You might think that there is just no explaining the seemingly bizarre and unpredictable actions of this president and his administration of administrative incompitance.
But, I think that there is a pattern to the daily mayhem that is this presidency. Just to name a very few of the events that appear to fall into the category of inducing mayhem.
Taking children away from their parents and locking them up at the Mexican border, offering paper towels to Puerto Rican hurricane victims, a group called Q-Anon appears mysteriously online. In a California meeting with experts briefing the president about the wildfire, the president said that the climate will get cooler and the scientists don’t really know what the climate is doing. The promotion of quack medicine “cures” to treat COVID infection, things like Hydroxychloroquine. Just sweep the forest and the wildfires will stop.
Telling lawmakers to not worry about passing another much needed COVID Relief bill, but to put priority on rushing the hearings to consider this administration’s third potential Supreme Court nominee. Insisting that he leave the hospital and return to the White House while he is almost certainly still extremely contagious with COVID.
This list is long beyond your interest level in reading it. So, I’ll get to the point of this post.
Author Erick Larson’s book “In the Garden of Beasts” chronicles the experiences of William Dodd, U.S. Ambassador to Germany starting in 1933. It would be another six years before the Nazi’s invaded Poland and started World War ll.
The National Socialist Party, which would become the Nazi Party, was a prominent player in German politics, but was not yet in total control of the government. It is within this culture that Dodd, appointed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, had been inserted to represent the interests of the United States in a country exhibiting very disturbing tendencies in dealing with non-Aryan peoples. Many thought that the Germans were building for war. Some, like Dodd, held out hope that the German Chancellor, Adolph Hitler, really wanted peace.
Again, back to my point. In late October 1933, Ambassador Dodd met with Hitler. Dodd was convinced that the German Chancellor wanted peace, but his Consul General was skeptical.
To quote Consul General Messersmith: “I think for the moment he genuinely desires peace, but it is a peace of his own kind and with an armed force constantly more effective in reserve in order to to impose their will when it may become essential.” My point is coming.
Here’s my point. As you read this, consider the daily mayhem that the United States has lived through for the past four years and that doesn’t include COVID-19, multiple hurricanes affecting the Gulf and East coasts and devastating wildfires affecting the West.
Messersmith reiterated his belief that Hitler’s government could not be viewed as a rational entity. “There are so many pathological cases that it would be impossible from day-to-day what will happen any more than the keeper of a madhouse is able to tell what his inmates will do in the next hour or during the next day.”
I bring this up because what Messersmith was describing in 1933 Germany has parallels with the 2020 United States. The constant pathology in the White House has the effect of keeping Americans on edge, nervous, always off our centers just a little bit. This constant state of anxiety can be manipulated by unscrupulous leaders to create a state of fear and doubt which is capable of paralyzing the entire country.
This is what is happening right now in the United States. My request of you, wherever you are and whatever you do, is don’t buy into it. Overcome your fear and doubt and act boldly in any way that feels right to you short of violence against anyone.
Civil disobedience is fine, writing letters and postcards, marching with posters and banners, sending letters to the editor of whatever and whoever you are reading, record a message and send it to podcaster, radio station or website, write a blog. (That’s where this writing is coming from.)
Most importantly is to vote. Your vote is your voice. Make sure it is heard.