Winer: What to Expect When You’re Expecting Catastrophe

Good assessment, drawing from the experience under Hitler, appropriately so:

It’s as if the so-called shock and awe of that unholy duo—Donald Trump and Elon Musk—combined with loyalists like Kash Patel, Stephen Miller, Dan Bongino, Ed Martin, and many others, has rendered us, for the moment at least, unable to react.

Magical thinking is far from new. Adolf Hitler came to power amid similar lies and conspiracy theories. We should know where that leads. And, while MAGA may ignore the mountains of books written on fascism, the rest of us are not in the dark about what comes next.

As we brace for further actions from a cabinet catering to a serial fabulist, it is important to note that the president’s abstruse nonsense is not random. It has a history. A history that takes us in only one direction, to catastrophe.

Here, then, are things to watch for, all warnings from the well-known story of the Third Reich.

• Daily life will take on a surreal quality and, if we do not take some action or join an organized resistance, our discussions will consist of merely repeating the latest horror.
• People around you will forget that they once were anti-Trump.
• The administration will issue absurd denunciations of opponents whose expertise is needed.
• There will be parades and possibly mandatory public displays of support for the administration.
• News sources will disappear or be radically altered.
• MAGA will continue to believe what the leader says up until the very brink of disaster.

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The debate about whether or not we should bring Hitler or Nazism or fascism into a contemporary political debate is obsolete. Now it is crucial that we take seriously the warnings gathered for us by survivors and writers. When you look at a photo of a Jew about to be arrested or shot and he or she is staring straight into the camera, remember that it is you they are looking at.

Source: Winer: What to Expect When You’re Expecting Catastrophe