The first guy waited until he became Chancellor of Germany and used the Reichstag fire as a pretext to start rounding up enemies and building concentration camps. A front-page story in the New York Times this morning tells us that our own Chancellor-in-Waiting, Donald J.
I have read several articles from other reporters about this issue and trmp’s speech. No one put any of it together as you did. I shared the entire article on Facebook because everyone needs to see it. The people who still support him need to read it, even if they don’t get it the first time. Trmp is now as crazy as a shithouse rat in a trailer park meth lab. He needs to be locked up, but no one in his family will do that except for Mary his niece.
Thank you for your accuracy and factual analysis, Lucian. People have to stop pussyfooting around this evil maniac. Now.
At least you're saying IF, not WHEN. Your strangely complicit and/ or timid media constantly imply that Trump WILL win, talk about self fulfilling prophecies which conform to their chillingly misleading "opinion polls" where they seemingly, blatantly skew their findings by polling some 1,500 agreeable people in their very own personal Augean stable, AKA focus groups, about what they agree with.
1) not to take Trump’s words and “plans” at face value; and
2) to assume there is anything about our history, values, and institutions that ensures “it can’t happen here.”
That, in a nutshell, is what the 2024 election is about, and the bad guys (within and without) are already hard at work.
They are playing asymmetrically, using our laws and norms when it helps…violating them wantonly when it doesn’t; repeating outageous lies enough that they become credible narratives to the gullible. And they are working to undermine governance, foment division, invite instability and foster crisis that can give them momentum. All in plain daylight.
As we contest that pathway to dystopia, and we must, our agency and fortitude now needs to be the stronger.
Suggested reading: "War for Eternity: Inside Bannon's Far Right Circle of Power Brokers." Or just use TRESemme TRES Flawless Curls Extra Holds Mousse. Either one will curl your hair.
He was smart at one time. He did an MA in foreign service at Georgetown and an MBA at Harvard and graduated with honors. From the looks of him he is a serious alcoholic, which does a real number on brain cells. Now he is going for power as easily as possible with trmp as his Judas goat. No one at this point knows who is using who. The entire operation is Paranoia Incorporated.
"No one at this point knows who is using who." This is so true, and so concisely put! It probably doesn't help that I'm rereading DARK MONEY at the moment. Between the Bannons, the Millers, the Flynns, and the militias, I don't think the billionaires know quite what they're dealing with, and I don't think Trump does either.
P.S. I've had the same impression of Bannon. Photoshop him onto any skid row anywhere and he would look right at home.
Bannon CLAIMS that he's a teetotaler, which suggests to me that he's either lying or he's in recovery. he is certainly a guy who seems to go out of his way to look like a guy feverish with the Irish Virus.
lest I give offense with that last sentence, I learned it from Irish guys in AA meetings.
ALL of it does. and, proud Agent of Chaos that he is, he's like the proverbial pig in shit (an expression especially relevant to the unwashed slob with the giant Milk Dud on his temple).
tRump is a useful idiot, even more so today than in 2016 and 2020. As he descends into dementia, his “handlers” will be making all of the policies and decisions, and they are very, very dangerous.
As a nation of immigrants, where immigrants grew this country, tRump takes a distinctively UN-American stand. . . No surprise re: the criminal P1135809
yeah, but they're the sort of white, European, racism-ready immigrants TFF WANTS. remember when he asked about why we couldn't get all our immigrants from Scandinavia?
it's not immigrants, in general, he doesn't want, it's the "wrong kind."
which explains why they won't talk to him. he's from Santa Monica, which has a notably large, active group of Jewish people (an old girlfriend joined their number after converting about twenty years ago, and she reported to me regularly). Miller was a pathetic, obviously unpopular kid who achieved some notoriety when he made a speech about why students shouldn't have to pick up things like gum wrappers when there were people PAID to do it. it worked for him in HS, so he kept at it (the big fish, small pond thing) and got very, very lucky at exactly the time his hair decided that his head was no longer a going concern.
that's my story and I'm sticking with it.
I'm admittedly interested in the kind of actual woman who'd wanna marry the bald little piece of stinking effluvia.
I thought the one who got killed with him was the Jewish one. I think he had more than one. I checked and yes, there were at least two. the one who died with him was Clara Petacci. Margherita Sarfatti was the one who helped him craft his particular variety of Fascism.
I guess he just dug Jewish chicks.
as much as I've come to hate the internet, Google can be very handy.
in my zeal to comment, I've neglected to thank Lucian for a SPLENDID piece of work.
Clara Petacci was his wife. Italian women keep their last names when they get married. Sarfatti was incredibly helpful to Il Duce. She gave him money, got supporters for him (and there were many Jewish Fascists before Mussolini aligned with Hitler) and almost paid with her life.
see my comment elsewhere about the Jewish fans of Hitler with whom I grew up...
as for thinking he's immune, you're seeking something rational to explain something wildly irrational. the fact is, there ARE "self-hating Jews." my own feeling is that a more general self-hatred comes first and then spreads to cover more specific hatreds until there's nothing BUT hate.
I admit it's as counterintuitive as anything gets. but that doesn't mean it's as uncommon as it sounds.
This is the most chilling and frightening description of what we would face with a Trump presidency and the evil, and morally corrupt, actions of henchmen like Stephen Miller. What do we do? We have to mobiilze people to oppose this and to vote against this evil potential future. I am beginning to lose faith in this thing we call the American experiment. What are people willing to do to destroy this? So sad and scary.
Nov 13, 2023·edited Nov 13, 2023Liked by Lucian K. Truscott IV
I am going to bring up something else I have noticed happening with alarming frequency and it is the total disregard for the results of elections when they go against the far right agenda of the Putinistas. We here in Ohio resoundingly approved our Issue 1 only to have our super-majority in the Ohio legislature say the very next day that they are going to try to rescind the voters decision and ignore the results in the interim.I am thinking that We the People here in Ohio may need to look into a legal way to fight this flagrant disregard for the results of a resounding “Yes” from the voices of the people. Perhaps a class action suit is warranted.
While you’re at it, a class action suit should be filed re: the railway deregulation that resulted in your recent, environmental catastrophe. . . And those kids who were abuse while Gym Jordan was in charge--that suit should be revisited.
Stephen Miller was a child with an unbridled conduct disorder, paranoid thinking and fits of grandiose ideology that blossomed into the anti-social monster that he is today. I suspect that his family is horrified by who he rapidly became. This kind of person needed constant supervision, very clear and strong boundaries and consequences as a child and teenager. Now, he is a fully formed sadist with no redeemable features. Obviously, he’s only gotten encouragement from his orange Hitler and will contentedly create more diseased ideas if given the opportunity. I’m surprised by how long my list is of people that I can’t stand and it only grows by the day.
the unbridled conduct disorder makes perfect sense, along with the family being well-to-do enough to keep him out of Special Ed (the parents who claim "outside help" is always on the way). the "grandiose ideology we already know about.
I'd give good odds there was Ayn Rand as an imaginary playmate of some kind.
it's obvious that falling in with TFF was one of those perfect cute meetings you only find in places like "The Fountainhead." and the thing is, Miller HAS in fact done very well as a result of that meeting, and will continue to do so. if all else fails, he'll become a "celebrity" right-wing late night radio scumbag.
Nov 13, 2023·edited Nov 13, 2023Liked by Lucian K. Truscott IV
Thank-you,Lucien, for your wise words (I don’t know you personally but feel like I can address you on a first name basis).I have no doubt that should TFG become POTUS again that I and many, many others will be on his revenge list.I did notice yesterday in one NYT article whose author I can’t recall ,discusses the horrific plan for our country that Trump has made no secret of dispensing should he win again.I am going to quote some poignant words from Heather Digby Parton that pretty much says it all in regards to our msm elevating Trump to the presidency “The press needs to keep in mind that this relentless recitation of polling numbers showing Trump slightly ahead a year out is setting in stone a narrative that will serve Trump’s purposes very well if he loses.He won’t say the polls are wrong.He’ll say that they prove the election was rigged.”She is right on the money and our media need to heed this and start discussing the absolutely vile and fascistic plan that Trump and company have in place should they win in 2024.
The upcoming election is truly a fight for democracy. The choice could not be clearer. I thought the American version of House of Cards became utterly ridiculous at the end. I had no idea that Trump viewed it as a blueprint.
I think Joe Biden is a wonderful president who deserves a second term. But if he needs to make way and step aside to save America if that's what it takes to stop Trump, I’m sure he'll do it to prevent the nightmare that Trump has promised should he ever become President again.
The Republicans in the Senate committed the greatest act of political malpractice in this country's history when they failed to convict Trump at the second impeachment trial and had the chance to bar him from ever holding office again. Now look where we are.
I visited Dachau with my college chorus on a singing tour of Europe in the late 1970s. Most of the barracks are gone, but there is a museum that uses photographs, text, and artifacts to document in soul-shatteringly explicit detail just what the Nazis did to the mostly Jewish abductees who arrived by train at Dachau. General Omar Bradley was adamant that everything be documented when the camps were liberated, to ensure that no one could deny the horrors the Nazis had inflicted on six million people.
One of the places we forced ourselves to visit were the crematory ovens. And there, we saw an example of American obliviousness and crass insensitivity that still flabbergasts me. As we came into the little courtyard in front of the ovens, there was a young American couple with their toddler. They had just lifted the toddler up and seated her in the opening of one of the ovens. They proceeded to take her picture there while we looked on, dumbfounded. When we pointed out that these were the ovens where the bodies of countless murdered Jews had been cremated, the wife snapped, "Mind your own business," and they walked off in a huff with their child.
It's the ugliest act of casual amorality I have ever personally witnessed. (And yes, I lead a sheltered life.)
The story of the American couple and their toddler at Dachau is horrifying but not surprising. There are entirely too many people like them in this country - ignorant, stupid, and vicious, blind to common decency, incapable of empathy, and easy targets for the new Nazis in the US. They will be the destruction of democracy and they'll laugh while it's happening. I am unfortunately too old and too poor to escape this hellhole, so I guess I'll just have to stay and fight as best I can and hope I don't end up in an American version of Dachau.
We still have the power to prevent this horror. It’s my favorite four-letter word:
VOTE. Be one of the activists who write voter postcards and letters, join phonebanks to call voters, donate strategically, or even canvass door to door. Remember: the Republicans and their policies are NOT popular with the majority. They have tried to rig elections with gerrymandering and voter purges, but Democrats are still defeating Republicans. We can do this! Don’t give up!
I know what has to be done and I'm doing it, but I'm really tired. I'm 73 now and have been fighting for social justice since I was fifteen. I didn't think that things would ever be this bad, and I certainly didn't think that I would still be battling at my age. Forgot that "Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty". And with respect to Trump, as Mel Brooks said, "That's our Hitler!".
Linda! Drink the refreshing beverage of your choice. I've got ten years on you, and thankfully can still down a Pepsi with real sugar, or Coke bottled in Mexico (same deal: no high fructose corn syrup) and keep on plugging away.
Thank you! Think I'll have a glass of a good red wine and a little toke of something fragrant and contemplate raising some hell. If you have 10 years on me and are still kicking then I am embarrassed about complaining. It's just that I get weary, you know?
Linda, I get it. I'm not too far behind you. I'm dealing with recovery from mono and taking my 97-year old mother to frequent appointments leading up to three weeks of Mon-Fri radiation treatments starting Nov. 27. I'm exhausted. And... I'm about to request another batch of names from Vote Forward to write letters to voters. They make it easy: you pick a campaign, get some names, print out the letters, fill in your own personal reasons for voting in a couple of short blanks, and address and mail them. The only cost is the paper and postage, and I can do a few a day and still meet the deadline because they usually give you several weeks. It's something. When my life calms down and my energy returns, I'll do more.
“It is the desire of the Theater Commander that both still and moving pictures be utilized to the fullest extent practicable as exhibits in reports of investigations of war crimes committed by the Nazis with particular reference to Allied prisoners of war both in and out of camps and to concentration camps for the purpose of recording for civilization the history of horror written by over five years of German atrocities.”
What a horrific scene, burned into your memory. If that now-elderly (white) couple are still alive, who do you suppose they have and will vote for? Rhetorical question.
A fascinating question, Laurence. Do they have that photograph in an album somewhere, with all the other childhood photos of their darling daughter? Have they told her what it is? Or was their dismissive response on that long-ago day a cover for deeply felt and well-deserved shame, and did they shudder and shred that photo when they they got the prints back? I hope it was the latter.
I visited Dachau 50 years ago while stationed in the military. In addition to the visual experience, I still remember the feeling I had while walking the grounds. It was eerily quiet and haunting. I will never forget it.
My Uncle was an ambulance driver in Patton’s 3rd Army, so he was one of the first on scene. He committed suicide in his 80’s after decades of struggling with PTSD. I’m not saying Dachau caused it, but it certainly didn’t help.
What's truly terrifying is that there are plenty of sick and evil people in this benighted country who would be more than happy to carry out Trump's plans, and that there are all too many others who would simply shrug and turn away under the assumption that nothing will happen to them. I wish I knew what to do to stop this, but I have no answers.
Please, encourage one person to vote. Donate $10 to a candidate you believe will do the right thing. Write a letter to the editor of a local newspaper supporting one good public policy. Hold the hand of someone else on that ledge, like me, and stay around to vote again.
Reading through all these comments, I became more and more depressed, until I came to yours. You reminded me that all is not lost if we each do something, anything within our abilities, with kindness and empathy. Now I feel better, thank you!
Thanks, Suzanne. I'm not going anywhere. I'm civically engaged and have been since I was a teenager. I'm a generous donor to candidates across the country. I'm a grassroots activist and we've won a few battles. I've marched. Worked the polls. I'm in this for the long haul. I am just so sick of the battering on our democracy. He doesn't want a civil society, he wants a roiling one. Every day there is fresh trauma.
I have read several articles from other reporters about this issue and trmp’s speech. No one put any of it together as you did. I shared the entire article on Facebook because everyone needs to see it. The people who still support him need to read it, even if they don’t get it the first time. Trmp is now as crazy as a shithouse rat in a trailer park meth lab. He needs to be locked up, but no one in his family will do that except for Mary his niece.
Thank you for your accuracy and factual analysis, Lucian. People have to stop pussyfooting around this evil maniac. Now.
“ Trmp is now as crazy as a shithouse rat in a trailer park meth lab “
Excellent description
I think there's an Animal Channel/Discovery-History Channel special in that rat. Insert crazed smiling emoji here.
I think he runs too erratically to be filmed! 😄
SOL (Smile Out Loud)
Er-rat-ically, indeed.
I've said for several years if Trump wins in 2024 we will be reliving Germany in the 1930s. The article today and this column just confirmed it.
At least you're saying IF, not WHEN. Your strangely complicit and/ or timid media constantly imply that Trump WILL win, talk about self fulfilling prophecies which conform to their chillingly misleading "opinion polls" where they seemingly, blatantly skew their findings by polling some 1,500 agreeable people in their very own personal Augean stable, AKA focus groups, about what they agree with.
The most serious mistakes we could make are:
1) not to take Trump’s words and “plans” at face value; and
2) to assume there is anything about our history, values, and institutions that ensures “it can’t happen here.”
That, in a nutshell, is what the 2024 election is about, and the bad guys (within and without) are already hard at work.
They are playing asymmetrically, using our laws and norms when it helps…violating them wantonly when it doesn’t; repeating outageous lies enough that they become credible narratives to the gullible. And they are working to undermine governance, foment division, invite instability and foster crisis that can give them momentum. All in plain daylight.
As we contest that pathway to dystopia, and we must, our agency and fortitude now needs to be the stronger.
Does this bear Bannon’s fingerprints?
Of course. He’s the “intellect” in the mix.
Bannon is an intellect?
Only in the trmp crowd...
Linda, thanks for the clarification. Israel, thanks for asking, and saving me the keystrokes.
Suggested reading: "War for Eternity: Inside Bannon's Far Right Circle of Power Brokers." Or just use TRESemme TRES Flawless Curls Extra Holds Mousse. Either one will curl your hair.
A spider. Only less attractive.
The guy was a not-terribly-successful Hollywood producer who has read some books. That makes him an "intellectual," especially in Trumplandia.
He was smart at one time. He did an MA in foreign service at Georgetown and an MBA at Harvard and graduated with honors. From the looks of him he is a serious alcoholic, which does a real number on brain cells. Now he is going for power as easily as possible with trmp as his Judas goat. No one at this point knows who is using who. The entire operation is Paranoia Incorporated.
"No one at this point knows who is using who." This is so true, and so concisely put! It probably doesn't help that I'm rereading DARK MONEY at the moment. Between the Bannons, the Millers, the Flynns, and the militias, I don't think the billionaires know quite what they're dealing with, and I don't think Trump does either.
P.S. I've had the same impression of Bannon. Photoshop him onto any skid row anywhere and he would look right at home.
Bannon CLAIMS that he's a teetotaler, which suggests to me that he's either lying or he's in recovery. he is certainly a guy who seems to go out of his way to look like a guy feverish with the Irish Virus.
lest I give offense with that last sentence, I learned it from Irish guys in AA meetings.
Paw prints
ALL of it does. and, proud Agent of Chaos that he is, he's like the proverbial pig in shit (an expression especially relevant to the unwashed slob with the giant Milk Dud on his temple).
tRump is a useful idiot, even more so today than in 2016 and 2020. As he descends into dementia, his “handlers” will be making all of the policies and decisions, and they are very, very dangerous.
Anything with Miller’s fingerprints on it will be horrible. Members of his own family have referred to him as a shanda.
the intellectual (and financial) aristocrats who wrote the constitution didn't allow for 1) political parties or 2) monsters.
lack of foresight.
I find it interesting that a person of Jewish ancestry is planning, enabling justifying these efforts. Does he think he’s immune?
Same self-loathing that motivates Clarence Thomas...
Trump himself is the son of an immigrant mother and two of his immigrant wives bore four of his five known children.
Aryans - the master race ya know!
“known” 😉
As a nation of immigrants, where immigrants grew this country, tRump takes a distinctively UN-American stand. . . No surprise re: the criminal P1135809
Yep.
yeah, but they're the sort of white, European, racism-ready immigrants TFF WANTS. remember when he asked about why we couldn't get all our immigrants from Scandinavia?
it's not immigrants, in general, he doesn't want, it's the "wrong kind."
That little shit is what we call "a self-hating Jew." NO ONE in his family is speaking to him.
If Miller had been in charge of immigration in 1903 his grandparents would have been denied entry into the US.
If his parents and grandparents hadn't immigrated to the US Stephen Miller would not have existed, I think.
which explains why they won't talk to him. he's from Santa Monica, which has a notably large, active group of Jewish people (an old girlfriend joined their number after converting about twenty years ago, and she reported to me regularly). Miller was a pathetic, obviously unpopular kid who achieved some notoriety when he made a speech about why students shouldn't have to pick up things like gum wrappers when there were people PAID to do it. it worked for him in HS, so he kept at it (the big fish, small pond thing) and got very, very lucky at exactly the time his hair decided that his head was no longer a going concern.
that's my story and I'm sticking with it.
I'm admittedly interested in the kind of actual woman who'd wanna marry the bald little piece of stinking effluvia.
Mussolini's mistress was a Jewish woman who had to flee for her life to South America. Miller's family may be on that list of enemies.
Apparently sleeping with the boss isn't always helpful.
I thought the one who got killed with him was the Jewish one. I think he had more than one. I checked and yes, there were at least two. the one who died with him was Clara Petacci. Margherita Sarfatti was the one who helped him craft his particular variety of Fascism.
I guess he just dug Jewish chicks.
as much as I've come to hate the internet, Google can be very handy.
in my zeal to comment, I've neglected to thank Lucian for a SPLENDID piece of work.
Clara Petacci was his wife. Italian women keep their last names when they get married. Sarfatti was incredibly helpful to Il Duce. She gave him money, got supporters for him (and there were many Jewish Fascists before Mussolini aligned with Hitler) and almost paid with her life.
thanks for the disambiguation.
Exactly.
He'll be under the bus with so many others as soon as something goes awry!
Not "under the bus." Behind barbed wire.
He doesn't remember the Night of the Long Knives and what happened to Hilter's S.A.
you'd be surprised.
once again, rationality has trouble dealing with the purely irrational.
I think he does. He’d be wrong of course.
Look--people like Miller are in bed with the Russian Mob. And who IS that, exactly? Mogilevich--a Jewish, Russian Mobster.
see my comment elsewhere about the Jewish fans of Hitler with whom I grew up...
as for thinking he's immune, you're seeking something rational to explain something wildly irrational. the fact is, there ARE "self-hating Jews." my own feeling is that a more general self-hatred comes first and then spreads to cover more specific hatreds until there's nothing BUT hate.
I admit it's as counterintuitive as anything gets. but that doesn't mean it's as uncommon as it sounds.
A truly remarkable essay. Thanks for collecting and connecting the historical facts and the present moment.
I think this reporting and memoir is remarkable. I only wish it would be read by every American - especially those who can vote in 2024.
“Every American” doesn’t see things the way you do. For those who follow Trump’s playlist, Hitler a matinee idol.
This is one of Mr. T.'s specialties.
This is the most chilling and frightening description of what we would face with a Trump presidency and the evil, and morally corrupt, actions of henchmen like Stephen Miller. What do we do? We have to mobiilze people to oppose this and to vote against this evil potential future. I am beginning to lose faith in this thing we call the American experiment. What are people willing to do to destroy this? So sad and scary.
I am going to bring up something else I have noticed happening with alarming frequency and it is the total disregard for the results of elections when they go against the far right agenda of the Putinistas. We here in Ohio resoundingly approved our Issue 1 only to have our super-majority in the Ohio legislature say the very next day that they are going to try to rescind the voters decision and ignore the results in the interim.I am thinking that We the People here in Ohio may need to look into a legal way to fight this flagrant disregard for the results of a resounding “Yes” from the voices of the people. Perhaps a class action suit is warranted.
Redistricting; Ohio is a gerrymandered mess and will remain that way until a fairer map is forced onto the scene.
If this is challenged, the people will prevail. Make it happen.
While you’re at it, a class action suit should be filed re: the railway deregulation that resulted in your recent, environmental catastrophe. . . And those kids who were abuse while Gym Jordan was in charge--that suit should be revisited.
apparently, that case is going ahead...it was held up for a while. and it's gonna be very embarrassing for Jordan, the prick.
it's always wrestling teams. hardly surprising.
Stephen Miller was a child with an unbridled conduct disorder, paranoid thinking and fits of grandiose ideology that blossomed into the anti-social monster that he is today. I suspect that his family is horrified by who he rapidly became. This kind of person needed constant supervision, very clear and strong boundaries and consequences as a child and teenager. Now, he is a fully formed sadist with no redeemable features. Obviously, he’s only gotten encouragement from his orange Hitler and will contentedly create more diseased ideas if given the opportunity. I’m surprised by how long my list is of people that I can’t stand and it only grows by the day.
the unbridled conduct disorder makes perfect sense, along with the family being well-to-do enough to keep him out of Special Ed (the parents who claim "outside help" is always on the way). the "grandiose ideology we already know about.
I'd give good odds there was Ayn Rand as an imaginary playmate of some kind.
it's obvious that falling in with TFF was one of those perfect cute meetings you only find in places like "The Fountainhead." and the thing is, Miller HAS in fact done very well as a result of that meeting, and will continue to do so. if all else fails, he'll become a "celebrity" right-wing late night radio scumbag.
Thank-you,Lucien, for your wise words (I don’t know you personally but feel like I can address you on a first name basis).I have no doubt that should TFG become POTUS again that I and many, many others will be on his revenge list.I did notice yesterday in one NYT article whose author I can’t recall ,discusses the horrific plan for our country that Trump has made no secret of dispensing should he win again.I am going to quote some poignant words from Heather Digby Parton that pretty much says it all in regards to our msm elevating Trump to the presidency “The press needs to keep in mind that this relentless recitation of polling numbers showing Trump slightly ahead a year out is setting in stone a narrative that will serve Trump’s purposes very well if he loses.He won’t say the polls are wrong.He’ll say that they prove the election was rigged.”She is right on the money and our media need to heed this and start discussing the absolutely vile and fascistic plan that Trump and company have in place should they win in 2024.
The upcoming election is truly a fight for democracy. The choice could not be clearer. I thought the American version of House of Cards became utterly ridiculous at the end. I had no idea that Trump viewed it as a blueprint.
I think Joe Biden is a wonderful president who deserves a second term. But if he needs to make way and step aside to save America if that's what it takes to stop Trump, I’m sure he'll do it to prevent the nightmare that Trump has promised should he ever become President again.
The Republicans in the Senate committed the greatest act of political malpractice in this country's history when they failed to convict Trump at the second impeachment trial and had the chance to bar him from ever holding office again. Now look where we are.
Yeah and who should he "step aside" for? That makes no sense.
Feiglinge
Trump will call the Democratic nominee, whether it’s Biden or someone else, “Marxist vermin.”
I visited Dachau with my college chorus on a singing tour of Europe in the late 1970s. Most of the barracks are gone, but there is a museum that uses photographs, text, and artifacts to document in soul-shatteringly explicit detail just what the Nazis did to the mostly Jewish abductees who arrived by train at Dachau. General Omar Bradley was adamant that everything be documented when the camps were liberated, to ensure that no one could deny the horrors the Nazis had inflicted on six million people.
One of the places we forced ourselves to visit were the crematory ovens. And there, we saw an example of American obliviousness and crass insensitivity that still flabbergasts me. As we came into the little courtyard in front of the ovens, there was a young American couple with their toddler. They had just lifted the toddler up and seated her in the opening of one of the ovens. They proceeded to take her picture there while we looked on, dumbfounded. When we pointed out that these were the ovens where the bodies of countless murdered Jews had been cremated, the wife snapped, "Mind your own business," and they walked off in a huff with their child.
It's the ugliest act of casual amorality I have ever personally witnessed. (And yes, I lead a sheltered life.)
The story of the American couple and their toddler at Dachau is horrifying but not surprising. There are entirely too many people like them in this country - ignorant, stupid, and vicious, blind to common decency, incapable of empathy, and easy targets for the new Nazis in the US. They will be the destruction of democracy and they'll laugh while it's happening. I am unfortunately too old and too poor to escape this hellhole, so I guess I'll just have to stay and fight as best I can and hope I don't end up in an American version of Dachau.
We still have the power to prevent this horror. It’s my favorite four-letter word:
VOTE. Be one of the activists who write voter postcards and letters, join phonebanks to call voters, donate strategically, or even canvass door to door. Remember: the Republicans and their policies are NOT popular with the majority. They have tried to rig elections with gerrymandering and voter purges, but Democrats are still defeating Republicans. We can do this! Don’t give up!
I know what has to be done and I'm doing it, but I'm really tired. I'm 73 now and have been fighting for social justice since I was fifteen. I didn't think that things would ever be this bad, and I certainly didn't think that I would still be battling at my age. Forgot that "Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty". And with respect to Trump, as Mel Brooks said, "That's our Hitler!".
Linda! Drink the refreshing beverage of your choice. I've got ten years on you, and thankfully can still down a Pepsi with real sugar, or Coke bottled in Mexico (same deal: no high fructose corn syrup) and keep on plugging away.
Thank you! Think I'll have a glass of a good red wine and a little toke of something fragrant and contemplate raising some hell. If you have 10 years on me and are still kicking then I am embarrassed about complaining. It's just that I get weary, you know?
Linda, I get it. I'm not too far behind you. I'm dealing with recovery from mono and taking my 97-year old mother to frequent appointments leading up to three weeks of Mon-Fri radiation treatments starting Nov. 27. I'm exhausted. And... I'm about to request another batch of names from Vote Forward to write letters to voters. They make it easy: you pick a campaign, get some names, print out the letters, fill in your own personal reasons for voting in a couple of short blanks, and address and mail them. The only cost is the paper and postage, and I can do a few a day and still meet the deadline because they usually give you several weeks. It's something. When my life calms down and my energy returns, I'll do more.
“It is the desire of the Theater Commander that both still and moving pictures be utilized to the fullest extent practicable as exhibits in reports of investigations of war crimes committed by the Nazis with particular reference to Allied prisoners of war both in and out of camps and to concentration camps for the purpose of recording for civilization the history of horror written by over five years of German atrocities.”
— Omar Bradley, April 24, 1945
https://www.ushmm.org/collections/the-museums-collections/about/photo-archives/world-war-ii-liberation-photography
What a horrific scene, burned into your memory. If that now-elderly (white) couple are still alive, who do you suppose they have and will vote for? Rhetorical question.
A fascinating question, Laurence. Do they have that photograph in an album somewhere, with all the other childhood photos of their darling daughter? Have they told her what it is? Or was their dismissive response on that long-ago day a cover for deeply felt and well-deserved shame, and did they shudder and shred that photo when they they got the prints back? I hope it was the latter.
I visited Dachau 50 years ago while stationed in the military. In addition to the visual experience, I still remember the feeling I had while walking the grounds. It was eerily quiet and haunting. I will never forget it.
Hideous people! Think of how they must have influenced and raised that poor little child.
OMG! If leading a sheltered life means you would be cringing when seeing such a thing, we should all be leading sheltered lives!
OMG! OMG!
My Uncle was an ambulance driver in Patton’s 3rd Army, so he was one of the first on scene. He committed suicide in his 80’s after decades of struggling with PTSD. I’m not saying Dachau caused it, but it certainly didn’t help.
This is profoundly tragic.
What's truly terrifying is that there are plenty of sick and evil people in this benighted country who would be more than happy to carry out Trump's plans, and that there are all too many others who would simply shrug and turn away under the assumption that nothing will happen to them. I wish I knew what to do to stop this, but I have no answers.
Lucian, wanted to thank you for doing what by and large mainstream media has been failing to do.
Someone please talk me off the ledge! I fully expect widespread chaos immediately after the election whether he wins or loses.
Please, encourage one person to vote. Donate $10 to a candidate you believe will do the right thing. Write a letter to the editor of a local newspaper supporting one good public policy. Hold the hand of someone else on that ledge, like me, and stay around to vote again.
Reading through all these comments, I became more and more depressed, until I came to yours. You reminded me that all is not lost if we each do something, anything within our abilities, with kindness and empathy. Now I feel better, thank you!
Thanks, Suzanne. I'm not going anywhere. I'm civically engaged and have been since I was a teenager. I'm a generous donor to candidates across the country. I'm a grassroots activist and we've won a few battles. I've marched. Worked the polls. I'm in this for the long haul. I am just so sick of the battering on our democracy. He doesn't want a civil society, he wants a roiling one. Every day there is fresh trauma.
Lucian,
They have already had their Wannsee Conference. Now they just need to get control of the government to put it in action.
Be safe,
Steve Dundas
And they're still going to vote for him. Just unbelievable.
History does repeat, unless we stop it 😡‼️