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Writer's pictureGregory N. Austin

Power Corrupts, Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely

Updated: 23 hours ago

The French say: “qui ne dit mot consent” silence is consent. Will you dear reader remain silent? Imagine our Founding Fathers and what they would feel if they were here to witness their grand experiment of governing being taken over by a mind-bending, anti-science, shifty group of politicians surrounded by ungrateful billionaires on a mission of punishment and harm to our working people.

King Trump on the throne in front of an industrial hellscape
Blowing smoke as usual?

Plato said “democracies pass into despotism”. I am going on 88 years old in three months. I saw this political mess coming in February 2023 when I started my blog.

 

Dear reader, the doomsday clock for the life of our U.S. Constitution is now at 2 minutes to midnight! If President-elect Donald Trump gets 95% of his cabinet picks, the United States will have left its 245-year-old journey under the rule of law and fully embraced a dictatorship. Please take this blog and diary it ahead 18 months and by then more than likely, you may see the elimination of an election cycle in 2026. Mr. Trump by that time will have cornered the entire political process that heretofore has been normal, except for the civil war. He made remarks last summer to his followers, “vote for me, vote for me, get out and vote for me. This will be the last time you have to vote.”

 

President-elect Donald Trump is the best (or worst) in the use of incremental, cynical but successful political victories. No one did it better except for Adolf Hitler, Vladimir Putin and Viktor Orban. Don’t forget that Mr. Trump has admitted these men are his mentors. He has met with Viktor Orban many times, and we know he has had private meetings with Vladimir Putin. He has shown no interest in George Washington, Teddy Roosevelt, nor Ronald Reagan. The only former U.S. President he has shown any respect for was Andrew Jackson. Remember President Jackson shipped many Indian tribes from the Georgia area and put them on a Trail of Tears to the Oklahoma territory.

 

Donald Trump in his politics, follows his mentors' ideas by picking out negative targets in society to ridicule and belittle. He growls at the immigrants who are, according to him, “criminals, rapists and insane”. He considers it a situation always tolerated by liberals who allow them to pour across the border. Last May a bipartisan bill covering the border sponsored by Republican Senator Langford from Oklahoma was picking up much support until Donald Trump told the MAGA Republicans he did not want to authorize the bill. He thought it was a better idea to use the negatives at the border against President Joe Biden. The propaganda against immigrants is laughable. The constant need to rant over immigrants is a disgrace according to many fair-minded people. To hear Sean Hannity every night complain about the crimes committed by immigrants is absent of any reason. It is absolutely untrue that immigrants commit more crimes than the average American citizen. Dear reader, fact check, fact check! A thousand lies by Fox pundits does not make something true. It remains B.S. by the barrel, but it makes big bucks for Fox News. Dear reader, Rupert Murdoch is presently involved in his estate negotiations, because at age 93 he wants to leave the right wing slant format used on Fox News in place. He made his money on half truths, innuendo, lies and strong pundit delivery of the message. He wants to keep that formula in place after he is gone. Don't forget he is a naturalized American citizen who took an oath to support the U.S. Constitution.

 

Donald Trump said the Central Park Five from 1989 who were accused of rape and torture should be punished severely even before the trial. He actually took out a full-page ad in the New York Times. When these five young black men were found guilty but then later found fully innocent due to a DNA test, he still would not accept the exoneration! His strategy is to pick targets, rile the public and promote hostility and exaggerations at those targets. Don’t forget, he had 50% of his followers believing that Barack Obama was not born in Hawaii, but came from Africa. Did he submit facts, evidence, or proof of any kind to support this disgraceful lie? No, he did not. It was B.S. then and remains B.S. today. He thrives knowing that his followers will believe any lies he tells about his opponents. Further, don't forget the Washington Post found and fact checked over 30,000 lies during his first term as President.

 

In his real estate business he went through several bankruptcies, 3,400 lawsuits, paid a $25 million fine for fraud over Trump University, and paid a $2 million fine to the state of New York for his Family Foundation's violations. He was forced to dissolve that foundation. When he was elected President of the United States in 2016, he was impeached twice. Remember he participated in the COVID mayhem and confusion by questioning the efficacy of vaccinations. Over 100,000 Americans out of the one million that died, may have survived had they taken the vaccine. Some of those on their death bed told their relatives they regretted turning down the vaccination.

 

He set a record for deficit spending during his four years as President. At the end of four years he had added $7.8 trillion to the federal debt. No other President has done that. Check it out dear reader. Over 100 professional historians whose job it is to judge Presidential performances ranked him dead last out of 46 past U.S. Presidents.

 

He created the January 6th insurrection against the Capitol building by his taunts, lies and hostility about the "stolen" election. This created anger in his followers as they stormed the Capitol Building. They did much property damage, several deaths arose out of the riot, and several police officers were tortured. One officer later committed suicide. Donald Trump has said that the mob that desecrated the Capitol was made up of decent, innocent American citizens and that if he returned to the Presidency he would give them (over 600) a pardon. Dear reader it's so sad that 60% of MAGA Republicans believe to this day, that the Presidency of Joe Biden was stolen in 2020. There are no facts, there is no evidence, there is no proof to this day of a theft of that election. It's just the ranting of their cult leader, and if any one of his associates denies the 2020 election was stolen, they are not welcome into his political circle. You may want to note dear reader, that Vice President-elect JD Vance stated he would not have allowed the verification of the electoral college vote to take place. And remember Vice President Mike Pence was just following the U.S. Constitution, when he was chairing the vote. He ended up paying a very steep price for simply following the rule of law.

 

Mr. Trump had three legal cases that have been put aside because of his November 5th election victory. He still bears grudges, claiming recently that FBI Director Christopher Wray “broke into his house at Mara Lago”. We have all seen the photos of boxes and boxes of secret U.S. documents illegally taken. The question is why? Christopher Wray was appointed FBI Director by Donald Trump for a 10 year term, 7 years ago. On December 11, 2024 he resigned after criticism from Trump and several MAGA Senators. Kash Patel has made it very clear in his pronouncements about the FBI that he has a retribution and revenge list of American citizens who criticized Donald Trump. There is a very good chance Mr. Patel will be the next FBI Director and from everything I've studied, the rule of law may become a Gestapo type operation.

 

Donald Trump had several Federal cases that were pending trial and could have been expedited with the idea that a quicker trial may have proved his innocence, instead he vigorously paid millions of dollars to delay those cases past the date of his victorious election. However, in May of 2024 he was found guilty on 34 counts of fraud over the 2016 election by a jury of his peers. This was despite Speaker of the House Michael Johnson sitting in the courtroom attempting to influence the jury. Donald Trump now claims that all of the legal problems he's had, including the cases with E. Jean Carroll, costing him an $85 million judgment and the case of the state of New York filing fraudulent business practices charges which cost him $470 million in fines. His constant theme throughout all of his legal problems is that he is a victim. A victim of the Deep State, a victim of the FBI, crooked judges and juries that hate him. Dear reader, in my opinion he protests too much. He might want to look in the mirror and do what we all have to do in some situations and just fess up. His rap sheet is so serious he can legitimately be called a lawless racketeer. Despite this, he is the people’s choice for President of the United States. I accept as a voter, the will of the people and my Bible says, "forgive them, for they know not what they do."

 

The saddest poll I saw was last August, which showed 80% of MAGA Republicans thought that the Democratic opponents were not going to run a fair election. They were responding to Mr. Trump repeating over and over again that his opponents would cheat. Now jump to the White House inviting the victorious Donald Trump to a concession meeting. President Joe Biden honorably and nobly without question accepted his defeat and shook hands with President-elect Donald Trump.

 

Dear reader, now let's go back to 1992 and look at Democratic Speaker of the House Tom Foley from the State of Washington as he voted for a tax increase for the rich and voted also that year to ban assault weapons for 10 years. As a result of these two votes, is he lost his seat as Speaker and his Congressional seat as well. He was asked, what happened and he said, “all I did was vote my conscious.” He also accepted his loss nobly and honorably.

 

Let's jump forward to January 6, 2021, the night that Vice President Mike Pence chaired the Electoral College count on behalf of winner Joe Biden as required by the U.S. Constitution. Surprisingly dear reader, eight MAGA Republican Senators, 6 of them lawyers, voted “no” and 142 MAGA Congressman also voted “no”. What was their proof, what was the evidence, and what were the facts that allowed them to vote no? Zero. Did they violate their oath to the U.S. Constitution with not a thimble full of proof? Surprisingly, many of them despite the "no" votes, were reelected. This is a demonstration of how far we have fallen and how much we have discounted truth as just another political opinion. Truth is just a political weapon used by Democrats to confuse the public according to MAGA Republicans.

 

Has America fallen off the moral shelf and abandoned the rule of law? Is the U.S. Constitution about to collapse into a moral abyss from which it will not recover? Dear reader, save this blog. I give us less than a 5% chance of keeping the rule of law.

 

Finally, don't forget Project 2025 wants to defang the EPA because it is part of the Administrative State, the Deep State, and it bothers our poor American billionaires who don't want to be regulated and don't want to pay taxes. Donald Trump has made it clear to these poor guys that he will reinstate the big tax cut he gave them seven years ago before it runs out this coming summer. It is clear our poor billionaires will not have to bare their horrible burden under the new administration, cough, cough.

 

This great venture was created by those unselfish 55 Founding Fathers who discounted more power and more money and instead gave the people the right to govern themselves. It has been a good, wonderful ride for 245 years, but it is now 2 minutes to midnight! Now it appears that the billionaires have plans to pluck even more feathers from our citizens. The people have very little time to make any difference whatsoever. Do they want a dictator? Do they want to discontinue the rule of law and allow the Constitution to simply fade away? We better get some answers, and intensive ones at that, to make it known before it’s too late. Otherwise Mr. Trump and his billionaire buddies will officially kick-off Project 2025, which in my humble opinion is a mean-spirited, groundless project foisted upon a great nation that was well respected by the free world. Now they want to burn the house down to the ground and put their ideology in place which promotes their power and lust for more money. At whose expense? Naturally, the average citizen will be the victim. They want to reduce the size of government by a third or more. And they want to replace non-political federal employees with federal employees loyal to the unitary leader.

 

God help us, God help our children and grandchildren who will undergo mayhem and chaos as the Trump 2.0 Administration gets underway with their 11 million immigrant arrests, their retribution, their revenge and their crazy programs to enrich themselves.

 

The French say: “qui ne dit mot consent” silence is consent. Will you dear reader remain silent?

 

Imagine our Founding Fathers and what they would feel if they were here to witness their grand experiment of governing being taken over by a mind-bending, anti-science, shifty group of politicians surrounded by ungrateful billionaires on a mission of punishment and harm to our working people. And remember the quote that came from Elon Musk recently, “the reforms we propose will hurt the people, but only for a short time.” Elon Musk owns the social media platform X that was recently asked by the European Union to stop its promotion of so much disinformation. Remember dear reader, since Elon Musk joined forces with Donald Trump in July, it has been recently reported that his wealth had increased by an additional $200 billion. (This is not a typo) And remember the other 10 billionaires that will be in the close circle of Donald Trump are ready to cash in as well. Meanwhile don’t you wonder just how many of these billionaires will be purchasing Donald Trump’s $100,000 watches, not to mention all the other products he has been hawking the last 7 or 8 months? Is our sacred White House simply going to be turned into a Wall Street casino for the billionaire class? Keep your eyes open, it is about to happen.


There are billionaires that are patriotic to the rule of law and our flag. They just may be willing to join with ordinary American citizens to protect our just society. I know of only five, but they are a powerful five. I'm sure they care about their legacy and the judgement of history. They may also be concerned about the judgement of a just God.


Finally, my Bible says: "offenses are bound to come, but woe unto him from where the offense cometh."


What will be, will be.

 

Opening Image: Adobe Stock, Stablediffusion.com

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