The Affordable Care Act (“Obamacare”) now provides access to healthcare for more than 45 million Americans, who could not otherwise afford coverage.
The Act:
Eliminates the “pre-existing condition” excuse insurance companies had used to deny coverage to those who most needed it.
Provides a range of no-cost preventive services.
Allows children to stay on their parents’ insurance up to age 26.
Expands the Medicaid program that insures lower-income people access to health insurance markets offering subsidized plans.
Yet since it won Congressional passage in 2010, Republicans have made 50-70 attempts to repeal, modify, or otherwise weaken the Act.
As a Presidential candidate and President, Donald Trump has repeatedly claimed that he wants to replace it. But he’s never offered a credible substitute.
On September 10, 2024, in his only Presidential debate with Vice President Kamala Harris, moderator Linsey Davis, of ABC News, asked him: “So tonight, nine years after you first started running, do you have a plan and can you tell us what it is?”
Trump’s reply: “I have concepts of a plan. I’m not president right now.”
On July 4, a re-elected Trump, backed by a Republican House and Senate, signed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act into law. Its purpose: Significantly cut federal health programs to pay for tax reductions for billionaires.
The law primarily impacts Medicaid, Medicare, and the Affordable Care Act (ACA), and is projected to cause millions of Americans to lose health insurance coverage. The bill includes the largest cuts in Medicaid’s history, reducing funding by nearly $1 trillion over the next decade.
Democrats refused to support a temporary spending bill to fund the government unless Republicans reversed cuts to Medicaid and prevented health insurance premiums from rising at the end of the year.
Trump—and Congressional Republicans—refused. They also falsely claimed that Democrats wanted to give health coverage to illegal aliens.
So the Federal Government shut down on October 1. The shutdown continues into its 36th day—with no end in sight.
Why have Republicans relentlessly tried to end healthcare for the poor? Here are the publicized reasons:
Millions of Right-wingers hate the Federal Government and openly call for its overthrow. They vividly proved this on January 6, 2021 when they tried to illegally retain Donald Trump as President. They hoped to prevent the selection of Joe Biden as the legitimately-elected President of the United States by storming the Capitol Building.
Racism forms a major component of the GOP’s appeal to older, white, Right-wing voters. So having the name of the first black President unofficially stamped on the Act (“Obamacare”) serves as a constant spur to their racist hatred.
Barack Obama
Obama’s promise that “If you like your plan, you can keep your plan.” The promise backfired because the law stated that those who already had medical insurance could keep their plans—so long as those plans met the requirements of the new healthcare law. If their plans didn’t meet those requirements, they would have to obtain coverage that did.
Now for the most important—and unpublicized—reason.
Like so much else in the Republican agenda, it is rooted in the goals and methods of the Third Reich.
On June 22, 1941, German Fuhrer Adolf Hitler sent three million soldiers smashing into the Soviet Union. During the first six months—June to December, 1941—German armies lured huge Soviet forces into gigantic “cauldron battles,” surrounding and exterminating them.
An estimated 5.7 million Russians became prisoners of the Wehrmacht. The Germans found themselves surprised and overwhelmed by the sheer numbers of them. But their mandate demanded that they keep marching ever forward.
So they simply imprisoned their captives behind barbed wire and wasted no food or medical care on them. Between starvation, illness and the brutal Russian cold, at least 3.5 million POWs died in custody.
Soviet POW’s
Republicans have learned a valuable lesson from this: If you simply deprive those you detest of food, clothing, shelter—and medical care—you don’t need gas chambers or firing squads. Or even rigged vote-counts.
No better proof of this could be given than the lying announcement made by the U.S. Department of Agriculture on October 27:
“Senate Democrats have now voted 12 times to not fund the food stamp program, also known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). Bottom line, the well has run dry. At this time, there will be no benefits issued November 01.”
This is a lie. Trump is holding back access to a contingency fund of $5 to $6 billion for the SNAP program. The reason: To pressure Democrats into agreeing to gut healthcare programs for the poor.
SNAP provides food assistance to more than 42 million Americans with low or no income.
For Trump, Democrats can choose to provide the poor with food—or medical care.
The official Republican lie continued:
“We are approaching an inflection point for Senate Democrats. They can continue to hold out for healthcare for illegal aliens and gender mutilation procedures or reopen the government so mothers, babies, and the most vulnerable among us can receive critical nutrition assistance.”
Most Americans—owing to naivety or historical ignorance—cannot accept that their Right-wing politicians can be as evil as those in other nations.
But they can—and are.
Those who depend on the government to provide access to food or medical care had better learn this truth quickly.
“Real power is—I don’t even want to use the word—fear.”
Thus Donald Trump—then a 2016 Presidential candidate—revealed guiding philosophy on rule to legendary journalist Bob Woodward.
It also serves as the thesis of Woodward’s 2018 bestseller: Fear: Trump in the White House, which chronicles the first two years of Trump’s first term as President.
Throughout that term, he showed no interest in compromise: “Do what I want—or I’ll destroy you” proved his go-to method of “negotiation.” And it has remained so during the first nine months of his second term.
On July 4, he signed into law the Republicans’ “One Big Beautiful Bill” which gives huge tax breaks to billionaires—by gutting Medicare and the Affordable Care Act for the poor and middle-class.
When Democrats refused to sign on, he shut down the government on October 1, saying openly he intended to punish them—and their constituents—for their refusal to bow to his will.
The Federal Government remains closed as of this writing.
But there are humane ways to wield power—and these usually leave feelings of lasting gratitude—if not reverence—for those who do.
Two examples follow.
Lesson #!: In Book Three, Chapter 22 of his classic masterwork, The Discourses, Niccolo Machiavelli offers the following: “An Act of Humanity Prevailed More With the Falacians Than All the Power of Rome.”
Marcus Furius Camillus, a Roman general, was besieging the city of the Faliscians, and had surrounded it. A teacher charged with educating the children of some of the city’s noblest families decided to ingratiate himself with Camillus by leading them into the Roman camp.
As Roman hostages, they could be used to compel the city to surrender.
Camillus not only declined the offer but went one step further. He ordered the teacher stripped and his hands tied behind his back. Then Camillus had a rod put into the hands of each of the children and directed them to whip the teacher all the way back to the city.
Upon learning this, the citizens of Faliscia were so much touched by the humanity and integrity of Camillus, that they surrendered the place to him without any further defense.
Summing up the meaning of this, Machiavelli writes:“This example shows that an act of humanity and benevolence will at all times have more influence over the minds of men than violence and ferocity. It also proves that provinces and cities which no armies…could conquer, have yielded to an act of humanity, benevolence, chastity or generosity.
“…History also shows us how much the people desire to find such virtues in great men, and how much they are extolled by historians and biographers of princes….Amongst these, Xenophon takes great pains to show how many victories, how much honor and fame, Cyrus gained by his humanity and affability, and by his not having exhibited a single instance of pride, cruelty or luxuriousness, nor of any of the other vices that are apt to stain the lives of men.”
Niccolo Machiavelli
This lesson—recorded by a master political scientist and practitioner of Realpolitik—remains highly relevant today.
Lesson #2: On May 25, 2020, George Floyd, a black unemployed restaurant security guard, was murdered by Derek Chauvin, a white Minneapolis police officer. While Floyd was handcuffed and lying face down on a city street during an arrest, Chauvin kept his knee on the right side of Floyd’s neck for eight minutes and 46 seconds.
Cities across the United States erupted in mass protests over Floyd’s death—and police killings of black victims generally. Most of these demonstrations proved peaceful.
But cities such as Los Angeles, San Francisco and New York City saw stores looted, vandalized and/or burned.
In response, President Donald Trump called for harsh policing, telling governors in a nationwide conference call that they must “dominate” protesters or be seen as “weak.”
To drive home his point, Trump ordered police and National Guard troops to violently remove peaceful protesters from Lafayette Square, which borders St. John’s Church near the White House.
The purpose of the removal: To allow Trump to have a photo opportunity outside the church.
“I imposed a curfew at 7pm,” tweeted Washington, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser. “A full 25 minutes before the curfew & w/o provocation, federal police used munitions on peaceful protestors in front of the White House, an act that will make the job of @DCPoliceDept officers more difficult. Shameful!”
Contrast that with the example of Sheriff Christopher Swanson of Genesee County, Michigan.
Sheriff Christopher Swanson
Confronting a mass of aroused demonstrators in Flint Township on May 30, Swanson responded: “We want to be with you all for real.”
So Swanson took his helmet off. His deputies laid their batons down.
“I want to make this a parade, not a protest. So, you tell us what you need to do.”
“Walk with us!” the protesters shouted.
“Let’s walk, let’s walk,”said Swanson.
Cheering and applause resounded.
“Let’s go, let’s go,”Swanson said as he and the cheering crowd proceeded. “Where do you want to walk? We’ll walk all night.”
And Swanson and his fellow officers walked in sympathy with the protesters.
On October 18, more than seven million Americans protested the dictatorial policies of President Donald J. Trump.
It was the second nationwide “No Kings” series of protest marches since he took office on January 20.
The first marches, on June 14, had drawn about five million people.
Republicans, knowing the marches were coming, tried to pre-empt their “I Hate Dictators” message with one of their own: That the intended marchers hated America.
Speaker of the House Mike Johnson: “You’re gonna bring together the Marxists, the socialists, the Antifa advocates, the anarchists, and the pro-Hamas wing of the far-left Democrat party.”
Mike Johnson
Other Republicans quickly joined his chorus.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent: “This crazy No Kings rally this weekend, which is gonna be the farthest left, the hardest-core, the most unhinged in the Democratic Party, which is a big title.”
Kansas Senator Roger Marshall warned that the protests would turn violent and have to be stopped by the national guard.
Attorney general Pam Bondi claimed, without proof, that the protests were an organized effort with dedicated funding: “You’re seeing people out there with thousands of signs that all match, pre-bought, pre-put together. They are organized, and someone is funding it.”
Pam Bondi
But, according to an October 19 opinion piece in The New Republic, such slanders were proven wrong:
“The atmosphere was extremely energetic and family friendly for both young and old.
“People walked slowly, often with kids in tow. Countless attendees wore large inflatable costumes, inspired by the Portland frog. There was live music, tabling, and speeches by Bill Nye, Mehdi Hasan, and Senators Bernie Sanders and Chris Murphy, among others.”
The greatest threat posed to the Trump administration didn’t come from the “No Kings” rallies. It came from no less a figure than President Donald J. Trump.
To show his utter contempt for those who oppose his policies and dictatorial rule, he posted an AI-generated video on his Truth Social account. It showed him wearing a crown and flying a jet labeled “King Trump” that dumps feces on protesters.
It’s set to the music of the 1986 Top Gun film song, “Danger Zone,” by Kenny Loggiins.
Loggins responded on NPR: “This is an unauthorized use of my performance of ‘Danger Zone.’ Nobody asked me for my permission, which I would have denied, and I request that my recording on this video is removed immediately.
“I can’t imagine why anybody would want their music used or associated with something created with the sole purpose of dividing us. Too many people are trying to tear us apart, and we need to find new ways to come together. We’re all Americans, and we’re all patriotic.
“There is no ‘us and them’ – that’s not who we are, nor is it what we should be. It’s all of us. We’re in this together, and it is my hope that we can embrace music as a way of celebrating and uniting each and every one of us.”
Owing to Logginis’ demand, many YouTube versions of this video don’t contain that music.
NPR contacted to the White House for a response to Loggins’ reaction.
White House spokesman Davis R. Ingle ignored NPR’s questions but contemptuously replied with an image from Top Gun of stars Tom Cruise and the late Val Kilmer, captioned: “I FEEL THE NEED FOR SPEED.”
Loggins could file a copyright infringement suit against Trump.
The Internet erupted with outrage:
“Can’t believe that’s a president of a country.”
“It tells you everything you need to know about what he thinks about the people of America who are, in fact, America.”
“Just to be clear, Americans, this is what Donald Trump thinks of you if you oppose him, protest, or simply ask questions.”
“Trump’s AI fantasy of crowning himself King & dumping shit from a fighter jet is the most honest thing he’s ever posted. He’s literally shitting on Americans because he doesn’t give a fuck about them. And the MAGA stupids will cheer it, calling it “patriotism.”
But these were tame compared to the warning issued by Niccolo Machiavelli, the Florentine statesman, more than 500 years ago.
Niccolo Machiavelli
In his best-known work, The Prince, he advised rulers to “mingle with [citizens] from time to time, and give them an example of his humanity and munificence, always upholding, however, the majesty of his dignity, which must never be allowed to fail in anything whatever.”
“…A prince need trouble little about conspiracies when the people are well disposed. But when they are hostile and hold him in hatred, then he must fear everything and everybody.
“….For whoever conspires always believes that he will satisfy the people by the death of the prince.
“…[The Roman Emperor Commodus], being of a cruel and bestial disposition, in order to…exercise his rapacity on the people, he sought to favor the soldiers and render them licentious. On the other hand, by not maintaining his dignity, by often descending into the theater to fight with gladiators and committing other contemptible actions…he became despicable in the eyes of the soldiers. And being hated on the one hand and despised on the other, he was conspired against and killed.”
But there are other ways a tyrant can be forced to give up power—such as Gaius Caligula, Adolf Hitler and—possibly—Joseph Stalin.
Joseph Stalin ruled as absolute dictator of the Soviet Union from January 21, 1924, to March 5, 1953—29 years.
Joseph Stalin
Throughout his nearly 30-year reign over the Soviet Union, at least 20 million men, women and children died—from executions, deportations, imprisonment in Gulag camps, and a man-made famine through the forced collection of harvests.
Robert Payne, the acclaimed British historian, vividly portrayed the crimes of this murderous tyrant in his brilliant 1965 biography, The Rise and Fall of Stalin.
According to Payne, Stalin was planning yet another purge during the last weeks of his life. This would be “a holocaust greater than any he had planned before.
“This time there would be a chistka [purge] to end all chistkas, a purging of the entire body of the state from top to bottom. No one, not even the highest officials, was to be spared.”
Then, on March 4, 1953, Moscow Radio announced: “During the night of March 1-2, while in his Moscow apartment, Comrade Stalin suffered a cerebral hemorrhage affecting vital areas of the brain.”
Stalin died on March 5, 1953. He was 73 and in poor health from a lifetime of smoking, drinking and little exercise.
But he could have died of unnatural causes.
In the 2004 book, Stalin’s Last Crime, Vladimir P. Naumov, a Russian historian, and Jonathan Brent, a Yale University Soviet scholar, assert that he might have been poisoned.
If this happened, the occasion was during a final dinner with four members of the Politburo. Two of these were Lavrenti P. Beria, chief of the secret police, and Nikita S. Khrushchev, who eventually succeeded Stalin.
The authors believe that, if Stalin was poisoned, the most likely suspect was Beria. The method: Slipping warfarin, a tasteless and colorless blood thinner also used as a rat killer, into his glass of wine.
In Nikita Khrushchev’s 1970 memoirs, he quotes Beria as telling Vyacheslav M. Molotov, another Politburo member, two months after Stalin’s death: “I did him in! I saved all of you.”
It’s entirely possible that Donald Trump’s “Presidency-for-Life” may end by natural causes.
He’s 79, and despite his repeated boastings that he’s the healthiest President in United States history, clearly he isn’t.
He is grotesquely overweight, doesn’t exercise, falls asleep in public appearances and slurs his words. Much of his diet consists of greasy, artery-clogging fast food—such as from McDonald’s and KFC.
He stays up late at night, pouring out his hatred for countless real and imagined enemies on his website, Truth Social.
But that is not the only way his reign could disappear.
Since retaking office on January 20, Trump has ruled as de-facto dictator. Among his outrages.
Turning Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) into his personal Gestapo. Nearly 150,000 people—both illegal aliens and American-born citizens—were arrested between January and late July 2025.
Purging FBI agents who rightly investigated his illegally confiscating classified documents and inciting the January 6, 2021 attack on Congress.
Attacking CBS and ABC for their news departments’ accurately covering his litany of mistakes and crimes.
Ordering the Justice Department to indict former FBI director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James for carrying out their legal responsibilities.
Forcing ABC to (temporarily) cancel Jimmy Kimmel Live! because the comedian made jokes about him.
Shutting down the Federal Government over Democrats’ refusal to back his gutting of Medicare and the Affordable Care Act (ACA) to give tax breaks to billionaires.
On June 14, more than five million Americans protested Trump’s rule with a “No Kings” march. And nearly seven million participated in the October 18 march. More are planned.
* * * * * * * * * *
Niccolo Machiavelli, the father of modern political science, offers a stern warning for Trump—a warning he has steadfastly ignored.
Niccolo Machiavelli
In his masterwork, The Discourses on Livy, Machiavelli notes how important it is for rulers to make themselves loved—or at least respected—by their fellow citizens:
“Note how much more praise those Emperors merited who, after Rome became an empire, conformed to her laws like good princes, than those who took the opposite course.
“Titus, Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian, Antoninus and Marcus Auelius did not require the Praetorians nor the multitudinous legions to defend them, because they were protected by their own good conduct, the good will of the people, and by the love of the Senate.
“On the other hand, neither the Eastern nor the Western armies saved Caligula, Nero, Vitellius and so many other wicked Emperors from the enemies which their bad conduct and evil lives had raised up against them.”
In his better-known work,The Prince, Machiavelli warns rulers who—like Donald Trump–are inclined to rule by fear:
“A prince should make himself feared in such a way that if he does not gain love, he at any rate avoids hatred: for fear and the absence of hatred may well go together.”
By Machiavelli’s standards, Trump has made himself the perfect target for a conspiracy:
“When a prince becomes universally hated, it is likely that he’s harmed some individuals—who thus seek revenge. This desire is increased by seeing that the prince is widely loathed.”
He became Emperor in 37 A.D. after succeeding the Emperor Tiberius, his uncle who had adopted him as a son after his father died.
Caligula’s reign began well—and popularly. He gave Tiberius a magnificent funeral—then recalled to Rome all those whom Tiberius had banished, and ignored all charges that Tiberius had leveled against them.
He gave bonuses to the military and allowed the magistrates unrestricted jurisdiction, without appeal to himself.
But in October 37 A.D. he fell seriously ill or perhaps was poisoned.
Caligula soon recovered but emerged a changed man. He began claiming to be a god, and killing or exiling anyone he saw as a threat. He ordered his victims tortured to death with many slight wounds: “Strike so that he may feel that he is dying.”
Among his litany of crimes, according to his biographer, Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus:
“He forced parents to attend the executions of their sons, sending a litter for one man who pleaded ill health, and inviting another to dinner immediately after witnessing the death, and trying to rouse him to gaiety and jesting by a great show of affability.”
For all his cruelty and egomania, the trait that finally destroyed Caligula was his joy in humiliating others.
His fatal mistake was to taunt Cassius Chaerea, a member of his own bodyguard. Caligula considered Chaerea effeminate because of a weak voice and mocked him with names like “Priapus” and “Venus.”
On January 22 41 A.D. Chaerea and several other bodyguards hacked Caligula to death with swords before other guards could save him.
Next up: Adolf Hitler, dictator of Nazi Germany from January 30, 1933, to April 30, 1945—12 years.
He was born on April 20, 1889, in Braunau am Inn in Austria-Hungary.
Adolf Hitler
He was appointed Chancellor—chief law enforcement officer—of Germany on January 30, 1933, by President Paul von Hindenburg. Upon Hindenburg’s death in 1934, Hitler assumed the Presidency and established himself as absolute dictator.
From 1933 to 1939 he presided over Germany’s rapid economic recovery from the Great Depression, the defiance of restrictions imposed on Germany after World War 1, and the annexation of Austria and Czechoslovakia, where millions of ethnic Germans lived.
These accomplishments won him widespread popular support.
But after absorbing Czechoslovakia in 1938, Hitler felt himself invincible. On September 1, 1939, his armies attacked Poland—and unintentionally ignited World War II.
After conquering Norway, Denmark, Holland, Belgium, France, Greece and Yugoslavia, he made his two greatest mistakes of the war: He invaded the far more powerful Soviet Union on June 22, 1941, and declared war on the equally more powerful United States on December 11.
Parallel to unleashing a war that slaughtered 50 million people, Hitler orchestrated the extermination of at least six million Jews during the Holocaust.
By April, 1945, Germany faced destruction from the advancing Russians on the East, and from the advancing Americans on the West.
On April 30, with Russian forces only blocks from his underground bunker, Hitler lifted a heavy 7.65mm Walther PPK pistol to his right temple, bit on a cyanide capsule, and pulled the trigger.
Just as Caligula’s mangled remains were hastily burned and buried in the Horti Lamiani gardens, Hitler’s body was hastily cremated in the Reich Chancellery garden.
Last up: Joseph Stalin, dictator of the Soviet Union from January 21, 1924, to March 5, 1953—29 years.
Born on December 18, 1878, in Georgia, Russia, he hated Czarist rule and in 1903 joined the Communist Bolsheviks party, led by Vladimir Lenin, to overthrow it.
Joseph Stalin
On November 7, 1917, Lenin overthrew the Provisional Government, which had taken power in February, after Czarist rule collapsed.
Stalin became a member of the new Soviet government, gradually working his way to the position of General Secretary. When Lenin died on January 21, 1924, Stalin outmaneuvered Leon Trotsky, his major rival for the succession, and became absolute dictator.
Starting in 1934, a series of massive purges followed—most notably between August, 1936, and March, 1938.
Throughout his nearly 30-year reign over the Soviet Union, at least 20 million men, women and children died—from executions, deportations, imprisonment in Gulag camps, and a man-made famine through the forced collection of harvests.
Robert Payne, the acclaimed British historian, vividly portrayed the crimes of this murderous tyrant in his brilliant 1965 biography, The Rise and Fall of Stalin.
According to Payne, Stalin was planning yet another purge during the last weeks of his life. This would be “a holocaust greater than any he had planned before.
“This time there would be a chistka [purge] to end all chistkas, a purging of the entire body of the state from top to bottom. No one, not even the highest officials, was to be spared.”
Yet Stalin did nothing to calm their fears. He often summoned his “comrades” to the Kremlin for late-night drinking bouts, where he freely humiliated them.
Long before he took office for the first time on January 20, 2017, Donald Trump never intended to rule as an ordinary President.
Under the Constitution, a President can hold office for—at most—eight years. But a “President-for-Life” can rule until he dies.
That was—and remains—his ambition.
In a closed-door speech to Republican donors on March 3, 2018, Trump revealed his ultimate intention: To overthrow America’s constitutional government.
He praised China’s President, Xi Jinping, for recently assuming full dictatorial powers: “He’s now president for life. President for life. No, he’s great. And look, he was able to do that. I think it’s great. Maybe we’ll have to give that a shot some day.”
The statement was greeted with cheers and laughter by Republican donors.
Xi Jinping
Upon taking office as the Nation’s 45th President, Trump attacked or undermined one public or private institution after another.
Among these:
American Intelligence: Even before taking office, Trump refused to accept the findings of the FBI, CIA and National Security Agency (NSA) that Russian Intelligence agents had intervened in the 2016 election to ensure his victory.
“I think it’s ridiculous,” he told “Fox News Sunday.” “I think it’s just another excuse. I don’t believe it….No, I don’t believe it at all.”
And when FBI Director James Comey dared to pursue a probe into “the Russia thing,” Trump fired him without warning.
American law enforcement agencies: Trump repeatedly attacked his own Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, for not “protecting” him from agents pursuing the Russia investigation.
On November 8, 2018, Trump abruptly fired him, following Democrats’ winning control of the House in the midterm elections.
He threatened to fire Rod J. Rosenstein, the deputy attorney general, who oversaw Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian subversion of the 2016 election.
American military agencies:In 2018, Trump refused to visit an American cemetery near Paris and referred to U.S. Marines buried there as “losers” and “suckers.”
Trump regularly abused military officials, calling Chairman of the Joint Chief of Staff Mark Milley a “dumbass” and former Secretary of Defense James Mattis “the world’s most overrated general.”
Seal of the Department of Defense
The press: On February 17, 2017, Trump tweeted: “The FAKE NEWS media (failing@nytimes, @NBCNews, @ABC, @CBS, @CNN) is not my enemy, it is the enemy of the American People!”
Appearing before the Conservative Political Action Conference on February 24, 2017, Trump said: “I want you all to know that we are fighting the fake news. It’s fake, phony, fake….I’m against the people that make up stories and make up sources. They shouldn’t be allowed to use sources unless they use somebody’s name. Let their name be put out there.”
The judiciary: Trump repeatedly attacked Seattle US District Judge James Robart, who halted Trump’s first Muslim travel ban.
In one tweet, Trump claimed: “Just cannot believe a judge would put our country in such peril. If something happens blame him and court system. People pouring in. Bad!”
At Trump’s bidding, White House aide Stephen Miller attacked the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals: “We have a judiciary that has taken far too much power and become, in many cases, a supreme branch of government.”
Donald Trump
Even after leaving the White House in 2021, Trump continued his attacks on one cherished American institution after another:
Facing 91 criminal counts in four cases, he discredited the judicial system, attacking judges, prosecutors, witnesses—and even their family members.
He attacked Independent Counsel Jack Smith as “deranged” and accused him of trying to invalidate his candidacy for President in 2024.
He attacked retired U.S. Army General Mark Milley for calling him “a wannabe dictator,” and said that Milley deserved execution as a traitor.
Milley had successfully averted war with China by calling his Chinese military counterparts in the final weeks of Trump’s administration to assure them that Trump was not planning to attack China.
He claimed voter fraud where none existed, casting doubt on the integrity of the electoral system.
He claimed himself to be the victim of “the deep state” inside the federal bureaucracy.
He attacked the integrity of the FBI—causing previously “law and order” Republicans to demand its defunding.
* * * * * * * * * *
Donald Trump isn’t crazy, as many of his critics charge. He knows exactly what he’s doing—and why.
He intends to strip every potential challenger to his authority—or his version of reality—of legitimacy with the public. If he succeeds, there will be:
No independent press to reveal his failures and crimes.
No independent law enforcement agencies to investigate his abuses of office.
No independent judiciary to hold him accountable.
No independent military to dissent as he recklessly hurtles toward a nuclear disaster.
No candidate—Democrat or Republican—to challenge him for re-election in 2028—or any other year..
No candidate—Democrat or Republican—to challenge his remaining in office as “President-for-Life.”
A dictator can die of illness or old age.
China’s Communist ruler, Mao Zedong died on September 9, 1976, at 82, from a series of heart attacks.
And Spain’s Fascist tyrant, Francisco Franco, died on November 20, 1975, at 82, of congestive heart failure.
But there are other ways a tyrant can be forced to give up power—such as the following three.
On September 2, 1964, the FBI launched a full-blown counterintelligence program against the Ku Klux Klan—COINTELPRO–WHITE HATE in FBI-speak.
Tim Weiner, author of Enemies: A History of the FBI, chronicles the methods used by the Bureau:
“WHITE-HATE intensified in the fall of 1964. It involved all the techniques in the FBI’s long-running attack on the Left. Once a week….FBI agents interrogated all known members of the White Knights of the KKK, blaming other Klansmen for being snitches and naming names, sowing deep suspicion among Klan members. Few knew who was an informer and who was not.
A Ku Klux Klan meeting
“The FBI dangled small fortunes before potential Klan informers, offered outright bribes to Klansmen who could serve as double agents inside state and local police forces, planted bugs and wiretaps in Klaverns, carried out black bag jobs to steal membership lists….”
Other tactics included:
Contacting the news media to publicize arrests and identify Klan leaders;
Informing the employers of known Klansmen of their employees’ criminal activity, resulting in the firing of untold numbers of them;
Breaking up the marriages of Klansmen by circulating rumors of their infidelity among their wives.
“When the Klan reached 14,000 in the mid-sixties, I asked to take over the investigation of the Klan,” recalled William C. Sullivan, who headed the FBI’s Domestic Intelligence Division in the 1960s. “When I left the Bureau in 1971, the Klan was down to a completely disorganized 4,300. It was broken.”
William C. Sullivan
According to Neil J. Welch, the retired Special Agent in Charge (SAC) of the FBI’s Buffalo, New York office:
“A Klan Bureau of Investigation (KBI) was created to counter the FBI, and its members placed the wives and children of agents under surveillance, harassing them with taunts and anonymous phone calls,” wrote Welch in his memoir, Inside Hoover’s FBI.
“It was a serious miscalculation. The most dangerous members of the KBI were systematically identified and assigned to agents selected solely because they were comparatively dangerous. The agents had full discretion.
“During the next few months, a number of men previously involved in Klan violence around the state seemed, by remarkable coincidence, to experience misfortune. Some disappeared from the area. Some were forced to leave Mississippi for health reasons. A few took unplanned trips to places like Mexico and seemed to lose all interest in the Klan upon their return.”
Under a Democratic President, a similar effort, focusing on Right-wing terrorism, could include the following:
The FBI’s designating Right-wing political and terrorist groups as the Nation’s #1 enemy.
Reviving the FBI’s legendary COINTELPRO (“Counterintelligence Program”) that destroyed the Ku Klux Klan in the late 1960s. Among the methods that can be used:
Turning the Bureau’s powerful arsenal—bugs, wiretaps, informants, SWAT teams—on them.
Buying the cooperation of informants within Right-wing organizations.
Conducting “black bag jobs” to steal membership lists of of Right-wing organizations.
Breaking up the marriages of prominent Right-wingers by circulating rumors of their infidelity among their wives.
Informing the employers of known Right-wing terrorists of their employees’ criminal activity, resulting in the firing of untold numbers of them.
Contacting the news media to publicize the arrests of prominent Right-wing leaders.
When Right-wing terrorists target Federal law enforcement agents and/or their families for harassment or worse, they can be targeted for similar intimidation or removal.
FBI SWAT member
A revised COINTELPRO could be supplemented by the following:
Creating tip hotlines for reporting illegal Right-wing activities—and offering rewards for information that leads to arrests.
Prosecuting militia groups for violating Federal firearms laws.
Treating calls for the murder of members of Congress—as Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene has done-–as felonies punishable by lengthy imprisonment.
Prosecuting Right-wing leaders involved in the treasonous assault on the United States Capitol Building.
Prosecuting as “accessories to treason” all those Republican members of Congress who stoked Right-wing anger by lying that the 2020 Presidential election had been stolen from Donald Trump, although every objective news source proved he had lost.
Directing the Treasury Department’s Terrorist Finance Tracking Program (TFTP) at fundamentalist Christian churches that finance Right-wing terrorism—just as it halts the financing of Islamic terrorist groups by Islamic organizations.
Using drones, planes and/or helicopters to provide security against similar Right-wing terror demonstrations—especially in Washington, D.C.
Using the Federal Communications Commission to ban Fox News—the Nation’s #1 Right-wing propaganda network—from representing itself as a legitimate news network, and requiring that its stories carry labels warning viewers: “This is Right-wing propaganda, NOT news.”
Encouraging victims of Right-wing hate-speech to file libel/slander lawsuits against their abusers—such as the parents of murdered children at Sandy Hook Elementary School successfully did against Alex Jones.
Using Federal anti-terrorist laws to arrest, prosecute and imprison Right-wingers who openly carry firearms and threaten violence, even if states allow such display of firearms.
Seizing the assets of individuals and organizations found guilty of Right-wing terrorism offenses.
When you are constantly looking over your shoulder, your enemies are winning. When your enemies are constantly looking over their shoulder, you are winning.
In 2022, Donald Trump’s followers did what even the Mafia had never dared: Threaten the lives of FBI agents and openly challenge the authority of the Justice Department.
On August 8, 2022, the FBI, under a search warrant issued by the Justice Department, seized 11 sets of classified documents from the former President’s home at Mar-a-Lago. These included four sets that were classified as “top secret,” according to the unsealed search warrant.
Trump’s legions of fanatical Right-wing followers then vented their fury at a wide range of their self-declared enemies: President Jose[h Biden, Democrats, Attorney General Merrick Garland, the Justice Department—-and especially the FBI.
On August 12, 2022, the FBI and Department of Homeland Security [DHS] issued a joint Intelligence bulletin warning of the increased threats aimed at federal law enforcement agencies.
FBI seal
“Since 8 August 2022, the FBI and DHS have identified multiple articulated threats and calls for the targeted killing of judicial, law enforcement, and government officials associated with the Palm Beach search, including the federal judge who approved the Palm Beach search warrant.
“The FBI and DHS have also observed the personal identifying information of possible targets of violence, such as home addresses and identification of family members, disseminated online as additional targets.”
“These threats are occurring primarily online and across multiple platforms, including social media sites, web forums, video sharing platforms, and image boards. The FBI and DHS would like to ensure that law enforcement, court, and government personnel are aware of the range of threats and criminal and violent incidents.
“The FBI and DHS have observed an increase in violent threats posted on social media against federal officials and facilities, including a threat to place a so-called dirty bomb in front of FBI Headquarters and issuing general calls for ‘civil war’ and ‘armed rebellion.'”
Even the Mafia—with one or two exceptions—never threatened the lives of FBI agents. And when individual mobsters did, they found the consequences frightening.
In April, 1963, four New York mobsters knocked FBI agent John Foley to the ground, and then severely beat and kicked him. Foley had been conducting surveillance at the Brooklyn funeral of Carmine “The Doctor” Lombardozzi, a capo in the Gambino Mafia Family.
The FBI retaliated by launching an all-out war against the Gambinos. Agents leaned on the cartel’s boss, underboss, counselor and lieutenants. The Bureau also intensified the use of illegal electronic surveillance (wiretaps and hidden microphones) against the mobsters.
Map of Mafia families
Angelo Bruno, the boss of the Philadelphia crime syndicate, unwittingly informed a hidden microphone about how the FBI brutally drove home the message to “boss of all bosses” Carlo Gambino:
BRUNO: “They [the FBI] went to Carlo and named all his capos [lieutenants] to him. The FBI asked him: “Did you change the laws in your family, that you could hit FBI men, punch and kick them? Well, this is the test—that if you change the laws, and now you are going to hit FBI men, every time we pick up one of your people we are going to break their heads for them.’
“And, really, they picked up our guy, they almost killed him, the FBI. They don’t do that, you know. But they picked up one of his fellows and crippled him. They said, ‘This is an example. Now, the next time anyone lays a hand on an FBI man, that’s just a warning. There’s nothing else we have got to tell you.'”
Word traveled quickly through the nationwide organized crime network—and its leaders decreed there should be no further assaults on FBI agents.
Under a Democratic President, the FBI could be ordered to wage war on the radical Right. And it could be done the same way the FBI destroyed the Ku Klux Klan in the mid-1960s.
Klansmen had shot, lynched and bombed their way across the Deep South, especially in Alabama and Mississippi. Many Southern sheriffs and police chiefs were Klan sympathizers, if not outright members and accomplices.
On June 21, 1964, three civil rights workers disappeared in Philadelphia, Mississippi.
President Lyndon B. Johnson called J. Edgar Hoover, the legendary director of the FBI, and ordered an all-out investigation: “I want you to have the same kind of Intelligence [on the Klan] that you have on the communists.”
Poster for missing civil rights workers
For decades, Hoover had refused to tackle white hate groups. And, in truth, no President had been willing to give him the order to do so. But now a President had given him such an order.
In August, the FBI uncovered the bodies of the three missing civil rights activists—Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman and James Chaney.
On September 2, 1964, the Bureau launched a full-blown counterintelligence program against the Klan—COINTELPRO–WHITE HATE in FBI-speak.
Tim Weiner, author of Enemies: A History of the FBI, chronicles the methods used by the Bureau:
“WHITE-HATE intensified in the fall of 1964. It involved all the techniques in the FBI’s long-running attack on the Left. Once a week….FBI agents interrogated all known members of the White Knights of the KKK, blaming other Klansmen for being snitches and naming names, sowing deep suspicion among Klan members. Few knew who was an informer and who was not.”
Syndicated columnist Mark Shields (now deceased) and New York Times columnist David Brooks appeared every Friday on the PBS Newshour to review the week’s major political events.
On March 25, 2016, Shields—a liberal, and Brooks, a conservative—came to some disturbingly similar conclusions about Donald Trump.
Eerily, their conclusions echoed those reached by former Panzer General Heinz Guderian about German dictator Adolf Hitler.
Guderian created the concept of motorized blitzkrieg warfare, whereby masses of tanks and planes moved in coordination to strike at the vital nerve centers of an enemy.
Heinz Guderian
Guderian thus enabled Hitler to conquer France in only six weeks in 1940, and to come to the brink of crushing the Soviet Union in 1941. He recounted his career as the foremost tank commander of the Third Reich in his 1950 autobiography, Panzer Leader.
On the PBS Newshour, moderator Judy Woodruff noted that “polls show Trump’s standing with women voters had worsened in recent months.”
Judy Woodruff
Mark Shields noted that Trump clearly had an obsession with Fox News Correspondent Megyn Kelly.
MARK SHIELDS: But there is something really creepy about this that’s beyond locker room. It’s almost like a stalker….It actually did the impossible. It made Ted Cruz look like an honorable, tough guy on the right side of an issue.
Donald Trump
HEINZ GUDERIAN: Once in power, Hitler quickly—and violently—eliminated his opposition. He make no attempt to disguise this aspect of his character, because the opposition was weak and divided and soon collapsed after the first violent attack. This allowed Hitler to pass laws which destroyed the safeguards enacted by the Weimar Republic against the dangers of dictatorship.
MARK SHIELDS: And I don’t know at what point it becomes…politically, he’s still leading. And I would have to say he’s the overwhelming favorite for the Republican nomination.
HEINZ GUDERIAN: Hitler promised to “make Germany great again” both domestically and internationally. And this won him many followers. In time he controlled the largest party in the land and this allowed him, by democratic procedure, to assume power.
DAVID BROOKS: The odd thing about [Trump’s] whole career and his whole language, his whole world view is there is no room for love in it. You get a sense of a man who received no love, can give no love, so his relationship with women, it has no love in it. It’s trophy.
HEINZ GUDERIAN:[Hitler] was isolated as a human being. He had no real friend. There was nobody who was really close to him.
Adolf Hitler
There was nobody he could talk to freely and openly. And just as he never found a true friend, he was denied the ability to deeply love a woman.
DAVID BROOKS:And [Trump’s] relationship toward the world is one of competition and beating, and as if he’s going to win by competition what other people get by love.
HEINZ GUDERIAN:Everything on this earth that casts a glow of warmth over our life as mortals—friendship with fine men, the pure love for a wife, affection for one’s own children—all this was and forever remained unknown to him.
DAVID BROOKS: And so you really are seeing someone who just has an odd psychology unleavened by kindness and charity, but where it’s all winners and losers, beating and being beat. And that’s part of the authoritarian personality, but it comes out in his attitude towards women.
HEINZ GUDERIAN:He lived alone, cherishing his loneliness, with only his gigantic plans for company. His relationship with Eva Braun may seem to contradict what I have written. But it is obvious that she could not have had any influence over him. And this is unfortunate, for it could only have been a softening one.
* * * * *
In his bestselling 1973 biography, The Life and Death of Adolf Hitler, British historian Robert Payne harshly condemned the German people for the rise of the Nazi dictator:
“[They] allowed themselves to be seduced by him and came to enjoy the experience….[They] followed him with joy and enthusiasm because he gave them license to pillage and murder to their hearts’ content. They were his servile accomplices, his willing victims.”
On November 5, 2024, 77 million ignorant, hate-filled, Fascistic Americans catapulted Donald Trump—a man with an “odd psychology unleavened by kindness and charity”—once again into the Presidency.
Appeals to their hatred, racism, misogyny and greed proved far more seductive than preserving America’s 248 years of democratic traditions.
They ignored the 400,000 American deaths in 2020 by his ignoring the dangers of COVID-19 and alienating America’s longtime allies like England and Canada while clearly showing preference for its mortal enemies like Russia and North Korea.
Future historians will similarly and harshly condemn those Americans who, like “good Germans,” joyfully embraced a regime dedicated to
Lies
Vindictive prosecutions
Censorship
Celebrating Trump’s egomania
Depriving America’s poor of their only source of healthcare
Further enriching the ultra-wealthy and
Threatening the use of force against those who desired to live as citizens in a republic, instead of a dictatorship.
This should be remembered the next time an American blames Germans for their embrace of Adolf Hitler.
On November 5, 2024, Americans faced a monumental choice: Save their democracy by electing Vice President Kamala Harris, or speed its destruction by re-electing former President Donald Trump.
They chose Trump—and democracy’s destruction.
This despite:
His egomania and vindictiveness;
His 34 criminal convictions for falsifying business records;
His plans to gut the American healthcare system; and
His having tried to violently overturn a legitimate Presidential election.
Eight years before the 2024 election, liberal syndicated columnist Mark Shields and conservative New York Times columnist David Brooks had reached some disturbingly similar conclusions about the character of Trump, then the Republican Presidential front-runner.
They did so on the March 25, 2016 edition of The PBSNewshour, to review the week’s major political events.
Mark Shields and David Brooks
Eerily, their conclusions about Trump echoed those reached by former Panzer General Heinz Guderian about the character of German dictator Adolf Hitler.
Guderian created the concept of motorized blitzkrieg warfare, whereby masses of tanks and planes moved in coordination to strike at the vital nerve centers of an enemy.
As a result, Guderian enabled Hitler to conquer France in only six weeks in 1940, and to come to the brink of crushing the Soviet Union in 1941. He recounted his career as the foremost tank commander of the Third Reich in his 1950 autobiography, Panzer Leader.
Moderator Judy Woodruff opened the Newshour discussion by alluding to the blood feud then raging between Trump and his fellow Republican, Texas United States Senator Rafael Eduardo “Ted” Cruz.
Both were ruthlessly seeking their party’s Presidential nomination.
Cruz accused Trump of being behind a recent National Enquirer story charging him with having a series of extramarital affairs.
An anti-Trump Super PAC posted on Facebook a photo of a scantily-clad Melania Trump–-his wife. The photo had been taken 16 years ago when, as a model, she posed for British GQ.
Its publication came just ahead of the primary caucuses in sexually conservative Utah, which Cruz won.
Trump quickly responded on Twitter, accusing the Cruz campaign of leaking the photo, warning Cruz: “Be careful or I will spill the beans on your wife.”
Cruz struck back, defending his wife, Heidi, and calling Trump a coward. The next day, Trump retweeted an unflattering image of Mrs. Cruz.
Rafael Eduardo “Ted” Cruz
This “war of the wives” had cost Trump dearly in his standing with American women. In March, 2016, a Washington Post/ABC News poll showed that 64% of women felt highly unfavorably disposed toward him.
DAVID BROOKS:The Trump comparison of the looks of the wives, he does have, over the course of his life, a consistent misogynistic view of women as arm candy, as pieces of meat.
Donald Trump
It’s a consistent attitude toward women which is the stuff of a diseased adolescent. And so we have seen a bit of that show up again.
But if you go back over his past, calling into radio shows bragging about his affairs, talking about his sex life in public, he is childish in his immaturity. And his—even his misogyny is a childish misogyny….
He’s of a different order than your normal candidate. And this whole week is just another reminder of that.
HEINZ GUDERIAN:As Hitler’s self-confidence grew, and as his power became more firmly established both inside and outside Germany, he became overbearing and arrogant. Everyone appeared to him unimportant compared to himself.
Previously, Hitler had been open to practical considerations, and willing to discuss matters with others. But now he became increasingly autocratic.
Judy Woodruff asked Mark Shields if the uproar over Donald Trump’s disdain for women could really hurt his candidacy.
MARK SHIELDS: The ad featuring a scantily-clad Melania Trump elicited from Donald Trump the worst of his personality, the bullying, the misogyny, as David has said, brought it out.
But I think it’s more than childish and juvenile and adolescent. There is something creepy about this, his attitude toward women.
Take Megyn Kelly of FOX News, who he just has an absolute obsession about, and he’s constantly writing about, you know, how awful she is and no talent and this and that.
Megyn Kelly
And I don’t know if he’s just never had women—strong, independent women in his life who have spoken to him. It doesn’t seem that way….
She just asked him tough questions and was totally fair, by everybody else’s standards.
HEINZ GUDERIAN:Hitler’s most outstanding quality was his will power. It was by this that he compelled men to follow him. When Hitler spoke to a small group he closely observed each person to determine how his words were affecting each man present.
If he noticed that some member of the group was not being swayed by his speech, he spoke directly to that person until he believed he had won him over. But if the target of his persuasive effort still remained obstinate, Hitler would exclaim: “I haven’t convinced that man!”
His immediate reaction was to get rid of such people. As he grew increasingly successful, he grew increasingly intolerant.
Steffen White’s Email: Sparta480@aol.com Former reporter, legal investigator and troubleshooter. Columnist at Bureaucracybuster.com. Fighting political and bureaucratic arrogance, incompetence and/or indifference.
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Don't attribute motives to people you've had problems with, such as: "The postal clerk refused to help me because he's a drunk." If the person actually appeared to be drunk, then be precise in your description: "As he leaned over the counter I could smell beer on his breath. Behind him, in a waste basket, I saw an empty bottle of Coors beer."
Show how the failure of the official to address your problem reflects badly on the company or agency: "This is not the level of service your ads would lead potential customers to expect."
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IT WORKED FOR THE NAZIS; NOW REPUBLICANS WANT IT TO WORK FOR THEM
In Bureaucracy, History, Politics, Social commentary on November 5, 2025 at 12:10 amThe Affordable Care Act (“Obamacare”) now provides access to healthcare for more than 45 million Americans, who could not otherwise afford coverage.
The Act:
Yet since it won Congressional passage in 2010, Republicans have made 50-70 attempts to repeal, modify, or otherwise weaken the Act.
As a Presidential candidate and President, Donald Trump has repeatedly claimed that he wants to replace it. But he’s never offered a credible substitute.
On September 10, 2024, in his only Presidential debate with Vice President Kamala Harris, moderator Linsey Davis, of ABC News, asked him: “So tonight, nine years after you first started running, do you have a plan and can you tell us what it is?”
Trump’s reply: “I have concepts of a plan. I’m not president right now.”
On July 4, a re-elected Trump, backed by a Republican House and Senate, signed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act into law. Its purpose: Significantly cut federal health programs to pay for tax reductions for billionaires.
The law primarily impacts Medicaid, Medicare, and the Affordable Care Act (ACA), and is projected to cause millions of Americans to lose health insurance coverage. The bill includes the largest cuts in Medicaid’s history, reducing funding by nearly $1 trillion over the next decade.
Democrats refused to support a temporary spending bill to fund the government unless Republicans reversed cuts to Medicaid and prevented health insurance premiums from rising at the end of the year.
Trump—and Congressional Republicans—refused. They also falsely claimed that Democrats wanted to give health coverage to illegal aliens.
So the Federal Government shut down on October 1. The shutdown continues into its 36th day—with no end in sight.
Why have Republicans relentlessly tried to end healthcare for the poor? Here are the publicized reasons:
Barack Obama
Now for the most important—and unpublicized—reason.
Like so much else in the Republican agenda, it is rooted in the goals and methods of the Third Reich.
On June 22, 1941, German Fuhrer Adolf Hitler sent three million soldiers smashing into the Soviet Union. During the first six months—June to December, 1941—German armies lured huge Soviet forces into gigantic “cauldron battles,” surrounding and exterminating them.
An estimated 5.7 million Russians became prisoners of the Wehrmacht. The Germans found themselves surprised and overwhelmed by the sheer numbers of them. But their mandate demanded that they keep marching ever forward.
So they simply imprisoned their captives behind barbed wire and wasted no food or medical care on them. Between starvation, illness and the brutal Russian cold, at least 3.5 million POWs died in custody.
Soviet POW’s
Republicans have learned a valuable lesson from this: If you simply deprive those you detest of food, clothing, shelter—and medical care—you don’t need gas chambers or firing squads. Or even rigged vote-counts.
No better proof of this could be given than the lying announcement made by the U.S. Department of Agriculture on October 27:
“Senate Democrats have now voted 12 times to not fund the food stamp program, also known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). Bottom line, the well has run dry. At this time, there will be no benefits issued November 01.”
This is a lie. Trump is holding back access to a contingency fund of $5 to $6 billion for the SNAP program. The reason: To pressure Democrats into agreeing to gut healthcare programs for the poor.
SNAP provides food assistance to more than 42 million Americans with low or no income.
For Trump, Democrats can choose to provide the poor with food—or medical care.
The official Republican lie continued:
“We are approaching an inflection point for Senate Democrats. They can continue to hold out for healthcare for illegal aliens and gender mutilation procedures or reopen the government so mothers, babies, and the most vulnerable among us can receive critical nutrition assistance.”
Most Americans—owing to naivety or historical ignorance—cannot accept that their Right-wing politicians can be as evil as those in other nations.
But they can—and are.
Those who depend on the government to provide access to food or medical care had better learn this truth quickly.
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