Happy 2024 to all you readers, although according to The New York Times it will be under a dictatorial regime if Trump becomes president again. So what is one to think or do? Americans have never tolerated autocratic government, despite Woodrow Wilson’s efforts to jail anyone opposed to Uncle Sam entering his war. Now the Times tells us that The Donald’s use of “dehumanizing language toward rivals” might be another Adolf Hitler in the making.

The reason this writer is no Trump fan is his lack of dignified language and behavior; otherwise, I agree with most things he’s for. But the Times writing that Trump’s rhetoric echoes authoritarian leaders who rose to power in Germany and Italy during the 1930s is as big a lie as those uttered by the German and Italian leaders back then. The reporters who wrote this rubbish are two, Michael Bender and Michael Gold, and their reporting is in the noble tradition of the whoppers the Times is known for, especially while picking up a Pulitzer back in the ’30s by announcing that there was no hunger nor any dead as a result in the Ukraine thanks to Uncle Joe Stalin. (Only 5 million, that’s all.)

Never mind, there are wiser men and women than I who understand the dangers of fascist rhetoric, people like one Ruth Ben-Ghiat, who told the Times: “The overall Trump strategy is an obvious one of dehumanizing people so that the public will not have as much of an outcry as the things that you want to do.” I think Ruth’s overall strategy should be to first learn to speak in coherent sentences before engaging with reporters.

Again, never mind. The lefty media has for years accused Trump of praising foreign dictators and disdaining democratic ideals. But in my humble opinion, Trump is persecuted as well as prosecuted by a government in cahoots with the media and the deep state. The New York Attorney General, a black woman by the name of Letitia James, has repeatedly called Trump an “illegitimate president” and has promised to “get him.” She also participated in a chant of “Lock him up,” one that is back to haunt Trump, Donald having used it against Hillary in 2016.

We are now in a situation of choosing whose abuse of office is worse, the government’s or The Donald’s. It’s a sham spectacle, and typical of authoritarian states, one that the U.S. was never called by anyone in the past. Trump has four major trials coming up, and still he leads in the polls, hence no wonder the Times calls him a Hitler in the making. I lived under German occupation during World War II, and a Greek military dictatorship from 1967 until 1974. I visited Spain while Franco was in power, and Portugal under Salazar. The Greek, Spanish, and Portuguese dictatorships were benevolent ones, but authoritarian where freedom of the media was concerned. Very big lies were written by the left about the last three European countries to be under a dictatorship, but unless one was involved in politics, one would never have known that they were living under an authoritarian regime. All three European dictatorships ended peacefully and were followed by democracy and peace.

So, however crude it may sound, there are people in Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, Chicago, and many other cities in America whose houses and businesses have been burned or ruined by riots following the death of a career criminal, who would not exactly be opposed to an authoritarian government in Washington. Mind you, it ain’t gonna happen. Law and order are now dirty words thanks to the media and Hollywood. The criminal is a hero, the cop an oppressor, the happy law-abiding family a sepia-tinged postcard from the past.

Alas we’re in a situation in which some of the worst people on this earth get to determine what gets published, or seen on television and the movies. Add to that the internet and social media and you get chaos. Plus old Joe and inarticulate Kamala, and The New York Times and The Washington Post, and you have a ruined country. Trump doesn’t seem all that bad compared with them.

Needless to say, Trump is his own worst enemy where rhetoric is concerned. His hyperbole—“I will have no choice but to imprison political opponents”—feeds the media’s need to cry the fascists are coming. Trump himself is convinced that the indictments against him have been engineered by Biden in order to sabotage his chief rival. I happen to agree.

Because of uncontrolled immigration from Africa, Europe is turning to the right, with conservative politicians resisting open borders typically labeled neofascists by the media. The good uncle is not far behind. There are 50 million, yes, 50 million out of 330 million Americans who were born outside the United States. No wonder homelessness and rampant drug use are what most sane people notice about the nation nowadays. Smearing people as racists is now America’s most popular sport, so I’m not surprised the Times is calling the Donald a fascist racist.