Trumpcare: Terrible for Your Heart, Lungs and Spleen

IF IT FEELS LIKE BAD GOP HEALTHCARE PLANS keep cropping up like drug-resistant bacteria, you’re not imagining it.

Having discovered that repeal and replace wasn’t as easy as he thought, President Trump is desperate to get any bill passed, declare himself tired of winning and get back to doing what he does best. Tweeting insults.

The latest Republican plan to repeal and replace Obamacare, reduce money spent on healthcare, but still miraculously cover everyone covered now, is wobbling along in the U.S. Senate.

Meanwhile, Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell, with an assist from Trump—have managed to do what President Barack Obama could never do. No. I don’t mean take away all our guns. Remember how that was going to happen! Last we checked everyone still had the guns they had on Inauguration Day in 2009. In fact, gun sales boomed while Obama was seated in the White House.

Paranoia, I think it was. (Conservatives probably thought you needed more guns to stop gay weddings.)

As I was saying, GOP leaders have made Obamacare more popular than ever. We liberals readily admit the law is imperfect. And, as sure as you mention thermometers (climate change) math (monthly job growth) or polls (pretty much every approval poll taken since Trump sat down in the Oval Office), this one will probably not be believed by our friends glued to Fox News.

Here are recent polls on the favorability of Obamacare in graphic form:

HAVING VENTED A LITTLE, I feel better—which is good, because we’re going to have to take better care of ourselves once this new Trumpcare plan goes into effect. We don’t know exactly how many Americans will lose coverage, or exactly when the worst features will fully take hold.

We just know the Graham-Cassidy bill currently being discussed by the Senate is decidedly unloved.

Sponsored by Senator Lindsay Graham of South Carolina and Senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, this looks like the Republicans’ last chance to repeal and replace. Cassidy, for one, has been insisting his bill passes “the Jimmy Kimmel test.” That is: it will ensure that less-fortunate Americans whose children are born with severe health problems receive the care families require. Kimmel, the late night talk show host, has a young son with serious heart problems. In his case, he makes clear he has good coverage himself. He can pay. He’s rich. But Kimmel worries about families whose resources are slim.

Or none.

Senator Cassidy claims the latest Trumpcare plan passes that test.

Kimmel says, emphatically, it does not. He says Cassidy “lied right to my face” when he told him it did.

How bad is this plan?

Let’s try a test (not covered under the new Republican plan). Imagine you have a parent or grandparent suffering from long-term effects of Alzheimer’s disease. They need fulltime help.

Wouldn’t the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP) support a good healthcare bill?

AARP hates this plan.

Okay. Babies might not be covered. (The American Academy of Pediatrics calls Graham-Cassidy “dangerous” and “ill-conceived.”)

And grandpa and grandma might be screwed.

How about this? You have a heart problem and bills are piling up. The American Heart Association blasts the GOP plan.

“I think the odds have improved,” Senator John Thune told reporters yesterday. He thinks this bill can pass. “I just told Bill Cassidy he’s kind of the grave robber,” Thune added. “This thing was six feet under, and I think he’s revived it.”

Mentioning Trumpcare and graves in the same breathe might not be the best metaphor one could select.

Take cancer. The lobbying arm of the American Cancer Society is opposed.

Got a six-year-old with type-1 diabetes? The Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation believes the plan is a mess.

Are you an overweight or obese adult? Ha, ha. Of course you are. Seven in ten American adults weigh way too much. Suffering from type-2 diabetes, are you, now? The American Diabetes Association says vote “no” on the bill.

Your husband has lung cancer? The American Lung Association is opposed.

Your cousin is suffering the terrible effects of Lou Gehrig’s disease? The ALS Association considers the plan a joke.

The list (several are combined and linked below) goes on and on—with groups interested in pretty much every part of the body, from our heads to our toes, calling for the Senate to vote down the plan. These groups have come out against this last ditch Trumpcare-don’t care plan:

American Academy of Family Physicians

American College of Physicians

American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists

American Osteopathic Association

American Psychiatric Association (“this bill harms our most vulnerable patients”)

American Public Health Association (the bill would “devastate” Medicare)

America’s Essential Hospitals

American Health Care Association/National Center for Assisted Living (“this bill will undermine care for vulnerable seniors and individuals with disabilities”)

Arthritis Foundation 

Association of American Medical Colleges

Catholic Health Association of the United States

Children’s Hospital Association
Cystic Fibrosis Foundation
Family Voices

Federation of American Hospitals

HIV Medicine Association
Lutheran Services in America
March of Dimes
National Health Council 

National Council for Behavioral Health

National Institute for Reproductive Health
National Multiple Sclerosis Society
National Organization for Rare Diseases

Planned Parenthood
Volunteers of America
WomenHeart

Who else hates the GOP bill? The American Medical Association, speaking for 200,000 professionals, opposes the Graham-Cassidy plan. They say it violates the first principle of all medical care: “First, do no harm.”

The American Hospital Association: They don’t like it at all.

Maybe nurses? Maybe…good grief…the American Nurses Association wants the plan defeated too.

Blue Cross Blue Shield? They don’t like either. “The bill contains provisions that would allow states to waive key consumer protections, as well as undermine safeguards for those with pre-existing conditions,” says the company president. “The legislation reduces funding for many states significantly and would increase uncertainty in the marketplace, making coverage more expensive and jeopardizing Americans’ choice of health plans.” But, hey, other than that, the plan isn’t bad.

I talked to my daughter recently. She’s head of Newborn Screening at Children’s National Hospital in Washington, D. C. I asked how work was going since she just returned from a medical conference in Brazil. She mentioned meeting doctors from Egypt, Uganda and Rawanda, now that she’s back, to talk about what her hospital does to help children born with serious, life-threatening genetic problems. She mentioned one drug that costs $1,000,000 per day. We can all argue about what to do about ballooning drug costs. (Prices are expected to increase 11.6% in 2017.) But if Senator Cassidy and Senator Graham and Senator Mitch McConnell and President Trump truly want to help, they can get on the stick and start fighting to reduce costs today.

Until that day comes—which probably never will—we know leading professional healthcare groups consider this last GOP hope a contemptible mess.

Medicare Part D (passed under the last Republican president, has helped balloon healthcare costs.

Of course we all remember, during the 2016 campaign, how Candidate Trump promised to protect us from all those illegal immigrant rapists and murderers, pouring across the border from Mexico.

What we didn’t realize then, once the GOP was in full control, was that if loved ones developed skin cancer, required kidney transplants, or suffered catastrophic injuries in automobile accidents, they’d be pretty much screwed.

Trump, a Big Blob of Fat, and the For-Profit College Pirates

SCANNING THE NEWSPAPER these past few days, several stories caught my attention. The hurricane damage is overwhelming, the losses heart-wrenching. 

North Korea just fired another missile over Japan, proving they can probably deliver a nuclear strike on Guam if war breaks out.

In fact, the big stories were so depressing, I decided to turn to the back pages and seek psychic relief. I subscribe to “the failing New York Times,” as President Trump calls it. So maybe this is “fake news.” But did you know a big blob comprised of congealed grease, baby wipes, diapers, condoms and tampons is blocking a main London sewer line. How big is this blob, christened “Fatberg?” It’s as large as 11 London double-decker buses—weighs 140 tons—and clogs 300 yards of tunnel.

It smells like rotting meat and backed up toilets and workers say it’s “rock solid.” Think being a woman and working at Fox News would be tough, what with all the sexual harassment? Or being press secretary for Trump? This job is really tough: An eight-man team will break up the blob over the next three weeks.

***

SINCE THIS IS A BLOG about life in the time of Donald J. Trump, and we are talking about big blobs of fat, let’s give the President a snippet of credit. 

He actually got something right for a change!

The White House is blocking sale of Lattice Semiconductor to a Chinese-backed investing firm, on security grounds. It might be a no-brainer. Still, good job, Mr. Trump! You don’t want the Chinese gaining access to more secrets about American computer chip making. But Derek M. Scissors—is that a cool name, or what—of the American Enterprise Institute says we should give it up for Trump!

“We could have let it [the deal] die quietly,” Scissors told a Times reporter, “but we’re going to kill it loudly.”

In other words, this may be a signal to the Chinese. Trump is going to get tough. Also: if it has slipped your mind, he’s going to build a big wall!

Anyway, remember how Republicans always say government is the problem, and you can always trust business folks to do what is right, like they are all Eagle Scouts, and if we had no regulations at all this would be the best of all possible worlds?

Here we might pose a philosophical question for fans of unfettered capitalism. Why are so many giant corporations so infernally willing to move production to China (GE; Apple; Ford Motors), or import billions in Chinese goods (Walmart; Lowes, Ivanka’s shoes), and work hand in wallet with a corrupt Communist government?

This is a government that: A) denies citizens basic rights; B) allows leaders to amass personal fortunes in the billions; C) builds fake islands in the South China Sea, claims new territorial waters round said fake islands and dares neighbors to do anything about it; D) continues to build up its naval forces in case of war with…yes…the United States; F) won’t kick Kim Jong-nut in the butt.

Thanks China for all your help.

***

DID YOU REALIZE, IN GERMANY, politicians now hate to admit they’ve ever been friends with the big automakers? The Times reports that Angela Merkel once put in a call to California state officials to complain about tough emission standards which hurt German automakers who preferred diesel-engine trucks and SUV’s.

Now Merkel sounds like she’s always loved to drive a horse and buggy. “I’m just as angry about the fraud as you,” she told one interviewer.

If you don’t know what fraud she meant, it would be this fraud: Volkswagen engineers and executives plotted to design computer systems so the company’s diesel engines would defeat all emissions tests with ease. In 2015 the U.S. began to investigate and eventually slapped VW with a $2.8 billion fine.

So what’s the big deal, current-head-of-the-EPA-and-big-fan-of-the-oil-and-gas-industry Scott Pruitt might ask? 

A little smog never hurt anyone. 

Actually, according to the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America, the big deal is really big. Children with severe asthma are  “40 percent more likely to have acute asthma episodes on high pollution summer days than on days with average pollution levels.” Adult asthma sufferers are more likely to visit emergency rooms on days when air pollution is elevated.

Okay, sure. Scientists warn that elevated air pollution levels cause 2.2 million unnecessary deaths annually in China and India, and undoubtedly many more in nations where people have the audacity to breath. But we can take comfort—except when listening to all the children hack and wheeze—knowing the Trump Administration is clearing the path for more coal mining and oil drilling and working hard to protect us from all those illegal immigrants who want to rape and kill us.

In fact, let’s just cue up Scott Pruitt talking about how government regulations are the work of Bezelbub.

***

SINCE WE’RE ON THE TOPIC of questionable business dealings, let’s see what Martin Shkreli is up to. 

Not familiar with Shkreli? 

He’s the former drug company exec who first made a name by buying up the rights to old drugs, working a little business prestidigitation, and then, for example, increasing prices on Daraprim, a lifesaving drug for people with AIDS, a mere 5,000%.

Shkreli, 34, was convicted on fraud charges but had been out on $5 million bail. Now he’s back in jail. 

What happened? Shkreli offered $5,000 for anyone who could accost Hillary Clinton during her book tour and “grab a hair.”

A judge failed to see the humor, said the offer might be seen as invitation to commit assault, probably had in mind Shkreli’s assets might be subject in future civil cases and he shouldn’t be wasting money, and revoked bail.

Shkreli’s lawyer was reduced to arguing that his client should not be jailed, saying: “Stupid doesn’t make you violent.”

Alas: stupid does get you sent to jail. Then again there’s hope. 

Trump may well pardon him.

***

I LOOKED AT THE SPORTS PAGE for a bit of lighter fare. Even that doesn’t work. There's a story about the corrupting influence of big money and doping in baseball, football and track and field. And it turns out Jemele Hill, the African-American host of a popular show on ESPN is in hot water after using her Twitter account to criticize Trump. That seems ironic, I think even conservatives would agree.

In one tweet she wrote: “Trump is the most ignorant, offensive president of my lifetime. His rise is a direct result of white supremacy. Period.”

Here we might add: Ms. Hill  clearly should have dropped the “period” and ended with the more powerful: “Sad!” You really need the exclamation mark if you want people to take you seriously, like President Trump.

Naturally, Sarah Huckabee Sanders came to the defense of her boss. Showing how much she and the hyper-sensitive toddler in the Oval Office cherish the First Amendment, irony-challenged Press Secretary Sanders let reporters know what the President thought. “I think that’s one of the more outrageous comments that anyone can make,” she moaned, “and certainly something that I think is a fireable offense by ESPN.”

Praise him, Colin Cowherd, praise Trump!

That’s your new job.

***

LAST BUT NOT LEAST, there’s a story in the Times about another crooked for-profit college, Charlotte School of Law, which is now, sadly, terminally, defunct. I’ve written about this topic before on my education blog, but it seems the pirates at for-profit schools keep boarding the metaphorical merchant ships of knowledge and slaughtering entire crews.

For example: you had the famous case of the for-profit college that sent recruiters out to scour alleys and look under bridges and sign up homeless men and women for classes. Why? To help them better their lives? Ha, ha, don’t be naïve. They signed up these unfortunate individuals because they qualified for veteran’s benefits which would allow them to pay for expensive classes at the school.

It was greed.

The latest proof that you are guaranteed all possible variations of skullduggery when money is in play involves the aforesaid Charlotte School of Law.

Once owned by Sterling Partners, Charlotte at first enjoyed high times. Enrollment blossomed. Cash rolled in. Cash rolled out again, in the way of high returns for investors and fat salaries for executives. Profits piled up, mainly because almost all CSL students qualified for federally-backed loans. To be exact: the school soaked the federal government for $337.1 million in funds between 2010 and 2016.

Since Sterling is a privately traded company, it’s not possible to find exact salaries for company leaders. So, let’s cheat a bit and assume Charlotte operated like Corinthian College (defunct). Five top executives at that for-profit institution—which just so happens to be the same school that recruited the homeless—carted off $12.5 million in salaries and perks in one three-year span. We can also assume Corinthian investors profited handsomely from stock ownership in the school, with shares once selling for $61.04 each.

Alas, Corinthian shuttered operations in 2015 in the face of a massive federal investigation, leaving thousands of students stuck with high-interest loans, almost worthless diplomas, or no diplomas at all.

Investors who came to the party late got murdered. The stock price for Corinthian at the end: 1¢ per share.

In any case, it turns out Charlotte School of Law was operating pretty much like Corinthian. The whole Charlotte shebang collapsed after the U.S. Department of Education revoked the school’s eligibility to enroll students in federal loan programs. And why would the government turn off the cash tap?

Investigators began to uncover harsh truths about the “quality” of education being provided to students at CSL. When graduates of Wake Forest University School of Law took the North Carolina bar exam in July of this year they passed at a rate of 86.3%. Duke grads passed at a rate of 84.2%. Dragging up the rear, when results from all law schools were released, was Charlotte School of Law.

In July 2017 only 34.1% of graduates passed the bar.

And it could have been worse!

Threatened by a cut-off of federal funding, the bold business leaders who ran the school took desperate measures. First, they added a new class, involving extra preparation for the bar exam, and required all graduates to…um…un-graduate. You had to sign up for another semester, take the class, add to your loans, and pass it before you could take the bar.

In fact, the school went even further to try to improve passing rates and insure all that federal cash kept flowing its way. According to a whistle-blower, CSL began offering graduates $5,000 not to take the bar.

AND LET ME SAY, FINALLY, I think the moral for today is clear. Government regulation is always a curse and capitalism always works like a charm.

No, we meant the other big blob of fat!

THIS POST WAS COMPLETED BEFORE NEWS OF ANOTHER ATTACK ON LONDON. OUR SYMPATHY GOES OUT TO THE PEOPLE OF GREAT BRITAIN; AND WE WILL ADDRESS THAT MATTER SOON.

President Trump Channels His Inner Nazi

IF YOU’VE NEVER HAD THE MISFORTUNE to read Hitler’s Mein Kampf, I can save you the suffering.

When I was teaching I waded through all 687 pages.

Sadly, with the rise of President Donald J. Trump, it seems we might need to reexamine what it was Adolf Hitler said. We need to ask what it means when it appears Trump is channeling his inner Nazi.

The first, most obvious Hitler/Trump comparison involves the two leaders’ capacity for hate. Hate has fueled all repugnant ideologies in history. Hitler hated Jews. ISIS hates infidels and the West.

Trump hates those who criticize.

In Mein Kampf, Adolf Hitler’s poisonous ideas are on full display. Growing up in Austria, he claims he witnessed racial danger at every hand. Soon “the granite foundation” of a hideous ideology was set. Threats to racial purity were as life-threatening as “incurable tumors.”

Again, comparisons chill. You don’t have to scratch very hard to uncover racial fear at the heart of the Trump & Co. world view. In 2016 you had Candidate Trump scaring predominantly white crowds with nightmare scenarios of dark-skinned “rapists” and “murderers” pouring across our border. You had him drumming up support for punching protesters—had him threatening reporters—had him claiming thousands of New Jersey Muslims celebrated as the Twin Towers fell. 

Trump was peddling hate almost as skillfully as Hitler in Mein Kampf.

LIKE ADOLF HITLER, TOO, the man in the White House is fond of dehumanizing enemies, political or personal. His foes are “scum” or “animals.” Rosie O’Donnell clashed with him years ago. He labeled her a “fat pig.” MSNBC anchors who criticized the president were “low IQ Crazy Mika” and “Psycho Joe.” 

Gang members, Trump recently told police, “These are animals. They might not be sympathetic figures. True. Animals, however, have no constitutional rights.

Shooting animals, especially those with dark skins, some Trump supporters might agree, would be fine. 

It’s the kind of thinking that bred SS firing squads.

Executioners prefer to shoot people in the back of the head.
That way they aren't troubled by the human face.

When workers of differing political views tried to drive a young Hitler from a job site, the future Fuhrer labeled them “scum.” A century later, Trump has his own “scum” to battle. Angered by the way his campaign was being covered in October 2015 he described critical reporters this way: “They’re scum.”

Hitler, too, made war against a free press. At one point he refers to “the brutal daily press, shunning no villainy, employing every means of slander, lying with such a virtuosity that would bend iron beams, all in the gospel of a new humanity.”

Trump has made similar attacks a staple of discourse. In February he labeled media the “enemy of the people.” 

What Muslims are to men like General Flynn and Steven K. Bannon—an existential threat—Jews were to Hitler. He saw their diabolical influence in the press, in literature, in art and theater. “This was pestilence, spiritual pestilence,” he warned, “worse than the Black Death of olden times, and the people were being infected with it.” He began to examine the worldwide press. What he read was “more akin to lies than honest truth; and the writers were—Jews.”

Hitler had his “fake news” too.

IT WAS SHOCKING, TO SAY THE LEAST, when Trump watched tragedy unfold last month in Charlottesville and managed to see “many sides” equally at fault. On just one side you had Richard Spencer, Trump’s neo-Nazi fan boy spewing hate. On that side you had David Duke, former Republican candidate for Louisiana governor and Grand Wizard of the KKK. You had Andrew Anglin, founder of the Daily Stormer, billed as “The World’s Most Genocidal Republican Website.” You had James Alex Fields Jr., a 20-year-old Ohioan, owner of a powerful car.

Steeped in dehumanizing rhetoric, Fields revved up his 2015 Dodge Charger and sent it careening into a crowd.

He was ISIS with a Confederate flag. He killed one and injured nineteen more, five critically.

And Trump couldn’t see a difference.

As for Hitler, growing up in Austria, he claims he was fooled by what he saw around him. The Jews had “become Europeanized and had taken on a human look.” Only slowly did he grasp the truth. “Wherever I went, I began to see Jews, and the more I saw, the more sharply they became distinguished in my eyes from the rest of humanity.” Eventually, he realized Jews were the root of evil:

Was there any form of filth or profligacy, particularly in cultural life, without at least one Jew involved in it?

     If you cut even cautiously into such an abscess, you found, like a maggot in a rotting body, often dazzled by the sudden light—a kike!

Elsewhere, he likens them to a “spider” slowly beginning to “suck the blood out of the people’s pores.” The Jew is “the eternal mushroom of humanity.” Dehumanization—the polar opposite of humanism—would henceforth guide him on a twisted course.

You may forget: but Hitler’s hate was multifaceted. He hated homosexuals. He hated Gypsies. He hated Slavs. He describes himself as “repelled” by a polyglot “mixture of Czechs, Poles, Hungarians, Ruthenians, Serbs, and Croats.” In one passage he refers to Negroes as “half-apes.” The French were  a “negrified” people, a “mulatto state.”

All represented racial threats.

HERE AGAIN WE CATCH the same stench emanating from the modern alt-right, the same nauseating thinking reflected in the words of Alex Jones and the comment section of Breitbart News. The alt-right is anti-immigrant. The alt-right is anti-feminist. The alt-right opposes gay and transgender rights. The alt-right sees globalism as a Jewish plot to dilute the white race and undercut Christianity and American values. “White genocide” is their greatest fear. The concept was first popularized by Bob Whitaker, an economics professor and Reagan appointee to the Office of Personnel Management, who penned a 221-word call to action. His screed ended with the rallying cry: “Anti-racist is code for anti-white.”

If you believe such comparisons are overblown, remember: The neo-Nazis in Charlottesville were clear—the number “14” prominently displayed on battle shields. That figure represents fourteen words fundamental to their system of belief. “We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children.” 

It’s a slogan coined by David Lane, a man sentenced to 190 years in jail for the murder of Jewish radio host Alan Berg.

So what do we get from Trump and too many members of his loyal crew? We get a man who spent years hinting the first dark-skinned president of the United States wasn’t really an American. We listen as Trump claims a judge of Mexican heritage can’t possibly be trusted. We get Pam Taylor, a fan of President Trump and the First Lady, who referred to Michelle Obama as “an ape in heels.” We have Carl Paladino, New York state chairman for the Trump 2016 campaign, who, when asked what he’d like to see go away in 2017, replied, “Michelle Obama. I’d like her to return to being a male and let loose in the outback of Zimbabwe where she lives comfortably in a cave with Maxie, the gorilla.”

We get racism and hate—thinly veiled—or not veiled at all. We get Congressman Steven King of Iowa, channeling the pure blood ideas Hitler peddled, saying we have to stem even legal immigration because, “We can’t restore our civilization with somebody else’s babies.”

DOES THIS MEAN ALL Trump supporters are racist haters? No.

Not at all.

But you get Jeff Sieting, a small town official from Michigan, dealing in visceral hate. All you need to hear “Heil Hitler” chants echoing down the decades is to replace the word “Muslim” with the word “Jew.” On Facebook Sieting has posted bigoted anti-Muslim sentiments such as these: “Kill them all, every last one.” Sounding like a Nazi dictator, Sieting also warned that Muslims  were “dangerously destructive to society” and “there simply is no place for them in our world.” 

Islam was a “flesh-eating bacteria,” not a religion, “a death cult.”

Hitler might have complimented Candidate Trump on his ability to sway the simple masses. The Nazi leader had scant respect for the intellectual capacity of his followers. For that reason, he said, political ideas would have to be “engraved in the memory and feeling of the people by eternal repetition.”

So it was: Trump peddled simplistic fixes to complex problems. Who would pay for the border wall?

“Mexico,” crowds chanted.

Hillary Clinton?

“Lock her up!” his followers shouted.

Keep it simple.

Like Hitler, Trump also finds democracy to be an unworkable concept. He grows angry when courts oppose him, when “so-called judges” block his path. He fumes when the Senate acts too slowly. He demands immediate changes to fundamental legislative rules. In a German democracy, Hitler explained, “the leader is elected, but then enjoys unconditional authority.”

Call it: Trump Heaven.

HITLER, TOO, WON VOTERS with a promise to make Germany great again. Even defeat in World War I could be pinned on Communists and Jews. “Marxism…this pestilence,” Hitler warned, must be stamped out. It was a “venomous plague,” rooted in “Jewish universities.” It should have been the duty of any wartime government to destroy the threat, “to exterminate mercilessly the agitators who were misleading the nation.” 

“If the best men were dying at the front,” during the fighting, “the least we could do was to wipe out the vermin.”

That last statement is typical of Nazi and Trumpian thinking. Enemies are always subhuman—incurable tumors—vermin—animals—or scum.

Hitler often returned to the import of propaganda in his book. It must “be aimed at the emotions and only to a very limited degree at the so-called intellect.”

The receptivity of the great masses is very limited, their intelligence is small, but their power of forgetting is enormous. In consequence of these facts, all effective propaganda must be limited to a very few points and must harp on these slogans until the last member of the public understands what you want him to understand by your slogan.

And so it is even now.

Trump can contradict himself at will—Trump giving the lie to Trump—and his followers’ “power of forgetting is enormous.”

As far back as 1923, Hitler was already advocating the approach Trump instinctively grasps. In “view of the primitive simplicity of their [the masses’] minds, they more easily fall a victim to a big lie than to a little one, since they themselves lie in little things, but would be ashamed of lies that were too big.”

So Hitler lied big.

Trump follows suit. Obama tapped his phones at Trump Tower. Millions of illegals turned out to vote for Hillary. No one in the campaign had any dealings with Russians. Obamacare would be easy to repeal and replace. “You’re going to have such great health care at a tiny fraction of the cost. And it’s going to be so easy,” Candidate Trump repeatedly promised.

Big Lies. 

IN MEIN KAMPF, HITLER POUNDS away at racial themes. The Aryan race, cutting across national boundaries, bonded by blood, a folk group, must be preserved.

Blood mixture and the resultant drop in the racial level is the sole cause of the dying out of old cultures; for men do not perish as a result of lost wars, but by the loss of that force of resistance which is contained only in pure blood.

     All who are not of good race in the world are chaff.

The Jew:

…is and remains the typical parasite, a sponger who like a noxious bacillus keeps spreading as soon as a favorable medium invites him. And the effect of his existence is also like that of spongers: wherever he appears, the host people dies out after a shorter or longer period.

Put a Nazi armband on Congressman King and there you are.

Hitler focused again on the schools. Science, world history and cultural history would all be taught in such a way as to foster “national pride,” “so that when the young man leaves his school he is not a half pacifist, democrat, or something else, but a whole German.”

The crown of the folkish state’s entire work of education and training must be to burn the racial sense and racial feeling into the instinct and the intellect, the heart and brain of the youth entrusted to it. No boy and no girl must leave school without having been led to an ultimate realization of the necessity and essence of blood purity.

Humanism—even today a bugaboo of thinkers on the American right—would be ruthlessly suppressed.

WHEN GERMANY WAS FORCED to surrender in November 1918, Hitler blamed traitors in the nation’s midst. Politicians, puppets of evil Marxists and Jews, stabbed the people in the back. Punishment would come swiftly once he came to power. A “German national court must judge and execute some ten thousand of the organizing and hence responsible criminals of the November betrayal and everything that goes with it,” he insisted. 

The future would be filled with gas chambers:

If at the beginning of the War and during the War twelve or fifteen thousand of these Hebrew corrupters of the people had been held under poison gas…the sacrifice of millions at the front would not have been in vain. On the contrary: twelve thousand scoundrels eliminated in time might have saved the lives of a million real Germans, valuable for the future.

And so it was. 

And so it is. The neo-Nazis and Klansmen who marched in Charlottesville this summer and a frightening minority of Trump fans who voted in November seem happy to vouch for every word Hitler said. “The Jew shall not replace us!” marchers chanted in Charlottesville. Like Hitler’s minions at rallies in Nuremberg, they marched in torchlight formation. Others wore hoods representative of an organization founded to ensure the U.S. never “negrified,” as Hitler said the French had already done.

Hitler spoke often of the great sacrifice of blood that would be necessary in taking wide swaths of soil in the East.

Just as our ancestors did not receive the soil on which we live today as a gift from Heaven, but had to fight for it at the risk of their lives, in the future no folkish state will win soil for us and hence life for our people, but only the might of a victorious sword.

“Blood and soil,” men like the driver of the killer Charger last summer screamed. It was Mein Kampf 2.0.

As for the Jew, “No nation,” Hitler wrote, “can remove his hand from its throat except by the sword.”

That’s what Hitler said, what President Trump either fails to grasp or secretly supports. To the degree that the man in the Oval Office is channeling his inner Nazi, exactly to that degree does he represent a fundamental threat to what most Americans have always claimed they hold most dear.

(All quotes are from a translation by Ralph Mannheim first published by Houghton Mifflin in 1943. Mein Kampf was first published in Germany twenty years before.)