No. of Recommendations: 21
Anyone that is passingly interested in history knows they are using the Nazi rise to power as a blueprint for the last two months. Just consider threatening Canada with invasion - out of the many daily outrages. It is not funny, or trolling, or anywhere near appropriate.
While I don’t think I need to burnish my credentials as someone aghast at the recent turn in the political world we are living in, I also rise to remind us of the history that has gone before.
We have actually invaded Canada at one time (Twice, really, if you’re counting). It didn’t go well. Yes, it was a long time ago and things are vastly changed, I’m just saying “Weird shit has happened, and we’re still here.”
I should also point out that we have invaded Mexico before. Things went much better (depending on your point of view, I suppose) and we acquired huge swathes of territory, including California, Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, and most of Colorado and Wyoming. Oh, and Nevada. Not to put too fine a point on it, but leading up to that war, Mexico had welcomed gringos into the territory, after all, they weren’t doing much with it. And gringos showed up by the thousands - and before Mexico knew it it was gringos everywhere, and we decided we’d just take it. (Simplified version, but there it is.)
We had a President who actually invoked a law to silence people who criticized him (The Alien & Sedition Act: John Adams.) It didn’t last long, but that’s happened too. Not to mention dissolving Habeus Corpus, or rounding people up in concentration camps because of their racial heritage, as was done during World War II. Yes, both of those happened in wartime and they were awful, but they are there.
I recall that the first hundred years of the Republic relied extensively on tariffs to fund the Federal Government. Different government, different world, I acknowledge, but it’s happened before. Happened in the ‘30’s, too; that one didn’t go well either.
There was a time when we were both a world power and a desperately unreliable ally. We didn’t join the Great War until years had passed and hundreds of thousands were dead, and we sat for years in isolation as Germany swept up Europe and the militarists in Japan took over much of Asia.
We’ve had avowed racists in the White House, we’ve had fist fights and canings in Congress, we’ve had four Presidents assassinated, not to mention various Senators and Representatives killed in office, often in duels (such were the times) but also by being assassinated by thugs in the KKK, among others.
We’ve been in fake wars and wars that were faked to get us into them. That’s happened repeatedly, we still haven’t learned, but we’re still here.
This old Republic has been through a lot, though I don’t know that we’ve ever had a President who consorts with the enemy, or does the other things that are alleged (much of which I believe to be true) that are opposite the national interest. I’m not knowledgeable enough about all the various Congresses that have existed through the years, but I would not be surprised to find one or two which have so shirked their responsibilities of governance, nor checks & balances as this one has so far. But then we have also been through a recent time when the Executive plotted to subvert the fair election of leaders, and another more distant in which it ignored the Judicial; the quote “They made their decision now let them enforce it” comes to mind, although I may have mashed the words somewhat.
It’s certainly possible that it will all end here, it has to end somewhere, sometime, after all, and I hope this isn’t it. If it is, well I shall be happy to have lived in the time of the most prosperous, strongest, best educated, most widely democratic and freest period in history, with rights extended to even the most marginalized of society. For 200 years we pretended that “all men are created equal” and never tried to live up to it. Blacks, mulattos, women, foreigners, gays, trans, disabled, and others forced to live their lives in the dark, often in shame, even in slavery - have all had a better time lately than ever before. Not perfect by any stretch, but better than any prior civilization in human history.
I’m much further toward the finish line than the starting line, so I weep for those with more miles to travel - assuming the worst happens and the American that we love ceases to exist as we have known it. It’s only the optimist in me that says “We’ve been in tough places before and gotten out. Let’s be lucky and do it again.”
Now you’re going to ask me how. I have no fucking idea.
