History is screaming at us to take Trump literally

The time to prepare is now!

I took a vacation this week. At least, my body did.

Let me explain. Despite my best intentions to get away from it all for a week, it became clear to me within a few hours of my (alleged) vacation that the threat Donald Trump poses made it impossible to truly check out. My body may have been sitting by a pool, but my mind was racing to devise ways to be more effective in the fight against Trump.

Now in the big picture, if the worst thing Trump does over the next four years is ruin my vacations, that would be a huge win. But we know it will be far worse than that. In fact, it will very likely be worse than we want to imagine. And I don’t say that to scare people--but to prepare people.

So there I was at the pool surrounded by people reading books that ranged from comedic memories to the type with a shirtless Fabio embracing a woman—or two. What was I reading about? Fascism and the rise of oligarchs. Fun stuff!

I read Timothy Snyder’s, “On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century.” I also re-read portions the compelling book, “How Democracies Die.” Add to that I took in chunks of two books about the Gilded Age (1870’s to 1900) where the arrogance and corruption of America’s wealthy elite led to The Progressive Era backlash of laws and reforms that reined in their power. (I’ll be writing much more in the future on the types of reforms needed now to end the new “Gilded Age” we live in headed by oligarch Elon Musk and the other modern day “robber barons.”)

While much of what I read was informative and often thought-provoking, Snyder’s best-selling book, “On Tyranny” was deeply alarming. Not because he told me--or you--anything we didn’t know. But because he laid it very simply the sinister actions of past fascists and instantly it conjured up Trump and his MAGA movement.

One of the points of Snyder’s book that shook me to the core was his flagging the sense that some in America—even on our side—deep down don’t believe Trump will do what he has vowed to do if he won.

To wake up those who may be lulled into that sense that Trump wasn’t being literal, Snyder gave a chilling example. Just three days after Hitler became Chancellor of Germany on January 30, 1933, a leading newspaper for German Jews published an editorial that sought to alleviate concerns of the Jewish population.

As you read the excerpt below keep in mind it was written before any of the anti-Jewish laws in Germany had been enacted and well before Jews in Germany had been arrested and sent to death camps:

“We do not subscribe to the view that Mr. Hitler and his friends, now finally in possession of the power they have so long desired, will implement the proposals circulating in [Nazi newspapers]; they will not suddenly deprive German Jews of their constitutional rights, nor enclose them in ghettos, nor subject them to the jealous and murderous impulses of the mob. They cannot do this because a number of crucial factors hold powers in check … and they clearly do not want to go down that road. When one acts as a European power, the whole atmosphere tends towards ethical reflection upon one’s better self and away from revisiting one’s earlier oppositional posture.”

This publication was not intending to gaslight the Jews of Germany. They had heard Hitler and his allies advocate everything listed above. Yet the editors and others like them sincerely didn’t believe Hitler meant what he said and that his “better self” would restrain him.

But just four months after Hitler took power in Jan. 1933, he began to implement every single policy that he had vowed to do during the prior years. It all began in April 1933 with the passage of a new civil service law that removed Jews from civil service positions, including schools, universities, and government jobs. Next came laws barring Jews from public schools and working in newspapers--all building to the “Nuremberg Race Laws” in 1935 where “Jews lost their citizenship and became subjects of the state.”

Worse, the newspaper’s confidence that the Nazis would not “enclose them [Jews] in ghettos, nor subject them to the jealous and murderous impulses of the mob” was horrifically wrong. The Nazis did just that as well as other crimes against humanity.

As Snyder explained, what the newspaper wrote was “the view of many reasonable people in 1933.” Snyder then instructively added that “many reasonable people” today share that same outlook when comes to Trump—namely that he is not being literal.

Let me end any delusions you may hold deep down. Trump—like Hitler did—will attempt to enact as policy every single thing he has vowed to do during the campaign. And while Trump in his first term was dangerous, this version of Trump is even more dangerous. He is angry and bitter. Trump believes he was wronged by Democrats who sought to hold him accountable for his crimes. He and his followers even believe Democrats were behind the attempts on his life. And in his second term, Trump knowns--courtesy of the corrupt GOP Supreme Court—that he has broad immunity for “official actions.”

There is also something else. As you can see from Trump’s nominations for his cabinet, he doesn’t care about competence, he solely cares about loyalty. For example, he is fighting hard for Pete Hegseth to be Secretary of Defense despite the fact he is objectively speaking unqualified, was credibly accused of rape, was drunk at past jobs and is a vile anti-Muslim bigot.

What matters to Trump is that he needs a blindly loyal Hegseth to order the military to do whatever Trump wants to do. As a reminder during the campaign, Trump said the military should be used to silence “the enemy within”-- which are simply his critics. Trump will 100% do this. Trump may even use the military to remain in power after his term ends.

Trump has repeatedly vowed to shutdown media outlets that he views as being unfair to him—from CBS to NBC News. He will attempt to do that as well as shutdown comedy shows that mock him--as he explored doing to “Saturday Night Live” in his first term.

And the list goes on from prosecuting Barack Obama, New York AG Tish James, Adam Schiff and others to mass deportations which he vowed would be “bloody.” Everything Trump promised to do, he will try.

All of this is why we must be prepared for what is coming. As Snyder wrote, “be calm when the unthinkable arrives” because fascists hope fear will paralyzes us. The key to doing that is by building strong alliances now before Trump enters office. And from there it will take courage. Snyder’s final line of his book sums that up so well: “If none of us is prepared to die for freedom, then all of us will die under tyranny.”

We hope it doesn’t come to that. But history tells us that alone we will be crushed. Together, we have a fighting chance to win.

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