In this blog, I am always happy to cite writers whose insights are worthy of note. My sources of those writers are many, and sometimes arise from the recommendations of others. My good friend John, also a man of deep insights (I'm truly blessed with such companions, including Steve and Dom), alerted me to Oliver Kornetzke. The writer offers a searing, withering portrait of the man the Amerikans have twice chosen to lead them to their doom:
“Behold. The festering carcass of American rot shoved into an ill-fitting suit: the sleaze of a conman, the cowardice of a draft dodger, the gluttony of a parasite, the racism of a Klansman, the sexism of a back-alley creep, the ignorance of a bar-stool drunk, and the greed of a hedge-fund ghoul - all spray-painted orange and paraded like a prize hog at a county fair. Not a president. Not even a man. Just the diseased distillation of everything this country swears it isn't but always has been - arrogance dressed up as exceptionalism, stupidity passed off as common sense, cruelty sold as toughness, greed exalted as ambition, and corruption worshipped like gospel. It is America's shadow made flesh, a rotting pumpkin idol proving that when a nation kneels before money, power, and spite, it doesn't just lose its soul - it shits out this bloated obscenity and calls it a leader.”
Kornetzke gave additional analysis of Trump and his gang of barbarians in an essay he originally wrote in April.
What’s happening in this country isn’t just cruel—it’s methodical, strategic, and deeply familiar to anyone who’s studied or survived under regimes built on repression and rot.
We’re watching a script play out—one that was written in the blood and bureaucracy of Putin’s Russia, refined in the dungeons of Chechnya, perfected through decades of oligarchic decay, secret police intimidation, and mafia-state theatrics. And now it’s being re-staged here in America, rebranded with flags and lapel pins and the tired language of “law and order.”
The Trump regime—this carnival of third-rate strongmen, grifters, sycophants, and sadists—isn’t innovating anything. It’s copying. It’s importing the authoritarian model wholesale. They’ve read the Putin playbook, dog-eared the best parts, and now they’re running it in real time. And the cruelty? That’s not a flaw in the system. That is the system.
Because cruelty serves a dual purpose: it distracts and it paralyzes. It shocks the conscience just long enough to make you forget about the theft happening in broad daylight. It freezes resistance by making you wonder who’s next. It’s not just about dehumanizing the target—it’s about disarming the observer. You see a 52-year-old seamstress abducted by masked agents in broad daylight, and your mind stops. That’s the point. While you’re frozen, they’re looting the vault.
Just as the Nazis had their terror squads, so does Trump.
That’s what ICE is now—a terror squad designed not just to punish the “other,” but to frighten the rest into submission. They don’t need to knock on your door. They just need you to see what happens when they knock on hers. They want you disoriented, enraged, heartbroken, and above all—silent.
Kornetzke has not abandoned all hope, however, and predicts the Trump regime will ultimately fail.
...you can only keep people paralyzed for so long. Fear calcifies. Shock fades. And eventually, rage focuses.
Rage, yes—but don’t retreat. Pay attention. Speak out. If something feels wrong, say it’s wrong. Refuse to play along with their language, their framing, their euphemisms. They are not “removing undocumented immigrants.” They are disappearing people. They are not “restoring law and order.” They are weaponizing the state.
Remembering our collective humanity can also be a potent antidote to tyranny:
...there will ... be courage. And solidarity. And moments that remind us exactly why we fight.
Because we don’t do it for the flag. We don’t do it for politicians. We do it for every seamstress dragged from her car. Every family torn apart. Every dissident silenced. Every protestor jailed. We do it to honor the civil rights marchers, the freedom riders, the Stonewall rebels, the water protectors, the labor organizers—the defiant, the bold, the brave.
Fighting the good fight has never been easy. As a teacher, I always tried to instill, through literature, the power of integrity and demonstrate that courage, resistance and truth, while they often appear to exist in only small pockets against seemingly insurmountable power, ensure that we retain our humanity.
