18 July—Today marks the centennial of the publication of “Mein Kampf.” The author of record, of course, was Adolf Hitler, but since he was a god-awful writer (but a pretty good painter) it’s likely that others—like noted parachutist Rudolf Hess, who also was Hitler’s typist and Stellvertreter des Führers (Deputy Führer), and Max Amann, who was the Nazi Party’s publisher—did rather more than just editing and proofreading. The book was a terrible read but it was a best-seller anyway and made Hitler, who held the copyright all by himself, lots and lots of Geld (money).

“The Art of the Deal,” also a money-making best-seller, was published some 62 years later, on 1 November 1987. The name boldly over the title on the jacket is Trump, but it’s credited on the bottom to Donald J. Trump with Tony Schwartz. According to Schwartz in 2016, Trump didn’t actually write any of the book but merely redacted “a few critical mentions of business colleagues” before publication. In all events, Schwartz owns the copyright jointly with Trump and received half the advance and royalties from Random House.

Presumably the Schwartz-Trump book is a better read than the Amann-Hess-Hitler book because Tony Schwartz is a good financial writer, but we couldn’t comment because we haven’t read it. (Don’t waste you time with “Mein Kampf,” by the way. We did.) Nor indeed could we comment on the Trump TV show that’s touted on some iterations of the book’s jacket even though it was no longer on the air at the time of publication because we know absolutely nothing about it.

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Yesterday’s “Mallard Fillmore” comic reads: “In response to recent U.S. military action, Iranian hackers briefly took down Trump’s Truth Social platform . . . causing disruption and inconvenience to literally tens of active users.”

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The latest news about the Trump dictatorship’s execrable populist xenophobic so-called third-country deportations is that five victims have been shipped off to Eswatini. Eswatini? When we read that, we naturally reckoned that Trump, real estate con man—sorry, make that mogul—that he is, had created a steerage-class resort-country expressly as a destination for his exiles (including but not limited to alleged gang members, trumped-up criminals, and critics) who eventually are bound to number in the millions.

But we must abjectly apologize to Eswatini. Because we were surprised—positively gobsmacked, in fact—to discover that Eswatini is in actual fact a very very very little landlocked country in Southern Africa, with South Africa (where Trump’s invited Afrikaner refugees come from) on three sides and Mozambique on one. And it’s been an independent nation—Umbuso weSwatini (the Kingdom of Eswatini)—and a member of the United Nations since the United Kingdom granted it independence in 1968. We were living in the UK at the time and didn’t even know it. Our bad.

Like the United States, Eswatini is an absolute monarchy with a bicameral legislature of record, for all it’s worth. While Eswatini is the last absolutel monarchy in Africa, the United States is the resurrection of absolute monarchy in North America.

Anyway, in our unworthy defense, Eswatini became Eswatini only in 2018, when, during the celebration of its 50^th year of independence—and the king’s coincidental 50^th birthday, as it happened—it changed its name from Swaziland, which of course everybody knew. And that was done, according to informed sources, not only to reflect the country’s original Swazi name, but also to avoid confusion with Switzerland.

Makes perfect sense. But by the time Swaziland became Eswatini Switzerland didn’t have truly anonymous numbered bank accounts. So who cared?