Doug's Darkworld

If your thinking doesn’t evolve as you age, you’re doing it wrong. Thinking and aging. Awhile ago I wrote a post titled ‘Trump Isn’t Hitler.’ In some ways I stand by what I wrote, historically speaking the comparison is still weak. Still, the mall shooting in El Paso forced me to re-evaluate my position. And I realised my position suffered from intellectualism and white privilege. Both are problems for me from time to time. I was concentrating too much on the details, and not enough on underlying themes. Overlooking the fact that since I am not being targeted, I would have a tendency to minimize what is going on. Academically and historically Trump and Hitler are far apart, socially and personally they are all too closely related.

There’s basically two ways there are alarming similarities between Trump and Hitler. The first is that both have a pool of fanatic supporters. Almost all politicians have die hard supporters, but a rare few are basically messiahs to their followers. Hitler was one, he has supporters to this day. Napoleon is another great example. Robert E. Lee. George Washington. And, oddly enough, Trump. I might not put Trump (OK, I would not) in the same league as these guys, he’s more a Mussolini type. And when one has a pool of fanatic supporters and a leader who encourages bad things, bad things happen.

And that’s what Trump is doing. He is “othering” people who don’t fit his definition of American. Dehumanising is another word. In the common speak, encouraging hatred against minorities. Hate speech. It’s clear again and again that only white people fit Trump’s definition of American. His refusal to condemn American Neo-Nazis. Comparing desperately poor people seeking shelter to an invading army. Referring to African Americans and Latinos as “the African Americans” and “the Latinos.” Trump calling for the death penalty in the Central Park Five injustice. His “Go back to where you came from” to four Americans. Trump is of course not the only person doing this, but his doing so from his bully pulpit (The Oval Office) is emboldening others to take up the cause. And an ugly cause it is, as the El Paso shooter showed us.

In other words, the parallels between claiming Latinos are invading the country as some sort of Democrat plot to take over the country and claiming Jews secretly sabotaged Germany in World War One are scary. And just today he said that Jews who vote for Democrats are disloyal. Got a lot of clapback from Jews. And his sentiments are creepily similar to Hitler’s stated belief that Jews were not loyal to the state.  Or we can just go with the facts, the science is absolutely clear, there’s been a huge uptick of hate crimes unequivocally linked to Trump’s rhetoric.

It’s really not debatable at this point that there some ugly parallels between Trump and Hitler. I’m not sure it really helps to make the comparison though. Some of his base like the comparison. And the rest are just going to regard it as name calling and claim it’s Liberal overreaction. Or worse. I no longer really care what most Trump supporters think, I’ve yet to meet a politically active one that could construct a logical argument. (To be fair, not something limited to Trump supporters in our burgeoning Age of Unreason.) I now have friends who have been hurt by the GOP’s policies under Trump, and who have been victimized by hate crimes since Trump got elected. Kinda makes it hard to be well disposed towards people who support Trump.

Trump isn’t a patriot, he doesn’t give a crap about anyone but his rich friends, and he is blatantly encouraging Americans to hate their non-white neighbors. While he and his rich friends rob working class Americans blind. Granted every president since Reagan has been a friend of the rich, but Trump comes with a giant slice of racism and hate as well. And I don’t think most of his followers will ever see it. Well, the blatantly racist ones do, but they like it. And many of the rest live in a fantasy world where feminism has gone too far and whites are a discriminated against minority. Hopefully working class Americans who don’t hate their neighbors will desert Trump in 2020 in enough numbers to kill his reelection chances.

If not, things are going to get a lot uglier. I hope I’m wrong. This was a very difficult post to write, which is why I am posting it late. I still like my Trump supporting friends and relatives, but they are taking America to a dark place. I see no greatness in that. Have a great weekend everyone.

Copyright © 2019 Doug Stych. All rights reserved.

(Image: Mussolini and Hitler. Credit: Unknown, public domain under US copyright law.)