CBS Correspondent William L. Shirer covered the Third Reich from 1934 to 1940. Writing about the rise of Adolf Hitler in his monumental bestseller, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (1960), he noted:     

“No class or group or party in Germany could escape its share of responsibility for the abandonment of the democratic Republic and the advent of Adolf Hitler. The cardinal error of the Germans who opposed Nazism was their failure to unite against it.

“At the crest of their popular strength, in July 1932, the National Socialists had attained but 37 percent of the vote. But the 63 percent of the German people who expressed their opposition to Hitler were much too divided and shortsighted to combine against a common danger which they must have known would overwhelm them unless they united, however temporarily, to stamp it out.”

William L. Shirer (left)

Competent future historians will reach the same verdict about the second coming to power for Donald Trump on November 5, 2024.

• Republicans: Who feared that Trump’s Fascistic supporters would deprive them of political office if they didn’t abase themselves to a lifelong criminal and would-be dictator.
• Republican judges: Who bent and/or broke the law to enable Trump to escape justice.
• Justice Department prosecutors: Whose awe of the Presidency allowed Trump to slander and threaten federal prosecutors and judges.
• Attorney General Merrick Garland: Who refused to appoint Jack Smith Special Counsel until November 18, 2022—giving Trump time to delay justice and again win the Presidency.
• Democrats: Whose cowardice toward Trump encouraged Republicans to ever more extreme measures.
• Blacks: Who voted for a racist in hopes of a bigger paycheck.
• Muslims: Who refused to support Kamala Harris because President Biden wouldn’t stop Israel’s military campaign to free Hamas-captured hostages.
• Hispanics: Who refused to believe that Trump would carry out his threats to deport illegal aliens.
• The Biden administration: Which  refused to stem the tide of illegal aliens invading America—and thus enraged millions of law-abiding Americans into supporting Trump.
• Toxic masculinity voters: Whose hatred of women led them to reject a former local and state prosecutor for a 34-times convicted felon.
• American voters: Whose hatred of Hispanic illegal aliens and inflationary grocery prices led them to ignore overwhelming evidence of Trump’s intent to overturn the democratic process and make himself absolute dictator.

On January 20, 2025, Donald J. Trump became the 47th President of the United States.  

Since then, he has aggressively committed a series of outrages against the country he claims to love, including: 

• Granting clemency to more than 1,500 people convicted of offenses related to the January 6, 2021 United States Capitol attack.
• Signing 26 executive orders reversing climate change initiatives, eliminating DEI programs, changing the federal designation for the Gulf of Mexico to the “Gulf of America” and initiating a federal hiring freeze.
• Revoking an executive order on Artificial Intelligence safety signed by former President Joseph Biden, to establish safeguards for the rapidly advancing AI technology.
• Firing the inspectors general—who are charged with protecting the government from waste and corruption—from more than a dozen federal agencies.
• Purging about a half-dozen executive assistant directors at the FBI. These were some of the bureau’s top managers overseeing criminal, national security and cyber investigations.
• Their “crime”: Investigating Trump’s inciting the January 6, 2021 coup attempt and illegally holding highly sensitive national security documents after leaving office.
• Following Trump’s anti-DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) executive order, the Department of Defense deletes content that included the achievements of nonwhites—such as Navajo code talkers, black Tuskegee Airmen, Medal of Honor winners and women veterans.

• Firing the board members at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and appointing himself as chairman—just as Joseph Stalin made himself arbiter of what was permissible for artists in the Soviet Union.
• Ordering the Justice Department to indict his critics such as New York Attorney General Letitia James and former FBI Director James Comey.
• James had convicted him on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records. Comey had sought to investigate Russia’s subversion of the 2016 Presidential campaign to ensure Trump’s election.
• Flooding the streets of cities such as Los Angeles, Chicago and San Antonio with masked, heavily-armed agents of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Almost 200 American citizens have been improperly assaulted, arrested and detained. 
• Shutting down the Federal Government on October 1, when Democrats refused to agree to his gutting Medicaid, Medicare and the Affordable Care Act (ACA), causing 10-15 million Americans to lose health insurance coverage. 
• Among those not getting paid: Air traffic controllers for the Federal Aviation Administration. Owing to many controllers refusing to work, the FAA reduced air traffic by 10% at many airports. 
• Shutting off the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) for the poor to pressure Democrats to support his gutting of healthcare programs.

As John Adams, second President of the United States, observed:

“Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide. It is in vain to say that democracy is less vain, less proud, less selfish, less ambitious, or less avaricious than aristocracy or monarchy. It is not true, and nowhere appears in history. Those passions are the same in all men, under all forms of simple government, and when unchecked, produce the same effects of fraud, violence and cruelty.”