In August 2015, a week after Donald Trump announced his candidacy for the 2016 Republican Party presidential ticket, I wrote a My Turn for this newspaper comparing him to Adolf Hitler. Not surprisingly, it outraged some Valley residents, especially those with a conservative slant.

My decision to do so wasn’t some kind of knee-jerk reaction. As a Jew who’s over-literate in the history of the Holocaust, Trump launched red flags right from the start. Few Republicans today will admit that Trump launched his campaign by labeling Mexican immigrants as “murderers” and “rapists.”

That was it. That was all it took. Whatever white supremacist poison that lay dormant during the Obama years was allowed to spew forth from the gutter.

Besides noting the call for scapegoats, I predicted two responses that in fact did occur. I feared that nobody would take seriously a guy with goofy hair and a big mouth, which was the initial reaction to Hitler’s rise. Once elected, it was assumed that both men would tone down the rhetoric and govern like responsible leaders. Neither did. If anything, gaining power made them both crazier and more egomaniacal.

Trump is a Hitler restrained by 247 years of American democracy. Germany only knew 15 years of such before 1933. Before launching the Nazi Party, Hitler was a vagrant roaming the nether regions of Vienna. During World War I, he was a message courier with the rank of corporal.

Trump was a successful, if sleazy New York City real estate billionaire and television reality show host. Hitler murdered millions in his death camps. Trump ignored a pandemic that killed over a million Americans while suggesting they drink bleach as an antidote. Both men tried and initially failed to overthrow a democratically elected government; Hitler with the Munich Beer Hall Putsch in 1923 and Trump with his Jan. 6 insurrection. Democracy was anathema to Hitler and as it is to Trump.

But a new comparison comes to mind as we lurch into the 2024 election cycle. Hitler gained traction by his “stab in the back” conspiracy theory. According to this, Germany was about to win World War I but was betrayed into losing by a diabolical coalition of Jews, liberals and communists. In fact, the German army in late 1918 was reeling from massive Allied attacks with its civilian population reduced to starvation rations. Soldiers and sailors mutinied and the Kaiser was forced to flee.

Trump’s counterpart is the “stolen election” big lie, which is still believed by a majority of Republicans, a party that once respected facts and intelligence. By now we know the details thanks to his many criminal indictments. Trump, it should be remembered, announced that he had won the 2020 election even before it took place. He also half-joked that he would be president for life.

This man is dangerous. And any progressive gloating that “This time they got him!” better think twice. I’ve assumed that a dozen times since 2016.

Trump could still get elected, whatever the outcome of the indictments, because his party has forfeited whatever moral compass it ever pretended to have. The other GOP hopefuls, with too few exceptions, are mere servile lapdogs to Trump as most promised to support him as candidate, crimes be damned.

Trump’s mugshot tells it all, and its image printed on T-shirts and coffee cups will probably outsell red MAGA hats. Trump’s expression is that of a Mafia capo planning to murder his rivals at a wedding or a Balkans warlord about to initiate an act of ethnic cleansing. It’s downright frightening as it should be, for Trump has made it clear that if reelected, revenge against those who crossed him will be the top priority on his policy agenda.

I realize that for many, including myself, a 2024 rematch between Donald Trump and Joe Biden will make us pray for the big asteroid to come and put us all out of our misery. More realistically, it will turn away many young people who are tired of these creaky old men vying to run their country. Still, I think “Vote for the Grandfather, not the Felon” would make a nifty campaign slogan.

As before, this election will be long and ugly. Hopefully, democracy will prevail and Republicans will remember that they are Americans first and Trump supporters second. That’s how I approach Joe Biden. And for my progressive friends, please remember that elections are a chess game, not a love affair. In other words, don’t vote your hearts, vote your brains.

Daniel A. Brown lived in Franklin County for 44 years and is a frequent contributor to the Recorder. He lives in northern New Mexico with his wife, Lisa and dog, Cody.