“Republicans have entered their own kind of end-stage Bolshevism, as members of a party that is now exhausted by its failures, cynical about its own ideology, authoritarian by reflex, controlled as a personality cult by a failing old man, and looking for new adventures to rejuvenate its fortunes.” - Tom Nichols, The Atlantic, June 1, 2021

The Republican Party is the American Mafia dressed up as capitalism. This party is led by a gangster, and his most ardent supporters are thugs. As the Trump grift continues to unravel, America is left with a Republican Party festooned with pitchforks in lieu of policy - in lieu of ideas, or any sense of patriotism.

Many political scientists agree that anger is the mother of political activism. It isn’t progressive taxation; untrammeled voting rights, or an unacknowledged pandemic that claims the lives of 600,000 citizens. It’s anger – and the GOP has been winning on that front for decades. They always have an enemy: Islamic terror, promiscuous women with unintended pregnancies, or uppity African Americans who might rise up and force change. Anger works. So, how are Democrats going to stimulate a second Blue Wave in 2022 and the political activism they need to keep the House and Senate so that they are in a position to send this party back to the Stone Age from whence it came?

I think the Democrats need an enemy too – just not false flag enemies like abortion rights, Muslims, or immigrants – the Republican golden oldies. The GOP is the Democratic Party’s best candidate they have in this era of Enemies of Democracy, and Donald Trump remains the single most powerful source of Democratic activism. There is no chance to negotiate with Republicans, and the Biden Administration knows this. But do they know that a chicken in every pot will not get them over the finish line in 2022?

Since the 2020 election turnout was the highest in any national election since 1900, one can make the assumption that the likely stimulus was Donald Trump’s bombast: his boastfulness; his swagger and his deeply undemocratic policies. To Democrats, Trump and his brutal policies – policies that have been inherently and historically Republican – were repugnant on many levels. His malignant narcissism, his family of RICO enthusiasts at the Trump Organization, and his sheer ruthlessness were obvious. And they were rightfully interpreted as a threat to Democratic governance. Trump, single-handedly, caused the 2018 Blue Wave, and his continued efforts to “deconstruct” America’s administrative state still charts the course for the Republican Party.

Democrats need a devastating Blue Wave for 2022.

But many highly credible analyses show that Republicans stand a good chance of winning back the House and Senate in the 2022 midterms. This, in spite of the Republican sponsored insurrection, in spite of their failed pandemic response, and in spite of their attempts to deny voting rights across the country. But Republicans can only win now if they cheat in elections, and campaign the way Hitler did with the propaganda tactic of the “Big Lie”. Hitler wrote:

“Therewith, one started out with the very correct assumption that in the size of the lie there is always contained a certain factor of credibility, since the great masses of a people may be more corrupt in the bottom of their hearts than they will be consciously and intentionally bad. Therefore, with the primitive simplicity of their minds, they will more easily fall victims to a great lie than to a small one, since they themselves perhaps also lie sometimes in little things, but would certainly still be too much ashamed of too great lies. Thus, such an untruth will not at all enter their heads, and therefore, they will be unable to believe in the possibility of the enormous impudence of the most infamous distortion in others. Indeed, they may doubt and hesitate even when being enlightened, and they accept any cause at least as nevertheless being true. Therefore, just for this reason, some part of the most impudent lie will remain and stick; a fact which all great lying artists and societies of this world know only too well and therefore also villainously employ”. - Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, 1925

Today’s Facebook announcement that it will continue to ban Donald Trump from its platform, and Twitter’s decision to do the same, is reminiscent of Hitler’s exile to Landsberg prison in 1924 for his part in the Beer Hall Putsch of 1923, the attempted coup of the Weimar Republic that took place in Munich. Hitler was found guilty of high treason for this attempted coup, but he was out of jail before the end of the year.

Mar-a-Lago is to Landsberg as the treasonous Pasha of Palm Beach, Donald J. Trump, is to Hitler. He has found a way to keep the MAGA fires burning, just as Hitler did. Hitler used his time at Landsberg prison to grow more powerful. He was permitted to see 30-40 supporters daily and continue his political activities. It was there that he wrote his infamous manifesto “Mein Kampf,” (my struggle).

While we all know that Donald Trump is an illiterate blockhead who cannot write his own material like Hitler could, he entertains his co-conspirators and boot-lickers over dinner at Mar-a-Lago and effectively still runs the Republican Party. Perhaps he has lost his voice on Facebook and Twitter, but our new “Mouth of the South” will likely rise again. It is up to the Democrats to recognize the legitimate enemy that they need in order to stimulate the political activism necessary to cause a Blue Wave Tsunami landslide in 2022. Or else.