Kind of along screed but I felt the need too write it. Some of it was inspired by something else I read today and I built around it.
I didn’t like Biden and I didn’t support many of the things he did but not all. I'm still angry at the DNC for tanking Bernie Sanders's campaign twice. He brought republicans and democrats together and that's why they hated him so much. Some of Biden's policies were terrible like hos unhinge support for Israel even when the world could see a genocide taking place right before our eyes. However, many of his policies were good and they worked. It's easy to forget and it seems like many have forgotten just what bad shape this country was in when Trump left office last time he pretended to be president. Grocery store shelves had huge gaps in them. Thousands of ships were stranded at our ports and ports all over the world, full of goods and the paperwork was scattered everywhere. Supply chains were a mess and our economy was in the gutter. Our public schools were closed. Hundreds of thousands of jobs had been lost and never to return due to changes in technology and business closings. This is what lead to the inflation everyone felt. there was a time lag between the shock of the pandemic and the inflation we all had to deal with and it showed up after Trump left office allowing him to take no responsibility for it like the car accident he created in his rear view mirror.
I criticized Joe Biden and the DNC repeatedly but I was never afraid to do it openly and honestly. Can you say the same now about Trump? The pandemic was still killing thousands of people each week when Trump left office. Things were really bleak back then. Still, I probably wrote to the Biden Whitehouse every week about something but it wasn't all negative or critical either. Credit where credit is due in my book.
I’ve been reading and listening to those in the know about Hitlers rise to power, the Nazi machine, and all their horrendous actions since I was very young. My dad, uncles and most of the men I knew growing up around were WWII vets. My dad even had a business growing up that sold war surplus. I grew up surrounded by all the radios, switches, power supplies and dials you see in the old WWII movies. We even sold parts from B-17 bombers and some German equipment too.
There are many who know more than I about Nazi Germany, but I know more than most.
I can tell you with certainty that nothing about Biden, in personality or in his actions, is in any way similar in any form to Hitler and his Nazi thugs. Joe Biden was not on a mission to tear it all down and worked within the bounds of law and regular order to do the things he did and he left our institutions intact when he left office. We might complain about our institutions and how they work but it is up to us to engage with them and make them into what we want and that work takes time and we all have to do the work together. This time around as nay as 90 million people who could have voted didn't show up to vote or even register to vote. Not only are we not all rowing in the direction of peace and prosperity for all but way too many of us aren't rowing at all!
Trump, and those he has surrounded himself with are, conversely, exactly like Hitler and the members of his Nazi party. If you do a little reading about "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich" you will see this clearly. Each move he has made through the election cycle, and since his election, the double speak, propaganda and easily disproven lies resemble very closely Hitler's in form and function, and the end goal is the same: absolute power. Power for power's sake. Not power as a means to and end but power being the end and that's what makes these times so dangerous. There is always more power to be gained and more terrible things you can do to get it including genocide.
Trump's red hats are very much like Hitler's brown shirts in character and action. Both despots needed their adoring followers to hero worship them. And like Hitler, Trump will discard his red hats as swiftly as Hitler discarded his brown shirts when they have outlived their usefulness. He does it with everyone in the end. This is his pattern. No one is immune to his abuse. You may think you're on his "A" list today but no one and no group stays there for long.
It is very easy to look at the end of Hitler's cancerous reign and the genocide that sprung from it and assume that it ended with his death. The sentiment that created those horrific events and allowed his ideas to grow in the hearts and minds of people still exist because, sadly, I believe they are part of human nature. It is only through the force of will that our base animal instincts are kept in check. Some use religion. Others employ different methods.
Those who see no similarity with Trump (yet) are being lead down a trail as old as history itself. All of us now that road. It's a very familiar place road and destination called failure. I think familiarity is why so many of us choose it so often and don't even know it. Success on the other hand can bring uncertainty, requires new behaviors and development of new talents and new territory we've never seen before and being a bunch if scared little animals most prefer the convenient lie over the anything that will create uncertainty and doubt.
Once you know the long process of propaganda/verbal manipulation, intimidation and coercion and the series of steady incremental actions Hitler took before the final solution (it’s called final because it wasn’t the first idea or action), and compare them to Trump, then it is painfully obvious what's going on.
And like Hitler, it’s only after you’ve been discarded, and your world is falling down in ruins around you, that you’ll understand that you were duped.
Those of us who oppose Trump are not the enemy. We are the friends that you don’t yet know you need yet.