Blind Faith = Willing Hands
and the Normalization of Brutality
A good friend of mine recently wrote about the arrest of Don Lemon who was reporting on an anti-ICE protest:
Nazi Germany did not become Nazi Germany overnight. Hitler didn’t seize absolute power in a single dramatic moment and ordinary Germans didn’t wake up one day inside a fully formed authoritarian state. The regime advanced incrementally, through laws, policies and bureaucratic systems that slowly narrowed who was protected and who wasn’t. Rights were suspended “temporarily,” the media was pressured “for public order” and courts were reshaped “for national stability,” with each step framed as reasonable, legal and necessary. Infrastructure was built not only in concrete and steel but in habit, normalization and lowered expectations. By the time the most horrifying outcomes arrived, the groundwork had already been laid.
Mike Maeshiro “Why a Journalist?”
I remember in 2016 the left saying that Trump was a Nazi. I dismissed it as hyperbole (I voted for him, I don’t vote for Nazis. So, obviously they are wrong). However, there was a nagging question in the back of my mind I couldn’t shake - “What are they seeing that I am not? Why would they say that?”
Using AI historians were able to identify a photograph from the 1940’s of a Jewish man moments before his execution by a pistol wielding Nazi. The photo is hard for me to look at, I saw many similar moments in the Marine Corps - men using weapons to kill other men. The Nazi was a member of Reserve Police Battalion 101. They were too old for combat so they were enlisted to round up and kill Jews, LGBTQ+ humans, and other non-whites. In total this unit of less than 500 men who were salesmen, clerks, teachers, a.k.a. normal civilians shot to death 38,000 humans and deported over 45,000 to gas chambers.
“Imbued with years of propaganda and discouraged from independent thought, many of them committed genocide out of what they perversely believed to be professional obligation.”
“At Last, a Name for the Murderous Face in a Holocaust Photo”
Make no mistake America is the playground for a fascist dictator cozying up to billionaires. He is being empowered by xtian (as I’ve said before I replaced christ with x since his teachings are largely absent in much of the American church today) organizations such as Faith & Freedom and The Heritage Foundation and is turning our country into a police state. Tackling and detaining lawmakers, scooping up U.S. citizens, disappearing legal residents, violating 4th amendment rights, murdering moms, and men in handcuffs - all of this is now normal. When will you decide “this is enough”? What has to happen before you say “Maybe this is wrong”?
Hitler was supported early on by the Protestant church. They tried to fuse xtianity with Nazi ideology. They promoted nationalism, antisemitism, and loyalty to the state. Furthermore, they believed Hitler would restore order, oppose communism, and revive German pride. They welcomed Hitler because they thought he would bring about economic recovery and bring stability. The churches failed to stop Hitler. Self preservation outweighed moral confrontation. Clergy actively collaborated with Hitler. Too many stayed silent.
Does any of this sound familiar?
Germans have a saying: “What do you get when you have dinner with a Nazi? Two Nazis.”
Proximity equals complicity.
Calling it what it is…
ICE is a gang of boys in men’s bodies playing cosplay, living out their Call Of Duty fantasies. They are cruel weak bullies. They are modern day gestapo imbued with decades of propaganda and fueled by peer pressure.
Sound familiar?
It is past the time for action, but it’s never too late to join your voice with the millions who are standing up, as true patriots, for the future of this country as a place where life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness is for everyone. Period.
Leave the table
Be brave
Speak out
Love is the only way forward (and is not predicated on sexual orientation, skin color, nationality, or gender).
And never forget silence is complicity.
Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.
- M.L.K. Jr. Strength To Love, 1963