Yes it's been a long time. A long river cruise across Europe, and then intense work on a demanding part in a local community theater play. A long visit by our son, daughter and law and granddaughter, joined often by our other son who lives in town - really wonderful to have everyone together.
But those are just excuses. It's been a long time because I gave up again, just gave in to horror and despair with no hope - not a single spark - on the horizon. As the catchphrase of the September 1 protests notes: "No one is coming to save us." Unfortunately, we ourselves have no tools whatsoever to even begin making things right.
I'm so tired of being an American. There's so much to cope with, to endure, and there's no end in sight.
What it took was a different perspective, which has to do with that river cruise noted above.
We traveled by river through the heart of Europe, or one of the hearts of Europe - in our case, mostly through Germany except at the beginning and end. I was looking forward to a journey through medieval Europe, which is what I got. But I also got another journey I wasn't expecting - a journey through the horror and devastation of World War II and the Nazi atrocities that we are so afraid of seeing again.
As I note in the trip journal, the German people have acknowledged their past, set themselves against the Nazi legacy and honored those who were victimized by the horror of the Holocaust: "Over and over we are reminded by guides of the atrocities of the Nazis and the horror felt by the German people today. Their response... is almost always measured, solemn, authentic and intense. They do not shy away from their history; they acknowledge it head-on and in doing so, set the stage for a better future."
While preparing the post on our stop in Nuremburg the other day, I had reason to do some research on the Nuremburg Rallies, which you can read about in the post. I was actually looking for a photo of the speaker's platform used at the rallies, that so many of us have seen (perhaps not knowing exactly where it was) in WWII documentaries, many of which used footage from Hitler's documentarian, Leni Riefenstahl.
I looked through those pictures, of the rallies, the massed troops, the hundreds of thousands of Germans, the huge swastika, and the man at the center of it all. I recently finished an online course - taught and recorded in 2008 - about modern Europe, and one of the lectures focused on describing Adolph Hitler and the fascists. It was hard to avoid the parallels; in fact, it was chilling. This lecture was a low point for me, reinforcing the despair and hopelessness that had been consuming me - with its ups and downs - since November.
But as I looked at the pictures of the rallies, and of Hitler, it struck me that we - the US in this moment - are not in a position to repeat the exceptional cruelty and destruction of 1930s and 40s in Europe under the Nazis. We are, in fact, a pale shadow of the Third Reich.
Although the similarities between Hitler and Trump are chilling, the stark differences are, I am beginning to believe, more significant. Although both came to power by creating widespread fear and warping a democratic infrastructure, Hitler backed all that up with brutal violence, while Trump ranted at rallies (much smaller than Nuremberg) without making any of the fears tangible. Although both came to power primarily by appealing directly to a disaffected populace, Hitler's message was much truer than Trump's: Germany had been demolished by the Allies, while Trump's message is to people whose disaffection has been carefully constructed over time, and is not justified. Although each controlled a great war machine, none of Trump's goals can be accomplished by going to war with another country, while Hitler's core message was the vision of a Third Reich which stretched from France and England to Russia (Vladimir Putin is, at present, much more like Hitler on this point than is Trump). Although both have created secret police to weed out undesirables, the SS acted quickly and ruthlessly, while ICE is harassed daily by significant resistance and Trump does not seem to know what to do about it. And, of course, while Hitler may have had a personality disorder - which may have actually forwarded his pursuit of the Third Reich vision - Trump is uninterested in policy or vision, probably suffering from dementia, widely ignorant, and clearly - demonstrably - descending into babble, narcissism, randomness, and dissociation, as well as increasingly becoming distanced from reality.
If the Emperor has no clothes, Hitler was clothed and armed and put words into actions. Trump is naked, and it is getting harder and harder to ignore that every day.
So the upshot of all this is that, after steeping myself in Nazi politics, I've realized that it's not likely to happen here. Trump is no Hitler. And, to be fair, the US is no 1930s Germany: here, we have a governing structure that has worked, essentially unchanged, for almost a quarter of a millennium. And, ironically, Trump depends on the very democratic structure that he is trying to destroy (that's why he's trying to destroy it). Court decisions still matter. He is only a handful of Congressional seats away from a successful impeachment and, unlike Hitler when his aides exploded a bomb meant to kill him, Trump will have to go if impeached, and it would all be over. And, unlike 1930's Germany, there is a substantial and widespread opposition movement which - and this is important - has not been suppressed. There will be no American Tiananmen Square.
So what I have realized, I guess, is that the Emperor really does not have any clothes. He is the Emperor, which means that there's a system keeping him in charge. But the system has its limits, and he's approaching those limits. We'll see what that means.
Whatever the monster is, the monster is insane and getting careless.
That means it's out of control, and that's our only hope.
John Lennon. 1971
