Watching as America Goes Insane.
A wrecking ball Supreme Court, a charlatan king and a mob reveling in ignorance, misinformation, selfishness and meanness have declared independence from integrity, truth, decency and compassion as an unmoored America steams full speed directly into its darkest era.
I have long been irked by comparisons, of anything, to Nazi Germany. Not because I like Nazis, nor, certainly, because I wish to downplay their atrocities. My own father, in the Texas 36th Infantry Division, fought those bastards in Sicily and on the beach at Salerno and up through the muddy, freezing cold mountains of Italy to Monte Cassino and then to Rome before moving up through the Rhone Valley in France to pincer them between the Allied Forces coming east and south from Normandy. A whole lot of T-patchers never came home. And that’s just my immediate family’s experience with that regime; I’m sensitive that many families experienced far worse. No love lost for the Nazis, to say the least.
I believe it is important to keep the depravity of the Nazis at a bar all their own. To conflate other notorious movements with them is to somehow lower that bar. And to recognize the unique circumstances that conspired to allow it all to transpire. Post and pre world war Germany was a toxic mix of conditions that almost begged for the worst to happen. Nothing remotely like those conditions has existed since, perhaps largely because the rest of the world has not allowed them to.
I spent most of my own life firmly assuming that that kind of nonsense could never happen here. I resisted as long as I could, but things have changed over the past few years. I can now safely, sadly, say I was wrong. We have now come to the point where, with just a squint of the eye, too many similarities emerge, and a dark, looming potential comes crystal clear. The Trump Phenomenon has opened a Pandora’s Box and clouds of long pent-up poisons are billowing out.
What makes this particularly bizarre and absurd is that in modern times the United States has never come close to the national humiliation, the impossible reparations punishment, the beleaguered anxiety, the hopelessness, the hyper-inflation, the bread lines, the numerous threats of civil war, the serial coup attempts of the post-World War I years that the German people experienced. Somehow the nation survived all of that and, as the economy stabilized even found its way into a liberalized “Happy Twenties” for the second half of the decade. During this brief period jobs and hope returned, the bread lines significantly shortened, political turmoil subsided, religion’s hold was lessened, the arts flourished, science advanced, tolerance ruled, sexual mores relaxed, women pronounced their freedom with modern hairdos and dress, alternative lifestyles and non-dominant ethnicities felt able to fully participate in culture, “progress” ensued. In the cities, particularly Berlin, entertainment venues proliferated, cabarets and dance halls among the most popular. It was a mini golden era of peace, promise and happiness that lasted five years.
Then it all went to hell. Insanity would fill the void.
The first shock was the worldwide Great Depression, hardly Germany’s fault (in fact, you hardly need look further than Wall Street in New York City for that). Still deeply in debt, Germany reeled. Almost overnight, it was back to the bad old days. Political rogues pounced, most ominously, as usual, conservative opportunists. Sensing a pathway to power, they ginned up a backlash against the overreach, blasphemy and assault on “traditional values” of a variety of “others” they blamed for the predicament: the liberal establishment, women’s lib, gays and lesbians, communists, Jews, Gypsies, immigrants and foreigners. Everything was somebody else’s fault. It was all a raft of lies, but it worked (that’s why they are so popular). Over the next few years the fascists would consolidate power, using the democratic system itself to eventually take control, with the help of their goons. A little intimidation goes a long way. In January, 1933, Adolf Hitler was appointed Chancellor of Germany, but was still on a constitutional leash. No problem. By the end of the year, the Nazi Party would jigger several states of “emergency,” thwarting constitutional governance and suspending civil law and liberties. He insulted and castigated the old military regime as “losers,” and installed his own loyalists. Democracy at the federal and state levels swiftly collapsed, and the Nazis soon purged the government into complete obeyance to the “führer.” He transformed the courts to his liking. He sought retribution from his enemies. The republic was dead, and the “Third Reich” dictatorship had begun. Few in Germany would have believed this possible just four years previous.
For a while, the Nazi effort to Make Germany Great Again worked out marvelously for its instigators, as well as for those who thought of themselves as “pure” or “real” Germans. Hitler restored their pride, their prestige, their swagger. With massive federal spending, he got the economy humming. He instructed German engineers to astonish the world, and they did. More and more average Germans willingly, eagerly, accepted him. A tidal wave of popular momentum gathered for the führer. He made pacts with other dictators. He consolidated deals with the primary religious movements in Germany to go along with his agenda. With those supposed edifices of morality complicit, and with tens of millions of “average” Germans jazzed to jump on the Nazi bandwagon, the führer became one of the grandest cult figures in the history of the world. They didn’t just like his policies, they idolized him.
In a BBC essay attempting to explain Hitler’s charisma, it is noted that people “believed whatever he said.” He had the ability to “express in words what their subconscious mind wanted.” “His speeches are daydreams of this mass soul… they always begin with deep pessimism and end in overjoyed redemption and joy.” Often they can be refuted by facts and reason, but “they follow the far mightier logic of the subconscious, which no refutation can touch” (emphases, mine). His audience already believed in much that Hitler advocated. No less than Albert Speer explained, “he was expressing what the audience, by now transformed into a single mass, expected of him.”
The führer had a unique, almost comical, appearance, which far from being a negative to his believers, was part of the proof of what an all-original, non-politician, champion for their cause should look like. He claimed he was the “only one” who could return Germany to glory, and urged supporters to have “faith” in him. This very word was a portal to something far greater: a virtual deification, with many of the devoted of religious bent drawing comparisons between Hitler and Jesus. A German contemporary not enamored of the phenomenon described it as a “political religion following a mystical messiah.”
Hitler, the BBC essay concludes, parlayed economic catastrophe and political turmoil into his transformation to charismatic “savior” of the nation for millions of Germans. He would lead them into easy acceptance of, even willing participation in cruel, heinous, despicable criminality. The world was left to wonder: how could this happen in such a modern nation? How could intelligent, educated, advanced, normal people be so easily led so astray?
It is history, putrid, absurd, tragic, unforgivable history that no one should ever want to come within a million miles of chancing to repeat. Except, now we are doing just that, rapidly sweeping right into that pattern again.
Does any of this remind you of someone in the American political arena today?
Someone who is also unusual, almost comical, in appearance.
Someone who also speaks in streams of lies, which his followers receive as inarguable fact and will countenance no rebuttal or doubt.
Someone who also is taking advantage of economic and political turbulence to accrue power.
Someone who also does not believe rules or laws pertain to him.
Someone who also purports to be a “Christian nationalist.”
Someone who also has made pacts with Christian followers now willing to forsake the entire ethos and morality of Jesus in order to line up in rank loyalty with a false prophet they, like the Germans, absurdly equate as a “messiah.”
Someone who also transparently plays to his Aryan base.
Someone who also is riding a “backlash” against liberalism, socialism, wokeness, gays and lesbians, immigrants and foreigners, and others who in one form or another are not “pure” or “real” citizens.
Someone who also claims to be defending the “honor” and “traditions” of a nation.
Someone who also has used the democratic system to seize power, and then corrupt it.
Someone who also claims to be making the nation proud and “great again.”
Someone who is also willing to take away rights and freedom from others.
Someone who also has a track record of using, abusing, victimizing others and a penchant for retribution.
Someone who also paints a false, dark, dismal picture of the nation’s reality, pushing emotional buttons to rile up fear, anger and selfishness.
Someone who also mocks and demonizes others, particularly vulnerable groups, and even speaks of other humans as “vermin.”
Someone who also eggs on his more combative followers to engage in bullying, intimidation and more violent means of serving his interests.
Someone who has also repeatedly proven he has no intention of preserving decorum or decency.
Someone who has also already proven he will attempt to overthrow democracy.
Someone who also has publicly stated his return to power will feature revenge against those who he feels transgressed against him.
Someone who has also publicly stated he will purge the government, the courts, the military and law enforcement and replace them with his loyalists.
Someone who has also attempt to transform the courts to his liking.
Someone who has also publicly stated the need for a “new constitution.”
Someone whose political party is willing to allow him to do anything.
Someone who is also envious and enamored of dictators, and has flatly stated he would like to be one.
Any two or three of these would represent a clear and present danger to our democracy. All of them combined is a flashing red light with screaming siren attending!
Perhaps a single individual of this sort would go next to nowhere if both major American political parties do their duty and stand staunchly in defense of basic, common sensical, moral, American and Christian values. But all bets are off as to what might happen if and when he draws a significant following, much less one of the major political parties actually joining in the wrecking ball effort.
It should send shivers up the spine of every true American patriot that for the first time in American history, there is just such a someone who has already reached the White House once, and now wants back in. That, of course, is Donald Trump. And he has the entire Republican Party backing him up, now actually competing with him for which “culture warrior” can be the most caustic and outrageous. This did not begin with Trump. The blueprint on the Right had long been established by the likes of William F. Buckley Jr., Newt Gingrich, Rush Limbaugh, Alex Jones, Glenn Beck and many others. The more bombastic, the more you ka-ching! Trump just noticed the clear trend, and wanted to get in on the action.
That’s actually the really scary part. The conservative base was hoping for just such an individual to arrive on the scene. He is riding a wave that has been building up in America since the Civil War. It is so fundamentally important for Americans to understand, yet few actually do, that conservatives have never believed in true American values — liberty, equality, justice, pursuit of happiness for all. And now a teeming host of blood red conservatives, corporate and social, sense Trump is their ticket to at long last win the “culture war.” The social conservatives so upset by “what is happening on the border” and the “transgender agenda” (even though neither likely affects them in the least) think he’s an actual, real, hero who will somehow magically restore an America that never was. The corporate cons, who really run things, see the stars aligning with him as a “useful idiot, “ who will allow them to, at long last, dispense with this “We the People” crap and get back to the iron-fisted rule of the real elite and rightful owners of this nation: the richest individuals and largest corporations.
Trump may not be a Hitler, but somehow he has bumbled himself into a position of prestige and power, and he (and/or his confidantes) seem to know the Nazi blueprint. It’s when ordinary, and extraordinary people, join a movement that it becomes exceedingly dangerous. It wasn’t Hitler that built the Nazi culture and war machine and genocide, it was millions of “normal” workers and soldiers, plus professional lawyers, writers, artists, doctors, preachers, engineers, physicists, generals.
If Trump remains too clueless to know what to do after he has achieved his vengeance upon his adversaries, the “team” he is likely to enlist this time around will surely provide all the expert guidance they want to do maximum damage to our republic, just as Hitler and his brown-shirted brigands did to the Weimar. There should be no doubt that this will be a much darker gang coming in than the cast of his first term. In that chaotic experiment, Trump was surrounded by a haphazardly organized staff and circle of advisors hurriedly plucked from here and there among the Republican and business establishment that had quickly bent the knee. Only a minority were true ideologues. Almost all of these helpmates were happy to use Trump to assist their own economic and political agendas. Some members of his administration would admirably attempt to rein in Trump’s worst instincts. They came and went as he got angry or bored with them. He also was stalled by the federal government bureaucracy, the “deep state” conservatives call it, comprised of largely career, non-political (as far as that goes… certainly at least believing in government) civil servants who as an entity served as an effective brake on his whims. Slowly, he tried to winnow out the non-rock-solid-loyalists, but ran out of time.
He lost the election fair and square, but now is back with vengeance. Instead of bemused and bedazzled, he has the hang of it now and will strike fast and furious. In his four years of exile, his goons have taken over the party. The RINOs (meaning slightest Trump doubter) have been mostly purged. The Trump zombie army has infiltrated local and state organizations, legislatures, committees, school boards and other key positions. Trump organized little of this; he has no interest in actual work. The cultists are carrying the cult. He is just their avatar, who knows enough to keep telling them what they want to hear. If he wants to install his family members wherever, they are delighted to make it happen. They are totally insulated from believing anything that would impugn their hero. Trump’s legal adventures are less than a bump in the road; they are grand fund-raising and crowd jack-up opportunities. The day after becoming the first U.S. president to be convicted of a felony (actually 34 felonies), a flood donations poured in that would total over $100 million before the end of June. Some billionaire “patriot” donated $50 million, himself. Wonder what this guy is going to want for his dough. Guaranteed it won’t be something that serves “We the People.”
When Trump enters the White House again, he will have a fully Trumpified Republican Party behind him. With their help in Congress, plus that chunk of the judiciary he already has on his side, plus a crack gang of conservative gangsters in his administration, he will be poised to wreak his vengeance and vendettas on his haters and other sundry opponents, real or imagined, while allowing the religious, the corporate, the political pirates do what they will to the United States of America. It will be like vultures feeding on a still barely-living beast.
We are already know what it will look like. The wackos in the red states are showing all their cards. So is the corrupt Supreme Court. Ginning up culture wars, rigging elections, banning books, forcing Christianity upon the rest of us, shutting down liberal colleges and other institutions (here in Washington state, the Republican running for governor wants to convert the state’s leading liberal arts university into a housing project for the homeless), persecuting minorities, taking away rights, stripping away protections, deregulation of everything, giving the nation over to friendly corporations, making government so small it can be “drowned in a bathtub.” Yeah, that’s going to work out well for this nation. They intend to stack the government with conservatives from top to bottom, congenitally opposed to one stitch of “progress” while dedicated to forever conserving what conservatives always conserve: their own advantage, privilege and power.
Or worse. Once this conservative horde takes over, mob mentality could become its own monster, uncontainable, unstoppable.
The signs are already ominous. Voters are standing in line to hop on the bandwagon, to join the crowd, to take the pledge, to drink the Kool-Aid, to reap the great rewards of America the Great Again. Ostensible intelligent, sensible, normal people are ignoring what their eyes plainly show them to instead believe what they want to believe, suspending all critical thinking and every imaginable warning sign. And not just the usual white, rural, macho, Jesus freak, hillbilly suspects, but professionals, Blacks, Hispanics, young people, women, even, for God sakes, some LGBTQ people. All of them blithely ignoring Trump’s lies, his crimes, his crassness, his lewdness, his open arms to dictators, his tolerance (even tacit approval) of racism, sexism, antisemitism, homophobia, transphobia, xenophobia, bullying, etc.
What is in it for them? What do they really hope to gain? What is it about this awful “liberal” America that has so damaged them, that has them so miffed? Why are they so willing and eager to hand power to such a dilettante of discord and the minions of deconstruction that will attend his regime? Is their near-term itinerary really begging for a rights-cancelling fest, a brutal roundup of a million people to be deported (many of whom were small children when the came to this country or were even born here), a force-feeding of “Christian” propaganda to every student, a re-writing of history to suit them, a stripping away of government programs, maybe a civil war thrown in (for which some on the Right are itching)?
This is not post-WWI Germany. This is not the Great Depression. These people are not starving. They are not homeless. They are not standing in bread lines. Their (legitimate) rights are not being threatened. Most of these people own homes, they have jobs or are retired, they have cars, they eat out at restaurants (in fact, they eat more meat than the typical Nazi could dream of), they go on vacations, they have nice clothes, some of them have guns, some of them have a lot of guns. This is not a class war. This is not the long-expected Marxist revolt of the down-trodden.
No, this is a toxic movement of shared selfishness, across the usual demographics, a determination to “conserve” a “way of life” even if it means burning down their nation. They know, subconsciously at least, what they are doing is wrong, but it feels so good to belong to the gang, the mob, as they head off for the lynching.
Well, they say that some Jews, ignoring flashing warning signs in the early 1930s, actually voted for Hitler. It probably happened. People believe what they want to believe, and when they are believing the opposite of what facts support, such belief is merely in service of their own selfishness. The modern analog of those Nazi-voting Jews is many of these current Trump supporters. And there are legions of them. Trump already owns the first and second most vote totals for any Republican ever. He will surely own the top three totals by November. He went from 61 million in 2016, to 72 million in 2020. One hundred million voters for Trump is being bandied as their goal, all anxious to, a few months from now, send a wannabe dictator to tear it all down.
If he and they win, likely the vast majority of Trump supporters are going to be in for a nasty surprise when they see just who, really, is going to most benefit from his making America “great.” We’ll see how they rejoice when the conservative elite finally gets its chance to roll back all that “socialism,” and their Social Security and Medicare tickets turn to dust, and when all public assets are privatized and the cost of tap water soars a thousand percent and a toll booth appears on every road. And, perhaps worst of all, as the devastation of Global Warming is pumped up and accelerated by a suicidal, “in-your-face-liberals” orgy of oil and coal burning, more and more towns will be burned to the ground, carried away in floods, squashed by hurricanes and tornado swarms, dry up in epic droughts, become habitats for nasty tropical diseases or simply suffocate under heat never experienced before by Americans.
The Ideology of Selfishness, conservatism, has practiced manipulating people for thousands of years. It is rarely up to any good, and often sheer evil. America is not the only country in peril. As we look around the world, we are witnessing nothing less than a resurgent, backlashy conservative plague. It always seems like a great idea to its believers. And they may get away with it, for awhile. But history soon proves it to be… deep depravity, utter insanity.
You may chafe at that condemnation of conservatism as a whole. But if Trump has done anything positive, it is that he has pulled the veil away, revealing what American conservatives really believe in, and don’t. They are not coy about it any longer, their capacity for shame has dissipated, they no longer fear any repercussion, they are blunt and blatant about what they are determined to conserve. It’s nothing to do with the precepts of Jesus or founding ideals America. Indeed, quite the opposite. It’s all about themselves versus the “other.” It’s anti-Jesus and anti-American. Yet they want to believe they are the heroes fighting evil. And when people are that confused, evil is walking in lock-step.
The other thing Trump has achieved is expose every weakness of our democratic system, which relies on a modicum of truth and trust to function. Those are its beating heart and breathing lungs. It is no match for malevolent actors who would relish the opportunity to rip both from the body politic, so as to turn it into their zombie slave. Our institutions, including our two-party system, are supposed to protect us, but when one has been thoroughly corrupted, and has upwards of a hundred million voters, a collapse is imminent.
Trump may be no Hitler. But his mob is looking more and more fascist every day. Many within it are itching for violence. The new “normal” within the Republican Party is abhorrent. It is what they are bent on that is really scary. And what is that? Simply what conservatives always conserve: their own advantage, privilege and power. It’s a very enticing and powerful force… that can always and quickly get very, very ugly. Only through the Ideology of Selfishness is a Nazi Germany possible, and America is briskly skipping down that very path.
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No Hate.
No Violence.
All Life is Sacred.
The Universe is Magnificent & Beautiful.
Love is the Way.
Copyright 2024, Rusty Reid
