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A man of wealth and questionable taste

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William Shakespeare wrote, “It is not in the stars to hold our destiny, but in ourselves.” Hence, will Americans elect the voice of reason or the voice of treason for president in 2024?

And if Shakespeare was wrong, what fateful ballot will destiny cast?

Donald Trump’s nature is to idolize himself ad nauseam by providing a hagiographical account of his life while forcefully and vigorously denying all his treachery, corruption and fatal flaws.

“Doth protest too much, methinks.”

As the curtain rose at his political theater debut, he opened with a misanthropic scourge of hate, division and racism that has become a crucible to our very existence. His political presence is an excruciating tribulation for America and nothing short of a Shakespearean tragedy.

Trump’s narrative is a demented chimera in his mind and his game conjures the worst in people.

He is the bête noire of democracy hell-bent on fear mongering with luridly melodramatic soliloquies at his rallies, heralding Armageddon if he loses the election. But is the Donald a thespian playing a part on the world stage or a nefarious mad scientist with a messiah complex proclaiming and believing his own blasphemous hype that he is the “chosen one” who will save the world?

It appears his blasphemy and flagrant repudiation of the teachings of Jesus Christ have gone unnoticed by the Catholic Church. At the Alfred E. Smith dinner attended by society’s upper crust and religious illuminati, Trump sat with the event’s host, Archbishop of New York Timothy Cardinal Dolan, to camouflage his perfidiousness and continue to deceive Americans.

In this political playhouse, where church meets state, is Dolan’s part to “mingle with society and play the humble host” or to be the vicar of Christ? 

I digress.

Like a pendulum, Trump oscillates between whistling Dixie and chants of “U.S.A., U.S.A.” He agitated for an attack on the nation’s Capitol seen by many as lèse-majesté and vows to pardon his fellow insurrectionists.

Now he is promising to rename Fort Liberty back to Fort Bragg. Braxton Bragg, a North Carolina slave owner and confederate general, was the eponym of the North Carolina military installation from 1922-2020. Bragg rebelled against the Union and fought during the American Civil War against the same U.S.A. that Trump and his partisans exalt and clamor for at rallies.

While speaking at the Black Conservative Federation in South Carolina to a group of mostly whites, Trump asked “Would you rather have the Black president or white president?” He answered, “I think they want the white guy.”

In September, CNN reported that North Carolina’s 2024 Republican gubernatorial candidate Mark Robinson called himself a “Black Nazi” and supported slavery, writing, “Slavery is not bad. Some people need to be slaves. I wish they would bring slavery back. I would certainly buy a few.” Trump supports and endorsed Robinson and said he is “better than Martin Luther King.”

Is the reversion to Fort Bragg and support for Robinson an attempt to fast-forward America back to the antebellum South?

Like a post Civil War carpetbagger, Trump is a Northerner seeking personal gain by exploiting the South.

GOP vice-presidential nominee JD Vance called Trump an “idiot,” “reprehensible” and in 2016 stated he was “a really bad candidate and frankly, I think, a really bad person,” and that he might be “America’s Hitler."

Trump echoes Hitler by asserting that immigrants are “poisoning the blood” of America and while president he called neo-Nazis in Charlottesville “very fine people.”

But, “what’s in a name?” A Nazi by any other name is still a fascist.

Although Trump’s nature is puzzling there’s no mystery to him. He’s not an enigma nor is he shrouded by any remorse or contrition. He’s a white supremacist and his presidency yielded a welcoming environment that planted the seeds of racism and hate. 

He toiled tirelessly, plowed the fertile political soil and helped the dystopian seeds quickly grow by adding his ideological manure, a once-secret potion of poison hidden behind a veil that has now produced a bountiful harvest of Americans that could figuratively remove the white hoods and allow racism and hate to proudly show their ugly faces in public.

Creating an enemy of the state is another part of Hitler’s nature that Trump shares and strives to emulate.

For years he has called the free press “the enemy of the people.” And recently he said this about political adversaries, “This time the greatest threat is not from the outside of our country I really believe this, it’s from within…. They’re very sick people.”

Although Trump is correct about the inside threat to America, it’s just more projection. He is the sick inside threat. He has succeeded in accomplishing what the Kremlin has not been able to achieve in 80 years, namely, undermining democracy, dividing Americans, subverting the electoral process and governmental institutions and inciting insurrection.

The doppelganger within Trump is the enemy within America.

The former Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley during Trump’s presidency called Trump “a total fascist,” adding, “He is now the most dangerous person to this country."

Ending America’s ideological civil war, which Trump encouraged, spawned and nurtured, will not be easy, but the inherent good in most Americans and their genuine patriotism will ultimately prevail. We see more and more traditional Republicans like Utah Senator Mitt Romney, former U.S. Representatives Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, former Georgia Lt. Governor Geoff Duncan and current Mesa, Arizona, Mayor John Giles each emerging with a “Profiles in Courage” moment where they put county over party and rebuke Trump’s abject turpitude and undermining of democracy.

The chorus of Republican voices warning of the consequences of a second Trump term has since grown by dozens. It now includes  John Kelly, Trump's longest-serving chief of staff, who also likened the Republican standard bearer to a fascist.

Meanwhile, as America trembles with hope our destiny lies not in the stars but in our hands at the voting booth.

And years from now when students are taught American history and learn of Trump’s depravity they will not ask why Romney, Cheney, Kinzinger, Duncan and Giles renounced Trump but instead they will ask why others didn’t.

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