Why not vote for "Hitler" as president since words "don't matter"?

 

Too often with these YouTube “influencers”—I won’t mention any names, but there is one I feel really sad about going down this road—are allowing themselves to be influenced by the language that they’ve heard used by others without thinking about where it came from. And then you have Sen. Lindsay Graham told Meet The Press that "We're talking about language. I could care less what language people use as long as we get it right." The headlines should read "Sen. Graham suggests that he would have voted for Hitler as president."

What is it that Graham thinks we should get "right"? Certainly not preserving the form of government the founding fathers intended. There are those who fear that democracy won’t survive a second Trump term. Trump says he will be a “dictator for a day” if re-elected, and people shouldn’t blow that off, because he can do a lot of destruction granting the far-right’s wish list in one day. 

But the real damage is that the country will be irreparably impaired, with one group of voters accepting single-party authoritarian rule, and  another group of voters radicalized into believing that they are on a sacred mission to preserve democracy, and those in the middle given the unenviable position of being the ones to blame for their choice between authoritarianism and democracy.

This country is at a crossroads. In 2016 many thought that Trump would “moderate” himself given that he really wasn’t the best “fit” for the highest office in the land; he was always a self-promoter, and winning the election was a grand PR stunt. But Trump was no politician, and he ran his own business like a dictator. He is a person guided by megalomania, his “gut” and his prejudices. 

And Trump clearly doesn’t care if his words signal the end of democracy as we know it, because he sees the cheering mobs at his rallies have no clue about the danger words present, and they don't want to hear that CRT stuff that makes them feel "bad" enough to reflect on the fact that they are no different than the Germans who, weary of the Weimar Republic that failed to "solve" the Great Depression, chose to be ruled by the Nazis who promised them "miracles" by removing the "poison in the blood."

Newsweek recently did a “fact check” on the comparison of Trump’s words with Hitler’s; its conclusion was very nearly that the comparison was accurate:

 

 Here are some recent comments by Trump:

They let — I think the real number is 15, 16 million people into our country. When they do that, we got a lot of work to do. They’re poisoning the blood of our country. That’s what they’ve done. They poison mental institutions and prisons all over the world, not just in South America, not just to three or four countries that we think about, but all over the world. They’re coming into our country from Africa, from Asia, all over the world.

In honor of our great Veterans on Veteran's Day, we pledge to you that we will root out the Communists, Marxists, Fascists, and Radical Left Thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our Country, lie, steal, and cheat on Elections, and will do anything possible, whether legally or illegally, to destroy America, and the American Dream.The threat from outside forces is far less sinister, dangerous, and grave, than the threat from within. Despite the hatred and anger of the Radical Left Lunatics who want to destroy our Country, we will MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN.

Nobody has ever seen anything like we're witnessing right now, it is a very sad thing for our country. It's poisoning the blood of our country, it's so bad and people are coming in with disease, people are coming in with every possible thing that you can have.

I think you could go to the, uh, you could go to a banana republic, and pick the worst one, and you're not going to see what we're witnessing now. No control whatsoever, nobody has any idea where these people are coming from, and we know they come from prisons, we know they come from mental institutions, insane asylums, we know they're terrorists. Nobody has ever seen anything like we're witnessing right now, it is a very sad thing for our country. It's poisoning the blood of our country, it's so bad and people are coming in with disease, people are coming in with every possible thing that you can have.

Of course like Hitler, Trump is no fan of  a free press, such as this response to suggestions that Trump's words parroted Hitler's: "Trump spokesman Steven Cheung told Newsweek earlier this week: 'Those who try to make that ridiculous assertion are clearly snowflakes grasping for anything because they are suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome and their sad, miserable existence will be crushed when President Trump returns to the White House.'" 

Can we really detect some Hitlerisms in all of this? Well, first you need to do your research. I located the English translation of Mein Kampf in the online Gutenberg Library, and did a word search on “blood” and “poison.” What did I find? Hitler seemed completely absorbed with the use and meaning of these words as they reflected in his mind the current "state" of Germany and the “purity” of its people. Here are a couple of excerpts I picked out, which hardly does “justice” to Hitler’s dementia:

Our contemporary generation of weaklings will naturally decry such a policy and whine and complain about it as an encroachment on the most sacred of human rights. But there is only one right that is sacrosanct and this right is at the same time a most sacred duty. This right and obligation are: that the purity of the racial blood should be guarded, so that the best types of human beings may be preserved and that thus we should render possible a more noble development of humanity itself.

The whole organization of education and training which the People's State is to build up must take as its crowning task the work of instilling into the hearts and brains of the youth entrusted to it the racial instinct and understanding of the racial idea. No boy or girl must leave school without having attained a clear insight into the meaning of racial purity and the importance of maintaining the racial blood unadulterated. Thus the first indispensable condition for the preservation of our race will have been established and thus the future cultural progress of our people will be assured.

And what measures did the State take to counteract this wholesale poisoning of the public mind? None, absolutely nothing at all. By this policy it was hoped to win the favor of this pest—by means of flattery, by a recognition of the 'value' of the Press, its 'importance', its 'educative mission' and similar nonsense.

This is a God-given signal. If this fire, as I believe, is the work of the Communists, then we must crush out this murderous pest with an iron fist. Nature is cruel; therefore we are also entitled to be cruel. When I send the flower of German youth into the steel hail of the next war without feeling the slightest regret over the precious German blood that is being spilled, should I not also have the right to eliminate millions of an inferior race that multiplies like vermin?

History furnishes us with innumerable instances that prove this law. It shows, with a startling clarity, that whenever Aryans have mingled their blood with that of an inferior race the result has been the downfall of the people who were the standard-bearers of a higher culture. In North America, where the population is prevalently Teutonic, and where those elements intermingled with the inferior race only to a very small degree, we have a quality of mankind and a civilization which are different from those of Central and South America. In these latter countries the immigrants—who mainly belonged to the Latin races—mated with the aborigines, sometimes to a very large extent indeed. In this case we have a clear and decisive example of the effect produced by the mixture of races. But in North America the Teutonic element, which has kept its racial stock pure and did not mix it with any other racial stock, has come to dominate the American Continent and will remain master of it as long as that element does not fall a victim to the habit of adulterating its blood. What makes a people or, to be more correct, a race, is not language but blood.

As suggested there are those who say that democracy won’t survive another Trump presidency. Some may claim that is an exaggeration, but I say not. Unless there is something like a symbolic Holocaust—and that could be a mass country-wide round-up and deportation of Hispanics without regard to their citizenship and legal status (I mean what do his supporters think he has planned?)—this country will have a significant portion of the population forever infused with de facto fascist mindset. Democracy will not matter as long as their “man” is there to save them from the “others” who have no legitimate rights because they are not of the “blood.”

Since “the border” and Latinos/Hispanic are the principle object of “fear” and the "tool" the far-right fascists hope to use to fashion a fascist white state, one question we may ask is what about these people who are the stand-ins for the Jews in Germany in this country? NBC News reported earlier this year that  

“There is an ingrained perception among many white people that all Latinos are foreign no matter how long they’ve been in the United States or how ‘assimilated’ they are, said Ian Haney López, an expert on racism and a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley. ‘Many whites view us as 'foreign' when measured against white people, both in terms of physical and cultural differences, and then collapse that into the assumption that we're foreign in the national sense as well,’ said López.”

Well, that is one view. Another is from the Pew Foundation

About two-thirds of U.S. Hispanics (68%) say that if people passed them on the street they would describe them as Hispanic or Latino. Hispanics who are foreign born (79%) and second generation (68%) are more likely than the third or higher generation (50%) to say this. Meanwhile, about one-in-five Hispanics (18%) say people passing them on the street would describe them as white. This share increases as immigrant connections grow distant. About 10% of Hispanic immigrants say a person would describe them as white, while 16% of the second generation and 33% of the third or higher generation say the same.

I don’t live in a world of illusion. Why are some of these people doing so? Those who self-identify as “white”—and I am mainly speaking of “mestizos”—are fooling themselves believing that if they “think white” or “speak white” actually makes them “white” in the eyes of those who only see a “Mexican.”

The Guardian after the El Paso mas shooting:

“It still impacts you because it rattles you at your core, especially if you realize they were aiming at Latinos, you ask: ‘I am Latino what does it mean for me?’” Rojas-Flores said. “I was very troubled by it because I understand the levels of exposure and impact, it keeps on adding to an already anti-immigrant climate. “It brings to the forefront more fear.”

The fear and violence are the results of a president who is openly anti-Latino, said Thomas Saenz, the president of Maldef, the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund. “The discrimination is certainly more direct, more open than in my lifetime and certainly emanates from the president of the United States,” Saenz said, adding that Trump’s policies and practices seem, “intent on eliminating the Latino community as an essential part of the country”.

The racism and prejudice that Latinos/Hispanics face in this country is barely if ever discussed by the national media; thus being rendered voiceless, there is no push-back on the generalized perception that they are all guilty of “something,” nor, despite all the evidence to the contrary, is racism and prejudice against regarded as something the general population needs to concern themselves with; after all, they "deserve" it.  

NBC News reported that “Latinos are barely part of the conversation in newspapers and online media outlets covering the issue of racial equity and racism, a new study has found":

Only about 6% of such news referred to Latinos, who make up nearly 20% of the American population and over 40% of all people of color, according to a report published Wednesday by the Berkeley Media Studies Group and UnidosUS. The study analyzed peak news cycles related to racism and racial equity issues, including wealth, housing and health in the U.S., following the onset of protests and protest anniversaries between May 1 and Sept. 30 in 2020, 2021 and 2022. 

During that span, the authors reviewed 195,536 articles that covered the topic of race. Only 10,963 articles, or 5.6%, referred to Latinos, with a dramatic drop-off in coverage in 2021 and 2022, the report noted.“When Latino experiences, contributions and concerns are excluded from news coverage, policymakers and the public don’t have the facts needed to craft effective and inclusive solutions,” said Viviana Lopez Green, senior director for UnidosUS’ Racial Equity Initiative. “Too often, our community is ‘out of sight, out of mind.’”

Rep. Joaquin Castro gave a speech criticizing news organizations, including the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, for their lack of reporting on the Latino perspective. “The worst offenders within the industry are actually news organizations and publishing houses. Some of America’s most renowned media institutions are the largest and longest perpetrators of cultural exclusion.”

I read a report whose author noted how he participated in a phone bank that called Latino voters to find out who they voted for and why in 2016; the author was surprised to learn from those who voted for Trump that they were most concerned about illegal immigration. The author discussed the reasons for this, but overlooked the role of racism within the Latino community (i.e. not wanting to be "lumped in" with "them"), and the Hispanic community generally. The racism of the "white" Latinos and the white American population generally focuses on indigenous peoples…

 

…who in fact tend to be harder working and less crime-prone than other groups; as noted I suspect that this is because Latinos who consider themselves “white” and yet discover that other white people just lump them with the hated “others” don’t like being so, thinking they are of a higher “caste”--as if that matters.

It shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone that indigenous peoples in Central  America are migrating in greater numbers than other “ethnicities” because they are the ones most likely to be targeted for violence and abuse by both the government and gangs—not to mention the fact the many decades where the U.S. government actively worked to thwart protestations for their rights, particularly through “leftist” governments that have been habitually overthrown with the help of the U.S. government.

And so it goes. It is tough walking around knowing that people look at you and wondering if you are “legal,” or your not “like them,” or they have their “criminal” or “drug dealer” paranoia—or laughable sexual stereotypes (especially for a loner like me). I recall I had just walked into QFC store going down an aisle to the cash machine when out of the corner of my I noted a white female, a complete stranger (I don’t know anyone in Seattle) walking toward me with a smirk on her face; as she passed me she said “Looking at my boobs?” Funny, but she gave me the perfect rejoinder: “No, I’m looking at a boob.”