I linked to this fascinating, enlightening, and, frankly, terrifying article from Timothy W. Ryback in The Atlantic (Apple News+) in my previous piece, but it deserves its own post. I’ve referenced it a lot since January 20, 2025. Though I was broadly aware of Hitler’s rapid rise and subsequent consolidation of power, I wasn’t aware of just how quickly it happened, nor how “democratically” it was done:

In one of the most astonishing political transformations in the history of democracy, Hitler set about destroying a constitutional republic through constitutional means. What follows is a step-by-step account of how Hitler systematically disabled and then dismantled his country’s democratic structures and processes in less than two months’ time—specifically, one month, three weeks, two days, eight hours, and 40 minutes. The minutes, as we will see, mattered.

I was already convinced Trump was America’s Hitler. After reading this article, and watching Elon Musk dismantle government agencies, I thought, Musk is Trump’s Wilhelm Frick, sent in to dismantle everything, with little oversight.

But maybe I have it wrong. Maybe Trump is President Paul von Hindenburg and it’s Musk who’s the Chancellor who usurps all power.

Regardless of who’s playing which role, since the inauguration, it’s felt like this country is speedrunning an autocracy/oligarchy challenge, with Trump seemingly trying to best Hitler’s democracy destroying record. I’ve wondered, more than once, how we will recognize when we’ve crossed the democracy rubicon? What’s the sign we’ve hit our “53 Days”?

Has it already passed, after Trump ceded power to an unelected, non-Senate-confirmed billionaire, targeted the most vulnerable, and purged the country’s military leadership?

Is it ongoing, with Congress ceding its power to the White House?

Or still to come, once Trump “acquires enough muscle to enforce his lawless proclamations,” a scenario more likely with Trump loyalists heading the FBI and Justice Department?

As you’d expect, not everyone finds this comparison appropriate:

I am not a fan of using comparisons to 1932 and Hitler.

This is not post-WWI Germany operating under the treaty of Versailles and the war reparations act, nor does the US have an inflation rate of 29,000% per month.

To me, the situations don’t have to align for the comparison to be apt. Hitler and Trump both gained power via legitimate, democratic means, and used/are using those same levers to undermine the very systems that brought them to power.

Trump admires Hitler and men like him, and is surrounded by others who do too.

I find it valuable to acknowledge the historical rhymes, even if we don’t like the meter.

This New York Times piece, from Jonathan Swan and Maggie Haberman, purportedly about serious disagreement inside Trump’s Cabinet over which of his sycophants are in charge, reads more like a Television Without Pity recap of an episode of The Apprentice, only with less clever writing.

It’s filled with weird quotes-that-aren’t (reading like a lightly altered transcript of a surreptitious recording), and contains some truly awful New York Times-isms, like this one:

Cabinet officials almost uniformly like the concept of what Mr. Musk set out to do — reducing waste, fraud and abuse in government — but have been frustrated by the chain saw approach to upending the government and the lack of consistent coordination.

One: There is zero reason to believe this “concept” is Musk’s goal (and plenty of evidence to believe otherwise). It’s unadulterated mendacity.

Two: It admits these cabinet officials want to bring about the destruction the US government and the pain it inflicts on the American people, just slower and with more meetings.

It’s an infuriating passage—a demonstrably false premise, paired with a disingenuous conclusion—and sanitized through the antiseptic language of propriety.

This exchange really struck me, though:

At another point, Mr. Musk insisted that people hired under diversity, equity and inclusion programs were working in control towers. Mr. Duffy pushed back and Mr. Musk did not add details […].

The exchange ended with Mr. Trump telling Mr. Duffy that he had to hire people from M.I.T. as air traffic controllers. These air traffic controllers need to be “geniuses,” he said.

Many of us have known about Musk’s racism for almost a decade, and about Trump’s for far longer, so we understand that when they say “diversity, equity and inclusion” they mean “not white men.”

The additional “tell” is the suggestion to hire from MIT, because in Trump’s mind, “geniuses” = “MIT” = “white”.

Just 7.6% of MIT’s student population is Black.

MacRumors:

Apple this month started advertising on X for the first time in more than a year. The company had stopped advertising on the social media platform in November 2023 following controversial remarks made by its owner Elon Musk.

Tim Cook “personally” donated $1,000,000 to, and attended, Donald Trump’s inauguration. Then Apple complied with the Gulf of Mexico name-change nonsense, despite no legal requirement to do so. Now, they’ve restarted advertising on Elon Musk’s toxic social media service, just weeks after Musk gave a Nazi salute.

My only conclusion is that Tim Cook and Apple support this autocratic regime and its brazen, systematic destruction of American democracy.

This latest act of acquiescence is clearly meant to curry favor with Trump and co-President Musk^[1] out of fear of retaliation—especially from Musk, who’s actively suing companies who stopped advertising on X/Twitter^[2]. No doubt Cook and Co. are hoping to avoid that, making the resumption of ads a bribe to Musk—or, if you’d like to be more generous to Apple, a payoff coerced through blackmail and extortion.

At this point, if Trump demanded that Apple create a backdoor allowing access to every customer’s device, I have very little reason to believe they’ll refuse the request.

I’ve been following Apple for over four decades, first as a customer, then as an employee for twenty-two years. While I won’t claim any unique insight from this tenure, it forged in me a belief that Apple always tries to do the right thing, even when it doesn’t appear that way from the outside. Or, in human terms, their heart was always in the right place.

I can no longer confidently say I believe that.