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Now you know what you would have done
I give up. I've struggled with this entry for too long. It has deep threads that go into every area of my life and many of my beliefs. Like any such thing, I find I learn more every time I open it up. I am also reminded that I believe incomplete and contradictory things. Godel would be proud, I hope. I keep trying to say things and failing and deleting and rewriting and reading things written by people who've said this or that bit of it better than I and then more awful racist hateful shit emits from Trump's mouth and I'm struck dumb again.
A friend wrote this not long ago: I didn't plan to say anything, but it's hard not to, isn't it?
If you are a person of conscience, a person of moral character, yes, it is very hard not to. At least some of you are old enough to remember as deeply and painfully as I do why we wore "Silence = Death" tee shirts. To do nothing, to say nothing, has ceased to be a valid option. Team Sideline no longer plays in this league. There are now two very clearly defined sides: this side and "fucking Nazis." Our president and his supporters from Putin and David Duke on down are simply wrong to equate them in any way. Voices from across the country, from across the political spectrum, have stated this eloquently, unequivocally, and forcefully. If you are so committed to your support of Trump, or your dislike of other politicians, that you are willing to ignore, excuse, or condone sympathy with Nazis and traitors then you and I likely have nothing further to discuss.
If you ever wondered what you would have done in Germany in 1935, look around. Now you know what you would have done - what you're doing right now, today.
A friend wrote this not long ago: I didn't plan to say anything, but it's hard not to, isn't it?
If you are a person of conscience, a person of moral character, yes, it is very hard not to. At least some of you are old enough to remember as deeply and painfully as I do why we wore "Silence = Death" tee shirts. To do nothing, to say nothing, has ceased to be a valid option. Team Sideline no longer plays in this league. There are now two very clearly defined sides: this side and "fucking Nazis." Our president and his supporters from Putin and David Duke on down are simply wrong to equate them in any way. Voices from across the country, from across the political spectrum, have stated this eloquently, unequivocally, and forcefully. If you are so committed to your support of Trump, or your dislike of other politicians, that you are willing to ignore, excuse, or condone sympathy with Nazis and traitors then you and I likely have nothing further to discuss.
If you ever wondered what you would have done in Germany in 1935, look around. Now you know what you would have done - what you're doing right now, today.
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Here are some of the ways Germany changed between 1925 and 1935:
By 1930, Hitler's private police forces (the SA and the SS) outnumbered the German army. In 1932, when Hitler ran against Hindenburg, 400,000 SA thugs invaded Berlin on the night before the election, and were fully prepared to overthrow the Republic if Hitler had won.
By early 1933, Hindenburg had suspended the Constitution and handed the entire government over to Hitler, who then ruled with no opposition. The rights to free speech, assembly, association, communication, etc etc were all explicitly abolished by Hindenburg's order, which also gave Hitler's government the right to arrest and murder its political opponents. In the Reichstag elections that followed, only the Nazis were allowed to campaign; supporting another party, at least in Berlin, meant receiving (at least) a good beating from the SA. After the elections, the Reichstag ceded all of its power to Hitler and his cabinet. (It's still early 1933 now.) To assure the passage of that legislation, several dozen Reichstag members were rounded up and imprisoned. By March, the individual state governments were dissolved. The non-Nazi parties and the trade unions all had their buildings and other property confiscated. From then on, all wages were set by the government, and there was an official boycott of all Jewish shops. By now, there was no political opposition and no opposition press. All newspapers, films, radio and art exhibitions were controlled by the Nazis and co-opted for propaganda.
By 1935, the concentration camps were underway, Jews had been deprived of citizenzhip, the Christian churches had been looted, government-sponsored bookburnings were a major thing, the public schools offered instruction only in martial training and "racial sciences" with *Mein Kampf* and related documents as the only allowable reading matter, eighteen year olds were subjected to compulsory labor service. The government appoiinted all teachers and all school administrators, who were repeatedly subjected to loyalty tests.
By 1935, this blog post would have landed you in a concentration camp..
Does that really sound to you like Trump's America?
Is it an America into which Trump's (or Sanders's) America could plausibly devolve? Absolutely. Color me petrified. But it's not where we are, and to suggest that it is strikes me as plain crazy.
Edited to add: PS. The fact that it is now more like 1925 than like 1935 means, among other things, that it's still pretty safe to resist --- and therefore makes non-resistance all the harder to justify.
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In the present case, I think that likening the US today to Germany in 1935 is about as ridiculous thing as I've ever heard, and I'm sure I'd have said so no matter who I'd heard it from. And I say that as one who is, I'm near sure, far far more concerned than the average American about the fragility of our freedom, prosperity and security in the age of Donald Trump. Given the content of your post, I can't imagine that I'd have said anything different, or said it any differently, no matter who I was responding to. So once again, there was nothing personal here.
As far as there being any sort of pattern, again I'm not aware of one. Maybe if I were pointed to a whole lot of examples, I'd suddenly recognize some personal agenda I was, until now, wholly unaware of. But I doubt that very much. I think it's more likely that you've recently said several things I very much disagreed with.
For the record, you once (and only once, as far as I remember) said something in the comments on my blog that I thought was so gratuitously insulting and indefensible that I started moderating your posts. But with that one exception, I've always been glad for your comments. More than once, you've given me new and valuable ways to see things. So overall I think of you as someone who is well worth paying attention to. Also, for what it's worth, I happen to like you.
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(FWIW, I agree that this is more like 1925. And what I would be doing, apparently, is flinching at Hitler's apparent 30 seconds of staring into the partially eclipsed sun, and thinking "WHY" over and over again.)
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