What Would Nellis Say?

 By Rick Stiller 

Our ignorant and illiterate President is so terrified about the prospect of impeachment, indictment, and incarceration that awaits him if the Democrats retake majorities in the House and the Senate, he’s reverted to 1950s McCarthy-era condemnation by claiming that anyone who doesn’t support his blatant corruption, endless lies, and brazen racism are “Communists”, “Socialists”, or “Jihadists”.

​

Former presidential advisors have made no secret of his inability to comprehend any document longer than one page with lots of pictures, so grasping definitions of big words like Communism or Socialism, or their place in historical context, is beyond his intellectual capacity. That does not inhibit his penchant for accusing rivals and Democrats of adhering to those well-defined principles without presenting any evidence for his claims. 

​

He’s still the little kid in the schoolyard calling his chums names because they are smarter, faster, stronger, and everything he could never be. He has no soul, no conscience, no empathy, and no allegiance to the basic tenets that make our nation the envy of the world.

​

In the modern world, “Communism” is a ruse to ensure the power of a tiny dictatorial group of billionaire oligarchs to control government, own and dominate private industry, and lord over a brainwashed population, which is the blueprint for the system that MAGA Republicans are trying to install in this country today. 

​

His good buddy, Vlad Putin is the model for Trump’s dreams and ambitions of dictatorial power. Following that Russian paradigm, “Trump demanded equity stakes in Intel, a “golden share” in U.S. Steel, and profit-sharing in Nvidia and AMD’s chip sales to China, and special voting rights in other major American corporations”. 

​

The President is strong-arming American companies to comply with his personal and administrative demands by threatening newly-authorized competition, tariffs on imported supplies, restrictions on exports, anti-trust scrutiny, and reconsideration of federal approvals, contracts, and grants. Other than select national emergencies or government bailouts, the American government has never owned shares of private or corporate industries and certainly not for a president’s personal enrichment.

​

He has transformed the White House into his personal gilded piggy bank. His most recent tax return claimed $2.24 billion in earnings since taking office. The New York Times reported that his accounts made more than 8000 stock trades in the past year…many profiting from timely White House announcements and directives.

​

He is offering early insider access to his Truth Social posts about coming policy and economic statements to Wall Street firms, private investors, and major corporations at a monthly subscription fee of $100,000 so they can make illegal trades before those announcements become public just like him!

​

His family is reaping billions more through the family’s Crypto exchange, Meme Coins, and Trump Organization developments and projects in many other countries. His sons, Eric and Donald, Jr. accepted seats on the boards of directors of at least 10 major military suppliers that suddenly got new or expanded contracts through the defense department totaling $3.7 billion. 

​

Trump’s personal criminal defense attorney Todd Blanche has just been confirmed as Attorney General (the nation’s top law enforcement officer) by the Senate, despite repeatedly lying under oath, an existing complaint alleging he mishandled evidence in the investigation into Jeffrey Epstein to protect his boss (who is mentioned thousands of times in those unreleased documents), and U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams’ formal referral to the Florida Bar considering disciplinary complaints involving a fraudulent settlement agreement that shielded Trump, members of his family, and affiliated businesses from federal tax audits and claims, and the creation of the “now-defunct” $1.776 billion weaponized compensation fund which was intended to pay off convicted/pardoned rioters from the January 6th invasion of the Capitol…so they will be ready and willing to attack the coming elections on his command. We all know it will be resurrected and dispersed under a different moniker.

While Trump’s blatant corruption is obvious and illegal, business and economic commentators are describing it as “astonishing”, “unprecedented”, “corporatism”, and “state capitalism”. Never in the history of our country has a president mined his position to reap such extraordinary personal wealth and power, and openly encouraged his band of administrative pirates to plunder every billion they can pilfer. 

He tosses the term “Socialism” around as if it is a threat to democracy, when Democratic Socialism exists when a population is willing to accept communal responsibility for maintaining critical functions of society such as roads, infrastructure, schools and education, healthcare, and welfare. By that definition, the United States is a socialist democracy.

​

President Bonespurs and Israel’s genocidal leader Bibi Netanyahu started the senseless war with Iran that has dragged on for months, depleted our arsenal of advanced weapons, trashed the world economy, and sacrificed 18 American lives and wounded 687 troops, and killed thousands of Iranian civilians. Trump never had a strategy to end this conflict and it is turning into one of those “never-ending wars” that he railed about during his last campaign. He is a failed “commander-in-chief” and former Fox talk show host and completely unqualified “Secretary of War”, little Petey Hegseth, has proven their impotence and incompetence.

​

Under the corruption of this administration, each day brings new threats and impediments to our form of democracy, where the population is supposed to vote in free and open elections without government interference.

​

His SAVE ACT, designed to inhibit voting and voter registration for millions of Americans, as well as banning mail-in ballots, has stalled in the Republican Senate until after the summer recess, but his surrogates have seized voting machines and ballots from several states seeking evidence of “foreign interference”, DHS is blackmailing states by threatening to withhold federal funding for counter-terrorism and disaster relief if they do not turn over voter rolls so Trump’s toadies can dictate who will be barred from voting, a power granted exclusively to the states by the Constitution, not the federal government or the chief executive.

​

He is threatening to “federalize” national elections, send camo-clad, masked, armed ICE agents or “military observers” to intimidate minority voters at polling stations, install “election deniers” in tabulation centers and executive positions in state governments, and, if all else fails, declare a “national emergency” in a last desperate attempt to render the elections “invalid” to protect his precarious grasp on authority.

​

Trump and his oligarchs have no intention of sharing power with “the people”. They are pillaging our resources, fouling our environment for profit, gobbling up television networks, social media platforms, and entertainment studios to control and manipulate the content and flow of information to our population, denying science, erasing history, “cleansing” museums and national monuments of honest and accurate depictions of our heritage, rewriting textbooks and curriculum to glorify white “accomplishments” and demean minority contributions, and brainwashing the next generation to accept totalitarianism, white “supremacy”, brutal and illegal arrests and detention of refugees in enormous horrific and inhumane concentration camps as the norm. 

​

He sold his followers on fear and hate, promotes and justifies racism, social division, and viscous cruelty to non-whites as “patriotic”. He has no concept of “truth, honor, or ethics”, and is desperate to hold on to power through any means necessary.

​

It’s up to real American patriots to ensure that the November elections actually happen, that they are free and fair, and hand a resounding defeat to every MAGA candidate on every ballot in the nation. Our democracy is depending on you to bury American Fascism.

Stand Up! Speak Out! Make a Difference while we still can!

For more of Rick’s essays and novels visit www.rickstiller.com and check out his magnificent floral portraits from his garden at www.rickstillerart.com.