Take A Stand

The rise of Donald Trump and the ‘tea party’ is frightening at best and prophetic about the path this nation is on at worst.

The last two weeks I posted about listening. I believe that we must listen to one another. But we must also honor the times we are moved to speak.

I am a long time student of Nazi Germany and the Second World War. I did focused study on the time period in college. I took courses on post holocaust ethics in seminary. I visited Dachau as a child living in Germany and was profoundly changed by the experience.

Donald Trump is dangerous. His followers are dangerous. They play fast and lose with our code of law- Trump even suggesting he could ‘shoot someone on 5^th Avenue and not lose any votes’. Hyperbole? Perhaps. But completely indicative of an entitled and sociopathic mindset. His minions (more than one, more than two)  suggest that Hillary Clinton should be murdered. That does not include the trolls on social media.

In my naïveté I once believed that what happened in Nazi Germany could never happen here. But we are no different than any other nation unless we insist that we live by the code of law and cherish our constitution rights (even expanding them as we gain deeper understandings). This is what made our nation- not necessarily our ability to fulfill the vision set out in our constitution, but that we consistently return to the values of freedom and justice. Our military takes an oath to defend the constitution, not the president. Our president takes an oath to defend the constitution. The constitution is a great big deal. Donald Trump and the tea party seem to have forgotten that.

People are afraid. We are afraid of terrorism. We are afraid of one another. We blame others rather than take responsibility for the trauma our nation is experiencing. Fear does horrible things. It drives us to dehumanize others- other races, other religions, other world views. It isolates us from one another. When we live in fear it is almost impossible to trust one another and we need that trust as part of our social contract.  Of course there are people who are untrustworthy and there are scary people out there but we must not allow our  fear co-opt our commitment to freedom and justice.

Before World War II broke out, Neville Chamberlin, then Prime Minister of Britain, pursued a policy of appeasement with Hitler, giving in to his takeover of Austria and later, Czechoslovakia. Chamberlin believed Hitler had been reigned in. Hitler’s hunger for power was fed rather than appeased.

Why am I bringing up poor Neville Chamberlin? Because DONALD TRUMP and his followers must be stopped. They have already tasted too much power. And they gained their power by tapping into the worst part of ourselves: the parts that fear and hate. If fear of the other manifests in deleting the constitutional rights of our citizens, if hate takes root in our political landscape, the momentum will be almost impossible to stop.

Donald Trump and the tea party are dangerous. What happened in Nazi Germany can happen here. Don’t believe it can’t. Take a stand. Vote as if all our lives depend on it. They do.