The Supremes and The Extremes

In the 1960s, Diana Ross, Florence Ballard, and Mary Wilson were The Supremes. In the 2000s, Donald Trump and his MAGA fanatics became The Extremes. The rise of the far-right had been at a slow boil before the Trump era. His wink and nod acceptance became a beacon in the darkness for white supremacists and “sovereign citizens.”

The Supremes

The beginnings of this extremism can be traced easily in the modern era to the Oklahoma City bombing in April of 1995 by Michael Fortier and Timthy McVeigh. Their vague motivations were supposedly protesting US support of the United Nations and a perceived one-world government that was plotting to take away their weapons. Extremist attacks of domestic terrorism have accelerated since Oklahoma and have taken place in almost every state in the union. When Cesar Sayoc (a Florida man) mailed 16 IEDs (PVC pipe containing explosives wired to a battery and clock) he was protesting perceived enemies of Donald Trump. “In this darkness,” the lawyers wrote in a sentencing memo, “Mr. Sayoc found light in Donald J. Trump.”

Most of these domestic terrorism attacks have been against minority targets and they champion an anti-government mindset. These attacks were by either lone wolf actors or small groups. Until Trump, they were leaderless. Trump provided a national platform, tacit approval of their cause, and made their views appear more mainstream.

With Trump’s acceptance, along with help from social media platforms like Facebook, X, and Truth Social, even more radicals were mobilized. After 2016, self-policing of mainstream platforms pushed some extremists to encrypted arenas like Telegram, Kik, and WhatsApp.

The Extremes are accepted outliers within the MAGA movement. Much as Hitler redefined the term Aryan to mean all German people who were not Jews, Blacks, or Roma (Gypsies), Trump has likewise coopted Ronald Reagan’s MAGA campaign slogan to include all Trump-loyal Republicans. Just as not all German “Aryans” were Nazis, not all MAGA faithful are extremists. These extremists are, however, both tolerated and welcomed under the MAGA umbrella.

Trump, with his wink and nod to the Twilight end-Zone of the far-right extremists, will still claim he is neither a racist nor an antisemite. Like others I have known who make such proclamations, they will justify their neutral status by pointing out specific examples from each group with whom they have no problem.

Trump has a Jewish son-in-law and will hire, with special effort, Jews to be his accountants or lawyers. He even made friends with Jeffrey Epstein saying, "He's a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side. No doubt about it—Jeffrey enjoys his social life."

Trump likewise continued his father’s policy of never renting to Blacks. He was sued in 1973 by the Department of Justice for racial discrimination against African-American renters. He signed a consent decree that, while never admitting guilt, he promised to never do it again. The Justice Department found him in violation of that consent decree in 1978 due to continued racial discrimination. It was found during these investigations that, as instructed, managers marked applications from Blacks with the letter “C” for colored. The doormen at Trump properties were told to quote outrageous prices to prospective Black renters.

In a book about Trump by John O’Donnell he quoted Trump, and Trump later in a 1997 interview with Playboy magazine acknowledged, that the statement was, “…probably true.” That quote was:

“I've got black accountants at Trump Castle and at Trump Plaza. Black guys counting my money! I hate it. The only kind of people I want counting my money are short guys wearing yarmulkes.... Those are the only kind of people I want counting my money. Nobody else... Besides that, I've got to tell you something else. I think that the guy's lazy. And it's probably not his fault because laziness is a trait in blacks.”

There is a white supremacist group in southern California called RAM (Rise Above Movement) who attended a MAGA rally in Huntington Beach who fought with protesters. That RAM splinter group calls itself Truimpenkriegers which is intended to mean “Fighters for Trump.”

Trump is not wholly responsible for the rise of the far-right and its resultant violence, but he has acted as a catalyst along with help from the expansion of the Internet and social media. While Diana Ross and The Supremes sang, “You Can’t Hurry Love,” Trump and The Extremes might counter with, “You Can Hurry Hate.”

Yes, there are far-left extremist radicals. You can generally spot them throwing gluten-free zucchini muffins at the homeless.

I'm Not the One

With well over seven decades in the rearview mirror, I’m not the one who should be most fearful of what lies ahead for our country. Those who will have to live in the aftermath of the potential wreckage for most of their lives are the ones who should be most concerned. They should tremble with the prospect of crossing the bridge ahead. The water is rising, the bridge is in poor repair, and we are driving much too fast.\

The youth of our country, perhaps the least likely voting bloc, will end up under either a damaged democracy that is still serviceable or looking up from the bottom of a ravine lamenting how it all might have been salvaged if only they (and we) had acted. In November 2024, our nation crosses that bridge and enters a bizarre “land of shadow and substance, of things and ideas.” For those too young to remember that journey reference, it involved entering, The Twilight Zone.

For much of the 1960s, I was too young to vote but I was eligible to be drafted and sent to Vietnam. Many of the youth of that period protested the war. I doubt many people my age could have told you why we were fighting and I would also guess that many adults shared our ignorance. Certainly, none of us wanted to die for an undisclosed cause under the guise of patriotic duty.

Today on college campuses there are protests about war once again. I won’t get into the pros and cons behind these current efforts only that perhaps these students should also be aware of what is happening in their homeland. While we need to be mindful of the tragedies unfolding in Gaza and Ukraine, we have a disaster in the making here in America that could end up being far worse.

I would hope that our eligible youth would look up from their cellphones long enough to find time to vote this November. They need to do their due diligence and make an informed decision. The following is a quote from Rod Serling of Twilight Zone fame, “Being like everybody is the same as being nobody. There is nothing in the dark that isn't there when the lights are on.”

We all need to view this presidential election as a fork in the road where we all need to decide which path our nation will take. What we do in November will decide our future for decades to come. We can all identify the problems even if we have different ideas regarding solutions and priorities. There are no simple solutions or fixes and no one person has all the answers. We need to hear about planned policy, not political rhetoric and senseless blather.

This should not be about who you would like to have a beer with. But, if that were your criteria, you should remember that Trump doesn’t drink and never picks up the tab. We each need to decide what type of person we want to represent us.

Postscript: While researching this post I ran across the May 1, 1964, episode of The Twilight Zone titled "The Encounter.” It had been first broadcast on that date but was withheld from syndication due to its racial overtones. The American market for this one episode was closed in the US until 2004. It holds the distinction of being the only episode ever so pulled. That episode involved a former US soldier who meets a young Japanese American looking for work. The job involves cleaning an attic. A war relic, a Japanese katana (Samurai) sword is central to the plot. It had been taken from a dead Japanese soldier by the homeowner (Neville Brand). Brand’s character had killed that soldier during WWII 20 years previous. The young Japanese American was played by George Takei.

The closing narration for this episode is, “Two men in an attic, locked in mortal embrace. Their common bond, and their common enemy: guilt. A disease all too prevalent amongst men both in and out of The Twilight Zone.” [the accompanying graphic holds a slightly modified version of one of the intros for that show.]

If You Think

 If you think immigrants are coming for your job, perhaps your dream career of picking cotton, lemons, potatoes, oranges, or peas in the hot sun fourteen hours a day or working on the kill floor of a slaughterhouse was a poor life choice.

If you think immigrants are the primary source of fentanyl being smuggled into the United States, perhaps you should ask a DEA agent. They will tell you that China is the primary source and the vast majority of it comes through the international mail, the express consignment operations environment, and across our southern border through official Ports of Entry (POEs). Most importantly remember that Donald Trump promised on his first day in office to free Ross Ulbricht, the founder of the Silk Road dark website responsible for much of the fentanyl entering this country before he was jailed.

If you think the president has direct control of oil prices and those prices are not largely determined by global market prices for crude oil and the fact that a small group of oil companies made billions in windfall profits recently, perhaps you have been asleep for the last few decades.

If you think that food prices are set by politicians, you are only partly right. A group of politicians removed restrictions on big business and, in the name of a free market economy, allowed four firms to control over 40% of the market share for 85% of your groceries. In fact, ten companies (Nestle, PepsiCo, Coca-Cola, Unilever, Danone, General Mills, Kellogg’s, Mars, Associated British Foods, and Mondelez) control almost everything we eat. The group of politicians advocating for bigger business with fewer regulations, especially any that would restrict corporate profits, has a pachyderm for their mascot.

If you think the Affordable Care Act is an abomination and should be repealed and the 45 million people served through subsidies, insurance mandates, and Medicaid expansion should be abandoned to find their own way in Emergency Rooms, you already know who your candidate should be. But, you should also know that his opponent is working to expand provisions that he championed in the Inflation Reduction Act that allowed Medicare to negotiate lower prices for ten of the more popular prescription drugs. The guy in the orange spray tan and combover claims to have a secret plan, one he kept secret during his four years as president, and he might consider telling us what those plans are, but only if he is reelected.

If you think the 2017 series of tax cuts that mostly benefited big business and the very wealthy and shifted the tax burden to future generations with a growing national debt was a good idea, ask yourself how that has worked out for you and yours. If you also think tax cuts for the wealthy should be expanded, your guy can be found wearing a red hat, and a red tie, and hanging around golf courses. If, however, you think that the very wealthy and big corporations should be paying more of the costs and that the promised “trickle down” never even moistened your lips, perhaps the guy wearing Ray-Bans deserves your support.

If you think a proposed ten percent across-the-board tariff on all imports instead of boosting domestic manufacturing with major federal investments in semiconductors and other technology is a good idea, maybe you should dust off your old degree in Economics and rethink your position. Tariffs get paid, not by exporters, but by consumers when exporters raise prices to cover those tariffs. Only one candidate has promised an across-the-board tariff of ten percent. That candidate's last name rhymes with dump.

If you think a nationwide abortion ban would be a good thing and that politicians should be able to use their religious beliefs to take away the rights of all women, you also know who got us headed down this path in the first place. Who better to make complicated medical decisions than a politician. So far the Dobbs decision that overturned Roe v. Wade and allowed individual states to set a patchwork of restrictive laws has also brought the predicted horror stories in its wake. Add to that the potential for a national abortion ban and the continuing efforts to abolish all manner of contraception, and you have a formula to expand the chaos now seen at the state level.

If you think climate change is a liberal hoax perhaps you can explain why the death rate from rising temperatures in Phoenix, AZ has gone up 100% every year for the past ten years. Phoenix had previously relied on the charity of churches to provide relief for the homeless and poor but that obviously hasn’t worked. Now they have turned to pandemic relief dollars to help with the problem. So, if you think fossil fuels are still the answer to all of our energy needs you know which party to vote for. You may remember that it was Jimmy Carter who installed solar panels on the White House in 1979, and it was Ronald Reagan who promptly removed them a few years later.

If you think we should abandon NATO and the years of our alliances fostered since the Second World War perhaps you should revisit how that war was fought and won. Know your history and the struggles since that war to maintain peace in Europe because conflicts in this region have cost America thousands of lives. China and Russia would love us to abandon NATO almost as much as they would love to rule the rest of the world. If you look down to where you are standing what lies beneath your feet is that world.

If you think that Donald Trump represents your moral values as a human being, you might want to pause for a little self-reflection.

Vote this November but know what is at stake.

What Will A Second Trump Term Look Like?

While hurricanes might be unpredictable, unless of course, you have a large Sharpie, this is not the case with predicting hurricane Donald Trump. He may seem like a human Pachinko machine but he is nonetheless predictable. He will follow his main muses, personal financial advancement and self-aggrandizement. One of the things for which you have to give Donald Trump credit is his candidness. This “openness” is only obscured by conflicting statements and occasional meaningless blather. To understand his intent, you need to watch what he does, who he hires, and who he likes at any given moment and for what reasons. Over time he will tell you what he is about, but he will likely say what he thinks his audience wants to hear.

Pachinko Machine

While it is easy to understand the frustration with our democracy and the current government, quick solutions can be worse than the disease. All common colds can be cured with enough strychnine. Lethargy and corruption in government are problems but the proposed authoritarian replacement of our democracy is not the solution.

So, what is a second Trump presidency likely to mean? What can we take from his statements, however obscure, and his proposals and associations? I have a list of likely outcomes.

1. President for life. Just as Vladimir Putin found a way around term limits, opposition candidates, and annoying elections, the laws that would ordinarily protect us are only as good as the will of those designated to enforce them. Donald Trump, his family, or close surrogates will rule our foreseeable future.

2. Christian nationalism will dominate the government agenda and a revisionist religious doctrine will become the law of the land. America will become a theocracy based on Christian teachings as interpreted by those who will twist its meaning for financial benefit. The original good intent of Christianity will be a cloak to disguise more nefarious goals.

3. Income inequality will further divide the nation into the haves and have-nots. Large corporations, lacking competition in their respective fields, will squeeze out maximum corporate profits at the expense of consumers. Very wealthy individuals will control our future to their benefit. Unions and other dissenting voices will be silenced.

4. Higher education will become unaffordable for all but the wealthy ensuring a further perpetuation of our caste system.

5. Government agencies set up to protect consumers will be gutted by executive decree and their function will be directed to protect corporate wealth. Project 2025 outlines the conservative plan to dismantle the federal government by firing over 50,000 federal workers and replacing them under Schedule F authority with individuals who will pledge allegiance and loyalty to their new authoritarian leader president.

6. The US will abandon NATO and will become aligned with other authoritarian states like Russia, China, Venezuela, North Korea, and Cuba.

7. Enactment of a federal abortion ban starting at the 16th week of pregnancy but allowing further restrictions by states and the possibility for other bans on contraception, IVF, mifepristone and any drugs that might be used for abortion or contraception. Women’s lives and future fertility will be sacrificed on the alter of religious dogma.

8. Rejection of climate science and all efforts that would move us away from fossil fuels. Withdrawal of federal incentives for solar, wind, geothermal, and electric vehicle technology.

9. Elimination of the Affordable Care Act that protects individuals with pre-existing conditions, women and families, kids, older adults, people with disabilities, etc. Trump vows to replace the ACA with something better but has no such “better plan” in development.

10. Expansion of trade barriers and increase in tariffs. Enactment of Trump’s four-year plan to eliminate all Chinese imports and a ban on US companies doing business with China. The cost of such a shift will be borne by American consumers. An immediate 60% tariff on all Chinese goods has been proposed by Trump on day one.

11. Federal control of all public education at all levels where the government decides the political, religious, social, and historical content of the curriculum. State school boards will be staffed with only those who follow the mandated conservative agenda.

12. Complete restructuring of DHS Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Agency (CISA) with loyalist replacements who would abandon efforts to curtail disinformation dissemination. This would adopt the Heritage Foundation's plan to limit CISA because they investigated and found that the 2020 election outcome was not influenced by rampant fraud.

13. Enactment of Trump's plan to use US missiles against Mexico to fight immigration and drug cartels by declaring the cartels terrorist organizations.

14. Use of 1792 law to allow the president to use the US military against Americans he determines to be violent or rebellious. Trump ally Senator Tom Cotton has promoted this idea to back local police to “restore order to our streets.” Oddly, this law is the Insurrection Act, and the president didn’t see fit to use it during our last true insurrection. We will have crossed the Rubicon.

15. Reversal of Trump's animosity toward cryptocurrency. Once a crypto adversary, he has since invested in crypto and NFT, even profiting from an endorsement of “superhero” NFT digital playing cards. Cryptocurrency is often used to hide assets and launder ill-gotten gain which he may see as beneficial for someone he loves dearly.

16. Weaponization of the Justice Department to retaliate against critics and the Trump-unfaithful with the appointment of a loyal special prosecutor to do his bidding. Executive control of the judicial branch of government will be sought with further appointments of loyal conservative judges to all levels of the court system.

17. Charter 10 new cities on federal land, Trumptopias if you will, that will feature manufacturing, economic opportunity, and new industry. A feature of these new cities will be flying cars. We can only hope they have pig avoidance systems.

18. Expansion of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act that featured massive tax breaks for the wealthy with a further reduction in the corporate tax rate from 21% to 15%. He failed to predict where this loss in revenue would be countered to avoid more national debt.

19. Promote a national concealed carry law to put more guns on the street and repeal the Biden executive order “targeting the firearms industry.”

Remember, Trump learned his lesson while serving as Trump 1.0 (beta). Next time, no more Mr. Nice Guy. Trump 2.0 will not have the guardrails like Mattis, Pence, and even Barr who helped avoid disaster in Trump 1.0. He will be surrounded by loyal sycophants fearing his wrath. America will be ruled by the court jester.

Freedoms

Americans cherish their freedoms. They will fight for these freedoms and vociferously use the first freedom of these to let you know when they feel threatened. One of the freedoms that didn’t make the official list is the freedom to be stupid.

Stupidity comes in many flavors but the worst of these is willful ignorance. We will readily accept the weak-minded, neurologically impaired, or those upon whom ignorance is the result of environmental factors, but lazy stupidity is unforgivable. Societal hurdles aside, some level of truth and knowledge is available to all. If you can read and use the Internet, a fountain of information and knowledge is readily accessible.

One of the inherent problems with this vast resource is the difficulty of discerning fact from fiction. When we are faced with conflicting versions of a topic, our baser instincts and prejudices will sometimes dominate the conversation. Lies and misinformation can become accepted truths when wrongly filtered by these frailties of the human condition. Unlearning bias is not a simple task and such bias exists throughout our population without regard to social status.

If you need evidence of how a lack of education and a culture steeped in bias can be dangerous, you need look no further than those “man on the street” interviews, known pompously in Latin as vox populi, or voice on the street. Most are done for comedic effect as our nation’s stupidity is laid bare. These mostly simple questions elicit sometimes bizarre responses.

Of recent note are those available on YouTube done outside MAGA rallies where social and racial biases are exacerbated by our current education system. Some good interviewers throw out a softball question, get a misinformed response, and then use the interviewee’s response to show their errors in logic. When finally confronted with their mistake, many will simply double down and state, “Well, that’s still how I see it,” or something to that effect. I wonder where they learned the technique of reinforcing a lie with repetition?

A pop-culture reference might be found in Forrest Gump whose low IQ did not prohibit him from making profound proclamations. “Stupid is, as stupid does,” is a quote of wise observation but not education. It suggests that actions and behavior are better indicators of intelligence than empty words. This indicates that even among the highly educated, ignorance is not an exclusive trait.

One other form of stupidity that should not be tolerated would be inflicted ignorance. Withholding education or restricting the quality of education in an attempt to perpetuate our American caste system is a shameful effort. Breaking the vicious cycle of poverty is hard enough without creating hurdles that needn’t exist.

The caste system in India has existed for over 3,000 years and dictates an inherited social hierarchy that withholds opportunity for those not entitled. A similar system exists in America perpetuated by tradition and advanced by wealth and power. If you want an education at the best of our schools you will need money and connections to gain acceptance.

One subtle form of control within the American caste system regarding education lies within a group using the right of free speech as a shield. They promote free speech when it benefits their ideology but are the first to push to ban books that might not coincide with their personal worldview.

The other form of advancing the status quo or providing greater separation between their own social/financial status and others is through the use of public versus private or charter school education and restricting access to the finest colleges and universities. One means to accomplish this is to place financial barriers of such height that only the already wealthy may avail themselves of that education.

Certainly, there are great minds among the poor and our nation would be better served by taking advantage of such resources. This would however violate the invisible rules of the current caste system so such opportunities are limited. While we can’t cram vast numbers of new students into a limited number of Ivy League institutions, we can upgrade existing public resources and make them affordable to all competent applicants. Students seeking advancement shouldn’t be burdened with a crushing debt that follows them into retirement. If we can find room for individuals with athletic prowess on the playing field, certainly the educational playing field can be leveled for all.

Limiting education has its consequences. Would Donald Trump be Donald Trump without his gullible minions? His rise to power was predicated on his ability to use his powers of persuasion to convince the poorly educated that he was the answer to all of their problems. He said so much during his 2016 campaign in a Nevada speech in which he stated, “We won the poorly educated. I love the poorly educated.” The crowd cheered. Ignorance is bliss.

The Seven Deadly Sins and Politics

Leave it to Roman Catholic theology to give us the seven deadly sins as the root of all other evil. Pride, Greed, Lust, Envy, Gluttony, Wrath, and Sloth complete this list. Of these, greed is a double-edged sword. Some measure of greed is almost necessary as motivation to achieve even worthwhile goals. Gordon Gekko, in the movie Wall Street, told us, “Greed is good.” His line was borrowed from convicted insider trader, Ivan Boesky who, in 1985 at UC Berkeley said, ”Greed is all right, by the way. I want you to know that. I think greed is healthy. You can be greedy and still feel good about yourself.”

My misspent youth included penny-ante poker nights. In those late-night gatherings the expression, “Money talks, bullshit walks,” was meant to intimidate the weak with a whopping twenty-five cent raise. We have recently been reminded that money doesn’t just talk, it yells, screams, and can corrupt our legal system. Who among us mere peons would be free after ignoring a judicial gag order to not attempt to intimidate a jury or witnesses in our own trial for corruption. Of the seven deadly sins, sloth is the only one not enshrined in the personage of Donald J. Trump.

The US Supreme Court agreed with Gekko and Boesky when they decided that money was free speech as they lifted government restrictions on expenditures for political campaigns in Citizens United v. FEC. They truly ignored their earlier acknowledgment of the link between large financial contributions and corruption in Buckley v. Valeo of 1976. In that decision, the courts said there was a compelling interest in preventing corruption where individuals or corporations could make large contributions to candidates. They stated that our “representative democracy is undermined” by such financial influence.

These two SCOTUS decisions and others released the multi-armed Kraken of corruption. The Kraken as a symbol of corruption is quite appropriate as it was a creature of Scandinavian/Icelandic origin, corrupted by Hollywood as a monster for its two versions of Clash of the Titans. The movies featured the Greek god Zeus who has no connection to Scandinavia. Our mythical Kraken cephalopod was able to drag ships to their doom and it is currently positioned to pull down our democracy.

We now can look on with horror as those decisions bear fruit. A corrupt Supreme Court exists where judges may refuse to recuse themselves even when they have a pronounced bias, have taken huge bribes from interested parties, and have a wife with a fully documented agenda involving the decisions at hand. We have a former president and presidential candidate who uses his wealth and the wealth of others to avoid justice and defy court orders with chagrin. We have members of Congress who willingly or unwillingly turn a blind eye to corruption as a means of survival.

“Our country is now taking so steady a course as to show by what road it will pass to destruction, to wit: by consolidation of power first, and then corruption, its necessary consequence.” – Thomas Jefferson

“Greed is now the fuel by which our national engine runs, and corruption is the grease.” – Jack Dallas