Just after Trump was elected president in 2016, I emailed my German Women’s History Study Group and said he was a fascist.  They reacted as historians, asserting that it couldn’t be fascism because there was no such political party here, that the context was different, etc.  Today, most of them agree with me.  What has changed?

     Fascism, defined as “a populist political philosophy…that exalts nation and often race above the individual, that is associated with a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, and that is characterized by severe economic and social regimentation and by forcible suppression of opposition” has, under Trump, come to characterize the MAGA movement.  Republicans who don’t toe the line have been expelled from the party.  Trump and others continually speak of “the enemy within,” meaning journalists, Democrats, and generally everyone who doesn’t agree with them.  Trump’s continuing attempts to insist that he won the 2020 election, in the face of facts and the decisions of over 60 courts, show both his contempt for the U.S. Constitution and his fascistic authoritarianism.

     Recently, Marine General John Kelly, who served as Trump’s White House Chief of Staff from 2017-19, declared that he now believed that “Mr. Trump met the definition of a fascist, who would govern like a dictator if allowed, and had no understanding of the Constitution or the rule of law.”  After years of silence, he decided to speak out because he thought Trump’s recent talk about “the enemy within” was truly dangerous.  Near the end of his presidency, Trump stated “I need the kind of generals Hitler had,” according to two people in the White House.

     So we can now consider him a fascist and a would-be Hitler.  What about the Alzheimer’s?  It’s “a brain disorder that destroys memory and thinking skills, and eventually the ability to carry out daily tasks.”  In recent years, Trump has mixed up Nancy Pelosi and Nikki Haley, confused Milwaukee with Madison, Wisconsin, and bad-mouthed Detroit to a Detroit audience.  Recently, his confusion has intensified.   He stopped speaking and instead danced silently for 40 minutes at a Pennsylvania rally.  His staff has prevented him from participating in interviews and debates, almost certainly to shield him from criticism.  A few days ago, at a rally, he riffed for 15 minutes about the golfer Arnold Palmer, ending by referring to the size of his penis.  After that, he called Kamala Harris “a shit vice president” and attacked mail-in voting as the rally’s tv screens urged his supporters to cast absentee ballots early by mail.

     Admiring and wanting to be like Hitler is bad, but being a Hitler with Alzheimer’s is even worse.  Please spend these last few days before the election working to support Harris and other Democratic candidates!

Like many Democrats, I was deeply depressed after President Biden’s debate with Donald Trump on June 26.  It did not seem like a “bad night,” as the president said, but rather a steep cognitive decline connected to his age.  I wrote him the following letter:

Dear Pres. Biden,  

     I voted for you in 2020 and have been sending you $25 a month for the last year.  But I now think you should not run for a second term.  You've done an excellent job.  But I'm old now myself (81, like you) and I know how age has diminished me.  I'm a retired history professor from the City University of New York.
     Your performance at the debate scared me.  To me there is no worse fate for the nation than Trump becoming president again.  And, despite all his lies, he won the debate.  Sadly, I don't think that's the only time you're going to be incoherent like that.   I'm sure you want to run again.  But please balance that desire (and ego) against the good of a nation you have served so well. 

I, and many others, were extremely pleased when he decided not to continue to seek a second term three weeks later.  Despite what I said in my letter to him, I was delighted that he endorsed his Vice President, Kamala Harris, to succeed him.

     In 2020, I did not care for Harris.  I found her very smart, but she possessed no charisma.  She reminded me of Hilary Clinton, whom I supported but did not work for.  I was pleased Biden selected Harris as his vice president, but more because she was a black woman and had been a state district attorney and U.S. senator than for her personality.

     But that has changed.  I think she has grown tremendously during her years in office.  She’s learned how to speak very effectively.  She’s now known for her laugh, for her quick wit, and for her ability to charm a crowd.  I was delighted that the Democratic Party rapidly united behind her on August 6th and even more pleased when she chose the governor of Minnesota, Tim Walz, as her running mate.

     I’d never heard of Walz until then.  I was hoping she wouldn’t pick Josh Shapiro, both because I thought he needed to remain governor of Pennsylvania, a swing state, and because I didn’t think a ticket of a black woman and a Jewish man could win.  But Walz is a terrific choice!  He’s a veteran, a coach, a family man and has supported causes like gay groups in the schools, IVF, which he and his wife, also a teacher, used to create their two children, and also supplied menstrual products to high school bathrooms.  And it was he who coined the successful and accurate term “weird” to describe their Republican opponents.

     There’s a joke going around that the most successful item the Democrats possess is J.D. Vance.  Unlike Harris and Walz, he and Donald Trump have been unremittingly negative and nasty.  Vance’s disparagement of “childless cat ladies” plus his subsequent “correction” that he “had nothing against cats” has gone viral.  Trump’s attack on Harris for “starting out Indian” and then “going Black” has done the same.  Suddenly now, Trump is the old candidate –- some have taken to spelling his first name “D-o-n-o-l-d” –-and he is making increasing numbers of errors in his few speeches.  In contrast, Harris and Walz are speaking daily to larger and larger crowds.  They’ve declared they plan to continue doing this and that they “can rest when they’re dead.”  Trump has been forced into at least one debate against Harris after she called him a coward for declining to debate her when he had eagerly fought for another debate with Biden.  I think she will cream him.  As will Walz against Vance. 

     At this point, the Republicans are offering a dark and scary vision of America.  They are trying to avoid the subject of abortion, the fascism of Project 2025, and the increased jobs, infrastructure, and international support created by the Biden administration.  In contrast, Harris provides a hopeful and generous vision based on these genuine accomplishments.  She is completely comfortable advocating abortion –- much more so than Biden, who could barely speak the word.  I think the issue of abortion alone is going tilt voters towards the Democrats.  Her laugh and sense of humor, which Trump has attempted to denigrate, are winning.  When has Trump ever laughed?  The best he can manage is a smirk.

     So hooray for these developments.  I haven’t felt this hopeful since Obama ran in ’08.  May this campaign have the same successful result!

     A short while before the Russian attack, a friend declared that Ukraine should not fight because it would surely be defeated.  I replied, “I couldn’t disagree more.”  As a historian, I know how important motivation is in wartime.  The Ukrainians were fighting for their homes; the Russians were fighting because they were ordered to.  And whether or not the Ukrainians win, surely their struggle has been impressive.  Using what is available, they have slowed the Russian advance to the point where the Red Army is running out of food.  The Ukrainians have, for instance, used glass beer bottles from the Russian brand to make Molotov cocktails, re-inscribing the labels to read “Fuck you, Russians.”  They’ve removed all road signs and written the same on them.

     As a result of their endeavors, most of the world supports them.  Russia has become a pariah nation, shut off from banking, air travel, supplies, sports, and musical groups.  There’s a saying that goes back to Ancient Greece: “It is better to die on your feet than live on your knees.”  No one person has proved this more than Volodymyr Zelensky, the President of Ukraine.  Before the current events, I remembered the Ukrainian support of the Nazis in World War II.  But now they have a Jewish president and what a president!  Asked if he wanted a trip out of his embattled nation, he said, “I want ammunition, not a ride.”  There another old saying – that “God hates a coward.”  Both Zelensky and the Ukrainians have been heroic rather than cowardly.

     That is more than could be said for a number of Republicans, most notably Donald Trump, who asserted that Putin was “a genius” when he invaded Ukraine.  For a while, some Republican commentators, like Tucker Carlson, supported him.  So have Senator John Hawley of Missouri, and Representatives Marjorie Taylor Greene, Paul Gosar, Matt Rosendale, and Thomas Massie, all of whom voted in Congress against support for Ukraine.  Now the Republican Party is back-peddling as fast as it can – except for Trump.  It may loosen his grip on the GOP.

     But regardless of U.S. politics, I believe that a Russian invasion of Ukraine cannot ultimately succeed.  Suppose they occupy that nation.  Will opposition and protest completely stop?  I don’t believe it will.  The cost of keeping innumerable Russian soldiers there, often against their will, plus the damage done by the other measures NATO and the United States have taken, have caused the ruble to plummet and the Russian stock market to close. 

     From its beginning to whatever its conclusion, this is a war fought with internet participation.  The Russians cannot be secretive any longer.  When it was revealed that the oligarchs who support Putin still had their yachts, those yachts were taken away.  Russia has alienated most of the world and the Ukrainians have won its support.                    

I’ve always hated winter, and the older I get, the more I dislike it.  Part of the reason is how long it is – much longer than the other seasons.  The Chinese divide winter into two seasons: Early Winter and Late Winter.  And this year, unlike last, we’re having a “real” winter.  Tomorrow the high is supposed to be 19.

     All this is compounded by Covid.  I was exposed by a friend last Monday and I’ve been lying low ever since.  I have no symptoms at all.  The testing sites here are jammed, and therefore quite dangerous, so I’ve opted to wait before I use the one test kit I have.  I’ll do it this Friday, before I have a scheduled massage.  My masseuse asked me to test before I saw her.  New kits should arrive on Saturday.  It’s been very hard to find them anywhere.

     In addition, there’s politics.  I found the anniversary of January 6th very difficult.  As a historian, I have to go back to the War of 1812 to find a similar event — when the British invaded and burned the Capitol to the ground.  The Confederacy never reached Washington, D.C.  The first time Confederate flags were raised in the Capitol was on January 6, 2021.

     But I’m very glad Biden finally spoke out.  His speech, where he continually referred to “the former president” but never used his name, was excellent.  I especially liked when he said, “He’s not just a former president, he’s a former defeated president.”  However, it continues to be shocking that almost every Republican in Congress, regardless of how they themselves were menaced, continues to downplay the event and support Trump.  Hopefully this will change.  The rate of people getting, and dying from Covid is far higher in Republican districts than in Democratic ones.  The Republicans’ platform now consists of opposing vaccinations, opposing voting, and opposing women.

     I believe this is a losing strategy.  People have voted under even more arduous conditions than those the Republican states are creating.  I hope that the Supreme Court will not overturn Roe v. Wade.  In addition to stare decisus (the principle that the court not reverse long-established policies), Chief Justice Roberts cares that he has a good reputation.  He does not want to preside over a court that makes political rather than juridical decisions.  Let’s hope his view prevails.

     Also, this outbreak of Covid may decline as rapidly as it arose.  It did that in South Africa, which does have a much younger population.  But we can hope that it will diminish within a month or so here. 

     Finally, with regard to Covid, politics, and the weather, remember the end of the quotation with which I started this piece.  Shelley wrote, “If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind.”

The concept of “the big lie” comes from the German general Erich von Ludendorff, but was publicized by Adolf Hitler. Ludendorff argued that “Jews and Communists” had blamed Germany’s defeat in the First World War on him — a position that came to be known as the “Stab in the Back Legend.” In Hitler’s book, Mein Kampf (My Struggle), published in 1925, he repeated Ludendorff’s argument. Ludendorff and Hitler became and remained close political allies and helped bring the Nazis to power.

Hitler defined the big lie as a lie so colossal that no one would believe that anyone could “have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously.” His most influential use of the concept was his assertion that the Jews were responsible for all of Germany’s misfortunes and so should be exterminated. In their 1943 assessment of Hitler, the U.S. Office of Strategic Services (a predecessor of the C.I.A.) maintained that “people will believe a big lie sooner than a little one; and if you repeat it frequently enough people will sooner or later believe it.” This big lie was the major justification for the Holocaust, which killed at least 6,000,000 Jews.

While it is difficult to believe that a United States politician would use a Nazi tactic for his own ends, this is exactly what Donald Trump did in 2020. Immediately after the presidential election in November, Trump began asserting that the election was a fraud, that if he lost, it was only because of foul play, and that any loss by him should be reversed. He kept asserting these falsehoods up to and including January 6, 2021, when he incited a mob to storm the Capitol building to try and seize the government. While this attempted coup most closely resembled the Confederate South’s attempt to undermine Pres. Lincoln’s election of 1860, the Confederacy never conquered Washington, D.C. The event closest to January 6 occurred during the War of 1812, when the British did occupy Washington, D.C. and burned both the White House, then called the Presidential Mansion, and the Capitol Building.

Trump’s attempts to undermine a free and fair election, in which the results of both the popular and Electoral College votes were not even close, did not end on January 6. His supporters tried to deny the results and Trump is still proclaiming that he “really” won. This Big Lie must not prevail. Many Democrats now argue that it is reason enough that he be convicted in the Senate of his second impeachment. May it be so.

     The power to pardon is older than Western Civilization.  In Ancient Babylon, when kings came to the throne, they issued general pardons.  In Ancient Greece, the monarch Thrasybus issued a pardon in 403 B.C.E.  In Ancient Rome, kings issued clemency – that is, pardons for groups rather than individuals.

     In medieval times, both the Roman Catholic Church and local rulers issued pardons.  By the 1500s, pardons were in the hands of the monarch.  When the United States was founded, this was one of the functions transferred to the Executive Power.  Article II, section 2 of the Constitution gives the president “the power to grant Reprieves or Pardons for offenses against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment.”

     That exception vastly limits the president’s pardoning power.  In 1787, founding father James Madison wrote “…if the President be connected, in any suspicious manner, with any person, and there be grounds to believe that he will shelter him, the House of Representatives can impeach him; they can remove him if found guilty.”  This view was expanded in the twentieth century.  By then, the truism that “No one may be judge in his own case” had taken hold.  The U.S. legal scholar and Harvard law professor Cass Sunstein supported and expanded this view. 

     In the 1970s, when Richard Nixon was indicted for the Watergate conspiracy, the Department of Justice ruled that “The President cannot pardon himself.”  That position holds true today.  In order to pardon himself, Pres. Trump would first have to admit that he did wrong.  He is unlikely to do this.  Summing up, former president Theodore Roosevelt declared “Patriotism means to stand by the country, it does not mean to stand by the president.”

The death of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg was both timely and untimely.  Timely, because she was 87 and had been battling severe cancer for many years, and untimely because she died while Trump was in office.  Breaking with their own statements when Obama was president and Republicans prevented even a hearing of his candidate for a year, the party decided to push through a new candidate for the court in a few short weeks.

         Given this situation, what can Democrats and their supporters do?  The most important action, I believe, is to try and convince some Republican senators not to go ahead with their party’s maneuver to control the court.  Here are the phone numbers of five Republican senators who might support a delay.  All of them go to voice mail, so if you call, you do not need to talk to anyone.

• For Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, dial 202/224-2523, ext. 1

• For Sen. Corey Gardner of Colorado, dial 202/224-5941, ext. 1

• For Sen. Martha McSally of Arizona, dial 202/224-2235, which will go directly to voicemail

• For Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, dial 202/224-6665, ext. 3

• For Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah, dial 202/224-5251, ext. 1        

         I think it is worth phoning these senators even if they have already announced that they will support Mitch McConnell’s attempt to rush through an appointment.  As McConnell himself declared, this issue is political, and if these senators receive enough calls asking them to desist, they might.

         Finally, even if this new appointment goes through, there is a powerful remedy.  In this nation the Supreme Court does not make laws, except in constitutional issues.  Congress does.  If, for instance, the new conservative court out laws abortion, congress can pass a law making it legal.  So I believe it is now even more important for Democrats to vote in large numbers, hopefully to give Biden a mandate as well as control of both the house and the senate.  It is the only force that can stop the degradation of this nation which Trump and his corrupt attorney general, Barr, have engineered in recent years.

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          A short while ago, a white woman in her thirties told me, “It it’s Biden, I’m not going to vote.”  I tried arguing with her, saying that Trump was much worse than Biden, but I got nowhere.  She maintained that both of them supported corporate capitalism and that if Biden were president, nothing would change.  I was very upset with her, but then I remembered that I had done exactly the same thing she was advocating.

         Back in 1968, I could not bring myself to vote for the Democratic candidate, Hubert Humphrey, to be president.  Humphrey, Lyndon Johnson’s vice-president, had supported the Vietnam war, which I’d marched against for years.  Nor did he repudiate the dreadful police riots in Chicago against peaceful demonstrators at the Democratic Convention.  So I voted for Eldridge Cleaver, the Black Panther who ran on the Peace and Freedom ticket.  Cleaver had no chance of winning, but this action made me feel righteous.  However by doing it, I helped make Richard Nixon president – an outcome I deplored. 

         I felt guilty about this action of mine for years.  I never believed that Humphrey was nearly as bad as Nixon.  Nixon’s presidency was a national disaster, culminating in Watergate.  Nor do I believe that Nixon was nearly as bad as Donald Trump is, although there are interesting parallels between them.  In both Watergate and Trump’s attempt to get the president of Ukraine to give him dirt on Biden, the cover-ups are almost worse than the actions. 

Just as Humphrey was superior to Nixon, so Biden is far better than Trump.  Equating the two, for whatever reasons, is a false and dangerous identification.  It could make Trump president for a second term, further eroding democracy in the United States.

         Some people believe that evil-doers should be allowed to obtain power, because then voters will see how dreadful they are and revolt against them.  This tactic was tried in Weimar Germany in the early 1930s.  Some members of the powerful German Socialist Party advocated this strategy against the Nazis, calling it “Socialist Defeatism.”  I think we all know how that turned out.

         In conclusion, it’s vitally important to vote – even if the candidate isn’t your favorite, even if you object to some of their views or positions, even if you don’t like him or her.  The alternative is so much worse.

For me, it began during the presidential campaign when Trump mocked and imitated a disabled reporter. I thought, “How could anyone vote for him after this?” It continued during the debates, when he stalked Hillary, tromping around the stage and looming over her. Although she was a weak candidate, I was shocked when he won and depressed that so many Americans voted for him. Yet again, I deplored that the Electoral College gave the election to someone who had lost the popular vote.

Crazy Town continued during one of his early cabinet meetings, when everyone in the room, led by Mike Pence, groveled and tried to outdo each other in sycophantic praise for Trump. I had never witnessed anything like it. Despite this, seemingly endless firings and replacements followed over the next two years, with one hireling after another running afoul of an irrational power freak. As George Packer wrote in the September 24th New Yorker, “A coarse and feckless viciousness is the operating procedure of his White House, and the poison spreads to everyone. Only snakes and sycophants survive.”

My dismay has increased as it has become clear that the Republican Party, in both the House and the Senate, has followed this corrupt lead, betraying its long-held values. A balanced budget? Let the deficit sky-rocket as we give more tax breaks to the wealthiest among us. Suspicion of Russia? Let it disappear as the president meets privately with Putin and praises him to the point that many of us consider treasonous. And now, the Supreme Court. The hypocritical claim of “Let the people decide” used in an unprecedented blocking of Pres. Obama’s right to appoint a justice, has now been trashed. Attempting to rush Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation through before the November elections, the scant Republican majority in the Senate allowed less than 10% of his papers released, dismissed any objections to his evasive answers, and now seems not to have done its basic homework. Three and perhaps four women have come forward claiming he sexually harassed them. All have asked for FBI investigations of their charges, something they would be extremely unlikely to do if they were just trying to “smear” him, as he claims.

Do I believe them? You bet I do. I worked as a rape crisis counselor at St. Vincent’s Hospital in Greenwich Village for fourteen years. In all that time, we had only one false claimant — a con-woman who went from city to city and was easily caught. We even had a pamphlet titled “I Never Told Anyone,” since this was so common. Look at the harassment Christine Blasey Ford, the first accuser, has experienced: death threats to her and her family, hacking of her email, etc., etc. It remains far more difficult for women to come forward with charges than for men to deny them.

And now the eleven Republican men on the Judiciary Committee are pondering whether to question her themselves or to hire a female attorney to present a better picture. She of course is not allowed to have her attorney present, nor to bring in corroborating witnesses. The echoes of the Senate’s base treatment of Anita Hill many years ago are deafening. And the context for all this is Trump’s own boasts about “pussy grabbing,” his infidelities, and his own sexual harassment of women. If you elect a clown, expect a circus.

The Constitution of the United States very carefully delineated what constitutes treason, as all the founding fathers were acting as traitors to Great Britain.   Treason "against the United States shall consist only in levying war against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. "  I, and many others, believe that Donald Trump's press conference with Vladimir Putin on July 16, gave "aid and comfort" to Russia, especially when the president declared that he believed the assurances of the Russian leader over his own intelligence services.

      The Constitution is even more careful about a conviction for treason -- it requires "the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court."  Neither seems likely to happen, although I found Rachel Maddow's reportage last night on the Russian spy, Marina Butina, intriguing.  Maddow asserted that the prosecution's papers included the charge that Butina had successfully influenced Trump not to appoint Mitt Romney as Secretary of State, but to choose a figure more acceptable to Putin.  Rex Tillerson, the ultimate choice, had been given a medal by Putin.  (It was Tillerson who later called Trump "a moron.")

     Even in the darkest days of our republic, charges like this are virtually unheard of -- the only exception is just before the Civil War, when some previous presidents were accused of siding with the Confederacy.  We are indeed living in interesting times, which a Chinese proverb considers a curse.  It will indeed be interesting to see what happens.

     In 1887, near the end of her long life, Ernestine Rose declared that "For over fifty years, I have endeavored to promote the rights of humanity without distinction of sex, sect, party, country, or color."  She herself experienced discrimination not only because she was female, but also because of her "country" -- she had been born in Poland.  Although she lived in the United States for 33 years and was integral to the U.S. women's movement, she remained its only non-native born member and was always called a "foreigner."  Even worse, during the 1850s, the anti-immigrant American Party arose.  It demanded limits on their entry, a 21-year residence period before citizenship could be applied for, and the restriction of all political offices to the native born.  The party's members said they "knew nothing" about it, giving rise to its nickname of the Know Nothing Party.  A number of Rose's fellow participants in the women's movement voiced their agreement with its views in her presence.

     As a historian, I'm leery of making comparisons between different eras, but the Know Nothings' tenets are amazingly parallel to those of Donald Trump and his attorney general, Jeff Sessions.  In his recent speech rescinding DACA, which gave persons brought here as children the right to stay for two years if they had not committed a crime, Sessions harked back to the distant past.  He did not invoke the Know Nothings, but rather the severely restrictive 1924 Immigration Act.  Designed by a congressional eugenicist, this bill sought to keep the United States "Anglo-Saxon" by outlawing the entry of most Jews, Italians and other southern Europeans, as well as all Asians.  In 2015, then Senator Sessions, disparaging the prediction that in a few years "we'll have the highest percentage of Americans non-native born since the founding of the republic," praised this act since it "slowed immigration" and "created the really solid middle class of America."  (Thanks to Rachel Maddow for this information.)  Sessions also argued falsely this year that DACA was "unconstitutional," that it would take jobs from "hundreds of thousands of Americans," and that it would work against "national security" and "public safety."

     After she left Poland, Ernestine Rose lived in Germany, France, and England before coming here.  In London, she met Robert Owen, the industrial-turned-radical, whose expansive view of human rights became her own.  "We have been told that Robert Owen was a dreamer," she asserted at a celebration of his life, "and what glorious dreams he dreamt!....It is said that he did not succeed.  But where he did not succeed in the past, he will in the future.  He shook the foundation of the old system, and left it to time to do the rest."

     I believe that time is on the side of those of us who oppose the racism and prejudice exemplified by Trump and Sessions, but our Dreamers, as DACA recipients are called, cannot wait since they will be deported in six months.  New York's attorney general, Eric Schneiderman, has already brought a lawsuit arguing that since almost 80% of the Dreamers are of Mexican origin, its rescinding is based on the anti-Mexican discrimination Trump expressed so often during his campaign.  The rest of us must continue, as Rose so often urged, to "agitate, agitate" for the causes we believe in, starting with the protection of these involuntary young immigrants.