August 21, 2025: Just Who's In Charge?

 After World War Two, the powers that be, C. Wright Mills' Power Elite, were so grateful for the defeat of Adolph Hitler and the Axis powers, that they rewarded their soldier-citizens with a liberal dose of economic opportunity. Since then, the elite's next generation began clawing back. And the next generation after that, the rich and powerful 1/10 of 1% who really run things today, actually resent having to help anyone, forgetting that a happy, healthy workforce is a productive one, and that their own wealth comes off the backs of that work force.

I know. I sound like a conspiracy theorist gone mad. But it is undeniable that America has become a plutocracy, that is, governed by the super-rich, of the super-rich, and for the super-rich. They have one agenda, increasing their wealth and power. What has changed is that the rich are outwardly righteous in their greed. Their monster, Donald Trump, has made this blatantly obvious. But is Trump merely a side show reality TV distraction, or is he a threat even to them?

I know that comparisons to Adolph Hitler are not considered useful or realistic, but who exactly is telling us that, particularly when such comparisons are so obvious? The MAGA movement considers itself a revolution in American politics, economics, and governance. The Power Elite, the Republican Party, and roughly 40% of the American people are lock-step behind them. Donald Trump is their face. But I think back to 1934, a scant 91 years ago. The German industrialists told Adolph Hitler that if he could not control his Brown Shirts and their leader, Ernst Roehm, they would not support him. Over the course of two days, June 30-July 1, Hitler eliminated 2,000 potential opponents, gutting the Brown Shirts and murdering his so-called friend Roehm. He won over the industrialists, then set the world on fire.

Ernst Roehm once famously said, “All revolutions devour their own children.” With Trump looking to control every aspect of American life, from minutia like the name of a football team to his authoritarian, and what some are now calling Marxist, approach to the economy, I again ask the Power Elite, Is Donald Trump your Adolph Hitler?