My kid sister came out to visit last week.
We did Portland then drove out to the coast, so we had a long car ride just to talk. During a conversation about politics sis mentioned unnamed “friends” who were Republicans but were “nice people”; not overtly racist, sexist, etc. She lives in a piece of rural New York state, so I find that entirely believable that she knows these kind of people.
“They’re Nazis.” I replied. “Nazis are never “nice people”; they’re Nazis. We fought a whole war and incinerated whole cities full of them.”
“But…these aren’t bad people.” she insisted.
“Yes. They are. Just like there were sweet old grannies and kind men and cute kiddies in Dresden, they’re Nazis. You can’t excuse them because they’re “nice”. They have to be fought, and, if need be, killed.”
She was silent. But couldn’t agree. Just didn’t want to face that.
And that’s why we’re here.
“And when their Orange Fuhrer wins, and he sends his soldiers out here to Portland, and they shoot me down in the street because I’ll fight rather than surrender to Nazis, your “nice” Republicans will be happy about that, now, won’t they?”
And she had nothing to say.
Update 10/28: Bret Devereaux says the same things better and more completely.
"And while right now you may have many reasons and many concerns, if you sign your name to this fascist and a fascist government takes power as a result…your many reasons will no longer matter. No one really cares what Franz von Papen or Victor Emmanuel III or NSDAP or Blocco Nazionale voters were concerned about or their pet issues. It no longer mattered. Once a fascist government took power…they were fascists.
And that was all that ever mattered."
As Tubby himself said; this may be the last time you get to vote.
9 comments:
We are taught from an early age that to get along, we have to go along. Some people never get the nuance involved, or the exceptions that are necessary to make.
I'm going to have to kind of agree on this one with your sister, Chief. But only kind of, so don't get too riled at me.
I've run across a small number of Republicans lately and I frequently ask them about their support for Trump in a way that doesn't ruffle their tail feathers.
Most of them are good people who do not follow politics much at all and fell they have been burned by events beyond their control. They are not so much voting for Trump as they are voting against the current circumstances:
- inflation
- perceived trouble at the border
- Biden can't avoid being in bed with Israel
- the effects of massive income inequality (although they unaware of income inequality)
- the housing shortage
- the endless amount of nonsense being pushed on social media
- etc. etc. etc.
These are not Nazis. They expect that Trump will whip out his magic wand (I know what you're thinking! Don't go there!!!) and make everything right again. They are in for a terrible surprise.
They are the people who enable the Nazis to get into power. They will also stand by, do nothing, and look confused if/when the Nazis seize power.
They are the people whose influence the founding fathers tried to minimize when they wrote the Constitution because the founding fathers feared their lack of education and their lack awareness of the issues and their causes. We've loosened those restrictions over the last 200 years and history has come full circle.
“A lady asked Dr. Franklin Well Doctor what have we got a republic or a monarchy – A republic replied the Doctor if you can keep it.”
Pluto
On the bright(?) side, I'm getting less and less afraid of Trump seizing power. It is becoming increasingly self-evident that Trump is falling into dementia.
Officially he has begun to cancel a lot of campaign appearances. The Democrats have seized on this as a sign of physical health problems (and I'm sure he's got a lot of those too) but it appears to me that mental health is the real issue.
I believe his staff is cancelling the campaign appearances because the days that Trump spends ruminating about the size of certain parts of Arnold Palmer are his GOOD days. I don't want to see him on his bad days.
What follows if Trump wins the White House is anybody's guess. My best guess is the following series of events:
- Trump goes from bad to literally ridiculous (dementia is a demeaning illness)
- Vance uses the 25th Amendment to lever Trump out of power with the support of the Democrats. Then screws up big time on something related to foreign policy, which is the biggest of his many blind spots.
- The Democrats and roughly half the Republicans impeach Vance.
- Mike Johnson, speaker of the House, becomes President. He will try to thread the needle between his ridiculously extreme right followers and reality as he has done in the past. The Democrats may or may not help him. His chances of success are not high.
Meanwhile in the rest of the world:
- The world goes into recession, whipsawed by the unintended consequences of poorly thought out legislation passed by the Republicans.
- Russia goes all-out in Ukraine because the Ukrainians have been cut off from US weaponry. NATO, minus the US, may intercede on the Ukrainian's behalf. I'm not sure it will be enough. The Russians are a lot weaker than they were but they may still have enough gas in the tank to finish the job and the Europeans have a lot of problems, especially with transporting military units beyond their borders.
- China attacks Taiwan. This probably won't trigger WWIII unless the US is dumb enough to send too small a naval force into the area and it gets sunk. Like the Russians, the Chinese have convinced themselves this will be an easy victory. Like Ukraine, Taiwan won't be easy or a victory, even if the US stays out of the conflict.
China can destroy Taiwan, but capturing it will be vastly harder and is likely beyond their power. At best, the Chinese will face economic sanctions and guerilla warfare in a shattered Taiwan that costs rather than rewards them. Yes, they will kill millions of Taiwanese, but that won't help their economy.
- The Israelis and the Iranians go all-out on each other, possibly including a nuclear exchange (unlikely, but possible). They will kill a lot of people and set up the next round of wars but will not resolve their grievances.
- Climate change will continue unabated with increasingly large consequences unless it is hindered by nuclear winter.
Hopefully reality will write a less depressing chapter in the history books.
Pluto
And we're constantly being "both sides do it" from the public press. That makes people hesitant to call a fascist spade a spade.
The Founders wanted "rich white guys only". Loosening restrictions to include more Americans in the franchise? That's an unequivocally good thing. Note that a huge proportion of the fuckery is perpetrated by...rich white guys.
And if you have four people and a Nazi sitting around agreeing that "something should be done" about borders, Israel, plutocracy, housing, and all four agree with the Nazi?
You've got five Nazis.
So, yes. They're Nazis just like the kiddies and sweet old grannies and kind gentlemen in Dresden were, and got rendered down into body fats for it.
Sometimes the traditional solutions are still the best ones.
I'm unsure of Iran-Israel but fairly sure that the PRC would have a lot of reservations about invading Taiwan even with Trump in charge. He's fucked up and a Nazi, but the GOP still looks on the yellow Reds as "foreign enemies".
Climate? That's the real wild card. I'm expecting regional wars over water before my death.
I agree with your comments about the PRC, but I'm envisioning a situation where basically nobody is in charge in Washington for months on end. That would seriously tempt the current Chinese leader.
We are already seeing wars over arable land and potable water in Africa. South America is in a nasty position as well.
https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/153447/intense-widespread-drought-grips-south-america
Pluto
I'm going to respectfully disagree with your "four people and a Nazi" analysis of the situation, Chief.
These people don't agree with the Nazi about "something should be done" about borders, Israel, plutocracy, housing. They aren't that informed and they are bombarded with "VOTE FOR US OR ELSE" messages from both parties plus mountains of misinformation from everywhere.
They don't like the current situation so they don't feel they can vote for Kamala and the Democrats. They've been told to "not waste their vote by voting third party" by both parties for decades (centuries?).
The problem we are facing here is a catastrophic breakdown of our historic voting systems that are causing cognitive dissonance on an epic scale.
For example, the number of Muslims who are planning on voting for Trump is startling considering his stated beliefs that he has acted upon many times that favor Christians and Jews. When I talk with them about it, they point to the current mess in the Middle East and say that they expect Trump to be less effective in supporting Israel than the Biden administration. They are simply hoping for the best regarding everything else. When I pointed out some of Trump's issues, one person described Trump as "an honorable man." They used the same words to describe Biden.
As for your "traditional" final solution, that would almost certainly lead to the self-destruction of the US and everything it has stood for in the last 70 years. Is that the best we can do?
As you know, I'm not exactly an optimist, but I don't THINK the situation is that dire. But I've been wrong before.
Pluto
To begin with, that "self-destruction" is here. It's done. It began with Nixon's Southern Strategy, rode into power with Reagan, metastasized with Rushbo and Gingrich. Everything the US - the "better angels" of the US, the bright promises of the Declaration, and of the Civil Rights Era, all the advances since 1945 - is shattered and ripped asunder. The MAGAt barbarians are through the gates, and we are already at civil war. The MAGAts know that, and are acting like it. If you don't think the situation is "that dire" you're 1) wrong again, and 2) suicidally deluding yourself. We who are not willing to be Nazis or serve Nazis must fight or bend the knee. There is no alternative.
But "these people" who think the Nazis are deluded by misinformation? Or "can't vote" for the not-Nazis? Or "hoping for the best" while Tubby and his MAGAt scum show them their whole ass? TELL them that they are not "honorable men" or anything else.
They're fools. Or fooling themselves.
Or, worse, they're white guys like me who know that in TrumpWorld they won't go shy a slug or miss a meal. They're indifferent to Nazism, which may be the slimiest sort of reaction to it.
It's really simple; we fight Nazis. We destroy them...because they won't just "stop being Nazis" until they are. They can lose a hundred times. They only need to win once.
And they fucking know that full well.
Post a Comment