Bracing For The Worst: Trump’s Return And The Specter Of Germany, 1933

-OpEd-

BOGOTÁ — What can we say, except: Unbelievable! When the leaders of Russia, China and North Korea — the United States’ avowed enemies — welcome the U.S. election result, that says it all.

Get ready, because what’s coming our way will be more than we could imagine. A convict and gargantuan, shameless liar, a proven molester who has robbed women of the right to decide over their bodies, a president who has already been impeached twice and handled a pandemic like a psychopath, encouraged an attack on the Capitol to impede a peaceful transition of power — that sacred element of a democracy — has just been reelected president of the world’s most powerful country.

So be prepared, because if his first term was a disaster, this one will be worse. Many are asking: If Trump is so bad, why didn’t he finish off the country in his first term?

No guardrails

The reason, quite simply, is that in his first term, there were people around him who acted as guardrails: secretaries of state, aides and advisers would remove papers so he wouldn’t sign them, and, frankly, deceive him to prevent some crazy decision.

He said it, and we should believe it.

Those people — who saw the madness and have since, mostly declared Trump to be unfit for the presidential office — will no longer be there. This time, the president is to be surrounded by obedient people who will never question him, and at full liberty to do as he pleases.

That will start with taking revenge on his enemies and ordering troops to shoot on his compatriots, which Trump has said he wants to do. He is a fascist who wants to become a dictator. He said it, and we should believe it. The American electorate has just given him permission to do so, so as I say, just get ready.

Comparable to Hitler?

The strangest thing is how those Trump despises were precisely the ones to give him their support. It must be unprecedented for women to vote for a misogynist who has molested a woman, at least once, then laughed it off, while robbing all women of the most intimate and elementary right.

How could a racist receive so many Black votes, or a xenophobe contemptuous of Latinos, who vowed to block and deport millions of them, win those of, well, millions of immigrants? How can so many Christians ostensibly concerned with morality, decency and kindness vote for a corrupt, immoral individual who sold Bibles and sneakers to pay for the defense lawyers he has had to hire over his proven crimes and offenses?

In 1933, Germans embraced the man who would ruin their lives. But there was a difference.

It wouldn’t be too much to say that Trump’s electoral triumph is comparable to Adolf Hitler’s election in 1933. That, too, was entirely democratic in terms of a clean vote, as Germans embraced the man who would ruin their lives. But there was a difference: In 1933 most Germans did not know what Hitler would do, including provoke a world war and murder millions of Jews.

Today, we know who Trump is, what he thinks, and what he wants to do, because he has told us. As the writer Milan Kundera said, “you are the brilliant ally of your own gravediggers.”

Sadly, the willing victim is sometimes a suicidal nation.