Monday, October 10, 2016

THE ROAD TO DACHAU OR THE GULAG

Within days of taking power Hitler's Germany began the roundups. Political opponents, communists real or perceived, labor leaders, former members of the German government disappeared into the first concentration camp, Dachau. By the end of the war Germany and the occupied territories were littered with them and the names are a litany of horror. Treblinka, Sobibor, Mathausen, Bergen-Belsen, Buchenwald and the queen of the horror show? Auschwitz. 

Stalin was the party secretary before he became whatever they called the head of government in the old Soviet Union. He was thorough. He made lists. And over the decades victims met a bullet, disappeared into Siberian labor camps or were deported to the east in wholesale shifts of populations suspected of disloyalty. While Joseph Stalin wasn't the first to use Siberia as a prison, he was certainly the most "efficient." 

No, I don't believe that a Trump administration would resort to concentration camps. And the US doesn't have a "Siberia." However threatening your political opponent with jail is a first. A Daily Kos headline used the term "not normal." Not "normal" hardly begins to cover it. 

Trump has made it perfectly clear he does not respect the constitution or the rule of law. The chants of the Trumpbots of "jail her" and the cheers of the threat of wholesale deportations of undocumented immigrants and the promise to block the immigration of an entire religious group scare the hell out of me. It's pretty damned obvious that the terrifyingly large group of our fellow citizens are either ignorant of what the constitution says, don't care or believe it only applies to themselves and those like them. As for the rule of law? I suspect they have the same respect for that, too.

1 comment:

Lisa :-] said...

I can only believe that our educational system has completely failed us. And the decay must have started a long, long time ago...as many of the Cheeto-screamers are our age or older. What happened? I know, when we were twenty-somethings, we dragged our parents along with some of our "enlightened" ideas. Have we become our children, who have been taught nothing in underfunded schools that lack decent standards of classical education? I don't know. But it is frightening. Because right now, if we pass the baton to Gen-X, Gen-y and the Millennials, the country, and the world, are screwed.