​Notzees morphing to Nazis

By Ed Raymond

fargogadfly@gmail.com

Perhaps it was by IVF — the Know-Nothings are “concepting” notzees

In the middle of the 19th century the Republican Party morphed to the Know-Nothing Party for a short time. Members quickly threw off STUPID and were “born-again” to the Republican Party. It remained so until the rise of the second Trump, which is an attempt to emulate the rise of the Third Reich by Hitler. In a very short time, Trumusklicans are morphing to the Notzee Party, following a scheme developed in Project 2025 where former Republicans cannot see what they are doing to American democracy. They have become Notzees of the Second Trump.

The biggest crime against the American people and democracy committed by the Trump administration so far is the elimination of funding the National Endowment of the Humanities. Brenna Gerhardt, Executive Director of Humanities North Dakota, wrote a beautiful article “The humanities exist to alleviate human misery — why have we forgotten that?”

The second and third paragraphs state: “It is not just short-sighted — it is profoundly dangerous. It assumes that the humanities are an expendable luxury, something we can afford to lose in the name of efficiency. But that thinking could not be further from the truth. The humanities — history, philosophy, literature, religious studies (and the art included with each subject!) — are not decorative. They are foundational. They exist not to generate products or profits, but to alleviate human misery. That is their higher purpose. And it is one we need now more than ever. To be human is to suffer. We know this. We carry loss, disappointment, and mortality with us every day.”

Her article made me do an accounting of how the humanities have given me a very “rich” life.

How a poor Minnesota farm boy got “rich” on humanities

My little rural school, Morrison County District #54, had about 400 books for grades 1-8 and I read all of them over my eight years in the white one-room school with two two-holers. When I was in sixth grade, I read “Men of Iron” by American Howard Pyle published in 1891. Set in the 15th century, it had both text and illustrations about the most powerful empire in the world. It was “a coming of age” story of a young squire about 14 named Myles Falworth, serving an English knight defending the realm. In the service of the knight, Myles also wants to become a knight so he can defend the actions of his father who had lost his honor.

One entire chapter is devoted to a knighthood ceremony and the description of training and equipment of a knight. In 1954 the story was made into a movie called “The Black Shield of Falworth.”I think this book started my lifelong marathon in the humanities. Here was history, art, music, literature, philosophy, religion, leadership, empathy, diversity, equity and inclusivity.

When I entered Little Falls High School with about 240 other freshmen in 1946, I decided to try out for the choir. I didn’t know I could sing, but I had done a lot of it singing to cows when I milked them and to pigs when I fed them. After the tryout, the choir director walked over and whispered, “You are going to be my soloist.” I almost died. But at the annual band and choir Christmas concert, I opened the night with the solo “Jesu Bambino” in an auditorium packed with parents and friends. Then, during my four years I sang music from all over the world in solos, duets, trios, quartets, madrigals and choirs. When I was a junior, my girlfriend’s parents took us to Minneapolis to see Rise Stevens in the opera “Carmen.” I learned to love opera and classical music. Nothing like the “Toreador” song!

At the time, I was also singing in the Winter Wonderland mixed quartet advertising a winter playground near Little Falls. When Miss Minnesota Bebe Shoppe from Robbinsdale also won the Miss America title, Cedric Adams of WCCO radio formed a program that would travel with her in the region for a year according to Miss America rules. We performed with her for a year, singing in large nightclubs, colleges, high schools, auditoriums and other entertainment facilities. Plus, we presented radio shows in Minnesota and the Dakotas. Our first radio show just happened to be over WDAY. We also performed at Moorhead High School that day — and my future wife Corky saw me for the first time.

I was the only high school student in the quartet. The bass was a junior in college and the alto, soprano and accompanist were secretaries. I missed a lot of high school my senior year, but my principal said he would graduate me anyway. Singing in the WW Quartet was a marvelous “humanities” program for me. These experiences changed my life. I was recruited to play football and baseball at Moorhead State Teachers’ College, but I was the only “jock” in the regular choir. A football cheerleader named Corky was also in the choir.

Trump reminds me of a pair of ragged claws scuttling across seas

Gerhardt has a warning for us: “To be human is to suffer. We know this. We carry loss, disappointment, and mortality with us every day. That shared vulnerability should make us kinder to one another — but we are complicated creatures. Compassion is not automatic. That’s why we need the humanities.”

I have listened to Donald John Trump for years. Here is a man with the benefits of the “good life,” growing up in a wealthy family surrounded and exposed to the humanities, a man you might trust with your money, life, property, girlfriend, wife, and always the truth. But Donald Trump has never demonstrated that he has a diploma from Ivy League Penn, read a history book, played a part in a play, memorized a poem, listened to old, modern, or classical music, attended Broadway plays and programs at the Kennedy Center — or felt compassion or empathy or love for anyone but himself.

Gerhardt writes,“It’s about cutting off the very disciplines that ask the big questions, that explore what it means to live with dignity, with sorrow, with purpose. When we narrow education to job training and research to product development, we lose the broader possibilities of human nourishment.”

In my favorite poem, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” T.S. Eliot creates a person so depressed and disturbed he describes the lack of human qualities with these words: “I should have been a pair of ragged claws, scuttling across the floors of silent seas.”

Sometimes, but not often, I have a moment of compassion for him and his mental condition. As I have written several times, he lacks the empathy, compassion, and education of a person one can trust. He has all the qualities of a jerk, prick, asshole, malignant narcissist, sexual predator and sociopathic psychopath as described in the latest Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) prepared by the American Psychiatric Association. In listening to his press conferences, cabinet meetings, “incidental” interviews, campaign rallies and the Meet the Press interview, he can be described as a blubbering, bloviating, babbling, bombastic Boobus Americanbus.

From Republicans to Know-Nothings to Republicans to Trumusklicans to…Notzees!!!

The original Republican Party, also known as the GOP (Grand Old Party), was founded in Wisconsin in 1854 by northern protestants, professionals (doctors, lawyers, etc.), businessmen, wealthy farmers, and, later, a few former slaves after the Civil War. The Democratic Party is the oldest political party in the world, officially formed in 1828 and can be traced back to 1792. It was a conservative party before the Civil War and defended slavery through the Civil War and the Jim Crow years to the 1920s. When Franklin Delano Roosevelt defeated Republican Herbert Hoover in a landslide after the beginning of the 1929 Great Depression, the Democrats gained the label of liberal while the Republicans gained the conservative America First believers and Charles Lindberg, the “Germany admirer” of my hometown who American Nazis joined later.

The election of Trump and the control of the Senate and House by the Trumusklicans has challenged Democrats to come up with a stop as the Lyin’ King pumps out hundreds of executive orders changing the party to the Notzee Party. The Notzee majority does not see or agree with the government supporting the following “common good” programs: universal healthcare such as Medicare for All, Medicaid, Social Security, parental leave, unemployment insurance, sick leave, public and private unions, the national park system, gender fluidity research, gender affirmative medical care, elimination of economic inequality, DEI (Diversity, Equity, Inclusive) programs, LBGTQUIA+ community and gay rights, transgender protections, same-sex marriage, pro-choice abortion laws, voter eligibility laws, IVF programs, separation of church and state, academic freedom, electric vehicle (EV) mandates, gun controls (seven children die from firearms every day) and fair income and asset taxes on multi-millionaires and billionaires.

Billionaires have paid cash for Trump, congress, and the Notzee Party

The new Notzee Party sees the 900-page Heritage Foundation program of 2025 as its political platform. The main elements of their dramatic reduction of the federal workforce by Elon Musk and Trump’s DOGE program consist of the elimination of more than 400 research programs under the supervision of the National Science Foundation, slashing or freezing the budgets of the National Institutes of Health, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and cutting NASA. The firing of thousands of researchers working at universities under government funding, passing “personhood” legislation in red states, maintaining and creating masculine “manhood” and paternalistic philosophy. Discharging transgender folks from the military and banning combat roles and commands for women. Deporting 22 million undocumented migrants, cutting or reducing foreign aid, dramatically reducing State Department personnel here and abroad. Suing media for producing “enemy of the people” and “fake news,” suing lawyers and law firms for attacking MAGA supporters and politicians. Reducing climate change regulations, particularly the use of coal in generating electricity, and increasing the use of fossil fuels while voting against solar and wind renewables on land and sea.

This is just a very short list of what the Notzee Party is for and against. There is something else more important. It’s the overwhelming selfishness and the total lack of empathy and compassion in the Notzee Party which is attempting to turn America into a Nazi state.

Donald Trump and Elon Musk are malignant narcissistic twins, being sexual predators, classic assholes and pricks. In an interview, Musk claimed, “The fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy.”

Here is one definition: “Empathy is the ability to understand other’s perspectives, what they feel, what they think, what they fear, what they want. Musk has a 20-year-old transgender daughter who hates him. He says she’s dead. The richest man in the world has fathered 14 children with four women. And he is constantly looking for women to impregnate because “the world needs more people with superior intelligence.” What a role model for the Know Nothing and Notzee Party.