Ominous Patterns

I have written a 400 page book: "Shanghai Before and After the Fall-Caught Between Two Chairs".  The book is about my life in the Shanghai Jewish Ghetto in the 1940's.  The book will be published by IUniverse next summer. 

In part this book is an autobiography.  But it is really much, much more.  It is an analysis of the different historical events which brought about World War II and with it various dictatorships.

I have done something which I believe no other author of an autobiography has ever done before.  I have analyzed the patterns which lead potential leaders or revolutionaries to become dictators or totalitarians and how these revolutionaries gained power without any previous political experience.  I have gone even one step further by showing what happens once they are in power and eventually their power is ended by external forces.  

These observations are based on the fact that I have grown up in China because of a ruthless dictator who persecuted my parents and millions of other Jews in Germany, namely Adolf Hitler.  

Then, once World War II ended, another dictator ruled China with an iron fist - Mao Zedong.  

I have also analyzed a number of other dictatorships.

Here, without going into much detail, as I do in the book, is a list of patterns which brings revolutionaries into power.

Frustration by the people with the status quo of their government's rule.

Usually there is high unemployment, as well as high inflation, followed by a breakdown of the prevalent culture.

The revolutionaries implore the people to trust them and their rule.

They claim, without being specific, to know what to do to rescue the country from the abyss.

They promise to abrogate previous agreements and contracts.

The State takes control over the individual's lives and promises jobs to the unemployed.

These dictators engage in major construction projects, largely statutes or monuments to their own glory.

They engage in a big build up of the military and subsequently once built up engage in foreign wars.

They silence or even remove the opposition by force.

They promise a better life to the masses.

They censor the press and largely silence the press.

They make some minority group the scapegoat for the countries' problems.

Once they have identified such a minority they persecute many of its members, imprison or make them disappear altogether and confiscate their wealth and assets to pay for the expenses of the construction and the build up of the military and the cost of the wars they have now engaged in.

In the end, the countries which they rule pay a high price for listening to these knights on a white horse in shining armor.

Look at what happened to the lives of Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, Mao-Zedong, Saddam Hussein of Iraq, Juan Peron, Augosto Pinochet, Marshall Tito, Joseph Stalin just to name a few and how their lives ended!

Hitler's Germany got decimated by the Allies and Hitler himself, never willing to listen to his generals as well as the generals being afraid to voice their opinions, at the end committed suicide in a bunker in Northwest Berlin, when Soviet troops entered Berlin!

Benito Mussolini tried to flee to Switzerland when the American troops under General George S. Patton and the British troops under Field Marshall Bernard Law Montgomery landed in Sicily.  Mussolini was captured by partisans, shot and his corpse was subsequently hung upside down from the roof of a Gas Station.

Mao-Zedong killed thousands of bureaucrats who had worked for the previous Kuomintang government of Chiang Kai-shek, before the fall of China.  While still under communist party rule, millions of Chinese starved but had no choice but to accept their fate until Deng Xiaoping (1978–1992), put down the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 and opened China to new far-reaching market-economy reforms.  Mao himself was reviled and fell into disrepute by the party.

Saddam Hussein ruled Iraq with an iron fist but was overthrown by the United States forces when they invaded Iraq in 2003.  He was subsequently captured in December of 2003 and sentenced to death by hanging for the murder of thousands of Iraqis.

I am not claiming that Pinocchio (The Donald) will do all of the things mentioned above, but I do fear that the man is dangerous like hell!!!

Let me tell you what I see in him that might have escaped you.

A large part of our population is frustrated with our government's inability to stop American manufacturers from shipping their jobs overseas where the cost of labor is infinitely cheaper than here at home. 

Do you know how the Donald wants to bring back the jobs?  He wants to lower the minimum wage back to $7.25!!!  You heard right!!!  He wants to bring the minimum wage back to $7.25.  Just think of what it would do to his empire if he got to lower the minimum wage again!

President Obama has brought the number of unemployed down quite substantially from what it was but there are still a large number of people who no longer qualify for unemployment benefits and therefore fall between the cracks.  They are still unemployed and struggling to pay their bills.

Conventional jobs have given way to computers and robots.

But Donald still promises the people that he can fix the system, while he knows absolutely nothing about politics.  He forgets that, if elected to be President, he will still have to deal with Congress and the Senate who is very much opposed to him as they were to President Obama because of the Congress trying to act as if the members of Congress were the Commanders in Chief.  Instead of cooperating with the President, Mitch McConnell and John Boehner have done everything they could possibly think of to undermine the President.

Donald talks big, as if he were in the gutter or even the sewer, but when it comes to specifics he doesn't explain how he will accomplish all his goals.  "Just trust" him he says.

He promises to abrogate the Iran Nuclear Deal and Obamacare.  He forgets that it took two years to negotiate the Nuclear Deal and that Iran was more or less in the driver's seat.  America did not give anything to Iran which wasn't theirs to begin with.  The money which Iran got was its own money which was frozen in American Banks!

And Obamacare has helped over 12 million people so far to get health insurance coverage.  Maybe the program needs to be tweaked a little bit, but it should not be torn to shreds.

He wants to build a 10 foot wall on the border of Mexico and the United States and Mexico will pay for it.  Happy Dreaming, Donald!

He wants to rebuild the Military.  It was Congress that refused to pay for a bigger Military.

When Meagan Kelly was scheduled to interview Donald in a Fox Debate he refused to attend, because she "didn't treat him nicely".  What about how he treated her?

She quoted him in his own words in the first debate when he shot back at her.

According to Pinocchio it is the illegal Immigrants from Mexico which are responsible for all of our ills, not Congress!

Gimme a break!

So he will round up 11 million illegal immigrants.  What happens to the Statue of Liberty?  Do we keep its torch burning?

In many ways he reminds me of a snake oil salesman.

But the people who believe in him trust him.  That's what they want to hear.  God help us.