Red scare, 1: In the late 1950s, President Dwight Eisenhower warned of the creation of a military-industrial complex, which would be fueled by the global threat of communism and thus generate a massive arms buildup. Ironically, some 80 years later, an American president has resurrected communism from its crypt, insisting, as Richard Nixon once did, that all America faces a communist threat. The real threat, however, is the growth of the now-robust corporate-political complex, which creates wars to produce investment opportunities for powerful American companies. In political terms, this is called cronyism, and it is as old as America. So, what this president is doing is distracting from this cronyism of unprecedented proportions by telling national crowds that they face communist enemies linked to the Democratic Party, all of this without foundation. The goal is clear. To scare unenlightened or ignorant voters into casting their ballots for the president’s alleged good-guy system built on unrestricted capitalism. It is the latest twist in an already unbearable presidential script, and bears an uncanny resemblance to Nixon’s anti-communist witch hunts of the late 1940s that began a political career that would ultimately lead him to two presidential terms before he disgraced himself.

I now live far away from my America, but I am always reminded of Yogi Berra’s charming tautology, “it’s déjà vu all over again,” only this time, and I hate the bromide, the rich just keep getting richer.