Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels wrote The Communist Manifesto . . . the beginning of the whole ugly mess.

Vladimir Lenin wrote Shto Dyelat? (What Is To Be Done?) . . . He stole the title from a Nikolai Chernyshevsky novel, and the seed of an idea from Marx and Engels; but then he took it to a whole new level.

Adolf Hitler wrote Mein Kampf . . . the political dreams of a madman, begun while in prison in 1923 and brought to fulfillment as World War II and the Holocaust — the firs volume published 100 years ago today, on July 18, 1925.

Benito Mussolini wrote My Life . . . the autobiography of a fascist dictator who didn’t die soon enough.

Mao Zedong wrote The Little Red Book . . . a compilation of quotations from the Chinese communist strongman who launched the Cultural Revolution, and whose legacy, unfortunately, lives on.

Vladimir Putin wrote On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians . . . an essay, published in July 2021, that should have forewarned the world of what was to come just seven months later.

And Donald Trump wrote The Art of the Deal . . . oh, wait. No, he didn’t; Tony Schwartz did.

But Trump has written — mostly in misspelled, ungrammatical, incorrectly punctuated, and often unintelligible tweets — such gems as:

“The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive.” [From @realDonaldTrump, November 6, 2012.]

“I am much better looking than Kamala Harris.” [August 17, 2024.]

About Whoopi Goldberg: “She was so filthy, dirty, disgusting. She was so dirty. Every word was filthy, dirty. What a loser she is.” [October 29, 2024.]

About Rosie O’Donnell: “If I were running ‘The View,’ I’d fire Rosie O’Donnell. I mean, I’d look at her right in that fat, ugly face of hers, I’d say, ‘Rosie, you’re fired.’ [2006]

About the January 6, 2021, storming of the U.S. Capitol: “Nothing done wrong at all. There were no guns down there. We didn’t have guns. The others had guns, but we didn’t have guns. And when I say we, these are people that walked down — this was a tiny percentage of the overall which nobody sees and nobody, nobody shows. But that was a day of love.”

About immigration: “Why are we having all these people from shithole countries come here?” [January 2018]

*. *. *

Eight world leaders, past and present, without whom the world might have been a much safer place.

But at least the first seven were literate.

Just sayin’ . . .

Brendochka
7/18/25