Trump's administration looks a great deal like those of the 1850s and the 1890s, with business and government so intertwined that they cannot be disentangled.
Special counsel Robert Mueller, investigating Russian interference in the 2016 election, provided ample evidence that the president should be investigated for obstruction of justice in his attempt to quell the Russia investigation by firing Comey and urging aides to lie.
The Declaration of Independence promised citizens equal access to economic opportunity. This was the powerful principle for which men were willing to fight the American Revolution, but it was never codified in law. When the Founding Fathers wrote the Constitution, they assumed that the country's vast resources would ensure equality of opportunity.
If Congress allows the USPS to collapse and private companies take over the mail business, we can expect what we have seen with private internet providers: thorough service in urban areas that will turn a healthy profit, either none or very expensive service in rural areas.
If Republican leaders are willing to enable Trump's autocratic enthusiasms in return for oligarchy, American democracy will die.
The same Republicans who had threatened to impeach Hillary Clinton remained silent when, immediately after his surprise victory, Trump refused to abide by laws about emoluments or nepotism, openly profiting from the presidency and filling the White House with personal relatives.
Abraham Lincoln and others recoiled from the idea of government as a prop for the rich. In organizing the Republican Party, they highlighted the equality of opportunity promised in the Declaration of Independence and warned that a healthy economy depended on widespread prosperity.
The only way to stop gaslighting is to shine the light of reality onto a situation. That makes it imperative for the perpetrator to keep victims in the dark.
The Treaty of Fort Laramie established most of what would later become South Dakota as a reservation, along with the Black Hills. But the treaty did not stop miners, buffalo hunters, railroad men, or settlers from intruding on Lakota lands.
Movement Conservatism was a fringe force from the 1950s until the 1980s, when voters elected Movement Conservative Ronald Reagan to the White House. But even then, their control of the Republican Party was not a given.
Republicans controlled the federal government for decades after the Civil War, and their policies funneled wealth upward -- with dire consequences. In 1893, the economy crashed, and too few Americans had enough purchasing power to revive it. Lincoln had been right: Government that served the wealthy would ruin the country.
For a generation, Republicans have tried to unravel the activist government under which Americans have lived since the 1930s, when Democrat Franklin Delano Roosevelt created a government that regulated business, provided a basic social safety net, and invested in infrastructure.
The fantasy world of Movement Conservatives is no longer fringe talk. The leading candidates for the Republican presidential nomination embrace it. They are playing to a chorus of true believers, and they are preaching what that choir wants to hear. They are following the same pattern Eric Hoffer identified as the path to authoritarianism.
Since the 1980s, Republicans have argued that policies embraced by a majority of Americans to promote equality of opportunity actually infringe liberty by hampering businessmen's actions or taking their money through taxes.
In contrast to them, Republicans argue, are minorities, organized workers, and women, who demand government policies that can only be paid for with tax dollars sucked from white men.
Prodded by the needs of the Union cause, the Republican Party created a strong national government that educated young men and gave them land to farm. Ultimately, the GOP abolished slavery, then gave freedmen the vote so they could protect their own economic interests.
Republicans turned against organized workers and abandoned the idea of promoting equality at the bottom of the economic scale. They turned their idea of economic harmony into a justification for supporting industrialists, who were the nation's job creators.
The government's job, according to modern Republicans, is not the protection of equal opportunity for all Americans, but rather the protection of male breadwinners.
In fact, there is no law that says election results must come the same day as the election. Historically, they used to take days.
The Attorney General of the United States is, of course, not the president's lawyer. The AG is supposed to be the attorney for the United States, protecting the rule of law.
