he partisan uproar over the release of the infamous Nunes memo on FBI surveillance MUST be accompanied by the release of Donald Trump’s tax returns.

If Trump is to be consistent about openness in government and the public’s right to critical information, releasing his tax returns is the least he can do in conjunction with this attack on the FBI.

But of course that would be too much to ask of this White House, which has long since established itself as a fascist regime that hates democracy and is consistent only in its demand for more and more personal power and money for el jefe at the top.

A kleptocracy like this one has just one agenda item – more cash and crushing ability for the would-be dictator and his inner circle. Zero openness and access for the rest of us.

That’s why the fight over this memo has long since entered the realm of the surreal.

The Nunes memo has clearly been doctored since its original appearance before the House Intelligence Committee. There is nothing of real substance in it to implicate corruption at the FBI in terms of Trump’s connections to the Russian mafia.

But never mind. The document has a singular purpose, which is to give Donald Trump a pretext to fire Rod Rosenstein, the Deputy Attorney General, who is technically the boss of Robert Mueller, the guy handling the investigation into the Trumputin connections.

Trump was stopped from firing Mueller when he wanted to many months ago. So The Donald wants Rosenstein removed so he can install a flunky who’ll do the job.

In other words, Trump is so desperate to stop the investigation into his connections with the Russian mob that he’s more than happy to concoct this absurd scenario.

If it doesn’t work, by the way, and he finds himself unable to fire Mueller, let’s see how long Mueller actually lives. Putin is infamous for eliminating his opposition. Four bullets to the back while walking across a Moscow bridge were a recent prescription for an annoying anti-mob opponent. Is Mueller exempt from such a “remedy?” Don’t bet on it.

If there’s anything Putin and The Donald hate, it’s full disclosure, especially when it comes to the connections between the Trump Junta and the Russian mafia. As David Cay Johnston has reported in his superb book It’s Worse Than You Think and elsewhere, La Moscow Cosa Nostra has been funneling money to Trump Inc since the 1980s – since before the fall of the Soviet Union.

The bottom line is that Trump is a lousy businessman. All flash and no cash. He has repeatedly mishandled the fortune his KKK father left him and been continually in desperate need of hard money. Having burned everyone around him in a business mode, he has gone to the lender of last resort – a Russian underworld operation with an abiding interest in his media/political assets, rather than his financial ones.

As partial repayment, he’s killed the sanctions approved almost unanimously by Congress. Those, as you’ll recall, were aimed at discouraging the Russians from stealing our elections, like the one that put Trump in office.

Hmmmm. Is there a conflict of interest here?

The Donald has groveled at Putie’s feet at every opportunity. Shamelessly and openly. Is there any more pathetic moment in our recent history than Trump swooning before the shirtless KGB operative now running the world’s biggest underworld operation?

That’s what this memo has been about. The FBI has conducted legitimate surveillance on a key consigliere within the Trumputin apparatus. Donald’s minions have been desperate to discredit the FBI investigation as a partisan attack. In the warped minds of the Trump Clown Car, whatever they can do to make the hard information the FBI has gathered look like Hillary Clinton’s dirty underwear is what they’ll do. That means primal screams from Fox, Limbaugh, Hannity, the usual suspects.

What it proves beyond doubt is that Mueller is investigating is a real nest of corruption and even treason, that the Trump Republicans are terrified of what he is finding, and that they’ll do pretty much anything to stop him.

One of the truly remarkable aspects of this affair is the absolute fealty of the GOP apparatus to the Trump persona. During Watergate, a substantial wing of the Republican Party opted for integrity and the sanctity of the Constitution. It made all the difference.

Among today’s Republicans, not one senator or congressperson of any stature has meaningfully stood up to the rapid-fire coup that is demolishing the last pillars of American democracy. From Fox to Paul Ryan, from Newt Gingrich to Mitch McConnell, they are all in lockstep with the fascist takeover. In the face of the Trump idiocy, the GOP has gone goose-stepping in unison with the burning of the Reichstag.

Likewise the corporate Democrats. The insanely boring Shumer-Pelosi-Perez blood clot atop of the Democratic Party is Trump’s ultimate enabler. They are off-target, corrupt, and ineffectual. In the face of an obvious fascist coup, the alleged head of the alleged opposition party is not even full time. As Norman Solomon has pointed out, Tom Perez has a teaching job while allegedly leading what should be the ultimate bastion of the anti-Trump resistance in a time of our worst Constitutional crisis in decades.

Adam Schiff has done a boy scout’s job of dissecting this particular memo, and of legalistically dismantling what the Trumputin attack is about.

But stopping Trumputin will require the full force of the social democratic movement ignited by Bernie Sanders, riding the popular wave of BlackLivesMatter, Occupy, etc. Only a massive grassroots uprising can stop the fascist coup now taking place.

And those are precisely the forces the corporate Democrats most fear. To read Hillary Clinton’s horrendous What Happened is to understand the utter worthlessness of today’s Democratic Party, and to shudder in fear of how far Trumputin fascism might really go.

Will we get The Donald’s tax returns along with this Nunes memo? Hell no.

Will we get the firing of Rod Rosenstein and then Robert Mueller? Probably.

Will we get the kind of leadership from the Democratic Party required to protect our nation from this all-out fascist coup?

Hell No.

Is it time for the social democrat, true democracy grassroots to rise up to protect our common humanity and our Mother Earth?

We have no other choice. And the clock is ticking.