One of the topics I’ve discussed over the last several years is how both the media and the internet have in essence fragmented U.S. society. There’s a news channel for everyone, and if that’s not enough for the far right and far left, there’s the “twitterverse.”

For whatever reason, the remaining Republicans, that is, the hard-core Republicans who believe that either Trump can do no wrong or that even Trump is better than any Democrat, seem less fragmented than the Democrats, as is clearly demonstrated by the increasingly bitter Democratic presidential primary.

On the far left is Elizabeth Warren, with plans for everything, but, as an economist who’s worked in government and the private sector, I can’t make the numbers work, despite her insistence that those plans are financially doable. Ditto for Bernie. Combined, they seem to have the most support.

Then you’ve got the moderates, with Joe Biden still having the most support, although that support seems squishy to me, despite his victory in South Carolina. Those moderates are at least trying to push changes that might be marginally financially feasible, but, guess what, not that many Democrats seem that thrilled with “moderation” (although Republicans, and even some Democrats, would find their proposals as unpalatable as those of Warren and Sanders). The fact that Mayor Pete and Amy Klobuchar have dropped out strongly suggests that there aren’t that many moderates among the younger Democrats.

Then there are the billionaires, and somehow, I don’t see either of them igniting a wave of warm support, as witness the fact that Steyer has ended his campaign.

But that’s not the biggest problem. The greatest difficulty is that the far left is trashing those with more “moderate” policies as being uncaring and ignoring the “needs” of the people, while the “moderates” keep asking how the country can pay for the proposed extravagance of the ultra-liberal policies. And even Warren and Sanders are bickering.

Yet this increasingly bitter fight over the nomination ignores basic reality. The next Congress won’t pass any ultra-liberal financially costly legislation, because even if the Democrats flip the Senate and hold the house, they’ll only have a one or two vote margin in the Senate.

In the meantime, the bloodbath is providing Trump with all the talking points and tweets he’ll need for whoever the Democrats nominate, especially since, given the past success in Republican gerrymandering and vote suppression, the Democrats will likely need close to a five percent advantage in the popular vote in order to get a very tenuous control over both the presidency and the legislative branch.

And they’re going to get it through ideological “purity” tests and trashing each other?

But then… let’s see what tomorrow’s “Super Tuesday” brings.

MSNBC anchor Chris Matthews equated the victory of Bernie Sanders and his supporters in the Nevada Democratic presidential primary to the Nazi victory over France in 1940. Although Matthews later apologized to Sanders, the initial claim was not only reprehensible, but shows that Matthews doesn’t really know or understand history.

In the early 1930s, the Nazis were a minority party. In fear of a takeover of the parliament by the communists, German President Paul von Hindenburg offered the chancellorship to Hitler, who represented himself as an ally of the more moderate business-oriented political parties. Hindenburg thought his group had “captured” Hitler, when it turned out the other way around, and Hitler consolidated his power by blaming all of Germany’s problems, including the burning of the Reichstag [parliament] building in 1933, first on the communists and then on the Jews… and foreign powers.

In historical terms, it’s Trump who’s analogous to Hitler and the Nazis, not Sanders. In both Germany and Italy, Hitler and Mussolini were supported by the business and industrial community, not by the left-wing radicals such as the communists. Even a number of large U.S. companies financially supported German industrial concerns long after WWII started.

The same pattern also existed in Spain and in Portugal, where right-wing, big-businesses supported the dictators Franco and Salazar. Yet, particularly in Germany and Italy, these dictators presented themselves as populists who were rescuing the middle class from the dangers of the left and from foreign domination and untoward influence. Might this sound just a little bit familiar?

So how could Chris Matthews be so incorrect? Was it merely a desire to see Bernie Sanders as Hitler…or was it something more sinister? I suspect the latter, because the Matthews quote refers to an accurate event in a totally inaccurate context and with an incorrect backstory, which is the staple of self-identified “populist” dictators and their followers.

There is a reason why the oath sworn before courts uses the phrase, “the whole truth and nothing but the truth.” Too bad that certain news commentators and Trump don’t believe in the “whole truth.”

Every human being I’ve ever met has lied, and certainly more than once. Now it might have been a white lie, or a lie to save someone’s feelings. It might have been calling in sick to work when they weren’t. It might have been worse than that. But all human beings lie… and if you insist that you’ve never lied, that’s a lie as well.

Why am I making this obvious point? First, because the fact that people lie doesn’t just apply to politicians; it applies to everyone. Second, what’s most important about lies isn’t that people lie; it’s the extent of the lie and the context in which they lie. Your lying and telling a friend that they look good or that a thoughtless word didn’t hurt isn’t the same as a president telling thousands of lies, hundreds of which are out and out falsehoods that can be easily disproved by verified facts.

By the same token, while almost all politicians occasionally shade the truth or don’t tell all of it, there’s a huge difference between the politician who utters an occasional lie, exaggeration, or misstatement and one who almost can’t utter an extended statement without lies or gross exaggerations.

Part of the reason that Trump gets away with all his lies, misstatements, and exaggerations is because he’s adept at exploiting a universal human weakness – human beings are mentally limited in the number of objects or thoughts that they can visualize or hold as discrete thoughts in their minds at any one time. After an individual reaches his or her limit, the brain defaults to “many.” So, in most people’s minds, there’s no difference between a politician who makes six or seven misstatements, exaggerations, or lies and one who makes thousands. Unless a person makes an effort to see each lie in context – and most people don’t – their unconscious feeling is that both politicians are “equal” liars… which clearly isn’t the case.

Then add in the fact that people don’t like to think unfavorable thoughts about someone they want to like… and it’s so easy to dismiss an opponent to the habitual liar as just another politician.

But, in the end, anyone who can’t or won’t tell the difference between the occasional liar and the habitual liar, or who thinks that there’s no difference, is lying to themselves… again.

On Thursday, the Utah State Legislature sent a letter to President Trump, commending him for his actions, citing reducing in size [drastically] two national monuments, repealing “onerous” federal regulations [including one that required oil and gas wells to control methane emissions], and appointing conservative judges. The commendation was sent after the legislature failed to pass two measures aimed at Senator Mitt Romney for his vote to convict Trump. The first bill would have recalled Romney as Senator, despite the fact that state restrictions calling for removal of a Senator have been found unconstitutional, and the second would have censured Romney.

Obviously, the very Republican [more than two/thirds] legislature fears Trump’s possible reprisal against the state of Utah and is trying to defuse Trump’s anger… or at least redirect it only to Romney.

And just what messages does this “commendation” send?

First, the legislature fears what Trump might do, which is a real fear, since Trump, especially this past week, has been venting his wrath on all sorts of people for simply telling what they saw or heard. But to commend a President, especially when he’s punishing people essentially for not lying under oath to protect him, is hardly a principled stand.

Second, the Republican-dominated legislature wants to punish one of its own party for voting his conscience and not following the party line. In short, ethics be damned.

But I’m not surprised. For the nearly thirty years that we’ve lived here, the Utah Legislature has invariably followed a simple unspoken Utah philosophy – Our Way or the Highway. And this was just another example, following several other recent examples, such as trying to more than triple the sales tax on food to fund a decrease in the income taxes of the wealthy [against the wishes of the vast majority of the state] and trying to gut the Medicaid expansion required by a state referendum.

Eleven hundred former employees – Republican, Democrat, and unaffiliated – who served at the Department of Justice under both Republican and Democratic presidents have signed a petition demanding that Attorney General William Barr resign because he “openly and repeatedly flouted” the principle of equal justice under law. The petition follows the withdrawal of four federal prosecutors (one of whom also resigned from DOJ in protest) from the DOJ case against Roger Stone when Barr overruled their sentencing recommendation, after a series of tweets by Trump claiming that the sentence and even the conviction of Stone was “ridiculous.”

Stone was found guilty of lying to the House Intelligence Committee, obstructing its investigation of Russian meddling in U.S. elections, and of threatening witnesses.

Barr also directed the top federal prosecutor in St. Louis to “review” the case against Michael Flynn, Trump’s former national security advisor, who had already pled guilty to lying to the FBI.

Now… let’s see. The President who attempted to extort Ukraine to start an investigation of the son of a potential political rival has now pressured his attorney general to lighten sentences of people convicted of meddling in the election in which the President denies there was anything wrong. These events don’t even take into account the other four (if I’ve counted right) Trump campaign associates who were also charged and indicted.

Trump has also refused to commit to not pardoning Stone. So…regardless of Stone’s final sentence, it’s likely Stone will pardoned.

And the saddest part of all this is that most Americans seemingly could care less.

Very few seem to realize that this is the most wide-spread corruption in the federal government in at least the past century, and it’s largely disregarded under the idea that all politicians are crooks anyway.

They’re not… but even if they were, just ignoring it is only going to make it worse.

So maybe everyone really ought to listen to the 1100… if only for self-interest, because one only has to look at Mexico and much of Latin America to see what happens when corruption takes over the legal system, the police, and the courts.