Donald Trump has not been working for the United States of America. He has been working for himself at the least and then possibly for Russia within the company of compromised and narrowed autocrats in NATO who have chosen to treat their nations as fiefs for their families and theaters for their own fragile but grasping personalities.

Erdogan, Orban, and Trump — oh my!

In reference, here’s how Tayyip Recep Erdogan’s consolidation of power took place: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peace_at_Home_Council | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Turkish_coup_attempt | https://foreignpolicy.com/2017/07/13/turkeys-post-coup-purge-and-erdogans-private-army-sadat-perincek-gulen/. With an attempted coup for his casus belli, Erdogan had the situation needed to completely overhaul the order established by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, improved upon by Ismet Inonu, and then sustained into instability by political change (Cemal Gursel), a coup and transformation into a multiparty system.

The massive purges that began shortly after the failed coup has seen hundreds of thousands of civil servants, judges, security officials, and employees of state-run institutions fired. Their positions are being rapidly filled, often by under- or unqualified replacements, via the Turkish patronage system of kadrolasma — literally, the building of loyalist cadres. The military is no exception. NATO’s top commander, Gen. Curtis Scaparrotti, raised the alarm back in December, when he warned of a “degradation” of the alliance’s command operations following the firing of “talented, capable” senior Turkish military officials.

Leela, Jacinto. “Turkey’s Post-Coup Purge and Erdogan’s Private Army.” Politico, July 13, 2017.

Behind the scenes: “A leaked report by Intcen, the EU’s joint intelligence service, concluded that Erdogan had planned a purge before July 2016 and an array of soldiers, fearing the upcoming mass firings, hastily launched a coup.”

Viktor Orban’s populism began with a hard knock in the school of political life:

In 2002, Orban committed a rare gaffe that resulted in defeat: playing more forcefully to the emerging middle class than to the much larger pool of older, uneducated, poor, rural voters—those ravaged by International Monetary Fund (IMF) and EU-driven market reforms. This group either shied from the polls or voted socialist left. It was not a mistake Orban would make twice.

Fidesz was out of office for the next eight years, and by the late aughts, Orban had transformed it from a conservative party to a populist vehicle that appealed not to a class but to a nation. He purged Fidesz of critical minds, centralized it around himself, and polarized Hungary’s discourse by casting political opponents as the nation’s enemies. Hockenos, Paul. “Hungary’s Descent Into Dictatorship: How Viktor Orban pulled off the unthinkable.” Foreign Policy, December 6, 2024.

Consider the two, Erdogan and Orban, role models for Donald Trump.

Ignorant, lying, and unconscionable personalities may more easily serve archaic feudal-medieval power than talents valuing their own integrity and schooled in cultures cosmopolitan, modern, and rigorous. In fact, one might suggest archaic power would appear to prefer corrupt or corruptible damaged, greed-ridden, and power hungry sycophants over qualified executives, warriors, and scholars properly equipped with backbones of their own.

Orban’s next move, broadly speaking, as chief of his own family and friends state mafia: extraordinary corruptions and nepotism (Hockenos, op. cit.).

One may expect no less of a bravura attempt at dictatorship from the confirmed felonious Trump.

With financial supplements removed from a body of poor Americans and Trump tariffs raising the cost of living for all Americans but those floating in their own clouds while living in their own compounds, Americans would seem positioned for abuse, exploitation, impoverishment, and a de facto enslavement ramped high by desperation and fear or enforced by related crime, imprisonment, and control–and all of that without meaningful appeal to the hard fought for liberal values of the greater western civilization known today to Canada, most of Europe (minus Hungary), and a Ukraine that has been fighting for its freedom from the Russian mafia state since the 2014 Euromaidan Revolution of Dignity.

For Trump now attempting to cleave military and police power from fealty to community, state, and nation and channel the same into his own system of private patronage, the challenge appears that of provoking his opposition to violence and claiming for his corrupt and apparently unconscionable and shameless Administration its own casus belli.

One hopes the American Left will not make life that easy for him.

One may hope as well that American military and police will defend the Constitution, the laws of the nation extant, and honor the oath sworn to attend such defense and further choose to refuse the wheedling maneuvers of a deeply delusional and dishonest American criminal and traitor.

Addendum: American Character and Integrity Matter — and Truth Matters Most of All

Reference About Donald Trump

Apartments

https://money.cnn.com/2016/03/28/news/trump-apartment-tenants/; https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/trump-tenants-lawsuit/2020/12/04/db4a82e6-367a-11eb-8d38-6aea1adb3839_story.html; https://thehill.com/homenews/news/528714-tenants-sue-trump-over-scheme-that-increased-their-rent-report/; https://www.newsweek.com/2016/10/28/donald-trump-business-busts-victims-511034.html.

January 6, 2021 – Insurrection

https://businessinsider.com/pentagon-hindered-dc-national-guard-response-to-insurrection-attempt-report-2021-1; https://cnn.com/2023/12/28/politics/recordings-trump-team-fake-elector-ballots/index.html.

Malignant Narcissism

Signal: delusional, grandiose, messianic ideation absent of normal boundaries and limits, i.e., the parameters of normal conscience.

Process: https://conflict-backchannels.com/2022/07/10/malignant-narcissistic-process-distilled/.

Ramification: https://conflict-backchannels.com/2024/04/22/trump-delusional-and-innocent/.

Russia! Russia! Russia!

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2022/07/19/detecting-post-soviet-russias-black-narrative-of-revenge-for-89-and-91/; https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/oct/29/czechoslovakia-spied-on-trump-to-exploit-ties-to-highest-echelons-of-us-power; https://conflict-backchannels.com/2024/11/08/well-have-it-fixed-so-good-said-donald-trump/; https://conflict-backchannels.com/2025/02/18/trump-piracy-board-disarm-and-plunder-the-united-states-of-america/; https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-trump-property/.

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