Dear Bob, Advice Please

Knowing your shit.

Dear Bob,

Color me confused! I know that our country is being destroyed by MAGA and the Trump regime, but I’m confused by all the accusations against them. They’ve been compared to Nazis, the KKK and the Cosa Nostra — all the worst pieces of shit. But which one is it?

Sincerely,
Confounded in Colorado

Dear Confounded,

Excellent question! You have hit upon something important. But before I give you the direct answer you’re seeking, let me first make a different comparison: namely, to the constant buffeting of the conscience from wave after punishing wave crashing to the shore — each enough to knock you off your feet. You just about right yourself when the next wave pummels you back into the surf. Again and again.

For years.

One moment it’s illegal arrests and deportation. Another it’s extorting surrender from “enemy” institutions of education, media, state government and industry. Another, the eradication of science. Another, the mobilization of the justice department and federal law enforcement as a de facto secret police. The attacks on our allies. The threats of colonization of sovereign nations. The cancellation of climate protection enforcement. The cancellation of consumer protection enforcement. The sale of pardons. The murder on the high seas. The bribes from foreign governments and corporate special interests. The revisionist history. The naked racism. The political prosecutions. The defiance of court orders. The assaults on voting rights. The lies, the lies, the lies.

So many outrages, with the effect that by the time a new wave crests, the previous one has dissipated, vanishing into the sand. Neither the public nor the political opposition can maintain focus. Worse, not only is each vile episode usurped by the next, the constant turbulence just turns into background thunder. It is hard to mount a resistance — or maintain focus — when you can scarcely keep track of the violence to your democratic being. When the siege of mass indecency is just a numbing condition of life.

That’s a tragic byproduct of constant predation, but not a random one. It’s a strategy, often described with the football term “flooding the zone.” That is unleashing too many threats for the defense to cover. Hence the farflung sociopathy that defies you to define.

So, my dear Confounded, back to your query! It’s a straightforward question, with a trick answer. Are these pieces of shit in power Nazis, or Klansmen or mafiosi?

No! They are Nazis, Klansmen and mafiosi! MAGA is a coalition of the vile, but the Trump Administration that these various repulsive subgroups all support actively embraces, represents and empowers the entire Axis of Shit. Let’s look at your three comparisons one by one.

Nazi

• Dehumanizing migrants

• Mass deportations and internment camps

• Extrajudicial Gestapo tactics and Stormtrooper roundups of undesirables

• Revisionist history erasing the nation’s worst crimes

• Jewbaiting

• Expansionism by force

• Summary executions

• Media censorship

• Criminalizing free speech

KKK

• “Protecting” women’s purity, “whether they like it or not”

• Toxic rhetoric about minority inferiority

• Encouraging white separatism

• Lies about threats to Christianity

• Promoting the paranoiac “Great Replacement” conspiracy

Mafia

• Extortion

• “Gifted” 747 and other bribes

• Money laundering

• Sweetheart deals and tentacles into private businesses

Now you may say, “The Nazi list is the longest so that must give me my answer.” But, again, no!

You can’t be a little bit pregnant, and you can’t be a little bit mafia. You are either an organized crime kingpin or you’re not. Trump is a career criminal. Please note his long history of fraudulent activities in the casino business, Trump University, his “charitable” foundation and, of course, the Trump Organization, where he racked up his 34 felony convictions. Threatening NATO negates none of that. Likewise the Ku Klux Klan comparisons. From the time he demanded the death penalty for five teenagers falsely accused of a Central Park attack on a white woman, he has been racebaiting non-stop. Obama’s birth certificate. The “not an intelligent person” attacks on Black Democrats. He’s a bad man but a Grand Dragon. Don’t take that away from him. He’s many shit piles in one bag.

So how did he get to the political top? Because shit floats.

It also has a very large constituency. After all the documented lies, lawlessness, authoritarianism and chaos, according to poll tabulations by RealClear Politics, Trump has the approval of 42% of the electorate, and 87.5% of Republicans. Please note that the most popular ice cream flavor, vanilla, is favored by only 38%. Here in the land of the free and home of the brave, 100 million people admire their Nazi, Klansman, Mafia hero. He talks about “shit hole countries” while trafficking in all manner of raw sewage.

Which finally leads back to those previously mentioned endless crashing waves, and why your question is so pertinent. It is hard to defend against a siege by a cruel and malign enemy in your very midst. It is even harder to defend against three distinct armies of them, fighting side by side, murder by murder, injustice by injustice, delusion by delusion, bigotry by bigotry, lie by lie. The temptation for any resistance is to “divide and conquer.” But that only invites the loss of focus I spoke of earlier.

Confounded in Colorado, you’re to be commended for your due diligence. Sure, there’s a taxonomy of antisocial behavior, and you don’t want to be dismissed as unserious for indiscriminate name calling. But it’s also true that you get nowhere identifying these loathsome constituencies one pile of shit at a time. No, you have to deal with Trump and his Republican henchmen, guardians and protectors of the whole, stinking sewer.