This topic has been written about much more eloquently than I can; people who do political reporting are better at this, I suppose. I’ve been seeing an awful lot of this on Facebook and other places around the web, so one more voice won’t hurt, I suppose.
It’s probably an occupational hazard. I have always been uncomfortable with anyone at all being compared to Hitler or Nazis (and DO NOT get me started on the horrifying “feminazi” term–although, to be fair, Rush Limbaugh started that. Karma’s a big old feminist bitch, isn’t it, Rush?). I suppose I can kind of see people who don’t have an in-depth understanding of 1930s Germany could think there were similarities, but we’re getting into Jade Helm territory here. America is not suffering 30% unemployment; it doesn’t already have a non-functioning coalition government. Here’s a secret: the U.S. government functions exactly like it was designed to. The system of checks and balances is supposed to make it difficult to make changes. The country’s founders knew what they were doing; compromise was essential to the government they made.
And think of that. A few years ago I finally went to Philadelphia, and I was RIGHT THERE in the actual place where a bunch of contentious jackasses got together in the 100 degree heat and argued and fought and drank and went out chasing women and owned slaves and ordered their wives around like servants and thought they owned their children and called each other names and disagreed and then…
Then they made a compromise. And they named it America.
Yes, my children thought I was nuts because I was crying. I was in the place where they made America. I’ve never experienced anything like it.
And I trust those guys. Even if they had feet of clay, they had brains of…okay, I’ve got nothing. They had determination. Grit. They didn’t want to see the country they’d just won devolve into anarchy and eventually be re-conquered and occupied.
Do you really think Trump is Hitler? No, you don’t. You don’t think Trump will build hundreds or even thousands of camps all over America and start executing people without due process. And don’t get me wrong; the system isn’t perfect. But do you really think such a thing could happen? Please remember that this government can hardly sharpen a pencil without four meetings, a memo, a few classified e-mails, and a million dollars in insurance in case something goes wrong and the intern sharpens his finger instead.
There was only one Hitler, though admittedly he had a lot of fanatical followers. His rise to power was brought about by economic and social forces we just don’t have in America. His atrocities were brought about by the sudden successes of his military and a lot of people who were personally devoted to him, all trying to outdo each other in serving him. But the catalog of atrocities is long: Babi Yar, Pawiak Prison, Hadamar, Vilnius, Lvov, Treblinka, and it continues. Do you really think Trump being president would result in this?
Do not honor Hitler and his henchmen by comparing them to Trump. This is a complete trivialization of Hitler’s rule. Trump is a showman; if he reminds me of anyone it’s George W. Bush, who was all excited to run for President and then shocked to find out governing is work. Trump is just the latest in a long line of faces: Reagan, George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush, who will really have someone else running the show. He’s no scarier than the rest of them.
Trump isn’t Hitler because America isn’t Germany. And eventually, maybe that’s all we need to know.
ellen mcbee 
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