How does one define a regime where the president is an intellectual dolt and has no real idea of how to govern and is indifferent to the details of the formulation of policy, yet commands the absolute, unquestioning allegiance even of those who should know better? Wikipedia gives us an example of how this could occur with the concept of “Leader Principle”—Führerprinzip—which “was the basis of executive authority in the government of Nazi Germany”:
It placed the Führer’s word above all written law, and meant that government policy decisions, and officials all served to realize his will. In practice, the Führerprinzip gave Adolf Hitler supreme power over the ideology and policies of his political party; this form of personal dictatorship was a basic characteristic of Nazism. The state itself received "political authority" from Hitler, and the Führerprinzip stipulated that only what the Führer "commands, allows, or does not allow is our conscience," with party leaders pledging "eternal allegiance” to Adolf Hitler.
Just insert “Trump” for “Hitler,” and you get the general idea. There is simply no denying it, unless you are a blind fool. Republicans who were once not afraid to criticize his nonsense suddenly grovel before him, fearful of his juvenile wrath. Of course as noted Trump is no policy “wonk,” so he tasks others not necessarily to perform their duties with professionalism and competence, but with absolute disregard for any law save his own word, whatever it is worth.
We see today that anyone and everyone who is even suspected of having a grain of independent thought or expresses an opinion that does not 100 percent align with Trump’s vision is regarded as an “enemy” and will be subject to a threat on Truth Social if they occupy an elected position that Trump cannot simply say to “You’re fired.”
Trump’s foreign policy is basically this, at least in regard to our allies: bully them with tariff threats, and hope they will give an inch to appease his ego for the moment. But history reminds us of the Munich Accords and the subsequent “Peace in our time” with Neville Chamberlain waiving a worthless scrap of paper with Hitler’s signature on it:
rWithin months it was already a dead letter, with Hitler’s army marching into Czechoslovakia and absorbing it into the German Reich as it did Austria. The failure to threaten military action and the lack of gutlessness only convinced Hitler that the allies would do nothing if he annexed part of Poland (with Russia’s “help”).
The question is just how far Trump will be allowed to continue in this fashion until he believes Europe and Latin America are just a bunch of “chickens” he can invade their coops because they are too cowardly to oppose him—at which point they will be forced to do something that just a few weeks ago seemed an impossible scenario.
Didn’t this megalomaniac once tell us he was for “America First” isolationism?; now he seems keen on global domination, which of course the U.S. simply doesn’t have the resources to do either militarily or economically—thus revealing the ultimate emptiness of Trump’s threats.
Trump the maniac has much wider aspirations than anyone with a grain of common sense thought possible, threatening to annex Canada and Greenland, but keeping Mexico apart to use as an “enemy” state populated by “vermin” and “terrorists.” If there are terrorists, it certainly isn’t common sense to fire the acting head of the DOJ's National Security Division, Devin DeBacker after just a few weeks on the job, merely because “fighting global terrorism, rooting out domestic extremism, stopping foreign espionage operations, enforcing U.S. sanctions, and investigating leaks of classified information” is not a priority of the Trump administration—as shown in his pardoning of 1,500 domestic terrorists and extremists who participated in the January 6 insurrection. I mean, that was the whole point of the Department of Homeland Security after 9-11. No illegal migrant has ever been accused of committing a terrorist act, only a white extremist in the El Paso mass shooting.
But back to führerprinzip idea. The Trump propaganda ministry is currently headed by press secretary Karoline Leavitt, whose only apparent “fitness” for her role beyond spreading outright lies and propaganda for her audience of one—Trump—is likely because Trump privately jacks-off at the notion of an attractive Aryan blonde white woman showing such sycophantic fealty to him. Of course propaganda outlets like Fox News and the New York Post are also expected to wax ecstatic over actions that if Biden did them they would condemn him as traitorous.
The NYP did a story on the genius Trump’s “miraculous” efforts to end the war in Ukraine, but what is the truth? Here, John Bolton accuses Trump of “surrendering” to Putin on a possible peace deal for Ukraine:
Let’s not avoid the reality that Putin is desperate for a “win” because he won’t last long if Russians start wondering if they shed all that blood for nothing. But Putin knows Trump is also desperate for a “win” on any terms, although to be “fair” most people have already forgotten the disastrous attempts at “peace” with North Korea that only left Kim Jong Un even more crazed than before (I mean, does South Korea really want to “inherit” the economic mess that is the North?).
Bolton points out that Trump and his so-called secretary of “defense,” Pete Hegseth, are working to undermine NATO in their “talks” with Putin, and who are basically caving into his demands to control all the Ukrainian territory it illegally occupied that directly defied the agreements made in the 1991 accord governing the break-up of the old Soviet Union, which Putin obviously wants to reconstitute.
Hegseth has already caved to Putin’s demand that Ukraine not join NATO, which is essential as an obstacle to future threats from Russia. In his press conference to address the “talks,” Trump declined to say that Ukraine would be allowed to speak for itself in the “negotiations,” and Kremlin propagandists on Russian television have expressed elation that Trump is doing their “dirty work” for Russian interests.
Let’s be real about this: Putin knows Trump, and he made the mistake of thinking the U.S. under Biden was as equally weak-willed when a threat turned to reality. Biden wasn’t a cowardly bully who ran when confronted on anywhere near equal terms—which is what Trump would have done in 2022 and is doing now, when he should be threatening more military aid for Ukraine (which, by the way, Secretary of State Marco Rubio voted against the last time) so that it is Putin who is made to see “common sense.”
Trump likes to talk “common sense,” but what passes for such is for the simple-minded. “Drill-baby-drill” makes “sense”—but for who? We are told that there are 2,000 unused oil leases in the Gulf of Mexico and thousands more on federal land that oil companies are simply not drilling in because 1. the U.S. is already drilling more than it needs and 2. the excess is going into the pockets of profiteers and shareholders who don’t want to see oil prices go down by drilling for more. Is Trump going to threaten tariffs on U.S. oil companies unless they “drill-baby-drill”?
We live in a complex world, but for Trump and the MAGAverse, simply saying something is “bad” or “good” isn’t necessarily “sensible” if it simply meant to be “contrary” to majority opinion. Hey, cut spending to reduce the deficit? Makes perfect “sense,” until someone actually comes up with a “plan” that cuts taxes for billionaires who we are told many take advantage of an ill-conceived tax loophole to avoid paying into the Medicare fund 1 or that even if DOGE cuts practically everything that isn’t a “priority” to either Elon Musk or Trump, and Trump puts a 100 percent tariff on everything 2 it won’t be close to being enough to “pay” for the next round of tax cuts the Republicans have in mind—and not only that, tariffs will be in effect a regressive tax that harms those in the lower-income brackets far more than anyone else.
Oh, and the firing of government workers who oversee public assistance programs won’t be around to help Trump voters either because, you know, they are not a “priority” with Trump and his oligarchs. But then again, you can’t expect “red” voters to see through the hate and use “common sense” to know that their ignorance and malinformed selves are being used to maintain the plantation state of being.
But again, people who voted for Trump ignored the warning signs that he was going to install into government people who actually had “plans” that put the “meat” on the bones of Trump’s usually ill-defined ideas. The concept of führerprinzip requires the support of fanatics who are allowed loose upon the world like Tasmanian Devils at feeding time:
So much for “sharing.”
You have Stephen Miller starring as Martin Bormann, Kristi Noem impersonating Himmler, and Tom Holman as Reinhard Heydrich as Gestapo chief and architect of the “final solution” in mass deportations. We are told by The Intercept that ICE does not appreciate the negative attention their thug operations are getting, and that it is now hiring contractors that draw-up lists of people who they believe have the “wrong” attitude toward them for potential criminal charges, and that anyone “who simply criticize ICE online could pulled into the dragnet.” According to an ICE document making these threats,
In order to prevent adversaries from successfully targeting ICE Senior leaders, personnel and facilities, ICE requires real-time threat mitigation and monitoring services, vulnerability assessments, and proactive threat monitoring services.
The U.S. version of the Gestapo in action. The Intercept notes that “If this scanning uncovers anything the agency deems suspicious, ICE is asking its contractors to drill down into the background of social media users.” The ICE document goes on
Previous social media activity which would indicate any additional threats to ICE; 2). Information which would indicate the individual(s) and/or the organization(s) making threats have a proclivity for violence; and 3). Information indicating a potential for carrying out a threat (such as postings depicting weapons, acts of violence, refences to acts of violence, to include empathy or affiliation with a group which has violent tendencies; references to violent acts; affections with violent acts; eluding [sic] to violent acts.
The Intercept notes that “It’s unclear how exactly any contractor might sniff out someone’s ‘proclivity for violence.’ The ICE document states only that the contractor will use ‘social and behavioral sciences’ and ;psychological profiles’ to accomplish its automated threat detection.”
Meanwhile, Holman recently admitted that ICE was forced to release some migrants (presumably the “collateral” arrests of those who committed no crimes but just happened to “be there” to help fill the quotas) because they just couldn’t find the space in “detention centers” like this:
To pay for more such facilities, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, USAID or food for starving children around the world are being targeted for cuts:
But who is really “running” the country now? That is the one caveat in the führerprinzip theory. Oligarchs with the money to buy the government was what John Adams warned about when he said he was less concerned than Thomas Jefferson was about a return to monarchy. The right-wing of U.S. Supreme Court essentially opened the door for oligarchic rule (and Trump himself is an oligarch) with its Citizens United ruling. It is being suggested that what we are seeing is something akin to the British East India Company, which during the peak of its power became a virtual independent “country” that even printed its own money.
Trump, by allowing someone like Musk, who has allowed in the unaccountable DOGE a man who admits to “being racist before it was cool” a 19-year-old who was previously fired from an internship for passing on business secrets to a competitor, and a 22-year-old coder who is being allowed to do some “tinkering” for fun. People ask why are these people being allowed to decide who or what is “government waste” rather than forensic accountants trained to find what actually constitutes “waste” is merely indicative of the power a megalomaniac like Musk believes he has--who like the oligarchs in Russia hopes to profit from being close to the levers of power.
Or maybe he believes he already has those levers in hand. Here we see this viral suggestion that Musk’s own son thinks Trump isn’t the “real” president:
I find it amusing that many people just think the kid is just a smartass like his dad, but what I see is that this kid is merely repeating what he heard his “dad” say about Trump. Yes, it is perfectly reasonable think that in private, Musk thinks he is the “real” president, and that he is the “power”—like, say, Cardinal Richelieu was during the reign of Louis XIII—behind the “throne,” except that Musk is so arrogant that during that press conference he did little to disguise his sense of superiority over Trump, who just sat there silently behind the Oval Office desk like he knew he was being outclassed by someone much “smarter” than he was.
If Musk is really “calling the shots,” then we wonder how this was possible. Here it is observed his “descent into megalomania” 4 while here we learn how his current actions are being influenced by his knowledge of South African apartheid 5. Musk also showed his contempt for the law and the Constitution by calling for the impeachment of judges putting holds on his activities. The fact that DOGE can’t help but do real damage to this country was pointed out by this post by radicalcompliance.com:
Like, do the math. The entire federal government is roughly 2.3 million people. Of that number, roughly 1.3 million are uniformed military personnel. If you want to cut the federal workforce to 1.15 million (which is half of 2.3 million), there’s no way to do that without cutting into uniformed service members. You could eliminate everyone else — no border security agents, no air traffic controllers, no federal prosecutors, no food and safety inspectors, no VA counselors, no Medicare fraud examiners, no members of Congress; heck, not even any president or White House staff — and you still wouldn’t have enough.
Nor would this exercise result in the $2 trillion in savings that Musk, Ramaswamy, and Trump are promising. The federal government spent $6.75 trillion in fiscal 2024. Of that amount, roughly $4.8 trillion went to Social Security, national defense, Medicare, veterans’ benefits, and interest on the national debt. That leaves only $1.95 trillion for everything else: Congress, federal courts, disaster relief, border security, diplomatic operations around the world, Medicaid, consumer protection, aviation safety, space exploration, tax collection, and all else the government does. You could cut all of it, and still fall short of the $2 trillion goal.
Of course that is all assuming that we still have a livable planet left. Reagan
Secretary of the Interior, James Watt, "famously" asserted that there
was no need for environmental protection because the "end times" were
near anyways, while the Reagan EPA was busy selling out to businesses and in
seeing its "administrators" convicted of various crimes in doing
so. Here 6
we learn that the Yosemite National Park is apparently being "prepped" in the
hope that there is something "drillable" there, and it is difficult to see what four of the
five "priorities" of new EPA administrator Lee Zeldin has will do
anything to aid the first one:
And it didn't take long for new OMB chief and architect of Project 2025, Russell Vought, to take aim at the rights of ordinary working people. According to the Associated Press,
The Trump administration has ordered the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to stop nearly all its work, effectively shutting down an agency that was created to protect consumers after the 2008 financial crisis and subprime mortgage-lending scandal.
Russell Vought, the newly installed director of the Office of Management and Budget, directed the CFPB, in a Saturday night email confirmed by The Associated Press, to stop work on proposed rules, to suspend the effective dates on any rules that were finalized but not yet effective, and to stop investigative work and not begin any new investigations. The agency has been a target of conservatives since President Barack Obama pushed to include it in the 2010 financial reform legislation that followed the 2007-2008 financial crisis.
The email also ordered the bureau to “cease all supervision and examination activity.”
Of course the Affordable Care Act is also in Trump's sights because, you know, he "cares" about people.
Still, there are those who claim that Trump is merely doing what voters (meaning those who voted for him) want him to do. But do they? The Germans discovered what happens when the whole world turned against them because they blindly followed the “leader” who gave them the fool’s gold of racism to live on until the bitter end.
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