Politics has been around for as long as civilization has been in existence. During these centuries we have encountered demagogues before. But never before in my memory has the United States seen a major political party offer two presidential candidates who are demagogues. These two candidates are Donald Trump and Senator Ted Cruz.

Their use of language is intended to inflame and excite the masses and by the use of scapegoats to conveniently place the blame for the ills, the insecurities and the fears of men and women on a particular group or groups.

For Mussolini it was the Slavs, who were to blame. For Hitler, it was the Jews who were to blame for Germany losing the war. Hitler and his henchmen portrayed Jews and others to be less than human, vermin really, who were to be exterminated from the face of the earth.

In American history we have seen and heard racists, bring hate to our political stage. Strom Thurmond, a candidate for the Dixiecrats, and George Wallace were public figures, elected officials who publicly chastised and dehumanized African-Americans. Both Thurmond and Wallace ran for President. Wallace even had the gall to name his political party, the American Independence Party. It’s idea of independence is to be free of any people of color, separate and not equal is their mantra.

Famously, we had Joe McCarthy, the Senator from Wisconsin who had no shame in ruining people’s lives claiming that they were Communists. Some were Communists but most of those accused were not. It is hard to imagine but McCarthy even accused Dwight Eisenhower of being a Communist or at a minimum those dastardly words a communist sympathizer.

These tactics of having a scapegoat blamed for peoples problems are designed to win political power.

Now who are the latest scapegoats?

For Cruz take your pick, gays, Muslims, non-Christians!

Trump has been clever, by making political incorrectness a source of support, he has insulted almost every group out there and individuals as well. Just recently he has stated that Muslims should not be allowed to enter the United States. There are others of whom he has unleashed his vile insults, among these are Latinos, and people with disabilities. These are people to be scorned and ridiculed. For a demagogue it is always someone’s fault for our problems.

What happened to the alleged Republican Party who was supposed to be for taking personal responsibility.  It’s always, if it wasn’t for the poor taking food stamps, or there are too many people on disability, if it wasn’t for all of those Mexicans things would be fine. Of course for these later day saints, if all else fails blame it on President Obama.

With Trump you have an authoritarian personality. He is never, never wrong. He will make America great, again. He will be in charge and make everything right. How, is he going to do that, you might ask yourself? Well, just if we could only use our resources to round up 11 million illegal aliens, as if they were from another planet, and deport them. And of course we need to build a wall, it will be a great wall. He reminds you that he builds things, and he will make Mexico pay for the wall. If you believe that I have a bridge for sale, it’s a bargain.

If any of you think that either one of these demagogues will work well with others, forget it!

America needs to realize that we can only progress if we work together as one people, one nation. We must reject these demagogues at the polls if we are too rise above personal recriminations and the use of scapegoats to gain popular support.

There is a reason we have things that are politically incorrect, that we are not supposed to say. It is because in this ever shrinking world we need to get along. We will never get along and agree on anything if we insult each other continually.

If you like dictators, after all things change quickly when you are told what to do, then vote for one of the demagogues, Donald Trump or Senator Ted Cruz. If you want to keep your Republic find someone else who wants to maintain the freedoms that we have. As Ben Franklin once said, “We have a Republic if we can keep it.”