who will be FIRST ??

 Dictators require archenemies.

It may seem counter-intuitive, given that most people think of dictators as bad guys themselves, but the simple reality is that without proclaiming enemies — larger than life enemies — dictators have a hard time hanging onto power and accomplishing the things they want to do.

- Hitler had Jews. 

- Mussolini had the Italian Socialist Party. 

- For Duterte it was drug dealers. 

- Stalin vilified the “Kulaks” (wealthy peasants) as a threat to the Soviet Union. 

- Mao blamed the bourgeoisie. 

- Pol Pot said intellectuals were the enemy &  ordered everybody who could read killed. 

- Idi Amin blamed Indians and Asians for the problems of Uganda. 

- Robert Mugabe said white farmers were destroying Zimbabwe. 

- Slobodan Milošević pointed to the Kosovo Albanians. 

- Pinochet blamed the trade unions for Chile’s struggles.

Trump has flirted with condemning several different groups over the years, primarily using brown-skinned immigrants as his bogeymen, although the GOP has also vilified queer people, Black people, academics, journalists, teachers, and liberals to motivate the hatred of their base.

Superman would have just been a boring guy who stopped bank robberies if it weren’t for Lex Luthor. Batman would only be a rich guy with a fancy car and a weird outfit if it weren’t for the Joker. Without Moby Dick, Captain Ahab was merely another whaler. Sherlock Holmes would have been a weird but boring private eye were it not for Professor Moriarty, “the Napoleon of Crime.”

You get the idea. The hero can only be as good as the bad guy is bad. Every superhero requires a super-antihero. A larger-than-life bad guy to portray as  Genuine evil.

SO - stand by to see who is the first in line for the new FOTUS (Felon of the United States) .....

Thom Hartmann