A True Abomination

I now must try to deal with something which will seem innocuous to many, but is by far the worst abomination yet perpetrated by Trump.  I have been thinking about this for several hours, since I first heard about it, and for once in my life I find myself unable to muster words that describe the true evil and danger of this course of action, but it must be addressed, so here I go.

It was revealed today that, immediately after the inauguration, Trump issued a proclamation declaring his own inauguration day to be a “National Day of Patriotic Devotion.”

“Now, therefore, I, Donald J. Trump, president of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and the laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim Jan. 20, 2017, as National Day of Patriotic Devotion, in order to strengthen our bonds to each other and to our country...

There is no freedom where the people do not believe in it; no law where the people do not follow it; and no peace where the people do not pray for it.”
The declaration does not apply to inaugurations in general, only to his.  This is not about the country, it is about Donald Trump himself.  It is Trump who is to be the target of patriotic devotion.

With this act, the time has come when it is not just appropriate but necessary to refer to Trump as Hitlerian.

I believe I know a pretty fair amount about Germany, from its creation as a country in the early 1870's to the end of World War II, and in many ways I have resisted comparing Trump personally to Hitler.  Hitler was a person damaged by a cruel upbringing, and by failure and poverty in his early manhood in Vienna.  He fought honorably in World War I, and then entered political life in a country crushed by its loss in that war, and devastated by the hyper-inflation of the early 1920's. He had a detailed (if obviously repulsive) program for his country, spelled out in the mid 1920's, in his book, Mein Kampf, and from which he never deviated.  Both personally, and in his circumstances, Hitler was vastly different than the coddled, rich bully Trump.  Well, Trump has now, immediately on ascending to the Presidency, ascended past those differences.

Those who know about the early days of Nazi rule know that, as soon as Hitler thought he could get away with it, he began the forced transfer of loyalty from the government to himself.  Soldiers, Nazi party members, and all government employees were forced to take oaths of loyalty to him.  Here is an example of German soldiers taking this oath:



And this is clearly what Trump intends to do.  We can now talk about him as a true despot, who intends to throw off the chains of two centuries and more of American laws and ideals, to enshrine himself as entitled by his very nature to rule the country forever.  This single act should suffice for any informed person to utterly reject him, and refuse to recognize that, in any way, he has a right to determine the course of our land.  Unfortunately, our sycophantic press will dismiss this act as having no real significance, and consequently, virtually no American will perceive what has just happened, or even realize that it took place.

Comments

Professor Chaos said…
How dare you speak critically of the Dear Leader? Hail Trump!
Dave Dubya said…
Loyalty oaths were required to attend Bush rallies too. Gott Mitt Uns!

The Orange Fuhrer may get some pushback from the press this time. There will be the usual sniveling and genuflection, but Dear Leader has declared his hostility. Some of them will did in...maybe?

Not much has changed in fascism.

The ugly history of ‘Lügenpresse,’ a Nazi slur shouted at a Trump rally

Critics of Adolf Hitler's regime were frequently referred to as members of the “Lügenpresse apparatus.”... “Lügenpresse” (lying press) was an important component under propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels

Republicans didn't start it after all. They only emulate it. "Values".


https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2016/10/24/the-ugly-history-of-luegenpresse-a-nazi-slur-shouted-at-a-trump-rally/?utm_term=.cfa71021f5ba

Unknown said…
This is precisely the way I felt, and like you, I avoided referring to him as a Hitler incarnate, until the act you describe and three other motions he took:
1. He muzzled Federal Employees' free speech by proclaiming they are not allowed to voice their opinion in any public forum
2. he is going to reopen all the black prison sites across the globe. Why? We're no longer capturing terrorists and locking them up forever. Think of this as I recite the next proclamation.
3. He publicly threatened Chicago's government that, if they don't get their crime levels under control, he is sending in the Feds.

Now, I am absolutely certain the feds he's referring to is not the FBI. They would be no more capable of quelling the violence than the Chicago PD. Rather than the FBI, the feds he's surely thinking of are wearing camouflage battle BDUs, wearing combat boots and helmets, carrying loaded fully automatic M16a4s and M4s.

And considering Trumps megalomania and his penchant for overstatement, I have no doubt those feds will also be driving APCs with .50 cal machine guns mounted on top of them, hell, probably even M1A2 Abrams.

NOW, we have a true Fuhrer, all nice and orange and every bit as mentally deranged as Hannibal Lecter. A lunatic with his hands shivering in anticipation of reading off the codes and putting his fingers on the "nuke'em buttons to rid the world of all those pesky Muslims he so hates.

Oh, and one other thing! If Congress doesn't get their thumbs out of one another's asses and do something about this unstable, rambling, lunatic, the other thing I see when I look at Trump is - the end of Humanity.
Green Eagle said…
Well, I agree with you, Bob. As cynical as I have been about Republicans, I have been stunned by how many of the building blocks of a fascist dictatorship they have gotten in place in five days. This is a highly calculated scheme, and it may very well succeed. I wrote a post a number of years ago about how fast, after Hitler became Reich Chancellor, he utterly crushed any opposition. I think I need to dig it out and run it again, because that is what is happening here.

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