The Führerbunker Nobody Talks About

     The destruction of the East Wing of the White House has become something of the proverbial train wreck. We can't believe what we're seeing yet we can't take our eyes from it because of the sheer scale of the hideousness. Also, like that train wreck, we're powerless to stop it. All we can do is stare, slack-jawed, trying to comprehend why it's happening at all.

     Dr. Mary Trump, to whose Youtube channel, Mary Trump Media, I subscribe, released a video nearly a week ago about Trump's Parthenon of Pusillanimity (which will feature bulletproof windows). She mentioned the immediate and suspicious cost overruns, Trump's proposed arch but paid particular attention to the bunker beneath the ballroom.

     It's unclear if Trump plans to also destroy the existing bunker that was under the original East Wing or to refurbish it. Yet Dr. Trump talked about it as if it was emblematic of Trump's lifelong cowardice in the face of even the slightest potential danger. She'd shown the famous clip of the bald eagle going after Trump in his office in Trump Tower and of him whirling around in panic when a guy appeared to approach him during a speech. For good measure, she also mentioned Trump retreating to the East Wing bunker when George Floyd protesters assembled across the street from the White House.

     It's as if Trump is bound and determined to follow in the footsteps of his ideological forebear, Adolf Hitler, including the Nazi leader's ignominious end in the bunker near the Reich Chancellery. Bully the media: Check. Establish one party rule: Check. Manufacture enemies to rally the populace: Check.

     Hide in a bunker in the End Times: Check.

     It's very consistent with a physical coward who fought harder than most combat soldiers in country to prevent getting drafted and sent to Vietnam by having a friendly podiatrist concoct a diagnosis of bone spurs that no one proved (One wonders why the Army medical authorities during the draft didn't confirm that on their own instead of going by the Trumps' doctor).

      Here's the difference between Hitler and Trump: True, Hitler took the easy way out so he wouldn't fall into Soviet hands. But at least he had the will and fortitude to take his own life. Trump, being a physical coward his entire life, would never think to do that. He'd still hold out and try to make one last deal, make one more big score, even as his enemies surrounded him. He'd be screaming at his Secret Service detail to "Save me! Save me!!!" even as he railed against their weight and physical appearance. He'd tell Stephen Miller to stay behind, take his chances above, that "We don't allow Jews into the bunker."

     Of course, that scenario is less than hypothetical and would never happen. We're not at war with a Soviet Union bound and determined to destroy our capital..It's a completely different world, with a completely different geopolitical makeup. The only consistent feature between 1945 and 2025 is the cowardice of right wingers and their animalistic, atavistic compulsion for self-preservation.

     It's no coincidence that construction on the ballroom began at the same time as the No Kings protests across the nation and even all over the world. An estimated 7,000,000 took part in roughly 2600 separate events. By all accounts, it was peaceful (the NYPD reported that not a single protest-related arrest was made). Yet, while it can't be said that the protests changed one Goddamned policy by this criminal junta, it did have one effect:

     It put Trump on notice that we as a people were not about to tolerate kings or tyrants, that he's not as popular as he may have fooled himself into thinking he was. It's reckless to say that the two No Kings protests this year are a dress rehearsal for a revolution but that's how Trump interpreted it. He showed his contempt for the American people in a puerile post in which he shared an AI video of himself in a fighter jet dumping shit on them.

     And his screaming social media post from this morning just hours after his Great Gatsby Halloween party putting Republicans on notice to never let Democrats govern again sounds just like something Hitler would've ordered in his last week in the bunker.