Day 203: Comrade Trump

 

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This is your reminder that we are now 203 days into the Trump cover-up of his being in the Epstein files.

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To the seven brave souls still reading this blog—thank you. You already know I’m a PC gaming devotee, and not just for the pixelated explosions. Like a good book or film, games can be portals into history, ideology, and the uncomfortable truths we’d rather not face. While the sticks-in-the-mud who are the Baby Boomers find this a shocking idea, Gen X and beyond know this to be true; hence, it is often video game franchises that command the type of fanatical devotion that popular movies once did (whither thou goest, Hollywood?). 

As I watch this once great nation slip into authoritarianism, it is no surprise that I have been playing a great deal of my two favorite Cold War gone hot wargames, WARNO and Regiments.  As a child of the Cold War, I've always been interested in this period of history, one that I suspect, due to the lack of a major East versus West conflict during this era, as well as the sudden non-violent collapse of the USSR, has been undervalued by contemporary audiences.  This is a great shame because there is much that the realpolitik of the Cold War can teach us about these fraught days.

And lately, as the line between fiction and reality blurs, I find myself drawn not to the heroes of NATO, but to the villainous Soviets and their Warsaw Pact allies—because in today’s America, the villains are wearing our colors. 

Dug-in East German infantry watch as a Soviet fighter-bomber strikes NATO positions - Regiments

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I recall a story I once heard about the early days of the USSR, where religion, being the "opiate of the masses," was banned.  This was one of those sticky areas where Marxism often came into conflict with reality, as, historically, Russians are a religiously devout people. It is said that Stalin, in one of his flashes of cunning, decided to give them a state version of Christianity by building the macabre Lenin's Tomb, where Russians could venerate the embalmed corpse of Lenin with the same fervor they once directed towards Christ. As Svetlana Alliluyeva, Stalin's daughter, put it, the Russian people demanded a god to worship, so Stalin gave them one in the corpse of Lenin. Lenin’s Tomb became a secular shrine—a grotesque parody of faith. 

Today, I've been thinking of that story, be it true or apocryphal, as I watch Trump play a similar role, embalmed not in glass but in grievance. As I have pointed out elsewhere, evangelicals have twice voted for Trump in overwhelming numbers, despite his scandalous history of corruption, felony convictions, and adultery with porn stars.  Now, of course, we have learned that he is named so frequently in the Epstein files that Trump is directing an elaborate cover-up scheme to bury the files for good. Will that change the minds of evangelicals about Trump's character? No. As startling as that might sound, the reason is identical to why Stalin's religious gambit succeeded (well, at least publicly): a large portion of the evangelical right desires to worship the state with the same religious fervor as they do God. This is to say that evangelicals never learned (understood?) the lesson found in St. Augustine's City of God, that the Lord's heavenly kingdom is not to be found on earth.  Instead, evangelicals are constructing their own Tower of Babel, where if God won't come down to them, they will build a political tower up to Him.  Such an idea is as foolish as it sounds, especially in light of what happened the first time a foolhardy people sought to intrude into God's domain, like, uh, illegal immigrants crossing a border. Only now, they are attempting to stand on the shoulders of an unrepentant sinner. I doubt this will prove more successful than the original effort.

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Warsaw Pact self-propelled artillery unleashes a volley - WARNO

Numerous aspects of the Trump regime are reminiscent of the Kremlin, making it a daunting task to decide which ones to explore, one that grows more challenging with each passing day. For example, we recently learned that Trump is wading ever deeper into the realm of command economics, where the government, and not the private sector, determines how business will be conducted in this nation. Be it on again, off again tariffs that can fluctuate wildly depending on the capricious moods of this senile president and his clownish cabinet, or the recent announcement that both AMD and nVidia need to kick back a portion of their profits if they are to obtain a license to sell chips to China, America, under Trump has less to do with the bastion of liberty is was under, say, Ronald Reagan, than it is under Trump who increasingly resembles one of the many central planners of the Soviet Union.

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Soviet troops assault a NATO position - WARNO

As I write these words, I have now been informed that Comrad Trump has federalized law enforcement in the nation's capital, including the deployment of National Guard troops, as he has already done in Los Angeles.  While the reason is proclaimed to be the restoration of law and order, the truth is far removed from this justification. 

Even here, Trump is reminiscent of past Soviet leaders. Back in 1968, the Czechoslovakian administration under Alexander Dubček sought reforms that would provide "socialism with a human face."  These reforms included greater freedom of speech, press, and movement, as well as a partially liberalized economy. Unfortunately for the Czechs, such liberalizing reforms were seen as a threat to the centralized command and control of Moscow, something that triggered the "Brezhnev Doctrine," where the USSR was permitted to directly intervene if it felt socialism was threatened. What resulted was a military intervention that crushed the "Prague Spring" under the jackboots of Warsaw Pact soldiers.

Not WARNO or Regiments, but an actual photograph of Soviet tanks invading Czechoslovakia to crush the reformists

Comrade Trump's intervention in the nation's capital has more in common with Brezhnev's intervention in Czechoslovakia than it does with its stated purpose. To begin with, crime in the nation's capital is at a thirty-year low, which undermines the stated purpose of law enforcement. Additionally, these troops are not deployed in the high-crime areas of south DC but rather in the upscale, tourist sections of the nation's capital.  Clearly, the reason has more to do with the growing resistance to the regime's iron-fisted tactics. Recently, plans that the Trump administration has drawn up to use military force to crush dissent have been revealed to the press. As the New Republic reports:

President Trump and the Pentagon are considering creating a full-time “Domestic Civil Disturbance Quick Reaction Force” that could be called on to quash civil unrest and protest at a moment’s notice, according to internal documents reviewed by The Washington Post.

The force would be made up of about 600 National Guards troops, half of which would be based on military bases in Alabama and Arizona, ready at all times to fly into any given city or state to lay down Trump’s law. They’d have military-style weapons and riot gear, would dispatch from their bases in waves of 100 soldiers, and would cycle out after 90 days to “limit burnout.”

Once again, Trump has all the earmarks of a good Soviet leader.  His deployment of troops to American cities - notably Democrat-run cities - along with drawing up plans for an anti-dissent military force at the behest of the whims of Comrade Trump, is something that one would expect from a Soviet premier and not an American president. And as with the ironfisted response of the Soviets, these belligerent acts are not driven by necessity but by a primitive need to crush heterodoxy.  

It is enough to make one choke on his vodka.

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A Soviet BTR fires at West German infantry - WARNO

I apologize as this blog post got away from me. Chronicling all the ways that America under the Trump regime reminds me of the Soviet Union has proven to be a far more laborious task than I expected. As I mentioned earlier, the examples are accumulating by the day.  To make matters worse, the current inclement weather in my neck of the woods, which is to say typical summer weather, continues to boil my brain and sap my precious bodily fluids.  So, out of mercy, I will wrap this entry up here with one final observation.

Last Friday, America officially welcomed a war criminal to our shores. Of course, I am referring to Trump TACOing on his threats to severely sanction Putin's Russia. Instead, Comrade Trump literally rolled out the red carpet for one of the most bloodthirsty national leaders in recent history.  Like a boy anxiously awaiting the arrival of his prom date, Trump was giddy with anticipation and absolutely gushed when Putin arrived.  To provide a counterpoint, Zelenskyy, with a sizeable and unprecedented coterie of European leaders, arrived to present their case as to the best way to end Putin's war of aggression. Unlike the infamous and uncouth meeting in February of 2025, this time, Trump, ever the cowardly bully, didn't have the moxy to take on a fight in which he was outnumbered, so he passively sat through a non-combative hearing of the Putin opposition. Of course, Trump did call Putin during the meeting for moral support from his master, but, in the final analysis, he was unable to sway the meeting against Zelenskyy. 

In the wake of such chaotic and unproductive meetings, I am reminded of another chaotic meeting between an American and a Russian president. Back in October of 1986, Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev met in Reykjavik, Iceland, to discuss a variety of issues, from nuclear arms control to the fate of Jewish dissenters in the USSR. Ultimately, the meeting failed to produce any results when Reagan, a man of principle, refused to cede ground concerning his futuristic plans for a space-based Strategic Defense Initiative. Ronald Reagan dared to walk away from Russian demands that, in his view, would be detrimental to the long-term security of the United States. In other words, Reagan never allowed himself to be intimidated, nor seduced by the Russian Bear (as bizarre as that sounds).  

But, as the saying goes, that was then, this is now. America, incredibly, after standing athwart Soviet aspirations and defeating them in the Cold War, has now decided to try the Soviet experiment on American shores. Incredibly, 21st Century America has come to resemble the defunct USSR in its authoritarian politics, in its command economy, and in its infatuation with the propaganda of the Rodina. In short, we have turned our colors, spurning the clear-eyed liberty politics of Ronald Reagan for the warmed-over nostalgia politics of the defunct Soviet Union.

Now you know why I am playing the Soviet side in my favorite wargames.

Soviet T-80 tanks advance into the attack - WARNO

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