Recycling history

I never thought I would hear these words coming from an American citizen, much less a presidential candidate for the United States of America.

Can it possibly be true?

Let's try this simple quiz:

1.  Who said, "I will get rid of the communist 'vermin'?"

   a) Donald Trump

   b) Adolf Hitler

   c) All of the above.

The correct answer is C, all of the above.

 

2. Who said, "I will take care of the 'enemy within'?"

   a) Donald Trump

   b) Adolf Hitler

   c) All of the above.

The correct answer is C, all  of the above.

 

3. Who said, "Migrants are poisoning the blood of our country?"

    a) Donald Trump

    b)  Adolf Hitler

    c) All  of the above.

The correct answer is C, all of the above. Well, actually, Hitler said "Jews and migrants are poisoning Ayran blood," but that seems to be a difference without distinction between the two.

4. Who said, "One people, one family, one glorious nation?"

   a) Donald Trump

   b) Adolf Hitler

   c) All of the above.

The correct answer is C, all of the above. And again, there is a slight difference without distinction when Hitler said, "One people, one realm, one leader."

Shockingly, but perhaps not surprisingly, Donald Trump uttered the first two of those nearly identical-to-Hitler verbatim comments during a Veteran's Day speech on Nov. 11 at a rally in Claremont, N.H. The other two came from Trump at various speeches across the country over the past few years. These are astonishing words coming from the Republican presidential candidate who is seeking a second term in office.

In my mind, they represent some of the most unAmerican rhetoric I've ever heard from an American politician.

I know, I know. How can I legitimately compare Trump to Hitler? After all, Trump has not practiced genocide like the Nazi leader, who exterminated six million Jews and another five million "undesirables" during his fascistic reign of terror in the 1930s and 1940s.

But, right now, the danger remains in the rhetoric. Hitler's ideology, memorialized in his book Mein Kampf (My Struggle), unveiled his blueprints for world domination. And we saw the results: concentration camps, book bannings, deportations, secret police.

When people tell you who they are, believe them.

Trump is already paving the road for his retribution ideology should he win a second term next November. He's already made clear he is prepared to round up undocumented persons and detain them in holding camps across the country. He's already attempting to break down our institutions, especially the rule of law that defines our democracy. Yet for now, it all remains mostly rhetoric.

Who's to say that if camps like this ever became an American reality, when do political opponents become incarcerated along with the immigrants? When do executions begin under the premise of journalists committing treason?

Learn from history, people. It's happening before your very eyes. The danger is there, camouflaged as political rhetoric.

But the rhetoric can easily become the reality for a duped and desensitized electorate.

Just like Hitler.

(For a deeper view of the Trump-Hitler similarities, see here.)

License renewal time

The panic attack came when I got the notice in the mail that it was time for me to renew my driver's license.

What, already? Seems like I just did that.

Well, I did. Five years ago.

But there it was, printed in red capital letters across the top of the notice: "It's time to renew your driver license!" There was no possessive on "driver," but there was that exclamation point, implying some sense of urgency and that I better take care of this matter right now. Right now, dammit!

The last time I had my license renewed, I think I had to take a relatively simple identify the road signs test. You know, what does a red sign mean? What does a yellow triangular sign mean? What kind of information is given on a white sign? Stuff like that. The quiz might have also served as the eye exam as well. At least, as a test for color blindness.

I had until February to renew my license, but I wanted to get this thing out of the way. I decided to go online and study road signs and road markings, but it wasn't long before I learned that North Carolina stopped giving the road sign identification test for renewals years ago.

Uh-oh. Now what? Surely there was some kind of test I had to take. Multiple choice? True or false?

So I googled NC driver's license renewal exam. There were several kinds of tests for which I could practice. I didn't know what to do. I asked some friends what they remembered from their last renewal, and they all seemed kind of foggy about it.

I'm not a person who tests well. I get apprehensive. Edgy. But I wanted to get this over with. So I took a couple of the practice exams until my head started swimming. Enough. Let's do this.

The DMV gives you the option of making an appointment for your renewal, or coming to the local DMV as a walk-in and take your chances on waiting for hours before your number is called, or you can renew online.

The thing about renewing online is that according to my initial renewal notice, if you renewed online last time, you must renew in-person this time. I quickly did the math in my head: if I'm 72 years old now, and my next renewal comes in five years when I'm 77, it might be better to go in person this time.

So I did.

The next day, I drove to the Lexington DMV for my in-person renewal, and sure enough, the parking lot was jam-packed. It was already 1:30 p.m. I didn't want to be there all day.

I was once told that things move more quickly in Mocksville, so that's where I headed. Twenty-five minutes later, I'm in the Mocksville DMV waiting room. There are 10 people in there, three of them waiting for their road test. About 35 minutes later, my number was called.

And then it was happening. My palms were sweaty. My heart was racing. Just like my wedding day. 

Here it comes: the exam.

"Sir, will you please look in the viewer and read the letters on the top line of the eye chart for me?" I was asked.

"M, Q, E, P, C, F, W, ummm, Deee?,Z,G,O."

"Thank you, sir. Will you please stand with your back to the screen so we can take you picture?

Huh? That was it? All that fretting and anxiety for an eye test?

Whew.

Easy peasy.

Antisemitism

More than 55 year ago, if I recall, our church's confirmation class took a field trip to a synagogue. This had to be in the early 1960s and I was a young teenager just beginning my high school years.

We were living in Bethlehem, PA, a deeply historic Moravian community, and I think the visit to the synagogue was a cooperative venture between the two houses of worship.

We weren't there for a service, but rather for the educational experience. I really don't remember much about that evening. And yet, there are some things that happened that night that have stayed with me all these decades later.

The rabbi gave all of us males yarmulkes to wear on our heads and I remember thinking this was cool. But I don't remember why we wore them. He then went on to give a brief history of Judaism. While he was speaking, I looked around the synagogue and remember thinking how surprisingly similar the interior looked compared to our own Moravian church. Candles. Pews. The difference, of course, was there was no Bible, but there was a Torah.

And not once did the rabbi discuss the Holocaust. Maybe the 1960s were still too close to the horrific history of the 1930s and '40s.

I think I came into the visit expecting to see something strange and exotic. I was probably mixing up Hasidic Judaism with Orthodox Judaism and not knowing the difference. I was probably expecting everybody to converse in Hebrew. And yet Dad had to learn some Hebrew while in seminary to become a Moravian minister.

When the evening was over, I remember coming away thinking there were more similarities among us than I expected. The three great faiths – Christianity, Islam and Judaism – are  tightly entwined, rooted as they are in the same Middle Eastern geography: they all use the first five books of the Old Testament as sacred scripture, they all draw their lineage to Abraham, and they all believe in one God.

In essence, we are pretty much the same. Pretty much the same.

Fast forward to today.

Given our similarities, there is an obvious worldwide rise in antisemitism, which is defined as the hostility or prejudice against Jewish people. The FBI says the rise in hate crimes against Jews in the United States is rising with disturbing frequency.

Which brings the Holocaust into focus. It is estimated there are only 16.1 million Jews in the world, which is an exceptionally small number in a global population of more than 8 billion people. Jews represent just 0.2 percent of the world's population.

The Holocaust murdered six million Jews. If there had been no Holocaust, it is estimated that there would be 32 million Jews on the planet now. Hitler was deadly efficient.

For such a small sect, Judaism draws disproportionate amounts of ire, and has for thousands of years. Illogically, Jews are accused by their persecutors of controlling the world's banks, the world's media, the theater and cinema, and so on and so on. I guess it's just a convenient – and lazy – way to label a people they can't understand.

If nothing else, my evening in the synagogue showed me that Judaism is just a different way to worship God by a people who breathe the same air, bleed the same blood, cry the same tears as we all do. What's so hard to understand about that?