In the early 1930s Germany still thought of itself as the cultured land of Beethoven, Bach, Goethe, and Kant. Yet, under the surface, a roiling stew of resentments was bubbling away. Much of its populace was convinced that it had only lost the Great War because of the enemies from within–Jews, globalists, gays, immigrants, decadent artists and dishonest journalists. Inflation had destroyed life savings. And the democratic institutions of the Weimar Republic seemed incapable of decisive action to better people’s lives.
All of this was fodder for a political figure with a unique instinct for how to harness and focus resentments to turbocharge his ascent to power. In early 1933, Adolf Hitler was appointed Chancellor. Nineteen months later, in a carefully stage-managed referendum, German voters gave him the absolute, unchallengeable powers of a Führer. And just over a year after that, the Nazified Reich passed the Nuremberg Laws, fundamentally restricting who could claim citizenship and stripping citizenship rights from vast numbers of Germans who until then had been full and equal members of the state.
From being one of the cultural powerhouses of Europe, Germany became a country the public face of which was Hitler, Himmler, Goebbels, Goering, and their collected gang of psychopaths.
Today, I fear, America is on a very similar trajectory. How did this wonderful, polyglot, endlessly diverse country of Louis Armstrong, Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, of Harriet Tubman, Billie Holiday, F. Scott Fitzgerald, of Hemingway and Bogie/Bacall, of Gershwin and Richard Feynman and Cesar Chavez and Martin Luther King and Harvey Milk, of Jackson Pollock and Langston Hughes, of Mark Twain and Amelia Earhart, and countless other dreamers and creators, scientific geniuses and explorers become the country of Donald Trump, Steve Bannon, Stephen Miller, of Hulk Hogan and of the street-fighting Proud Boys?
How did tens of millions of American voters, in an earth-shattering spasm of anger and resentment, of economic pain and an inchoate sense of cultural displacement vote to give such vast powers to this gang of sociopaths?
Nearly 160 years ago, the United States managed to put down the vile forces of the Confederacy. Now, in January 2025, Trump will be inaugurated, for the second time, in front of hundreds of thousands of supporters, many of whom–if past history is a guide–will be proudly flying the flag of the southern rebels. Make no mistake, it is the heirs of Jefferson Davis who now control everything from the nuclear codes to the immense propaganda tool embodied by Elon Musk’s odious X platform.
We are about to embark on Year Zero of a totalitarian reimagining of America, of what it stands for, of its place in the world, of who an American is and what people must do and believe so as to preserve their access to American-ness and its privileges.
It haunts me that roughly half the electorate bought into the greatest con, by the greatest con man, in the country’s history; that, presented with decency versus grotesquery, they willingly, gleefully chose the latter. That, when presented with gallons of snake oil, they reached out, bought the poison and chugged it down.
It haunts me that, when the generals and the historians, the decent Republicans who could see what was happening to their party, and the analysts of current political realities warned of fascism, half of America either was too oblivious to realize the moral implications, or knew the implications but decided that if fascism could bring down the price of eggs and gasoline, it was a bargain worth embracing.
It haunts me that half the country, when presented with a demagogue’s promise to unleash a carnival of violence and humiliation against immigrants, transgendered people, women who opt for abortions, political opponents, bought the idea that these targeted groups were the enemy within and gave a permission slip to Trump to unleash America’s Kristallnacht on these dehumanized groups.
It haunts me that when Trump promised to illegally end birthright citizenship, a bedrock principle of post-civil war America, when he promised America’s version of Hitler’s Nuremberg laws, half the country stood and cheered.
It haunts me that the country watched children being held captive in cages during Trump 1.0 and turned around and decided to give him a mandate to do even worse in version 2.0 of his rancid presidential career.
It haunts me that two impeachments, 34 felony convictions, civil courts finding him liable for sexual abuse and for tax fraud, and his having launched an insurrection to remain in power after the 2020 election not only didn’t dent Trump’s electoral appeal but actually expanded his support across one demographic after another.
It haunts me that we have become a country so enamored of the spectacle of cruelty, that our idea of entertainment is a nonstop parade of racial and misogynist insults.
It haunts me that Trump’s sadistic death cult is now the law of the land, and that the awesome powers of the US government will now surely be turned against perceived enemies both within and beyond the country’s borders.
It haunts me that the country that wrote its way into mythology as the most welcoming, generous, polyglot place in human history, has twice now voted for a man of Trump’s loathsome ilk to take the reins of power. That is the mark of a democratic culture in profound, perhaps terminal, moral crisis.
