Warning #2: Indifference is a sin
Heading into the final stretch of the presidential election, I am publishing 10 specific warnings about the existential threat at hand facing the American way of life. Make no mistake, it is under attack from within.
Here is Warning #1: Be not afraid.
And here is Warning #2…
The world wasn’t homogenized when fascism bared its fangs in Rome and Bavaria 100 years ago. The venomous ideology manifested itself in ways that were alarming, yet alien.
Some Americans were prescient and saw the danger building that Churchill would later call the “Gathering Storm,” but most were indifferent. The uniforms, goose stepping, songs, salutes, torchlight parades and messianic leaders seemed strange — even comical to American sensibilities. Yet, it is revisionism to pretend that the manifestation of power, illusions of order that masked repression and shiny boots, didn’t excite some Americans.
Charles Lindbergh was enthralled by the Nazis, and served as their useful idiot in the way so many MAGA fools do for Vladimir Putin today. Adolf Hitler kept a photo of the antisemite Henry Ford on his desk, and like Musk today, Ford was infamous for trying to conduct his own foreign policy. There was no shortage of Americans who wanted to cashier the Constitution in favor of something new. More than 20,000 of them gathered in Madison Square Garden on February 20, 1939, three months after Kristallnacht, and six months before the world would be lit on fire. There, they would “sieg heil” to giant banners of George Washington festooned with swastikas as speaker after speaker claimed their Americanism and patriotism.
Here is a poster from the event:
Yet, the Bund did not take off in America in part because Fritz Kuhn, the American Führer, had a strong German accent. Some mistook this for a testament to the strength of American character, but the woman who witnessed the collapse of democracy across Europe and the rise of Hitlerism knew better. Dorothy Thompson knew that both the desire for political power and the ingredients that make dictatorships rise — cynicism, greed, cowardice, apathy, arrogance, incompetence, ignorance, hate, anger, grievance and fear — are very human conditions. She saw her countrymen clearly:
When Americans think of dictators they always think of some foreign model. If anyone turned up here in a fur hat, boots and a grim look he would be recognized and shunned…. But when our dictator turns up, you can depend on it that he will be one of the boys, and he will stand for everything traditionally American.
Have you ever wondered why Donald Trump goes to UFC events? How about college football games in the deep south?
There is an internet meme about “dark MAGA” that has gained popularity in recent weeks. Here is the gist: it’s a term linked to far-right groups, signalling a more aggressive vision of Donald Trump's political movement.
Musk has driven the narrative forward with quotes like this:
I am dark MAGA.
He also claims that Democrats want to:
Take away your freedom of speech, they want to take away your right to bear arms, they want to take away your right to vote, effectively.
Yesterday, Donald Trump embraced the meme and put on a black hat. Donald Trump is making clear that his promises are real, and that his threats are to be believed. His plans for retribution against his opponents, and plans to deploy the military against the American citizen are very real. No one will be beyond his reach.
Jeff Bezos believes that his interests will be served through an appeasement of those of Donald Trump. Just like that, The Washington Post, a supremely important news organization, an icon of the power of the First Amendment, has chosen self-immolation with a deafening act of self-censorship that makes clear that America’s truth will soon be controlled in the same way that it is in Hungary. Frightening and appalling don’t begin to describe it, and it is going to get worse. Elon Musk controls X, and soon one of Donald Trump’s largest donors — Larry Ellison — will control CBS News, while Comcast and Disney control NBC and ABC respectively. And of course there’s Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News.
The hour will soon come during which truth-telling will cost something, and finding the truth will be harder than it has ever been. Trust your eyes and ears. See clearly what is in front, behind and all around you.
Should Donald Trump win, the American way of life will transform very quickly. Outspoken Trump opponents will lose jobs, face tax audits, loss of government contracts, and a thousand other petty inconveniences, which are not experienced in free nations. The truth is that, at the moment when resistance could be most impactful, the realities of the moment will create a stampede of submission and appeasement. Everyone who can will do everything they can to protect themselves, and not bring political attention to themselves. Medical doctors, pharmacists, nurses, immigrant lawyers, teachers, librarians, and many more will fall under government scrutiny. There will be no rewards for speaking up or out.
But some Americans will. We are a defiant people after all — slow to anger, difficult to control.
During the days and weeks ahead, many institutions which were once trusted will show the depths of their corruption, just like the Bezos-owned Washington Post.
“Democracy doesn’t die in darkness,” despite what The Washington Post masthead might say. It was always a stupid platitude, and the fact that Bezos mandated it makes it grotesque, not just pitifully moronic.
Here is my second warning. It comes from a speech that was the valedictory address of the 20th century at the edge of a new millennium when American power was supreme, and democracy triumphant in a world deeply hopeful. It was delivered by a moral giant named Elie Wiesel. Here is what he said:
In a way, to be indifferent to that suffering is what makes the human being inhuman. Indifference, after all, is more dangerous than anger and hatred. Anger can at times be creative. One writes a great poem, a great symphony. One does something special for the sake of humanity because one is angry at the injustice that one witnesses. But indifference is never creative. Even hatred at times may elicit a response. You fight it. You denounce it. You disarm it.
Indifference elicits no response. Indifference is not a response. Indifference is not a beginning; it is an end. And, therefore, indifference is always the friend of the enemy, for it benefits the aggressor -- never his victim, whose pain is magnified when he or she feels forgotten. The political prisoner in his cell, the hungry children, the homeless refugees -- not to respond to their plight, not to relieve their solitude by offering them a spark of hope is to exile them from human memory. And in denying their humanity, we betray our own.
Indifference, then, is not only a sin, it is a punishment.
It is a warning that endures.
I take MAGA at its word. It is all Darkness to me. The American Nazi rally to be held only miles from the grave of my United States Third Army uncle, a liberator of Buchenwald.
Just remember what Tucker Carlson said about little girls needing a spanking. Americans could put a sick group of predators in the halls of government. I am just taking them at their word.
We are on the verge of losing everything we have fought for since the Revolutionary War. This a national failure, pure snd simple. How many don’t understand? How many don’t care? They will be shocked when it reaches them.