But she’s just a stand-in for the half of America that I also don’t understand.

Nikki Who? I hear you saying. She is well and truly “Yesterday’s News” now. She might not realize that. It could be part of the problem. She might think, falsely, that she could run for elective office higher than “Dog Catcher” sometime in the future and have a chance.

She is important, but only as an example. Just to refresh your memory, Nikki Haley was one of the brightest rising stars in the Republican Party until she flamed out a few months ago. Just as a meteor can be a spectacular fireball before it becomes a burnt-out cinder, so Nikki Haley was a political fireball. She was the first governor of South Carolina who wasn’t a white male (She is from an Indian family.) Then she became Trump’s Ambassador to the United Nations. And finally, she had more success than anyone else running against Trump – no small accomplishment and one that Trump surely holds against her. She is almost a political twin of Kamala Harris. That could be part of the problem. Sibling rivalry. But I don’t think so. I think she is genuinely confused about her life now.

Contrast Nikki Haley with another political fireball, Liz Cheney. They both fought their way into the political top ranks, but they took dramatically different paths.

Nikki Haley rode – there is no other accurate way to put it – the fascist wave of deep south politics to the top. She got Sarah Palin’s support in the Republican primary. (Primaries are where winners are selected in deep red jurisdictions.) She had all the right fascist moves as governor and UN Ambassador. It seems that the real skill she had was her ability to surf the wave without falling off. Who knows what she really thinks? Not me. But there is no doubt that she learned to trust and depend on the power of the wave for political success. It only failed her once – at the very end.

Liz Cheney, in contrast, made it with a long march of conservative tradition. If you think Liz is outspoken, you should have known her dad. Dick Cheney reached his peak in my day. I still believe that “George Bush the Lesser” wasn’t really interested in running the country and turned the job over to Dick Cheney. Since I was a college student during the Vietnam War – and one of the last persons to be drafted into the Army during that war – I hated Dick Cheney. I still think his conservative views were, and are, very wrong and dangerous. Liz inherited her own conservative values directly from her father and her values are strong and deep just like his were.

Nikki Haley’s family, as nearly as I can tell, had no political views. They had a very strong will to survive and succeed that Nikki inherited.

As far as politics are concerned, the train left the station for both Liz and Nikki. But they have opposite views about that. Nikki thinks, “But, there will be another train along in just a few minutes. There’s still time for me.” Liz thinks, “An anarchist is just about to blow up the station. There won’t be a train for anybody if he succeeds.” Liz thinks Nikki is crazy. So do I.

If it happened before in history, it CAN happen again.

The problem is that half of America seems to be ignorant of history.

When I was much younger and looking out for my own career success, I had the wonderful opportunity to stay with a genuine, world-class scientist in his home overnight. (I was consulting for his technology startup company.) He had a magnificent library. We talked about the Japanese raid on Pearl Harbor at one point and I was surprised to learn that he believed that there was a conspiracy at the top levels of American government who knew that the Japanese would attack and decided to let it happen because they also knew that we had to get into the war and stop Hitler – and a Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor would do the trick.

At the time, I remember thinking, “Naahhhhhhh. Roosevelt would never do that. That’s crazy talk. He may be a world class scientist in his field, but that’s just wrong.”

I’ve changed my mind on that. Not specifically the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, but on the possibility of high level conspiracies. Since I’m the founding prophet of the Church of I-Don’t-Know, I’m simply not sure whether Roosevelt knew or not. But I think that being rich, famous, or powerful is no guarantee that you are honest and moral. In fact, the opposite may be true. Again, I DON’T KNOW.

I may not know much, but I suspect a lot. The idea is to get as close to absolute truth as you can. Realizing that you will never, ever reach absolute truth is part of the formula for getting closer. Here’s a truth from history that helps a lot … a whole lot … to understand the present.

In the Night of the Long Knives (look it up), just a year and five months after Hitler finally achieved his goal of power, he ordered the brutal murder of many hundreds of the very same people who helped to get him to the top,  just to be sure that they would never threaten his own power and to magnify it with an example that nobody in Germany would ever forget. The second most powerful man in the Nazi movement a year earlier was shot, but not killed, through the bars of a jail cell and left to die on the floor. All to guarantee power for Hitler personally.

Polls say that the people who support Trump are worried about the economy. Nikki Haley is worried about whether she will ever be able to win another election. Trump has openly declared that he will persecute his political enemies as soon as he gets the power to do it. Hitler didn’t even say that much, and he didn’t limit his purge to political enemies. A lot of people who thought they were his friends died. J D Vance has said that he would obey Trump rather than the Constitution if it came to a choice and Trump’s Supreme Court has issued a ruling that backs Vance up. Since Vance is ambitious and Trump knows that, getting Trump elected might not be the best strategy for him.

This is serious. The life of America itself is on the line. Don’t be a Nikki !