As America begins its descent into hell.

In the 1930s, the German people began their descent into hell.

Led by Adolf Hitler, the entire nation went mad with fear and hatred.

The systematic murder of Jews and other “undesirables” — i.e., anyone but white Christian Germans — was only an example of the horrors visited upon those people by . . . by the people themselves.

Hitler led, and the people followed, unquestioning, as though he were a god. 

None of his crimes were criticized; all were excused. In fact, Hitler’s criminality made him even more revered by the great mass of Germans.

Morality, sympathy, and empathy disappeared beneath a fist of iron. Hatred and cruelty were admired. 

The excuse, if there can be one, was the onerous economic conditions forced upon the German people by the winners of World War I. Hyperinflation and unemployment swept the nation. The people starved.

They desperately wanted a savior; Hitler gave them the promises they craved.

Never mind that his promises were smoke from hellfires. The people learned too late.

Inflation is dropping,

Poverty has declined since 2012, temporarily interrupted by the COVID-19 recession. 

Unemployment is near historic lows.

Contrary to popular imagination, the immigrants coming over our southern border benefit America.

They are much less likely to commit crimes than American citizens.

And they fill important job availabilities– the lowest, drudgery, stoop-labor, low-education jobs few American citizens seem to want.

America is not perfect. No nation is, nor ever has been.

We still have people who have grasped the short end of the stick — the impoverished, the sick who have no insurance.

We still have targets of bigotry, perhaps more now than in recent years.

We still have homelessness.

We still have the “tempest-tost” we welcomed with the Statue of Liberty.

But there is nothing to indicate the American people should feel the desperation that leads to abandoning the great American experiment in democracy.

There is nothing to indicate we now should praise criminality.

There is nothing that says an entire religion — Christian Evangelism — should desert traditional Christian morality and blindly follow a man who rejects everything Evangelism always has stood for.

Yet, here we are:

THE WEEK, January 16,2024
The prospect of a second Trump term is terrifying for many reasons, said David French, but what I dread most is how his reelection would accelerate the ongoing cultural transformation of red America in towns like mine in Tennessee.

Trump is the most culturally influential person – revered far more than any pastor, politician, coach, or celebrity.

My fellow Christian evangelicals treat Trump as a prophet with his followers due to emulating their cult leader’s grievance-filled extremism and boorish behavior.

The result is a religious movement steeped in fanaticism but stripped of virtue.

American Evangelicals no longer think a politician’s personal and public morality matter.

In fact, Trumpism has led to a wave of what has been dubbed “vice signaling,” in which Trump‘s core supporters convey their tribal allegiance by being deliberately rude, transgressive, or otherwise unpleasant just to demonstrate how little they care about conventional moral norms.

Many now justify threats of violence and actual violence against Trump’s opponents and are described by friends and family as “lost.”

A Trump win in 2024 would absolutely convince countless Americans that virtue is for suckers and vice is the key to victory.

Before Trump, if I had told you that the number of contributions to a politician’s election campaign was directly proportional to the number of criminal indictments he received and lawsuits he lost, you would have laughed at the ridiculousness.

Before Trump, if I had told you that a jury fined a candidate millions of dollars for sexual abuse, and the candidate’s followers loved him more, especially when he continued the abuse after the verdict, you would have been shocked.

Jan. 26, 2024: Trump-Carroll Defamation Trial Jury Orders Trump to Pay Carroll $83.3 Million for Defamation The jury found Donald J. Trump had acted maliciously in persistently attacking E. Jean Carroll. He was found liable last year for sexually abusing her. 

Before Trump, if I had told you the candidate and his party that most railed against undocumented immigrants has been telling Congress to vote against laws that would stop those immigrants, you would have scoffed, but:

For weeks, a legislative package that addresses security on the United States’ southern border and provides funding for Ukraine and other allies has been in negotiations in the Senate.

It looks like that bill is now DOA after presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump told senators in January to sink it because he wants to campaign on those issues.

Soon after, several lawmakers confirmed that Trump wanted the bill dropped.

Many Republican and Democratic legislators publicly reacted to his request to toss the bill, with some openly defying the former POTUS’s request.

Before Trump, if I had told you a former President plotted a coup against America and, when the coup was underway, refused to do anything to stop it, you would have said, “He’s a traitor.”

But not only did it happen, but disgustingly, it increased the adoration of his pseudo-patriotic cult followers.

US District Judge Royce Lamberth — whom conservative icon Ronald Reagan appointed to the federal bench in 1987— gave an ominous warning Thursday about the threat historical revisionism surrounding the January 6 insurrection poses to democracy.

According to NBC News, Judge Lamberth said he was “shocked” by comments made by some elected officials that dismissed or downplayed the violent siege of the US Capitol in 2021.

He said that those “preposterous” comments about the Capitol riot “could presage further danger to our country.”

“In my thirty-seven years on the bench, I cannot recall a time when such meritless justifications of criminal activity have gone mainstream. I have been dismayed to see distortions and outright falsehoods seep into the public consciousness.” 

“I have been shocked to watch some public figures try to rewrite history, claiming rioters behaved ‘in an orderly fashion’ like ordinary tourists, or martyrizing convicted January 6 defendants as ‘political prisoners’ or even, incredibly, ‘hostages.’”

 The Republican National Committee even passed a resolution a year after the attack, calling the deadly riot that killed five police officers and injured hundreds of others “legitimate political discourse.”

Before Trump, if I had told you a former president who had sworn to uphold the Constitution would deliberately defy the Constitution, what would you have said?

Trump calls for “all willing states” to deploy National Guard troops to Texas.
Amid Texas’ ongoing, dangerous, and flatly unconstitutional fight with the federal government over deadly razor wire installments along the US-Mexico border, called for “all willing States to deploy their [national] guards to Texas to prevent the entry of Illegals, and to remove them back across the Border.”

Border enforcement is the federal government’s business. Gov. Greg Abbott’s high-stakes game of chicken is only worsening an incredibly challenging situation. Trump’s call for state troops to rise up against the Biden administration is a direct and profoundly unsettling assault on the rule of law.

Before Trump, if I had told you the President of the United States defied the Constitution by accepting millions of dollars from China, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar, what would have been your reaction?

Donald Trump admitted he did receive money from foreign governments, such as China, while he was president, as his business was providing a “service” for them.

The U.S. Constitution’s foreign emoluments clause prohibits federal officials from accepting money or gifts from foreign governments without permission from Congress.

During his first two years as president, four businesses owned by Trump received around $7.8 million from 20 countries during his time in office, including at least $5.5 million from China.

The report was released amid House Republicans’ attempts to impeach President Joe Biden over allegations he benefited from his son Hunter Biden’s foreign dealings while in office, despite no evidence to back up the claims.

Although Trump continually accuses the Democrats of “weaponizing” the Justice Department, it is Trump’s Republicans who have spent many months fruitlessly trying to invent evidence against President Biden for doing precisely what Trump admitted he did.

Trump said he plans on retaining his stake in his real estate empire, The Trump Organization if he wins the 2024 election while defending the money he previously received from foreign officials.

“If I have a hotel and somebody comes in from China, that’s a small amount of money. But I was doing services for them, people were staying in these massive hotels, these beautiful hotels—because I have the best hotels and the best clubs, I have great stuff—and they stay there and they pay.

“I don’t get $8 million for doing nothing,” Trump added.

Whether Trump’s hotels are “beautiful” or “have great stuff” is irrelevant. The Constitution prohibits the President from receiving money from foreign nations. Period.

All federal officeholders are forbidden from “accepting money, payments, titles, offices or gifts of any kind “from any king, prince or foreign state” under the Constitution without the consent of Congress. Trump never sought this approval.

Here is a list of illegal payments Trump received from foreign nations: China ($5,572,548), Saudi Arabia ($615,422), Qatar ($465,744), Kuwait ($303,371), India ($282,764), Malaysia ($248,962), Afghanistan ($74,810), Philippines ($465,744), United Arab Emirates ($65,225), Democratic Republic of the Congo ($25,171), Kazakhstan ($23,772), Thailand ($11,340), Self-declared Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus ($8,800), Mongolia ($8,486), Lebanon ($7,720), Albania ($6,002), Kosovo ($4,950), Latvia ($2,739), Turkey ($1,894), Hungary ($1,011), Cyprus ($590)

Lest you believe Trump is the only criminal in the Republican party, his influence can be seen throughout the right wing.

GOP Rep. Lauren Boebert’s decision to run in the more GOP-friendly 4th Congressional District was front-and-center in the debate, with her rivals for the nomination calling her out as a carpetbagger.

In particular, State Representative Mike Lynch (R) fired back at her after she brought up his DUI arrest by asking her, “Can you give the definition of ‘carpetbagger’ to me?”

According to the Times report, “At one point, candidates were asked to raise their hands if they had ever been arrested. Six of the nine candidates onstage raised their hands to cheers and applause from the audience.

Can you imagine that politicians would be cheered and applauded for being arrested in previous years? In today’s GOP, being arrested is a sign of loyalty to Trump. 

Trent Leisy, a Navy veteran and business owner, high-fived Mr. Lynch and Ms. Boebert while their hands were raised.”

Boebert admitted to having been arrested only once over “a simple traffic violation that was unpaid,” the Times’ Chris Cameron added, “the local news media have reported at least two additional arrests.

In one incident in 2015, Ms. Boebert told police officers who were arresting her that she ‘had friends at Fox News’ and that the arrest would be national news.”

Is it hopeless? Is America doomed to follow Germany, Italy, and so many other nations down the dictatorship rabbit hole?

Or will our innate “Statue-of-Liberty” morality rise again (sometimes at the last moment) and prove to ourselves and to the world that we are not only the finance and military leaders but the moral leaders we believe ourselves to be?

More than 20,000 Christians have signed a petition calling for the boycott of pro-Trump evangelist Franklin Graham’s tour for the U.S.-Mexico border that is set to begin next month.

Faithful America, an organization of Christians supporting social justice causes while opposing “Christian nationalism,” published a petition last November calling on boycotts of Graham’s “God Loves You Frontera Tour.”

The organization is calling on venues hosting the tour to “stand up to Graham’s anti-LGBTQ hate and political violence,” writing that it is “critical that we show the public and the press that Graham’s right-wing ideology doesn’t represent all of Christianity.”

The petition has already received over 20,000 signatures and has a goal of 25,000 signatures.

“Despite the tour’s deceptive name, Graham is a divisive figure who tries to hide a series of deeply hateful messages behind his father’s Christian legacy. His message is not one of Christ-like love but of anti-democracy, anti-LGBTQ, partisan bigotry and harm.”

Are we beginning to come to our senses? Is there still hope for our nation and for our children?

Or have we awakened too late? Is this the end of the UNITED STATES of America?

Has evil defeated us?

Far-right Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene called for a “national divorce” between red and blue states as a means for far-right Republicans to get extreme, conservative policies implemented in red states without having to go through the democratic process.

Updated list of states announcing they stand with/ Texas in border dispute w/ federal government: Florida, Virginia, Georgia, North Dakota, South Dakota, Tennessee, Alabama, Montana, Idaho, Utah, West Virginia, Oklahoma, Nebraska, Louisiana

Have we begun an unstoppable descent into hell?

You tell me.

Rodger Malcolm Mitchell

Monetary Sovereignty

Twitter: @rodgermitchell

Search #monetarysovereignty

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THE SOLE PURPOSE OF GOVERNMENT IS TO IMPROVE AND PROTECT THE LIVES OF THE PEOPLE.