Historian Timothy Snyder reminds us that Trump’s veneration of oath-breakers and traitors, guys like Confederate commander Robert E. Lee, (or, for that matter, insurrectionist rioters like Trump’s pardoned J6 Day of Love crew), is intended to create a false narrative about the past in order to dominate the present. Fascist politics frames everything as a death struggle, an eternal battle of the wills, between us and our sick, evil, dangerous “enemies” (whoever they may be that day). In the case of Trump, the enemy is any American who opposes his right to rule like the CEO of a privately held company his father gave him.

Trump announced recently to a carefully selected group of MAGA soldiers, at Hegseth-renamed Fort Bragg, that he is ignoring a bipartisan law Congress overrode his veto to pass, and renaming US military bases for the violent racist scoundrels who led an army against the USA to preserve “The Peculiar Institution” (slavery). By law, he has no power to do this. As bellicose, in-your-face, strongman propaganda? Gold.

The selected troops assembled for his video op applauded as Trump promised to change the name of former Fort (Robert E.) Lee back from its current name (in memory of a black military heroes) [1]. He’s constantly appealing to the unhealed heart of the Old Confederacy, which was never defeated, in the minds of the descendants of those who lost the Civil War they still claim Northern aggression started.

Trump’s most devoted base is largely down in Dixie, among white Evangelical Christians.   The former Confederacy is bright red on the electoral map, and for the same irrational reason — the claimed God-given right of one Christian race to rule all the others.  In the mind of his base, Trump’s not going to let those goddamned black criminals who are eating the dogs, eating the cats, eat our goddamned pets and rape our women.  NOT ANYMORE!

Robert E. Lee, the American general who led Confederate troops in an actual war against the United States (most American casualties ever), is on a US postage stamp, for fuck’s sake. His former slave plantation became Arlington National Cemetery, but only after his death. A US military base was long named after this motherfucker. We don’t remember Lee as Benedict Arnold, we remember him as a refined and dignified southern gentleman who, out of loyalty to his home and family (many of whom apparently were horrified when he turned down Lincoln’s offer to lead the Union army) took up the glorious Lost Cause, protecting the rights of wealthy “planters” to own certain human beings and do with them as they pleased.

It’s Trump’s dream too. To do as he pleases, always, with no restraint from anyone because he is entitled, as a result of being born rich and the heir to a highly successful psychopath who bailed him out over and over from the results of his own hubris and stupidity. He has never been held accountable for anything he’s done in a long life of contempt, dishonesty and crime (the turd will be 79 on Saturday). He won Trump v. US, after all (consider the power of the name of that lawsuit) — not only is he the first president legally allowed to commit crimes if he believes they are part of his duties as Leader, but, perhaps even more sweet to the transactional, very stable business genius, no presidential pardon, even if bought and paid for outright, publicly and with receipts, can ever be challenged in court.

His $130,000,000 birthday present to himself, on the taxpayers’ dime, is a Soviet style military parade. He’s had sturdy fences constructed all along its route (to avoid another J6 when DC was completely unprepared for the illegal, unpermitted march he had planned and announced while whipping up the crowd to violence) and made sure no permitted protest is allowed within earshot of this North Korea-style spectacle he has planned for himself.

After all, traitors and sick, dangerous criminal maniacs prevented this parade during his first term, he has a right to it and he will have it, thank you very much. He’s publicly warned protesters that he’ll smash them hard in the fucking face if they try to rain on his big, beautiful birthday parade. He’s doing everything in his considerable power to provoke the violence that will allow him to do what his hero, Mr. Hitler, did when seizing power– invoke a national emergency and mobilize the military and secret police against any citizen who does not raise his arm in a proper Trump salute.

In this difficult moment, when this desperate and doddering dictator wannabe, who has already done such damage to the country while unable to pass anything in Congress or win a lawsuit in any court he doesn’t own 6-3, is playing his last card — provoking violence — we all have to keep our heads. It would be easy enough for Trump’s lackies to arrange to have a few dozen pardoned J6 rioters (perhaps even the dog dick who proudly marched the Confederate flag through as the others ransacked the Capitol, or the horned Q-Anon Shaman himself) join each protest and throw rocks, or fire guns at, cops. Putin wouldn’t hesitate, nor would any other dictator. I put nothing past these motherfuckers who make a career of lapping at their Leader’s colon.

Call me Anne Frank, but I am putting my faith in the better angels among us. The stakes are known to everyone, and I’m counting on the restraint of good people here in America resisting this wave of evil. If I’m wrong, I’ll try to send y’all a postcard on the way to Camp Donald J. Trump.

[1] “In the actual history of the United States, one war is central: the Civil War. Trump, who has never seen the point of the Union Army defending the republic, now seems now to have moved on to the position that the Confederacy should have won. He promised to rename Fort Gregg-Adams, the first base named for African-Americans, to Fort Robert E. Lee. The base in question hasn’t been known by the full name of the confederate commander since 1950. Lee was a traitor, an oathbreaker, a defender of slavery and the commander of a force whose mission was to break up the United States of America.” source