The Horror, The Horror

I read on Politico this morning that Trump called Speaker Nancy Pelosi an animal. After referring to a gang member convicted of murder as an animal, he turned his venom on Pelosi.  “I think she’s an animal, too, to tell you the truth,” Trump said. Cheerfully saying that he would probably suffer backlash for his rhetoric, he explained, “I will never use the word bullshit again. But what she did to us in this country … ” He did not finish the statement, but left it hanging, ensuring that his slur remained current. 
           I am reading Lion Feuchtwanger’s novel, The Oppermans. The book chronicles the rise of Hitler and his National Socialist movement and the various responses of the Jews to the propaganda that demonizes them. Consider the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, for example.  From Mein Kampf the novel quotes, “The vileness of the Jew is so gigantic that it should astonish no one if, to the German mind, the incarnation of the Devil and all that is evil assumes the shape of a Jew.” I am not saying that Trump is a Nazi sympathizer or a fascist, but his rhetoric has roots in the nationalist program that led to the attempt to destroy European Jewry. The epigraph for Book II of the Oppermans is from Nietzsche: “The Germans are to blame for the disease which is the most dangerous to culture and also for the greatest absurdity extant, namely Nationalism, this ‘névrose nationale’ from which Europe is suffering; they have robbed Europe of reason and intelligence.” What else is the Make America Great Again agenda but a reprise of the nationalist propaganda made infamous by the Nazis? What else has Trump and his legions done with their lies and vicious, filthy rhetoric but destroyed the influence of reason and intelligence. Gustav Opperman alone of his family holds firm to the belief that reason and intelligence will finally win out. At the meeting to authorize disguising the family ownership of their furniture factory and sales outlets from what they fear will be Nazi persecution and eventual takeover and shuttering, Gustav says, “Do you believe that this whole nation of sixty-five million people has ceased to be a culture people because it has conferred freedom of speech upon a few fools and scoundrels? I don’t believe it. I am against paying attention to a few fools and scoundrels.” His decision would prove tragically fatal, fatally tragic. How many United States millions voted for our fool and scoundrel? How many millions in the absence of any evidence whatsoever continue to hold that the 2020 election was stolen by the Democrats? How many millions supported the insurrection of January 6, 2021? How many millions continue to bow to him as he was the Leader? The epigraph for Book I is from Goethe: “There is nothing the rabble fears more than intelligence. If they understood what is truly terrifying, they would fear ignorance.” But this is not our fate.

            What terrifies me most this election day is not so much the Republican assumption of control of Congress—though I do tremble at the idea of it—but the return of Trump as a candidate for President. It would bring me to tears.