He wants 1933 Germany. Let’s give him 1788 France.

"One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we've been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We're no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us.

It's simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we've been taken.

Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back."

--Carl Sagan

By J. Basil Dannebohm

“Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain! The Great Oz has spoken!”

Not since The Wizard of Oz made its theatrical debut have Americans witnessed such a bizarre cyclone of uncertain chaos, and few US presidents have been so beholden to “that man behind the curtain” as Donald Trump to Elon Musk. Chaos, indeed, is the name of the game. Incidentally, that’s precisely what it is to both men: A game. Keeping Americans confused and exhausted is part of the playbook.

He ran as the chaos candidate. His base ate it up. Lately, however, only his fiercest followers and political puppets seem to be vocally expressing their support for what appears to be two sociopathic bulls running amuck in the fragile china shop that is American democracy.

The frustrated populace that hasn’t tuned him out has resorted to a collective, albeit helpless, lalochezia (the use of vulgar or foul language to relieve stress or pain) as a coping mechanism.

Most of his executive orders have been either self-serving or just plain weird. His statements have been little more than extemporaneous drivel aimed at both shocking and appeasing an audience.

While you'd be hard pressed to hear the words "intelligence" and "Trump" in the same sentence, some of his remarks have skirted on the edge of intelligence leaks and potentially posed serious risks for national security. Take, for example, his executive order outlining instructions for his team on how to respond should he fall prey to an Iranian assassination plot.

Par for the course is the strongman guise he’s honed to an art. So far, Mango Mussolini has vowed to overtake the Panama Canal, Greenland, Canada, and the Gaza Strip.

In a deranged show of force, the leader of “The Party of Reagan” imposed harsh sanctions on our neighboring allies who also happen to be our strongest trading partners. Demonstrating how far they’ve gone adrift from their party’s long-held core values, his congressional lackeys applauded the decision. It’s worth noting that in a Presidential Radio Address, Ronald Reagan once said, "Our peaceful trading partners are not our enemies; they are our allies. Beware of demagogues ready to declare a trade war against our friends; weakening our economy, national security, and the entire free world while cynically waving the flag."

Less than 24 hours later, he pulled back on his tariffs. It doesn’t take a Freudian mind to realize that was his plan from the start. The tariffs were yet another means by which to gaslight his cult. Shortly after the stunt, the White House claimed that Canada and Mexico "bent the knee” to Mr. Trump’s demands. In fact, Mexico and Canada essentially agreed to keep doing what they have done for quite a while. Dismissing facts as “fake news,” his gullible base chalked up status quo as a major win for their fearless leader.

Apart from Harry Houdini, no one man has seemingly relied so heavily on smoke and mirrors.

Governor J.B. Pritzker of Illinois called a spade a spade by observing, "It's a massive effort to distract from what they are doing across the country to take away things that working-class, middle-class people, families, the most vulnerable, really need."

As he wages retribution and issues one self-serving shallow executive order after another, one thing is clear: The price of groceries won’t be decreasing anytime soon – certainly not in 2025. This shouldn’t come as a surprise. In the days before the election, Elon Musk warned Americans to be prepared for “economic hardship.” Trump himself confessed that grocery prices would increase, suggesting that most people care more about the mass deportations of immigrants than the rising cost of groceries.

Pritzker is correct. In a Trump-Musk America, seemingly void of checks and balances, the rich will become much richer, the middle class will cease to exist, and the poor will become much poorer. The fat cat oligarchs will feast on food harvested not by immigrants, but by the poor, the elderly, and the opposition.

The notion that America’s “golden age” was a time of economic prosperity for all people is frankly nonsense. In fact, it was an era that gave way to the realization that the American dream of a land of opportunity for all people was a myth. It was a time of gross inequality: in wealth, in race, in religion, and in gender.

By now it should be obvious: The Wizard is a fraud. He wants 1933 Germany. Let’s give him 1788 France.