Was it just 90 short years ago when Adolf Hitler penned his diatribe known as Mein Kampf in which he outlined his hatred for humanity, and his solution for those who stood in his way to world conquest? He needed Rudolf Hess to elevate his jumbled discourse to a level that might bring some coherency into his wayward scrawlings. But Hess could not constrain the vitriol that boiled over and onto the pages of that misbegotten missive. Although the lingering elements of Hitler’s thousand years Reich are still fading, they will likely need the balance of the millennium before they recede far enough into history that they no longer pose an imminent threat to freedom.

In a similar fashion each new ingredient that is splashed into the boiling cauldron that portends the Trump administration’s undoing of democracy adds yet another element of bitterness arising from the depths of hell. The toxic fumes that swirl into the atmosphere pollute and suck the life out of our political, economic, social, and evolving experiment with democracy that we call freedom. It fills our lungs with poison. Democracy has survived a few tests, but is this its final test? Already we are left to wonder...

Who hath ordained this cause célèbre on us? What are its limits? When will it erupt? Where are its constraints? Why did this come along now? How much longer do we have in which to circumscribe it, corral it, and then eliminate it?

So much to do; so little time.

The list of misfits, thugs, and ne’re do wells that are emerging as Trump’s closest advisors provide no relief. They are enough to curdle the ethereal blood of all the saints in Heaven. Not even the cleansing action of purgatory could wash clean the minds and intentions of this group to a level of toxicity that might assure the survival of freedom in any practical sense.

“Oh, but we need to give him a chance to succeed,” I can hear the voices of supporters say. Define that last term. Where is failure a success? When will today’s course of actions exceed the point of no return? No, let us not give failure a chance to succeed; and we are already on course and are approaching the point of no return on many fronts. Even some artificial intelligence prediction models are now showing that all world markets will crash in the first half of 2017.

Moreover, Trump’s nominees for high office are a cast bulging with contradictions. Some do not believe in public education; or in health care for the poor; or in renewable energies; or in Social Security or Medicare for anyone; or in minimum wages for the sustenance of life. Others do not accept the scientific conclusion that global warming is a fact; they do not believe in freedom of speech or religion for all. But they do believe in stacking the Federal Reserve and the Supreme Court with candidates from the Stone Age; with Gerrymandering of voting districts to the nth degree; with tax cuts for the wealthy; with deregulation of the securities markets; and with a bellicose mindset as the guiding force to international trade and as a substitute for negotiations. They accept that all Muslims are evil until proven otherwise; but all Russians are peace loving, who would never hack, invade, and use our cyberspace against us—until proven beyond all doubt that they actually did. They believe that Iran is evil but Syria is friendly; that ISIS is not an extension of al Qaeda and the Middle East turmoil of the last 2000 years; rather it is an artifact of the Obama administration’s asserted weakness.

Ironically, those who insist on giving certain recipes for failure a chance to fail are from the same group of persons who fight to block innovative ideas for success everywhere. They dismiss facts as theories; they call sound conclusions “unproved”; or they fall back on the “fear” that someone higher in the organizational hierarchy will not accept it, therefore, let’s kill it here and now. This rationale is part of “group think” that is itself based in a fear of change. They are looking only to stay in their comfort zone that rewards loyalty, rigid ideas, ideologies, and other faulty perceptions masquerading as the truth.

And finally, they believe that Goldman Sachs and all who traverse its hallowed halls are the essence of goodness, truth, and love, and we will all be the richer for tapping into this sea of tranquility in filling the highest positions of responsibility in our government, while ignoring their propensities to keep a stranglehold on dissenters. These are all elements of a discordant human trait known as greed. And greed is the lover of riches.

Well, some will definitely be the richer for it.

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[1] The China Syndrom is a fanciful term--not intended to be taken literally--that describes a fictional meltdown where reactor components melt through their containment structures and into the underlying earth "all the way to China."