The Dec. 12 T.R. article “Trump Leads America Boldly into Decline” by syndicated writer Froma Harrop was just a scratch on the moral decadence, the corruption of Democracy and the unraveling of the rule law spewing from America’s highest office.

Watching Trump’s racist disparage of Somalia, his outrageous claim that Venezuelan oil is America’s oil, the barbaric extra judicial bombing and killing of suspected drug runners, his high jacking of an Venezuelan oil tanker, the continuation of illegal sanctions against Venezuela, Trump’s release of two U.S. war criminals and a high powered drug Lord from Honduras including U.S. Capitol insurrectionists should not only draw attention to Trumps sympathy towards criminal behavior but to America’s long historical imperialist mindset towards the people of the Southern hemisphere.

Trump’s total disrespect for the rule of law reminds me of the 1963 movie The Ugly American based on the 1958 book with the same title.

According to Wikipedia an Ugly American is a stereotype depicting American citizens exhibiting loud, arrogant, self absorbed, demeaning, thoughtless, ignorant and ethnocentric behavior here and abroad. It is also referred to U.S corporations operating here and abroad.

Watching a farmer tell Trump his son wanted to meet him instead of Santa, a man defending Trump despite having a loved one caught by ICE and faces deportation and a U.S. Republican Senator trying to defend Trumps pardoning of a high powered drug Lord from Honduras is beyond bizarre. I believe those folks are victims of the Stockholm Syndromel Those Trump defenders seem so caught up in the cult of personality they irrationally defend the moral bankruptcy of Trumps policies or actions.

What remains a major threat to democracy? The psychology behind Hitlers popularity and the average German citizen caught up in blind submission to the maelstrom of his racist charisma.

Racism and its ugly manifestations remain a dangerous pull. Examine the popularity of closing our southern border with little regard to the idea of human suffering. Today racism is stomping the hell out of empathy at our southern border.

When empathy is slowly strangled so goes humanity and barbarism becomes popular.

In the manual from the Holocaust Museum in D.C. there is a photograph of highly educated men giving the Nazi salute pledging allegiance to Hitler not to the rule of law, all of them were judges!