Dealing With The New Normal

Dealing With The New Normal
FILE - In this Friday, Nov. 11, 2016, file photo, Stephen Bannon, campaign CEO for President-elect Donald Trump, leaves Trump Tower in New York. Trump on Sunday named Republican Party chief Reince Priebus as White House chief of staff and conservative media owner Bannon as his top presidential strategist, two men who represent opposite ends of the unsettled GOP. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci, File)

FILE – In this Friday, Nov. 11, 2016, file photo, Stephen Bannon, campaign CEO for President-elect Donald Trump, leaves Trump Tower in New York. Trump on Sunday named Republican Party chief Reince Priebus as White House chief of staff and conservative media owner Bannon as his top presidential strategist, two men who represent opposite ends of the unsettled GOP. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci, File)

I’ve had a couple of weeks now to sit and mull over the Electoral College’s pending appointment of Trump as our new commander in chief.

I’ve mulled it over again and again, and nothing I come up with explains how Clinton lost the election while leading the popular vote by over a million, but hey, far be it from me to criticize a hopelessly broken system. So instead of taking the time to bitch about the Tangerine Nazi, I thought I’d address something of much more immediate concern: his supporters.

It’s no secret that I liken Trump and his entire campaign to Hitler’s rise to power in Germany, and I’m not stopping just because he (sorta-kinda-not-really) won the election. No, considering the wave of straight-up hate crimes that have sprung up in the wake of his election, I’m actually doubling down on those comparisons.

Now, before you Trump voters get up in arms about me calling you Nazis, I need to remind you that the vast majority of Nazis were not goose-stepping uniformed murderers. They were German citizens, down on their luck, dealing with a loss of jobs, angry at a government they saw as not working for them anymore. Hitler was an exciting prospect, an outsider, someone who said things political insiders avoided. Sure, he was a little anti-Semitic, but it was the racist times! Hitler did not run his campaign on the idea of the holocaust, or even anything slightly approaching what ended up happening.

So now we have the Cheeto-Gestapo, who ran on a campaign of hate and brought out the seedy (but totally not racist, you guys) side of these “United” States “won” — and in the wake of that “win,” a rise in hate-crimes sprung up. The Southern Poverty Law Center counted a huge increase in hate crimes following the election, with more than 700 in the first week alone.

People’s cars were firebombed because they were Muslim, white men got in fights at stoplights, telling black men “Y’all niggers are done,” or telling gay men “My new president said it’s OK to kill you faggots.” When you run on a campaign of hate and fear, why is it a shock to anyone when hate and fear are the things that follow in your wake?

So we’ve established that there are definite actual Nazis out there in the U.S. taking great joy in this victory, but what of the others I was talking about? The non-goose steppers who were just as common in post-Great War Germany.

Hitler didn’t start rolling out any anti-Jewish measures until well into his rule. Despite the hate that marred his campaign, there were many German Jews of a certain socio-economic standing that definitely cast their vote for the man who went on to form the “Final Solution.” Much like “Gays for Trump” or “Polar Bears for Global Warming,” there wasn’t much sense to be made from their votes. The rest? No one really hated the Jews, they just hated their government. They hated the officials elected to represent them, they hated that the depression in America was directly affecting them, and they voted with all of that in mind. What they got was a political outsider, much like our Tangerine, who ran on a campaign of hate and the German equivalent of “draining the swamp.”

In the wake of Hitler’s election, hate crimes saw an increase as well. Wanna know what Hitler did? He condemned the attacks. Told his supporters to stop. Talked about uniting Germany and coming together behind their new leader. Does any of this sound familiar? It really should. Trump looked straight into the cameras and told his supporters to stop attacking people. He has distanced himself from the rampant insane misogyny and racism that was a constant in his campaign. I’m sorry, but there are way too many check marks on my sheet of “Hitler BINGO” for this stuff to go unnoticed.

So if this bothers you, if being equated to a passive nazi bothers you, as it damn well should, then do something about it. Make sure this terrifying Jack-o-Lantern of a man doesn’t get to form his religious registry, make sure this stays the land of the free and the home of the brave. Stand up to your leader. The man doesn’t even know the damn constitution, this is who 75 percent of Americans (rounding up, the 25 percent that actually voted for him and the staggering 49 percent who DIDN’T EVEN VOTE) decided was fit to lead the free world. Bravo.

If this bothers you, and as a fellow American, I truly, sincerely hope it does, then you need to make yourself heard. If you don’t like being lumped in with the alt-right (the modern nazi party, essentially) then do something about it. Speak up. Make yourselves heard. You have voices. I know you have voices. They are very loud voices that spoke for eight years about birth certificates and “Thanks, Obama!” and about how badly our country was being destroyed. Where are you now? Where are your civic passions when the actual fabric of American life is at threat? Please, I am begging you, speak up. This was something that conservatives and liberals united against once before, so why is it such an impossibility now? We’ve had our share of hateful history, no doubt, but there’s always been a good chunk of America with its head on the right way, and we need to unite again against this hate and malice.

That’s the thing we need to unite behind. Not our Tangerine-Nazi “elect”.

Use your freedoms while you still have them, because for me and many others, there is a very real and palpable fear that came along with his “win”.

Categories: Commentary