By Ruth A. Sheets
My birthday has rolled around again. This year my age is a square times a cube, one of the few ages that can happen without using the #1.
Recently, as I note my age and the coming years, I have been contemplating evil and what it does to people. I have read a lot of books and articles about the Holocaust, a horrific manifestation of evil, wondering if there were points at which it could have been stopped. The people in Germany in the early 1930s were suffering under a depression as was most of the world. Someone came along and told them he could solve their problems, make Germany great again, and they bought it sight unseen. The man took over the government, surrounded himself with people who would do his bidding, men who got off on doing harm to others, particularly those they were jealous of (or that is how it seems). The new leader identified people the Germans could blame for all their suffering: the political opposition, Communists, and worst of all, Jews. The people rallied and jumped on board with the hatred, at least enough of them did that they didn’t mind concentration camps being set up to imprison those awful people. If some of them were killed, well, they must have deserved it. If their neighbors they had thought they liked disappeared, “ah well, they must have run away or done something to anger the new leader.”
Why were the people so willing to hop abord the train powered by anger, fear, resentment, and hatred? That’s a question that has haunted me since I first learned about the Holocaust in 8th grade when I read Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank. The people in hiding with her were rather annoying at times, but worthy of being dragged away and killed? I learned only Anne’s father survived. It has made me wonder what kind of nation Germany would have been had Hitler stuck to remaking just his own country and not been defeated. What would have happened when/if the Jewish people had all been killed or kicked out? What about the disabled persons killed in nursing homes, hospitals, and mental institutions? What would have happened when the Jehovah’s Witnesses, Roma people, and homosexuals were extinguished? Could that crew of sadists have stopped there? Who would have been next? Was invading Germany’s neighbors critical to the evil enterprise?
There are a lot of folks now comparing what is going on in this nation to Nazi Germany, and with good reason. Evil has raised its head here and has been welcomed by Americans who are not doing well, or rather are not doing well in relation to the people they envy. They listen to hatred being spewed over their radios, TVs, and internet and are angry that they are missing the wealth, the American dream that is supposed to be theirs. They vote for candidates who promise them some kind of magical relief from their “suffering” but have never shown evidence of willingness to work to make that magic happen. Those candidates have a cadre of folks to blame for the suffering of their constituents (not those elected officials, of course) and make sure those groups are vilified at every turn. People of color in general are at the top of the list because, they always have been on that list in this nation. They add women who are too uppity and LGBTQ+ persons for “living in sin” or whatever else they come up with. Women who choose abortion are now called murderers and states are trying to put laws on their books to charge them. Recently, immigrants take the place at the front of the line, well not the white ones, of course. They are called gang members, criminals, immoral, and whatever the guys in power decide will rouse their “supporters” to OK immigrants being deported without due process, a right since Magna Carta (1215 AD).”
A rich white businessman came along who had no moral compass, no concern for anyone but himself beyond wanting vengeance on anyone who didn’t agree with him, got in his way, or didn’t see him as a genius. A group of really rich white men saw Trump as an opportunity to take over this nation for their own benefit and began influencing the media, even buying media platforms to groom the “suffering masses” into believing this man would fix things for them and “make America great again.” Of course, his intention was to make himself “great” so he could enrich himself as much as possible from his time in power. He collected around himself a host of mostly white men and some female surrogates who would go along with the project to wreck this nation so the superrich white men could rule, eventually taking over the world because they are just so brilliant (in their own minds), but in reality, addicted to money and power. They’re also racist, misogynistic, homo/transphobic, antisemitic, xenophobic when it suits their purposes.
Hitler wanted power and comfort and the ability to hurt anyone he didn’t like. Trump wants money and the servitude of everyone else. His handlers want to use him, their orange fool to do as much harm to the American people and nation as possible. We know what happened in 1930s Germany when evil took over. The question now for us is, Will we allow the evil that is brewing in this nation to destroy us or will We the People stop it? I hope it’s the latter.
My birthday candle wish would be that the enthralled MAGA folks would wake up and decide they want more in their lives than anger, resentment, fear, and hatred and don’t want a king, a dictator, a tyrant as president of this country, ever. I hope the MAGAs or near-MAGAs won’t want rich white folks who have been elected to nothing acting as puppeteers directing a man who will do their bidding at everyone else’s expense, until they can take over. I hope we as Americans will act together to stop evil that has already infected state legislatures, our Congress, and some courts, before it grows in volume and scope and people feel the pain more than they already do.
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