On July 26, 1920, H.L. Mencken said this: “As democracy is perfected, the office of the president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. One some great and glorious day, the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last, and the White House will be occupied by a downright fool and a complete narcissistic moron.”

105 years later, America has that person in the White House. The only question of great importance is now this: in his remaining 3 1/2 years in office, how much more DAMAGE can D.J. Trump do to America, what’s left of American ‘democracy,” American norms, American decency, America’s economy, America’s reputation, American law, American education, the First Amendment, American national debt, American small businesses, America’s National Parks, American civil rights, America’s natural environment, the very concept of truth………………….

Luckily for Mencken, “The Evening Baltimore Sun” newspaper existed in a time when a president with a thin skin, a colossal ego, desire for “revenge”. on any and all who make him look bad [regardless whether it was true] was not in office.

One wonders what commentators like Mark Twain, the Muckrakers, and Will Rogers would say about Donald Trump. And, of course, one wonders how long it would be before Trump threatened them with the power and wealth of “our” federal government; how long before he sued the writer and their newspaper; how long before Trump threatened to cancel their citizenship; how long before Trump said they were “old,” “fat,” “ugly,” “stupid,” “a knucklehead.”

One wonders what specious, bogus, questionable, or outright falsehood would be the ‘grounds” for suing Mencken, Twain, Muckrakers, or Rogers. Would it be “a threat to national security,” “a threat to the president’s “vision,” “antisemitism,” “a need for efficiency and to eliminate waste and fraud,” “displaying dangerous D.E.I. tendencies,” that it violates “common sense” [hang on to your wallets when ANY Republican or R-W spokesperson uses this term!], that it “presented disturbing material like to offend good Americans,” that it “presented material likely to make some good Americans self-conscious,” that it “presented material making good Americans feel guilty” [anything suggesting slavery wasn’t fun], that it is “a hoax,” that it was “old news,” that “it was guilty of being ‘liberal bias’ [claiming 2 plus 2 equals 4], that ‘it was divisive” [saying the North won the Civil War], that it was “a feminist falsehood” [saying no woman had been president!], “we need a tax cut” [standard GOP operating principle; one state Republican claimed the cure for COVID-19 was a tax cut!!!], saying that despite Trump’s denials, he did know the person in question [as illustrated by 6 pictures, pre-A.I., of the two together], whatever else the Heritage Foundation or “Project 2025” authors can DREAM UP…………….

*** “The modern conservative is engaged in one of man’s oldest exercises in moral philosophy, ghat is the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.” [ John Kenneth Galbraith ]


Note: the inspiration for using Mencken’s 1920 quote comes from a 7/29/25 “letter-to-the-editor to the Minnesota Star Tribune by Chris Simonson.

***** “Terror is the most effective political instrument.: [ Adolf Hitler ]

Note: This post presents excerpts from: “Political Violence. Is. Working” [ Tessie McMillan Cottom; New York Times; 6/22/25] – Read this article and EVERY other article on political violence you can.

***** “Every Communist must grasp the truth, “Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.” [Mao Tse-Tung ]

1] “Sometimes violent political speech is obvious, like the president calling former representative Liz Cheney a war hawk who should know what it feels like when “the guns are trained on her face.” But sometimes violent political speech is not what is said but isn’t said. Or even the way that it isn’t said. It was evident in President Trump’s insistence that those who stormed the U.S. Capitol in 2021 were “very special,” instead of violent insurrectionists. It was clear, too, in his callous response to last weekend’s assassinations, an obvious case of the dangerous escalation of political violence.”

*** “Violence does not and cannot exist by itself; it is invariably intertwined with the lie.” [ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn ]

2]. “A culture of fear shrouds this administration from the consequences of its actions. Trump taunts. He threatens. He hides his violent language behind humor that’s less funny than plausibly deniable. His behavior sets the tone for greedy political attention hogs….They curry his favor because they want his power for themselves….Online, loyalists act out a presidential vision of power by harassing and dehumanizing those he marks as ugly, stupid, lazy, fat and generally subhuman.”

***. “Just as death is the liquidation of being, dehumanization is the liquidation of being human.” [ Abraham Heschel ]

3] “Trump is the Republican Party. That is settled. His violent talk is, then, the official political communication strategy of that ruling party and its followers. And that ruling party is stripping this country for parts.”

*** “You shall not oppress your neighbor or rob him.” [ Leviticus. 19:13 ]

4] “Steven Levitsky and Lucan Way argued this year in Foreign Affairs that many political observers misunderstood how autocracy can look in a mature democracy. The administrative and electoral bureaucracy can and likely will continue to function. Instead, institutional and democratic failure would involve tilting the outcomes of normal democratic processes in favor of one party while grinding down opposition with a mix of retribution and fear. By that definition, our institutions are fracturing before our very eyes. Nowhere is that more evident than in our broken Congress.”

***. “Power is in inflicting pain and humiliation. Power is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together in new shapes of our own choosing.” [ George Orwell: “1984” ]

5]. “The erosion of political norms has driven a Republican-controlled Congress out of the business of checking the executive branch, essentially handing itrs power over to a man who styles himself a king. In 2020 the Democratic senator from Ohio at the time, Sherrod Brown, wrote in this newspaper that congressional Republicans feared retribution from Trump so much that they had abandoned their duty to the public.”

*** “The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judicial, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, many justly be proclaimed the very definition of tyranny.” { James Madison: Federalist papers, #47; Founding Father, Fourth President ]

6]. “There’s the targeted harassment…Trump’s playbook, which is now the G.O.P. playbook, has long been to ruthlessly attack perceived enemies with ridicule and reputational punishment….”networked harassment”..the internet’s way of making doxxing people and spreading nasty rumors about them cheap, easy and undetectable.

*** “Exploitation is the essence of violence.” [ Mohandas K. Gandhi ]

7]. “The online part of violent political speech makes the violence seem twee, as if it was something teenage girls do on TikTok. But online harassment ruins lives and breaks people by socially isolating them. We should have more respect for teenage girls now that the president of the United States is enforcing fealty using his own burn book.”

*** “The most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressor is in the minds of the oppressed.” [ Steve Biko ]

8] “Would a conspiracy-obsessed man really have broken into Representative Nancy Pelosi’s home and beaten her husband’s skull with a hammer if not for the inescapable online narrative that cast her as a unique villain to the American people?”………
“In other words, maybe the Gestapo won’t be jackbooted thugs but keyboard warriors. And maybe the keyboard warriors are worse.”

*** “[To fanatics}. all thought is divinely classified into two kinds – that which is their own and that which is false and dangerous.” [ Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson ]

9] “What matters is political violence is here and it is working. Congressional Republicans fear the sort of retribution that would not simply oust them from office but would threaten their lives and those of their staff members and their families.”

***. “You can get a lot more done with a kind word and a gun than with a kind word.” [ Al Capone ]

Note’ consider this – that among the costs of political violence is this: “Security has been a growing priority at all levels of government in recent years….The unprecedented violence….The amount of money federal candidates..have spent on security has grown significantly during the last decade…”It is unfortunate that is today’s climate of toxic political rhetoric and rampant disinformation..” [ Jessie Van Berkel: “Security a real priority for politicians; Minnesota Star Tribune; 7/3/25 ]
note this problem “ha grown significantly during the past decade.” – now what, or who, has occurred in the last decade in American politics??????? Do you think, just maybe, that THE cause is none other than Donald John Trump?????? Is it possible that “toxic political rhetoric and rampant misinformation is THE characteristic of one Donald John Trump??????? Who else has supplied us with some 30,000 recorded lies????? Who else functions primarily on insults and public humiliations??????? Who else has a NEED to extract revenge????? Who else has dropped veiled threats of political violence – and excused – and pardoned violent perpetrators???????