The Worst Thing You Can Call Someone

Since the end of World War II, even though the world since then has seen massacres by Stalin, Pol Pot, Pinochet, Idi Amin, and others, there is still no worse judgment to be made than comparing a leader anywhere to Hitler and his party to Nazis. Name-calling in general has been on the rise in the past decade in the United States, and Hitler name-calling is increasing at an alarming rate, notes Edna Friedberg of the William Levine Family Institute for Holocaust Education at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, who finds the trend “disturbing.” She writes,

 

This oversimplified approach to complex history is dangerous. When conducted with integrity and rigor, the study of history raises more questions than answers. And as the most extensively documented crime the world has ever seen, the Holocaust offers an unmatched case study in how societies fall apart, in the immutability of human nature, in the dangers of unchecked state power. It is more than European or Jewish history. It is human history. Almost 40 years ago, the United States Congress chartered a Holocaust memorial on the National Mall for precisely this reason: The questions raised by the Holocaust transcend all divides.

 

Neither the political right nor left has a monopoly on exploiting the six million Jews murdered in a state-sponsored, systematic campaign of genocide to demonize or intimidate their political opponents.

 

Both right and left, she points out, have made use of these dangerous analogies.

 

Recently someone I know slightly posted on Facebook about Nazis in relation to American politics. He listed a few oddly chosen political sins of the Nazis (leaving out depriving people of basic citizenship rights, plus the whole Holocaust death machine!!!) as follows: They “tore down statues; banned free speech; blamed economic hardships on one group of people; instituted gun control; put the state before God; nationalized health care; and placed strict government regulations on industry.” He then posed the question (though it looks as if he copied the whole post from someone else; I don't really know), “Does this sound like the policies of a current political party in the U.S.?”

 

Well, let’s see. Let’s look at those “sins” one at a time. Here's what he says the Nazis did, which he thinks sounds like one of the American political parties:

 

Removed statues. Statues of Confederate leaders have been removed in more than one American city and state—are we talking about any statues other than those of Confederates? —and we can probably thank the primarily Democrats for that. Please note that the statues removed were leaders of an armed insurrection against the U.S. government, leaders of an opposing army in a war that cost over 600,000 American deaths, a war that took place over a century and a half ago; that most of those statues went up much later, during the 1890s, the Jim Crow era, i.e., when Reconstruction ended and Southern states began enforcing strict segregation laws; and that the current Republican president, in sympathy with the old Confederacy, has ordered a couple of those statues put back up. (He has never wanted to be the president of “all Americans” and has made that clear time and time again.) 

 

On the other hand, it has been the present Republican administration that removed online memorials to Black and Native Americans, and the Republican president himself had portraits of President Obama and both presidents Bush moved out of a highly visible area of the White House to a place where they are hidden from public view. 

 

Banned free speech. Sounds like the current Republican administration to me, where any criticism of the president is seen as treason, radio stations are threatened with loss of their licenses, newspapers are sued for printing true stories that show the administration in a bad light, etc. I suspect, however, given his general sympathies, that the questioner has in mind bans against “hate speech,” particularly on college and university campuses, so here’s the way the United Nations explains that idea. Did you follow the link for the definition? If “free speech” is an absolute, then “hate speech” must be permitted, and if this is where you come down on it, both parties are guilty restricting speech. The line between acceptable and unacceptable speech under the line has always shifted with shifts in political climate, in every country of the world, under all manner of political power. One absolutist on the matter wrote that he would not even ban yelling “Fire!” in a crowded theatre. Can you go that far? I can’t, although I tend in general to lean towards freedom. 

 

Blamed economic hardships on one group of people. Yes, Nazis blamed economic hardships on one group, the Jews, though they also scapegoated gypsies, homosexuals, disabled people, dark-skinned people, etc., etc. Republicans blame economic hardships on immigrants and Democrats, two different groups. They also love to call Democrats "socialists," because that's a hot button that short-circuits thought for many of their listeners. Democrats blame Republicans for their policies that favor the wealthiest Americans at the expense of everyone else. Not sure how to score this one.

 

Gun control. I don’t know what the specific German laws about gun ownership were under the Nazis, but neither major party in the U.S. has ever advocated making gun ownership unlawful. Democrats do, however, favor the kind of laws that most Americans also find reasonable, 

while Republicans kow-tow to the gun lobby and see any law about ownership of any weapons as an infringement of individual rights. It's strange that while they oppose even the “morning-after pill” as “murder of a child,” they are willing to sacrifice the lives of actual living schoolchildren so that anyone who wants to own a military-style assault weapon can get his hands on one. So yes, if “gun control” is a sin, Democrats are guilty. 

 

Put the state before God. That, like the foregoing, would be in the eye of the beholder. The separation of church and state does not elevate the state above the church and certainly does not elevate it above God. It’s a huge topic, what any individual might mean by this claim. 

 

Nationalized health care. There is only one country in the world, as far as I know, that has national health care, and that is the United Kingdom. Other countries have national health insurance, and the U.S. made a move in that direction with the Affordable Care Act, stopping short of having the government as a single payer. So American health insurance is still the business of for-profit corporations. Hospitals and clinics, too, which used to be owned and operated by cities and religious groups when I was young, are now for-profit businesses. Bottom line: We do not have nationalized health care. Neither major party has pushed for it. There is no country in the world that puts a greater burden on its people to pay exorbitant fees to private companies for health insurance and health care. 

 

Put strict government regulations on industry. This is certainly a sin of the Democratic party. Republicans would prefer that business be completely unregulated, with no safeguards for workers or for public health and no concern for the national resources of the country, on which all of us depend, including the industries.

 

Here's how I see these points, one by one, in summary: 

 

Every country chooses its heroes, and most adults recognize that we must choose our heroes carefully. 

 

Free speech would be less controversial if public, commonly accepted standards of civility and decency were still in place and respected and adhered to by our country’s leaders. 

 

Purposeful attributions of blame are unfortunately common in politics, but anyone following the news can see that it is much more common coming from Republicans, starting with the current president, the Blamer-in-Chief. 

 

I don’t know that this country will ever have sensible, reasonable discussion of gun ownership and gun control. 

 

Putting one religion above all others (often in a very perverted, materialistic form), rather than “putting the state before God,” is what I see Republicans doing these days, whereas Democrats would be content to maintain the traditional separation of church and state as laid out by the Founders. 

 

Nationalized health care is a straw man: We don’t have it, and neither party advocates for it. 

Government regulations on industry are nothing but common sense; the absence of regulations would be nothing but the raping and pillaging our own land and our own people for the short-term gain of the wealthiest segment of the population. I should say, for the short-term gain of the segment of that segment who recognize only one value: money and the power it gives.

 

A more important question relating to the list, however, is—what, if anything, does this list say about either major American political party? Would anyone want to say that a country with gun regulations or regulations on industry is, because of those regulations, led by Nazi-like politicians? The idea is ludicrous. 

As for my own view (which would not be the view of the person who posted the list), I believe that analogies between the present Republican administration and its leader to Nazis and Hitler are unnecessary and beside the point. We don't need analogies. All we need to do is listen to what is said by the Blamer-in-Chief and his diehard supporters and watch what they are doing and ordering done. It's all plenty bad enough without comparing it to other people and times and places. So let's not undermine our testimony with a reductio ad Hitlerum.

 

But I will let Edna Friedberg have the last word today: 

 

Careless Holocaust analogies may demonize, demean, and intimidate their targets. But there is a cost for all of us because they distract from the real issues challenging our society, because they shut down productive, thoughtful discourse. At a time when our country needs dialogue more than ever, it is especially dangerous to exploit the memory of the Holocaust as a rhetorical cudgel. We owe the survivors more than that. And we owe ourselves more than that. 

Blame is no cure for pain.

There is so much pain in the world! Some of it is unavoidable, obviously. We are embodied and mortal, prey to sorrows and afflictions of the flesh, and nature can be disastrous, and if we don't die young, we get old, and that isn't easy. Life is a heart-breaker in so many ways at the same time that it is the gift that makes all other gifts possible. But must we make it harder on ourselves and each other?

Our nature as animals who speak and imagine and live in time is to personify the world. We see the sun and rain as benevolent, destructive storms as malicious. A forest may appear either as friendly or dangerous, depending on experience and knowledge. Ancient Greeks explicitly named gods of wind and sea and land, gods endowed with all the petty vanities and jealousies and angers of the human beings who invented them. 

The stimulus of pain—“I am hurt!”—triggers an almost automatic response in many people: “Who is to blame?” We want to identify a responsible other, then to inflict pain on that other, as if hurting someone else will ease our own pain, somehow “even out” the score and erase the hurt done to us. It doesn’t work, but when it comes to hurt and blame, the most modern, educated human beings revert to primitive feelings, the human brainstem remaining—necessarily—as active as it ever was. Sometimes we identify a specific human being as the one who hurt us, but often that isn’t possible, so we look for a group or people or agency and make them into villains. 

Ironically, one person’s villain is often another person’s angel, because each of us has only our own experiences, no one else’s. Each of us has only our own pain, our own losses, no one else’s. Designs to help can fail to meet everyone’s needs. Even people who love us may occasionally let us down, and a person with the best intentions cannot foresee all consequences.

All that is hard to accept because we want justice. People who don’t deserve to die — they die! It isn’t fair! It isn’t fair, but it’s life. 

The biggest problem with blaming and scapegoating is that it not only fails to erase hurt: it spreads it further. Blame and revenge are as contagious as plague. 

Now some would say—and one or two have said—that my identifying the current president of our country as the blamer-in-chief is blaming him, and isn’t that exactly what I’m saying we shouldn’t do? If I’m truly tolerant, they imply, I would tolerate intolerance. No. That is a road I refuse to go down. 

Harry Truman said, taking full responsibility for the high office he occupied, “The buck stops here.” People going into politics knows at the start that not everything they say or do will be popular and that their words and deeds will be criticized. Criticism goes with the job. Taking criticism is part of the job. Name-calling, vilifying your opposition, attempting to silence critics, blaming others for your failures, on the other hand — none of that is part of the job.

This president has tarnished the reputation of our country around the world. He is doing everything possible to destroy our “Fourth Estate,” the free press,  because honest journalists refuse to be his parrots. He is purging government of experts and career professionals and replacing them with parrots loyal only to him. He is “firing” judges whenever he can, if they hand down verdicts he doesn’t like (replacing them whenever possible with parrots). He is deporting people who are legally in our country and threatening to strip citizens of their citizenship. 

HE, the PRESIDENT, is doing all these things. Do you not think these offenses are a thousand times worse than King George III’s tax on tea?

THE BUCK STOPS IN THE OVAL OFFICE.

The President Is Ruining My Life

The president is ruining my life!

-- Egocentric? You think? Well, fundamentally, aren’t we all? But note, I’m not singling out the president on this one: I’m outing myself. 

Because of all the ways the president has been ruining my life, starting from way back before he was in office — before he was even the chosen candidate of his party — what rankles most on a daily basis, repetitively and ad nauseum, is how he has stolen my friends’ attention away from the concerns of my. Own. Personal. Life. 

Do you know what I mean? Have you felt it, too?

Okay, sure, my life is ordinary. I get that. I’m not rich or famous, not a TV reality star or a notorious bankrupt or criminal perpetrator of tax fraud or a bold-faced pathological liar. Nothing in my life warrants headlines. I admit it. 

But aren’t we living in an age of democratic communication, where everyone is the star of his or her own life on social media? And don’t I deserve my three seconds a day like everyone else? 

Instead friends scroll past my most recent (admittedly mundane) posts at breakneck speed, searching for the president’s latest outrageous act or utterance, something someone else has already shared that they can decorate with their own little mad emoji. You know, the red face with steam rising from the head. Well, la-dee-da!

Once in a while someone leaves a comment on one of my posts, but even then they may drag in the president’s name! — though he was in no way connected to my post! He is intruding into my personal space!

It’s so unfair! Very, very unfair, I don’t mind saying, and if there were any justice in the world, this gross injustice would be called out for what it is. Because look. The president lives in the White House; he is surrounded for his protection by Secret Service personnel; he tweets! I don’t; don’t; don’t. He holds all the cards, dagnabit! How can I hope to compete?

Thing is, I know I’m not alone. You are out there, my fellow sufferers, you quietly responsible Americans who vote your consciences, work at your jobs, volunteer for causes you believe in, and long for the days when the people we elected to office would just do their jobs and not consume every available sound byte of global attention! You remember a time when we tuned in for the big events and kept weekly track of ongoing issues and still had time for private lives, our own and those of our friends. We had time to sleep, perchance to dream -- and our dreams, even when scary, were not political nightmares! Because yes, he has also invaded my nighttime dreamworld. So unfair! Is this a plot concocted in the White House to discourage us from any kind of political action?

Fellow sufferers, I know you exist, and I know you share my resentment, and we all know this is a very, very bad situation. It is very, very unfair, and we all know it. We want America to be America again — and more and better!

So what’re we gonna do? That’s what I want to know. Your ideas?

We Should Not Be Wall-Builders, Either

[What do you do when you can't sleep? I read and write.]

Saturday Morning Reflections

We who do not want to see a physical wall built between our country and Mexico must be careful not to build a social wall between ourselves and the Americans whose different views and votes carried the day on Tuesday, because “They” are not a homogeneous block but a diverse group, with diverse reasons for voting as they did.

·     Some are party loyalists and would have voted for the Republican candidate whoever he or she had been, and a certain segment of Republican party loyalists are of the all-government-is-bad stripe. (Ideologically, they are libertarians.) This group will always vote their ideology.

·     Others are one-issue voters (e.g., anti-abortion). One friend told me her group of Catholic women friends fall into this camp. All other issues, all other statements were unimportant to them.

·     Some “liked some of what he had to say” (e.g., “he talked about jobs”) enough that they could somehow set aside the rest. One woman told me she tried, in looking at both candidates, to set aside personality and character and look only at issues. Apparently there were people who could do that.

·     A very large segment flocked to the Republican Party because they had been feeling invisible and the Republican candidate paid attention to them. Most of the people in this group (amazingly! This came out in post-election coverage) won’t even care all that much if he fails to make good on his promises. Mobilization of the overlooked (overlooked by media and by mainstream politicos alike) is the #1 explanation favored by mainstream journalists in the election aftermath. I say it is significant, but it can only serve, in my view, as one explanation among others. We human beings crave simple explanations, but life is not always simple. Yes, this is an important factor (and we must all draw a lesson from it), but it is not the only factor.

·     Don’t forget that many who supported Bernie Sanders in the primary voted Republican in the election! Crossover vote from Democrat to Republican accounts for people (1) who believe that American workers have not benefited from trade agreements (I did NOT cross over, but I also believe that the agreements have benefited corporations at the expense of workers both at home and abroad; NAFTA was my biggest disappointment of the Bill Clinton administration) and (2) who want a president not beholden to the status quo.

·     Even the anti-Hillary contingent cannot be dismissed simply as anti-woman or anti-feminist. I voted for her but have never fully trusted either of the Clintons since NAFTA. Be honest, my dear fellow feminists: was she your ideal candidate? Not mine, but I voted for her because I mistrusted her opponent far, far more on almost every issue and could not stomach his behavior or rhetoric.

·     This brings us to racism and sexism and bigotry of all kinds. Undoubtedly, those played a part, and undoubtedly racism persists in this country, as does sexism and homophobia and xenophobia, etc. Unfortunately, too, the worst segment of that contingent now feels it has a mandate to act out its hate. And no, we cannot stand back in silence, and we cannot hide fearfully in our homes. We must oppose hatred and bigotry and persecution wherever we find them. But it’s important we not characterize half our country’s population on the basis of what I have to believe is a minority splinter contingent.

Nothing in my list above is meant to excuse odious speech or behavior on the part of the candidate or any of his supporters.

But now, two conclusions I hope you will share with me: First, supporters of the new president-elect cannot be dismissed as a monolithic demonic army of hate-mongers. And second, to prevent the social disintegration we so deeply fear it is important that we not build walls that would escalate divisions and turn our beloved country into warring camps.

President Obama never fails to amaze me, and he and the First Lady, Michelle, are the examples I would have us take for our own. We need to do as they have always done and continue to do: to oppose bigotry and hatred at every opportunity, to continue to listen to others, to demand and bestow respect for and on human beings, and to model the behavior we want to see surrounding us. I hope and fervently pray that the hour and a half the president-elect spent with the president the other day will have a lasting and beneficial effect on the future behavior of the man who will next inhabit the White House. I also hope, (somewhat desperately, I must admit: these are ugly, frightening times) that the president-elect will be inspired speak out publicly to rein in the worst behavior of his supporters. The sooner, the better. In fact, I hope it will have already happened before this post goes online.