His Big Beautiful Birthday Parade!

 

It's become difficult to avoid comparing The Don Donald to Adolph Hitler because...well, there's just no one who so closely fits.

It was Hitler who insisted that instead of taking an oath of loyalty to the German state, soldiers of the Wehrmacht took an oath to him, personally. They held up their fingers in a funky hand sign and pledge loyalty to him above all else. Uber Alles!

So when Mr. Trump gave his little talk to the soldiers at Ft. Bragg, which Donnie Dumpling thought was named after him, he enjoyed himself immensely. If the fort had been named for Trump it would have been Fort Braggadicio, but, in fact, it was named after another traitor who sought to destroy the United States, Braxton Bragg, a Confederate general.

Braxton Bragg owned a sugar plantation and 106 slaves in Louisiana before the war.  He was one of the 5% of Confederates who actually owned more than a dozen slaves.  So, he was like our modern day billionaires--a tiny percentage at the top who have the other 95% doing their bidding. At the battle of Missionary ridge, Union soldiers scaling what was thought to be an impregnable mountain, simply swept forward over Bragg's army and routed him and he had to virtually evacuate Tennessee and left the South open to Sherman and his march to the sea. The South had many effective and daring generals--Longstreet, Stonewall Jackson, Forrest--but, for reasons known only to the army and the Trump mob, they named a fort after one of the worst.

The Don mused that the loyal soldiers shown behind him on the stage would never have rallied to hear President Biden, but they loved President Trump and all the neo Waffen SS cheered wildly.  These boys in their snazzy maroon berets were Trump's boys. They loved him personally, not Biden, not the country, not the Constitution: They loved Donnie Dilatory. 

So, there you have it, Mr. Trump has got his own personal army just like Mr. Hitler.

Now, the Trumpster is throwing himself a massive birthday bash on June 14 and he has invited all his soldier fans to attend.  Mr. Trump, who famously dismissed soldiers as saps and suckers and fools for joining the military, now loves the adulation coming his way from the be-all-you-can-be guys at Fort Braxton Bragg.  

And then there is the phenomenon which Mr. Trump leads, and all his sycophants fall all over themselves trying to emulate. When a journalist asks Karoline Leavitt an embarrassing question, Ms. Leavitt responds "that is a stupid question," just like Mr. Trump who spends minutes attacking any journalist who asks embarrassing questions before not answering the question, telling them they are terrible reporters, have no business in the White House, work for a failing fake news network and all like that.

Because there is a long tradition of "civility" in American government--even Nixon fielded questions from journalists, who occasionally prefaced "with all due respect" and Nixon quipped, "That would be refreshing, coming from you,"--the slap in the face, the ad hominin attack on the appearance, intelligence, family history and purloined soul of any opponent has its appeal. It's fresh. It's authentic. It's titillating. It's so very Trumpish.

And it gets to be a fad among his fans--Marjorie Taylor Green, Lauren Boebert, Jim Jordan all pose as fearless fighters not afraid to "tell it like it is."

He famously said, "The only difference between me and [the others] is I'm more honest and my women are more beautiful." Christopher Hitchens suggested the best man to beat Trump would have been Warren Beatty, who had even more beautiful women, and he did not have to buy them.

As for the Trumpster, he is forever threatening violence--he would not risk his heel spurs himself, but he exhorts the crowd to do it for him. 

And the trumpery of rejecting actual argument or debate means, eventually, the only thing left when anyone in the government or the press disagrees is personal invective, and we've been there. 

In the run up the the last Civil War, Charles Sumner attacked the institution of slavery and the slave masters on the floor of the U.S. Senate, and Senator Preston Brooks, having no words or clever phrases or cerebral matter of his own, responded in the only way he knew how--by beating Sumner into a bloody pulp on the floor of the U.S. Senate with a brass headed cane for a bludgeon. 

Confederate sympathizers were so delighted, they sent Brooks dozens of canes to use on any other Yankee abolitionist who dared try to engage in debate using words only.

Of course, not all Southerners abjured rhetoric and debate. When John Randolph, who likely lost testicular function owing to adolescent mumps, found himself derided by another Congressman for his eunuchoid appearance, he replied: "You pride yourself on an animal masculinity, in which the Negro is your equal and the jackass infinitely your superior." Those White plantation owners made the Trump nursery look like school boys.

Now, of course, Trump sends in his FBI and assorted goons to take down a United States Senator challenging the Barbie Doll Noem at her "press conference."

Of course, Mr. Trump will accuse the Senator of defending rapists, illegals and MS13  and will threaten similar treatment for any other US Senator who dares defy him. The only thing missing is the brass headed cane.

Churchill, who was sufficiently pugnacious to appeal to Trump, who installed a bust of him in the Oval Office, was pugnacious in a way Trump never could be: cleverly.

The closest he got to attacking opponents ad hominin was to address their oratory: Of one unfortunate object of derision he said the man had "the gift of compressing the largest number of words into the smallest amount of thought." That, of course describes Mr. Trump succinctly.

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