I read that anti-semitism has been on the rise in the United States since 2015, and now we have had 66 bomb threats to Jewish facilities so far this year — and it’s only the end of February. These bomb threats are only the tip of the iceberg. The less dramatic but equally harmful manifestations of anti-semitism are numerous and so rapidly growing in number that many in the Jewish community feel we have reached a crisis. Who will provide the leadership to counter this scandalous trend? The President has been quiet about it. His single declaration that “anti-Semitism is horrible and it’s going to stop and it has to stop” is typical bluster. His PR people tell us that Mr. Trump cannot be anti-Semitic himself because one of his daughters is Jewish. This is a silly argument, but let’s let it go. The real issue is not whether the President is at all anti-Semitic, but the fact that many of his supporters surely are. He does not speak out regularly and energetically against anti-Semitism because to do so would alienate many of those who now support him feverishly, people who have been invited by Trump’s statements and his silences to “come out” with their prejudices and phobias.

So Trump wants to exclude from press briefings those news organizations that tend to tell the truth about him, and, I suppose will admit only reporters who have been vetted by the Party. Anytime news embarrassing to Trump is reported or any opinion critical of him is expressed, Trump and his flying squadron of liars accuse the media of lying. This is Trumpism’s BIG LIE. Trump is the most mendacious President by far to hold high office in recent years. Compared to him, Nixon was a model of candor and Cheney an honest man. I do not know whether Trump simply cannot see the difference between truth and fantasy (he is a big fan of professional wrestling) or is a compulsive liar. Whatever impels him, he has surrounded himself with a staff who will lie strenuously for anyone who pays them to do it. So I think there should be a working assumption in all spheres of American life that anything emanating from the Trump Administration is false unless proven true.

Steve Bannon, Trump’s spiritual director, has taken another approach, and has denounced the media as “corporatist” and “globalist.” His choice of words is unfortunate, for some of the attendees at CPAC may not know what corporatism and globalism mean. That does not matter. The hardcore Trumpites must have something to hate, and they are all the more enthusiastic when hating something they do not understand.

I read that Trump is going to enlist 10,000 new officers for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to implement his vast (2-3 million?) program of abduction and deportation. It is reported that he has boasted that this will be the largest deportation in history, but Hitler, Stalin, Talaat Pasha, and many other despots might dispute his claim, for mass deportation is a common practice of tyrants. I don’t know how Trump plans to transport all these people. The American railroad system hasn’t enough cattle cars to accommodate numbers like these. Perhaps they will simply round up immigrants and march them out of the country.

How will the people of America react to this brutality? Will we watch in silence, some even with approval, as the peoples of Europe watched and even abetted the disappearance of Jews from their societies? Will we be silent while Trump & Co. make the United States a rogue nation? Or will we be authentic Americans and resist this criminal regime?

Thy mandates make heroes assemble,
when Liberty’s form stands in view;
thy banners make tyranny tremble,
when borne by the red, white, and blue.