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“A Republic, if you can keep it.” B. Franklin

Well, that didn’t take long. Trump has been in office now for less than a year, but he has just boldly revealed his ultimate goal. On Monday (8/25/25), Trump told reporters at the Oval Office, “A lot of people are saying, ‘Maybe we like a dictator.’” On Tuesday, he added, “Most people are saying, ‘If you call him a dictator, if he stops crime, he can be whatever he wants’ — I am not a dictator, by the way.” But he also claimed to have “the right to do anything I want to do,” which is actually the very essence of dictatorship.

Despite his claim of not being a dictator, his use of the phrase “people are saying” is classic Trump. It’s one of his ways of laying the groundwork to justify his later actions. He likes to imagine in his fantasy world that many, if not most, Americans agree with him. So now he is trying to imply that a majority of Americans actually want a dictator as a leader. And, despite his protestations, it goes without saying that he thinks it should be him. He won’t call it a dictatorship though. It will be something like President for Life.

Naturally he fully expects the Republicans in Congress to go along with this plan since they all suffer from TTS (Trump Toady Syndrome). And the Supreme right-wing Court will merely say that it is a political matter outside of their jurisdiction. They have already granted him immunity from any consequences for illegal actions while in office. It seems that there is not a single Republican in any branch of our government who is willing to fulfill his or her oath to “preserve and protect” the Constitution, least of all, Trump.

In the meantime, Trump continues to subject Americans, including citizens, to unconstitutional dictatorial actions daily. He shows disdain for the laws and ignores the courts. He is building his own paramilitary force and assuming control of cities he doesn’t like. He is attacking his “enemies” with “lawfare,” coercion, and outright extortion. He is trying to assume control of the entire economy (don’t forget that he has a history of bankruptcy). He, along with his Republican toadies, are working hard to restrict voting rights (mostly of minorities but recently some voices on the Right have said that women should not be allowed to vote either). And so on and so on.

His deployment of ICE and the military into blue cities is specifically intended to provoke a reaction against the troops. No matter how minor, he will then use that reaction as an excuse to invoke the Insurrection Act. This will give him the authority to flood cities and states with military units. The mass arrests of Democrats will likely follow including Senators, Representatives, Governors, past Presidents, and other Democratic leaders. The concentration camps have already been built ostensibly just for the deportable immigrants, but they can hold Trump’s enemies as well. I believe that the mid-term election results will either be rigged or cancelled altogether to eliminate the possibility of any reductions in the Republicans’ powers.

So, dear Mr. Franklin, I regret to inform you that we were not able to keep the Republic you gave us. We managed for nearly 250 years to have a mostly honorable government run by mostly honorable people. There were exceptions of course, but our Founding Fathers never anticipated the level of dishonor, incompetence, and corruption that we are seeing now. The Constitution was written under the assumption that the “best of the best” would be chosen to govern, but it tells us nothing about what to do when the “worst of the worst” seize and hold the levers of power. I fear that it may already be too late to recover our democracy. Any advice from you, even posthumously, would be very much appreciated.

Watch Out! The GOP Is Coming After Your Money!

Like thieves in the night, the Republicans have been hiding their intentions in the shadows lest anyone find out what they are actually up to. And just like those thieves, they won’t break into your house through the front. Instead, they’ll go around to the back door. It’s not so obvious that way.

This week, a prominent member of the administration, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, proudly revealed their subtle plot. On Wednesday, he stated that the so-called “Trump accounts” Republicans created for children in their tax and spending bill are “a back door for privatizing Social Security.”(1) Like the thieves, the Republicans can’t be up front about their plans, they have to sneak through a “back door.”

The Republicans ultimate goal, the destruction of Social Security (along with Medicare and Medicaid), has always been somewhat out in the open. We’ve all known it, but until Bessent’s statement, it was something that most Republicans would vigorously deny.

In fact, Republicans have stated over and over again that they were not planning to touch Social Security. Unfortunately, they said the same things about Medicare and Medicaid, and we have all seen what happened to those programs when they took power.

The GOP would object and say, “We’re not planning to destroy Social Security; we just want to ‘privatize’ it.” But what would that mean? It means that your money will be taken from the safe and secure government accounts and distributed to private investment firms and banks — you know those kinds of businesses in which the C-suite executives are paid tens if not hundreds of millions of dollars. Where do you think that money comes from?

And, while they’re at it, the Republicans also plan to eliminate all fiscal regulations on these firms such as fiduciary requirements. That will allow all manner of investor fraud to occur, not to mention abuse and waste.

The argument they make is that private firms can earn higher returns on investment than the government. This may be true in some cases, but it is also true that investment firms and banks have, at times, lost money through overly risky opportunities and sheer incompetence. Some of these firms have even gone bankrupt losing all of their clients’ capital (after paying out inordinate sums to their executives in salary and bonus packages). Remember the financial crisis of 2008? It included the collapses of Lehmann Brothers and Bear Stearns as well as the government bailouts (using taxpayer dollars) of JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, and Morgan Stanley because they were “too big to fail.” Again, your money became their money without them having to go through the trouble of breaking the law.

Of course, once your funds are in the hands of these greedy people, you can expect to be charged all manner of “fees” in order to help pay for the exorbitant salaries and bonuses. There will be “maintenance fees,” “investment fees,” “administrative fees,” and so on. I anticipate that, under this scenario, the “fees” will steadily grow no matter what your return on investment is. Rather than receiving an annual letter from the Social Security Administration telling you about next year’s increase in your payments, you’re likely to get a bill from your investment banker for next year’s inflated fees.

But Social Security is going broke the Republicans argue. Yet they won’t take common-sense steps to save it like removing the arbitrary cap on Social Security taxes. It’s only there to keep the wealthy from having to pay more. Rather than save the program, the GOP would prefer to let it self-destruct even if it means that millions of Americans, some of whom are Republicans, will lose their only source of income.

Why are Republicans so adamant about privatizing Social Security? Because they see this HUGE pot of money in the government’s coffers that they and their billionaire backers can’t get their hands on. They lust after that money to the point of obsession. They aren’t really concerned about whose money it is, as long as they can get it somehow: like thieves in the night.

(1) https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/30/business/bessent-trump-social-security.html