No American should ever again ask, "How/Why did it happen in Germany"
We're seeing it up close and personal. It's been building for decades. And it has now come to the point where between 30% to 40% of Americans are eating shit and believing it's sirloin.
Germany, in the early 1930s, was an "advanced" country by most metrics. But during a period of a few short years, they plunged into barbarism. They turned from the future to the past. They embraced a self-destructive nationalism. They were manipulated by a small group of clever/malignant people who were seeking absolute power. And hatred of "The Other" was one of their major tools. -- Not every German bought into it. But enough did.
The majority of Americans denounce/reject Trumpism. But you don't require a majority to succeed. All you need is just enough people to buy the snake oil/drink the Kool-Aid/believe the well-packaged hate/spread the poison/become infected with the disease/despise their fellow human beings.
Not only can "it happen here." It's been happening here, in slow motion, for about 50 or more years. In short, John, Martin and Bobby are dead and Nixon's "Southern Strategy" has spread throughout the land to the ignorant everywhere. (Hatred, bigotry and ignorance don't recognize state lines.)
Perhaps the biggest lesson humanity can learn from this era is that bigotry/hatred outweigh self-interest. Those being hurt most by Trumpism are the MAGAs. Yet, they seem to have no problem fucking up their own well being, as long as they can "get the THEMS."
Does this tell us that hatred of "The Other" is stronger than self interest? I can't say for sure, but it certainly seems so. And if that's true, it makes humanity a suicidal species.
Disagree with this? Well, take a look at some old photos of what Germany looked like in 1945 after the civilized world bombed them into total rubble.
No one is going to bomb us back into the stone ages. But when/if another world war occurs, it will last for perhaps a few hours and then, humanity will be over. We will have turned out to be an evolutionary mistake.
Republicans refuse to learn from history. What about the rest of us? Have we learned? Do we finally "get it?" And the biggest question of all: What are we going to do about it?
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"Be afraid..Be very afraid". 
...and finally, this year, a recognition of how otherwise decent Germans/Austrians were bulldozed, numbed, and silenced by the viciousness that overtook and ruled their nation.
My MIL was raised in Vienna, Austria, a city of culture -- music, the arts, science, philosophy, so advanced in every way. Her parents had immigrated from Russia, but even they could not see what was coming. She could: it was a feature of her psyche that she knew when to jump. So finally she got two of her sisters and their families on the train to Belgium just ahead of the Anschluss, and still not all of that group survived.
I think of them often these days, and wonder what I can do. I pray I can be of use. I think America, this country where I was born, so long a beacon of democracy, arts, science, and mostly goodhearted and well meaning people -- being swept under by this tide of viciousness led by the minority -- and I think we are in for a long period of darkness that I can only pray I live to see the end of.
