I was in good mood this afternoon. I’d been writing this week’s Saturday post, which is always great fun. I tuned out the events of the day until a little before three in the afternoon. Then, I checked out TPM and learned that the latest Trump Toddler Tantrum was a Teutonic one complete with anti-Semitic code words. It was depressing confirmation of my choice to renounce Godwin’s Law this campaign season. Here’s a reminder of what that means: mention the Nazis in any discussion and you lose.

That’s no longer true in 2016 thanks to Donald Trump and his merry band of B3 Brownshirts. There’s so much thuggishness today that I don’t know where to begin. Let’s start with the bit that inspired this post title. You know, when the Insult Comedian said he didn’t sexually assault Natasha Stoynoff because she wasn’t hot enough:

I wasn’t sure whether to vomit or be angered by this nonsense. I chose the latter response. I don’t even know what this fuckwit is on about. His libido knows no boundaries. The only one who’s ugly in this discussion is Trump who has allowed the ugly underneath to come into public view. If the “grab her by Billy Bush” tape is to be believed, Trump will fuck anyone female within tongue or Tic-Tac range. Sorry for the extreme crudity but when dealing with a man who is willing to “burn it all down,” you have to fight fire with fire. Fuck you, Donald. You’re losing. Time to stop abusing the country with your vile bullshit.

In the big picture, Trump’s Protocols of the Elders of Zion infused conspiracy speech was even more disgusting. It’s another reason why I’m writing out of anger today. I prefer to be ice to Athenae’s fire but that’s impossible this afternoon. The scariest thing about the Trump campaign is the way it has attracted neo-Nazis and allowed them to dip their toes into the mainstream as it were. Trump never says the word Jew and uses his son-in-law as a human shield to protect him from charges of anti-Semitism. But anyone who knows history understands what he’s talking about, even if he’s too stupid to understand what these code words mean:

Trump laid out a series of elaborate connections between political, corporate, and media elites whose vast conspiracy he claimed included shipping jobs overseas at the expense of American workers and using stories of his past sexual misconduct to prevent him from winning the presidency and robbing them of their power.

“It is a global power structure that is responsible for the economic decisions that have robbed our working class, stripped our country of its wealth and put the money in the pockets of a handful of large corporations and political entities. Just look at what the corrupt establishment has done to our cities like Detroit, Flint, Michigan and rural towns in Pennsylvania, Ohio, North Carolina, and all cross our country. Take a look at what is going on. They’ve stripped away the towns bare and raided the wealth for themselves and taken our jobs away, out of our country, never to return unless I’m elected president,” he said.

“The Clinton machine is at the center of this power structure,” Trump continued. “We have seen this in the WikiLeaks documents in which Hillary Clinton meets in secret with international banks to plot the destruction of U.S. sovereignty in order to enrich these global financial powers, her special interest friends, and her donors.”

I’m shocked he didn’t mention Goldman, Sachs and the Sulzbergers by name. I guess that would be too obviously anti-Semitic for the B3 Brownshirts in charge of the campaign. The whole thing reeks of the post-Great War “stab in the back” conspiracy theory used by the German right to undercut the feeble democracy that replaced autocracy in the interwar period until, that is, the Nazis came to power. Remember: they were elected and once in government they destroyed all democratic institutions. They, too, were into “burning it down.” They set the Reichstag ablaze, blamed it on the Communists, and banned all other political parties.

The good news is that Trump is going to lose; bigly. The bad news is that right-wing extremists have captured one of our major political parties. The B3 Brownshirts are infinitely worse than the teabaggers. I’m not alone in being concerned what happens if a less self-destructive, more intelligent demagogue *continues* the takeover of the Republican Party. It *can* happen here. I never thought I’d say that but I just did.

I think it’s important for those of us who know history to take a firm stand against Trumpism. That’s why I’ve started comparing him to Hitler at his least disciplined. Hitler had the good sense to *keep* the ugly underneath until he had enough support to enact his racist program. Trump has no self-control but he is every bit as ugly, which is why he needs to lose in a landslide. Some of us are worried that he’ll refuse to concede on election eve, whip his supporters into a frenzy, and provoke a sort of American Kristalnacht. The good news is that most Trumpers are, well, pussies and are unlikely to riot if it’s a blow-out. Let’s hope so.