Putting the "ME" in Prometheus...

 When Mein Kampf  was published in 1939, Adolf Hitler left no doubt about his world view and his “struggle”.  His was a philosophy of grievance.  The fatherland was being screwed and now it was getting even.  At odds with all the democracies because of their inherent weaknesses, the fuhrer was focused on the “other” whose presence threatened him— Jews, the sick and disabled, blacks, gypsies, communists were all deemed inferior to the Aryan. White men and women bred for dominance were determined to be a master race.  Their defeat would have marked the end of days if National Socialism failed:

...(the Aryan) is the Prometheus of mankind, from whose shining brow the divine spark of genius has at all times flashed forth, always kindling anew that fire which, in the form of knowledge, illuminated the dark night by drawing aside the veil of mystery and thus showing man how to rise and become master over all the other beings on the earth. Should he be forced to disappear, a profound darkness will descend on the earth; within a few thousand years human culture will vanish and the world will become a desert.  Mein Kampf, p. 226

Looking in the mirror and seeing near perfection is a fairly common obsession among narcissists and teenage egoists.  The latter generally grow out of their mania, the former become enmeshed by it.  These diaries have been flush with Trump being compared to Hitler and called a narcissist. The President has much more at stake now.  His presidency is under siege by men much brighter, more skilled in the law, and committed to the truth. The question now is not so much how bad is Trump.  More than half the nation has decided.  The real question now is how does this end?  

Putting aside political skirmishing, there are very real investigations ongoing that are looking into potential criminal acts that may have been committed by the President’s family and friends. Indeed, key to these investigations is whether there is a nexus connecting illegal acts and the President himself.  A good source for evaluating the investigations and the case for impeachment can be found at the Bookings website and their report Presidential obstruction of justice: The case of Donald J. Trump.  The authors,  Barry Berke, Noah Bookbinder, and Norman Eisen, carefully review the record and give compelling arguments for the case against the President and likely scenarios for its conclusion.  What is most striking about this report is the sourcing of the events and its explanation of pertinent case law which impact the arguments for and against a criminal finding by the various investigations into the acts surrounding the Russian hacking of our recent election.  

Of interest in their report is the delicate balance between the appearance of criminal activity and the protections afforded those alleged to have committed the acts.  For instance, there is ample supporting evidence that the meeting between Donald Trump, Jr. and a Russian lawyer in June 2016 promised the campaign negative information gathered by the Russian government on Hillary Clinton. This “help” would be illegal on its face due to the incursion of a foreign government in an election and because the information was gathered through illegal hacking of the democrat’s computer files.  In addition to Trump, Jr., campaign manager Paul Manafort and campaign adviser and Trump son-in-law, Jared Kushner were known to have attended.  All three campaign officials lied when initially questioned about the meeting.  That would seem to be enough to prove complicity of the campaign in illegal acts and with collusion with the Russian government.  A potential nexus with the President adds to the import of this meeting as Trump Sr. is purported to have dictated a false explanation for the meeting in his son’s name that was published in Trump Jr.’s name following the initial disclosure of the meeting. This would seemingly  implicate the President in the nefarious plot providing the nexus for collusion. The slam dunk, however, may be contravened by the President’s pardon powers which would negate the prosecution of any crime committed by the players and, thus, could inoculate Trump’s collusion.  The report carefully reviews the limits of a president’s powers to pardon once it could be proved that a pardon was given to further or hide a corrupt act. 

And so, like Hitler’s Germany, all this is in response to some perceived grievances that befall our nation. In Trump’s view, the grievance is localized rather than Hitler’s more existential threats from foreign or insurgent sources. Our less than titan Prometheus suffers personal affronts at the hands of his predecessors (Obama and every other former president) and his opponent in the recent election.   He can neither measure up to them, nor can he destroy their legacies.  Instead, our fire gatherer has promulgated that he, and he alone, can preserve our nation’s greatness. He has, in fact,  suggested on several occasions  his own “indispensability” to our democracy: