linking arms with Kim Jong Un - as if admiration for the tyrant would halt North Korea’s march to nuclear weaponry and more effective missiles. Even the bellicose security adviser John Bolton seems placated while the threat of attack on the Pacific Coast is growing.

The threat of world-wide economic recession is now being exacerbated by Trump’s tirades and hastily imposed tariffs. The best response to China’s growing tech prowess and our trade deficit would be to increase US efficiency, r&d and education.

The lessons of history teach us that increasing empire and squandering a nation’s wealth on armament and troops are precursors to social and economic collapse. $738 billion for defense in 2020 while supposed fiscal conservatives lay down rather than risk presidential ire and the possibility of bad press in their home districts. We should be eliminating waste and performing intelligent cost reductions and working in concert with the rest of earth’s nations to save the planet rather than thoughtlessly expanding our overly bellicose global military presence.

Domestically we are plagued by deep division due to the approximately 75 year history of far right propaganda and libertarian subterfuge. Gerrymandering, voter role purges, restrictive identification requirements and ballot tampering are accelerating. Blatant racist appeals are inciting violence. Police agencies are increasingly militarized and the dangers of the profession made worse by intransigence on the subject of weapons control. We have allowed our local constabularies a gestapo like stance with close to blanket pardons for murder behind the badge.

The present need for giant campaign funds to guarantee election has led to legislators who are beholden to lobbyists and business interests. Tax cuts for the wealthy, offshore shelters for cash and profits, bank and corporate malfeasance have drained the populace of discretionary income. Medical care as a profit seeking enterprise, price gouging on services and prescriptions - and still the right-wingers seek the repeal of the Affordable Care Act and continue to tie that favorable legislation to the negativity of the president’s scorn for former president Barack Obama.

The US has wasted a great opportunity by pillaging South America with the economic aggression and theft of colonialism. We supported right wing dictators, connived to remove benign heads of state starting with President Arbenz of Guatemala in a 1954 CIA coup. In the 80s our violent policies in San Salvador created the dreaded MS13 gang, and when gang members migrated here we imprisoned them. Gangs convert other prisoners, the problem is replicated and amplified in ghettos created by US racism and denial of educational resources to communities of color, then when the problem grows we deport these US made criminals who then ravage the countries they came from. Now that thousands of innocents are fleeing the countries we ruined through years of neglect and exploitation our president denigrates and imprisons asylum seekers, shaming our country in the eyes of the world.

It’s time to halt the destruction. Even if the morally bankrupt Republicans in the Senate would fail to convict, we must begin impeachment proceedings! It won’t be easy to undo 75 years of right wing subterfuge, the semantic efforts to create negative signal reactions to previously benign concepts like liberalism, social welfare, public assistance, secular education and the entrenched insularity of libertarian institutions dedicated to rewriting the Constitution. But the present administration is dismantling centuries of humanitarian progress while the populace is distracted with the presidential bully’s public outbursts and transparent didactic appeals to the immoralities of hatred and violence. And the largely tacit response to his history of predatory sexual violence by his political party and the American press needs to be checked as well.