From his first campaign I’ve been bringing up the comparisons with Hitler and Germany every chance I get. And this horrid sequel has been following the playbook chapter and verse. It’s been lonely shouting into the wind.
A social-costing mission, the other night some old friends gave me cold comfort by observing, “Back then, we dismissed you when you were saying he wouldn’t go and would try to stay power [July 2020 when he declared the election was rigged-if he lost]. We both thought you had gone too far. But look at where we are, you were right!”
Nodding sadly and smiling darkly, I just shared I really didn’t like where I see we are heading next. Hitler came back even more destructive after a loss as well, using the same deranged but grossly effective furor-spawning tactics we are seeing spewing now.
Nazi Germany wasn’t just one person acting badly, and it didn’t only happen to history books. It was a result of enough real people, just like us, being duped by a megalomaniac, and too many other real people, just like us, sitting passively or making selfish choices letting it all happen.
And remember, if folks are pinning their hopes on trials, or elections, or some other comeuppance, in the end, despite knowing what he was doing, but moving far too slowly, they didn’t “get Hitler” when he could have been stopped and before it was too late.
Nor did they even get him in the end. With justice closing in, he just committed suicide with his own beauty of a wife (we will never know if that was really her choice) his hand on his own tiller to the end.
Will we actually be able to stop a new installment of human horror from happening again? Considering the men that murdered George Floyd five months after January 6th are already two years into their sentences and he hasn’t even gone to trial yet, it sure doesn’t look like it.
But will it make any difference?
From his first campaign I’ve been bringing up the comparisons with Hitler and Germany every chance I get. And this horrid sequel has been following the playbook chapter and verse. It’s been lonely shouting into the wind.
A social-costing mission, the other night some old friends gave me cold comfort by observing, “Back then, we dismissed you when you were saying he wouldn’t go and would try to stay power [July 2020 when he declared the election was rigged-if he lost]. We both thought you had gone too far. But look at where we are, you were right!”
Nodding sadly and smiling darkly, I just shared I really didn’t like where I see we are heading next. Hitler came back even more destructive after a loss as well, using the same deranged but grossly effective furor-spawning tactics we are seeing spewing now.
Nazi Germany wasn’t just one person acting badly, and it didn’t only happen to history books. It was a result of enough real people, just like us, being duped by a megalomaniac, and too many other real people, just like us, sitting passively or making selfish choices letting it all happen.
And remember, if folks are pinning their hopes on trials, or elections, or some other comeuppance, in the end, despite knowing what he was doing, but moving far too slowly, they didn’t “get Hitler” when he could have been stopped and before it was too late.
Nor did they even get him in the end. With justice closing in, he just committed suicide with his own beauty of a wife (we will never know if that was really her choice) his hand on his own tiller to the end.
Will we actually be able to stop a new installment of human horror from happening again? Considering the men that murdered George Floyd five months after January 6th are already two years into their sentences and he hasn’t even gone to trial yet, it sure doesn’t look like it.