There are few Americans alive today who have personal memory of Hitler, the details are lost to the mists of time. But Donald Trump is bringing it all back to us with a fresh, stark splash of reality.
Thom Hartmann
Donald Trump is a confidence man, a charlatan, an unrepentant liar whose deceits have cost at least a half-million Americans their lives. Why do so many American support him?
The day after President Trump was re-elected (with MAGA Mike's help), he invoked the Insurrection Act and began the mass arrests.
Religious charlatans like Speaker MAGA Mike Johnson, exploiting a basic human urge to know the unknowable, to touch the mystery of life, are the most dangerous of all the various types of con men on Earth.
Oligarchy is always a transitional system, typically a mere way station in the shift from democracy to fascism or some other form of authoritarianism.
In MAGA Mike Johnson (what Trump calls him), Republicans have found the perfect embodiment of their deplorable basket of hatreds. The only “loves” they have are rightwing billionaires and the fossil fuel industry. And, of course, Trump’s good buddy Vladimir Putin.
As Russia and Hungary have shown us, once a country has lost the institutions that maintain its democracy, it’s damn hard to get them back.
The simple fact is that, were it not for slavery, white supremacy, and the legacy of “scientific racism,” America would have had a national, single-payer healthcare system in 1915.
The right wing faces crises with incompetence or cynical exploitation: Bush and Hurricane Katrina; Netanyahu and Gaza; Trump and Covid, or tossing paper towels at hurricane victims in Puerto Rico.
Russia is close to having the upper hand Ukraine because of Putin’s ability to get American Republican politicians to mouth his talking points and propaganda.
Just the overcharges happening right now in the Medicare Advantage scam are costing Americans over $140 billion a year: more than the entire budget for the Medicare Part B or Part D programs.
If the six Republican SCOTUS justices rule the way the oligarchs who support their extravagant lifestyles want, America could be a very, very different place in just a few years.
Sunlight and accountability are still the best disinfectants and America needs to close this ugly chapter in our history with a sense of both finality and justice.
Can we rescue our nation from treasonous Republicans, who are trying to shut down our government to help Putin while they continue to bow and scrape to "The Rapist Who Would Be King?"
The Putin Caucus in the GOP, along with the fossil fuel billionaires, appear quite pleased that they’ve succeeded in intimidating fact-checkers just in time for the 2024 election.
For today’s bought-off GOP (and a handful of bought-off “problem solver” Democrats), as long as Republicans on the Supreme Court keep the corrupt payola machine running, there simply is no bottom.