I always look forward to receiving the latest Substack essay from Kareem Abdul- Jabbar.
Yesterday, he offered commentary around the ceaseless idiocy and incandescent ignorance of Marjorie Taylor Greene, who just proposed something so stupid, unconstitutional and un-American that it is best to hear it in her own words:
For Mr. Abdul-Jabbar it triggered reminiscence around a question that he pondered, asked, and for which he never received a satisfactory answer. Here is how he put it:
One of the questions that haunted me when I was growing up was: how did the German people ever get to a point where they permitted a dictator to commit genocide while they went about their daily business? I would ask adults how this could happen but no one could give me a rational answer. I think they were just as baffled.
When I was a kid, I asked the same questions, and never got answers that made sense. There were always reassurances offered by the adults that “it couldn’t happen in America.”
I’m not sure when during the Trump years that I understood how wrong that was, but I realize the American immunity to despotism is less than I imagined. Its susceptibility is no different from any other peoples. The great progress in America towards justice and equality should never obscure the sickening reality that when the Nazis looked for precedents to write the Nuremberg race laws, they found them in the miscegenation laws of the American South. These were the rear guard actions of defeated racists whose slaves were liberated, plantations occupied and society destroyed militarily in a civil war that lasted from 1861 to 1865.
There are great debates that are raging around the teaching of history and its meaning that are a proxy for the culture war that American politics has produced and is worsening. Mostly, these debates are over the shameful censoring of reality. They comfort the political sensibilities and intellectual frailties of jingoes who don’t understand the American idea, ideals, story and suffering that has occurred as the gap between our values and reality has been contested and closed over nearly 250 years.
Mr. Abdul-Jabbar is correct to note the laziness inherent in the oft-used expression by our politicians that something is “common sense.” He is correct about the words being an obvious tell that indicate something dishonest, ignorant or off the wall is about to be uttered by someone who isn’t on the level. However, when it comes to the question that intrigued us both as kids, the search for an answer and deep understanding may be the most common sensical area of study that could conceivably be taught to current generations.
It puts a simple and singular question forward. How did that happen? How did Hitler rise, and how did a civilized nation of poets, composers, philosophers, authors, writers and scientists succumb to it? Truly, there may be no more important question that deserves constant discussion, debate, understanding and scholarship. The reason for this is simple. The war started by Hitler’s Thousand Year Reich nearly cracked that foundation of human civilization. It came close to destroying the world, and when it was over, everyone who survived understood that the world would not survive its next conflagration.
The study of this era is urgent in this moment of growing danger. Understanding what happened in Europe during the first 45 years of the 20th century is of profound importance to keeping America safe in the 21st century.