Watching this incredible election year I feel like I have an idea what it was like to live in Germany in the 1930’s, watching my country careen madly towards catastrophe and being helpless to effect the outcome. For the first time in my 7 decades I see a person running for dictator and a mob of supporters willing to sacrifice all the advances of the past 240 years since the deal was struck in Philadelphia to create a society based on the dream of liberty and justice for all. I sit here and write this and wonder when the book burnings will begin, when the white race will be declared the “master race,’ when the concentration camps will begin to be filled with those “undesirable elements” waiting for deportation, when rebellions will lead to mass murder, when a state of extreme emergency will be declared demanding the suspension of the Constitution, when the rights of free speech will be totally outlawed for the sake of “national security.” Will there be trials for the “disloyal” who dare to question the government’s actions, will there be unexplained disappearances, will women and people of color finally be put “back in their places", will the U.S. nuclear arsenal finally be put to use to subjugate foreign countries?” When I was 14 I read Shirer’s book, “The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich” and saw what happens, step by step, when a society gives itself over to myths of its own inevitable superiority, to hatred, racism, fear, madness. I never dreamed I’d live to see it in the United States of America, land of the free and home of the brave. What a sad day it is to write these words: Donald Trump for dictator; make America Hate Again!
Watching this incredible election year I feel like I have an idea what it was like to live in Germany in the 1930’s, watching my country careen madly towards catastrophe and being helpless to effect the outcome. For the first time in my 7 decades I see a person running for dictator and a mob of supporters willing to sacrifice all the advances of the past 240 years since the deal was struck in Philadelphia to create a society based on the dream of liberty and justice for all. I sit here and write this and wonder when the book burnings will begin, when the white race will be declared the “master race,’ when the concentration camps will begin to be filled with those “undesirable elements” waiting for deportation, when rebellions will lead to mass murder, when a state of extreme emergency will be declared demanding the suspension of the Constitution, when the rights of free speech will be totally outlawed for the sake of “national security.” Will there be trials for the “disloyal” who dare to question the government’s actions, will there be unexplained disappearances, will women and people of color finally be put “back in their places", will the U.S. nuclear arsenal finally be put to use to subjugate foreign countries?” When I was 14 I read Shirer’s book, “The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich” and saw what happens, step by step, when a society gives itself over to myths of its own inevitable superiority, to hatred, racism, fear, madness. I never dreamed I’d live to see it in the United States of America, land of the free and home of the brave. What a sad day it is to write these words: Donald Trump for dictator; make America Hate Again!