CALIGULA? TODAY?

         Caligula has become synonymous with craziness and cruelty. People will debate what is true and what is not, but that is not the point. The point is to understand the damage that one person can do to a country and its people and how people become afraid to go counter to the crazy person's dictates.
     Caligula is not the only insane, yet clever, ruler we have had throughout history, and certainly we are 'blessed' with so many in the times we live in. Take a trip over to Venezuela or the Phillipines or North Korea or Russia or former SSRs and do not forget the insanely brilliant Hitler and the grief he caused and of course, do not forget our own version of Caligula - Donald Trump, the Demented One.
     He has not met a dictator he does not like or "fall in love with". He aspires to the position and historical first of becoming the first American dictator in history and looks to such as Putin and Orbin, Kim Jong-un, et al for guidance and inspiration. He has tended more and more to government by Executive Order. He has a cadre of fearful and corrupt, morally bankrupt people who serve him, afraid to provoke him, frightened perhaps for their very lives lest one of his insane and mad rants focus on them.
     He is single handedly destroying the economy, with the stock market tanking more and more as he destroys the world's economy with his insane tariff enactions. He bypasses Congress unless he needs to ask his stooges, the Republican Senators, for surface 'voting', for pushing through his judges who will ruin the system for decades to come. He encourages hatred for the other, is madly trying to rescind any and all progress that has been made with respect to LGBTQ, for women, for minorities and voting rights, for anything good and decent. We are now not on the cusp of backwards thinking re abortion rights but have actually gone right thru the door, right back to threats of jail and the horror of back alley and wire hanger abortions, with women being forced to carry a pregnancy of rape and/or incest to full term. Would that we could inflcit that on him and his supporters!!
     So the Dow is falling, we have broken with all our neighbors and former allies. We allow the deflection of crimes, of insanity, or moral turpitude, of the growth industry of revolving door policy on Congressmen and lobbying jobs after terms are up, try to reverse treason charges onto those who investigated the alleged treason on Trump et al, and no one seems to know what the next turn of events will bring. Will we be selling apples again on the streets? Will we be sending our soldiers off to war, so many that the draft is reinstituted - by the man who could  not go to war because of non existent bone spurs, and the draft will include men and women. Will we be forcing more people out onto the street, more food insecure families, more children without proper education and more people who have had their voting rights pulled from them due to the twisted desires of the Republicans and the gerrymandering they have bought whole heartedly into? Will we have alliances with the dictators of the world as we all join together to kill those we do not like, burn books once more and then, naturally, burn the people who read and support and publish and write these books!!
     What is to be done to get rid of the threat that this modern day Caligula and his henchmen present? All we need to do is rally to apply the laws of the Constitution while it is still available to us. Cannot convict for impeachemnt, due to the Republicans who have ceded all control over Trump to Trump? Go for Amendment 25 but then again, his corrupt Cabinet would have to be willing to admit that he is insane, criminally insane and unfit for office. Ha! Think they will ever do that? Think they will ever want to willingly cede their own morally corrupt and profitable offices? Never!
     So what to do? Anglea Merkel spoke at Harvard and stated thus: “Tear down walls of ignorance and narrow-mindedness,” “Changes for the better are possible, if we tackle them together. . . . Take joint action in the interests of the multilateral, global world.”  “take a moment to stop, be still, think, pause. Certainly that takes courage,”    We need to hear her words and their import and plan on implementing them. Both here and worldwide. We, the peoples of the planet Earth are on the edge, or perhaps over it already, well on our way to self destruct. What are we waiting for? Military coups right here in America? Invasion by others to get us back to the straight and narrow? Civil War in  the streets? American blood flowing once more on their own native land?  What the hell are we allowing? What the hell are we doing and not doing? What are we to do?
      Wish I had all the answers, but I think at least that I have the right questions. It is a start.