We just do as he tells us. We don’t know why that doesn’t work.

Some Democrats call themselves “Democratic Socialists.” Most Republicans call themselves “conservatives.”  Very few voters understand such terms as “communism, socialism, capitalism, or any other “ism,” but many argue strongly that they are, or are not, one.

Comparison of five systems

Notice that three “isms,” socialism,” “democratic socialism” and “national socialism” all use the word “socialism,’ but are markedly different.

Further, the countries that claim to use those systems, don’t. Even further, countries that don’t use those systems are accused of using them.

For instance, the U.S. Republican Party, claims to be “conservative” but isn’t, Republicans also claim that the Democrats’ “Democratic Socialism” is communism, but isn’t.

Theoretical definitions;

1. Capitalism is based on private ownership of productive assets and production largely directed by markets and profit incentives.

The United States is predominantly capitalist, although it has substantial government involvement through Social Security, Medicare, public education, regulation, and other programs. Capitalism does not mean the absence of government.

2. Socialism is a broad family of ideas advocating social ownership or democratic control of productive resources.

Some socialists favor centralized public ownership. Others favor worker-owned cooperatives and market competition. A government providing healthcare or retirement benefits does not, by itself, make its economy socialist. Those programs can exist within capitalism.

3. Communism is the envisioned final stage of social development: a classless society without a state, where productive resources are held in common. The Soviet Union and Maoist China called themselves communist, but they operated as highly centralized, one-party states with extensive state ownership and planning.

The theoretical definition of communism differs substantially from the historical governments that claimed to pursue it.

4. Democratic socialism seeks to achieve socialist economic arrangements through democratic means while preserving political freedoms.

They generally advocate stronger worker control, reduced economic inequality, and greater public ownership in important sectors. Democratic socialism is often confused with social democracy.

– Democratic socialism seeks a fundamentally more socially owned or democratically controlled economy.
– Social democracy generally retains capitalism while using taxes, public services, labor protections, and redistribution to reduce inequality.

Denmark, Sweden, and Norway are better described as capitalist social democracies, not fully socialist economies.

5. National Socialism was the ideology of Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Party, and an extreme version of fascism.

Despite including the word “socialism,” Nazism did not seek economic equality or worker control of industry.

The Nazi government preserved substantial private ownership while directing economic activity toward rearmament, territorial expansion, and the regime’s political objectives. It destroyed independent labor unions and persecuted socialists and communists.

Its defining features were racial nationalism, dictatorship, antisemitism, militarism, and the pursuit of a racially defined national community. The word “socialism” in the party’s name is misleading.

The U.S., under Donald Trump, trends toward Hitler’s national socialism’s emphasis on authoritarianism and a white Christion national identity.

Politicians use socialism, communism, and fascism as interchangeable insults. The most useful questions are not merely what a government calls itself, but who owns productive assets, who controls their use, who benefits from their output, and whether citizens can freely replace their rulers.

Is Trump a Conservative?

Trump and his followers claim to be conservatives. His Supreme Court appointees also claim to be conservatives. But they all are far from conservatives. Traditional conservatives often emphasize constitutional restraints, institutional continuity, free trade, fiscal restraint, and predictable limited government.

Trump’s political approach has included challenges to established institutions, extensive tariffs, executive-power expansion, and efforts to overturn the certified results of the 2020 presidential election — the opposite of conservatism.

Conservatives usually argue that overturning established norms is fundamentally inconsistent with conservatism. This creates an apparent paradox: A political movement can call itself conservative while seeking radical changes to the institutions it governs.

Political scientists sometimes describe such movements as radical right or national populist, rather than conservative.

Among the systems we’ve discussed, Trumpism has substantially more in common with authoritarian nationalism and fascist political traditions than with communism, democratic socialism, or liberal democratic capitalism as political philosophies.

Rodger Malcolm Mitchell

We would have won . . .

If I was on the ballot
except for the voting machines, and
the war and
inflation and
the Strait
Ukraine
data centers
Putin
incompetence
impeachments
affordability
air pollution
water pollution
politicization of the FBI
politicization of the DOJ
Hegseth incompetence
healthcare insurance cuts
Social Security insolvency
Epstein coverup
cruel deportations
labor shortages
hate mongering
convicted felon
Jan 6th pardons
my age
Steven Miller
corruption
my sons
vaccination lies
measles
mail-in ballots
Attacks on NATO
attacking women
attacking allies
book burning
Canada
Greenland
gas prices
food prices
Venezuela kidnapping
coal
solar energy
other renewables
research cancellations
anti-abortion laws
bigotry against gays
bigotry against blacks
bigotry against browns
crazy midnight diatribes
the ballroom
the arch
MAGA craziness
Elon Musk
DOGE excesses
gerrymandering
religious bigotry
climate change denial
the Reflecting Pool lies
national forest destruction

Except for those few minor problems, I would have won in a landslide.

Rodger Malcolm Mitchell

The following was written by Ray RichmondIf yu, a longtime journalist/author and an adjunct professor at Chapman University in Orange, CA

Contact him and tell him what a great article he wrote; then contact your Senators and Representative and ask them how they feel about the abomination named Stephen Miller.

And now, it’s Miller Time.

Let’s just get this out of the way right off the top: Stephen Miller is a vile white nationalist piece of garbage who has done more to destroy the lives and the spirit of hard-working immigrant Americans than anyone in the nation’s history. He is profoundly cruel and without conscience, President Donald Trump’s monstrous, xenophobic attack dog, a man devoid of conscience, morals or decency.

Miller is single-handedly responsible for a brutal and unconscionable immigration policy that has separated and destroyed families, and an ICE policy that has terrorized communities and led to the traumatization of everyone with whom the masked thugs enforcing the incarcerations and deportations come into contact.

Moreover, nearly everyone the odious Miller has worked with despises him. That’s Republicans as well as Democrats. He also speaks in the language of Nazis despite being raised Jewish and has made no mystery of his desire to transform the United States into a whites-only country, where there is no such thing as a legal immigrant.

You might therefore say that Miller is the perfect distillation of everything the hateful Trump administration stands for. And this is why it should have come as no surprise that Miller would be chosen last week to replace Susie Wiles as the new White House Chief of Staff.

What does the chief of staff do? Basically, it’s the position that makes all the decisions the president doesn’t want to bother with which, in the case of Trump, means anything that’s non-construction or interior design related. This guy, in other words, has more power than anyone else in the White House.

Think of it as having a Klansman overseeing the country and running things.

That’s the bad news. The good news is that we will soon have a Democratic Congress supplying the guardrails that have been entirely missing since January 2025. Miller cannot just do whatever he wants with impunity and expect no pushback from a compliant, missing-in-action House and Senate.

There are also guaranteed to be leaks aplenty by people across the administration who are determined for Miller to fail. At this point, they’re all in survival mode, and having a Nazi running things for the last few years of their tenure doesn’t much help their resume.

But none of that matters to Trump. If you’re him, this is precisely the dude you put in charge of things. He’s intent on punishing the nation for having the temerity to launch the blue wave washing his party out of congressional control. His response, naturally, wasn’t to take a step back and assess what the country was telling him but to dig in his heels, quadruple down and display his typically juvenile defiance.

Putting Miller in charge is like appointing the wolf as Little Red Riding Hood’s legal guardian, like appointing a great white shark to head up the beach safety commission.

Let’s remember that this man was the architect of the family separation policy during the first Trump administration that resulted in thousands of children being separated from their parents. Now, he’s being entrusted with substantially broader responsibilities. All that could go wrong is everything.

This is also the guy who once raised the idea of suspending habeas corpus. He has zero respect for due process or the rule of law. He believes that he IS the law, and nothing he’s encountered while working under Trump has disavowed him of this notion. Yet the chief of staff is generally expected to ensure that the president understands legal and institutional constraints. Good luck with that.

If there is a looser cannon than Trump to be found anywhere in the free world, it would be Miller. He also brings a record of inflammatory rhetoric into a leadership position, yet has described immigrants as “invaders.” He’s also proudly circulated white nationalist materials for years.

But on a more practical level, he’s pressed for a target of 3,000 immigrant arrests per day over the past 22 months. This has resulted in pushing the already savage and sometimes deadly tactics of ICE agents to another level, where documentation is irrelevant and citizens are treated the same way as those who are not here legally.

Miller’s style is to ignore the facts and condemn those he opposes without evidence. He called Alex Pretti a domestic terrorist following his fatal shooting by ICE officers in Minneapolis in January. This was a man who was holding a cellphone, not a gun, during a crucial point in that encounter. Didn’t matter to Miller.

He’s also endorsed unleashing the U.S. military on American citizens if necessary, and has played a role in dismantling federal diversity initiatives because, you know, we can’t be treating black and brown people with respect.

The timing of Miller’s ascension is also noteworthy and creates an extraordinary political contradiction. It comes just as House and Senate oversight is about to intensify and the House Oversight Committee is gearing up to investigate Miller’s role in immigration enforcement. He’s now going to occupy the post most directly involved in coordinating responses to congressional demands for information.

Does anyone doubt that Miller will do his best to obstruct any investigations and save himself? He’s already a walking conflict of interest. Like seemingly everyone else associated with this White House, it will be all about his own self-interest, certainly not the country’s.

The primary question now is what happens when the man who spearheaded some of Trump’s most abhorrent and lawless policies is also given responsibility for managing the machinery that carries them out — and for responding to the investigators preparing to examine them.

It should give us a small measure of reassurance, however, that while a White House Chief of Staff has enormous practical influence, he has no independent constitutional authority to override Congress or the courts. In other words, prepare for a lot of screaming and yelling but precious little ultimate power.

Also, everyone outside of Trump and his wife desperately wants to see Miller fail. Operating in a town where relationships are everything, that’s a kiss of death.

So, of course, Trump gave him an increase in power. Perfect.

Rodger Malcolm Mitchell