6/15/2017—The problem is that James Hodgkinson’s crazy actions perfectly match how many people feel about the situation we are in. What should people have done the moment that Hitler came to power? If they had known then what they learned later, people of good will would have taken to the streets in an attempted, violent coup. Such an effort would have been doomed, but so what? Better to die on one’s feet.
So, if it is wrong to do that in America today, it must be because, for all his faults, Trump is not Hitler. And the Republicans are not the Nazi Party, even though they are doing terrible things, like preventing people from trashing the planet and repealing healthcare.
Liberals are unaware that before the election the rhetoric on the right had all the same elements. Here is an account from the New York Times in February:
“Mr. Klingenstein was referring to the continuing furor around “The Flight 93 Election,” an incendiary pro-Trump polemic that appeared in September on the website of The Claremont Review of Books, the institute’s flagship publication. Published under the pseudonym Publius Decius Mus, the essay compared the American republic to a hijacked airliner, with a vote for Donald J. Trump as the risky, but existentially necessary, course. Decius’ apocalyptic vision — “Charge the cockpit or you die” — stirred intense rebuttals from the overwhelmingly anti-Trump conservative intellectual establishment. Then The Weekly Standard revealed that Decius was Michael Anton, a senior staff member at the National Security Council, and a news media stampede was on.”
So, Clinton is not a Jihadist. Trump is not a Nazi. The First Amendment has not been repealed and the next election has not been cancelled.
Oh, and your neighbor who voted for Trump or Clinton is not crazy.
We should really be asking why we feel this way—that is our spiritual crisis.
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