Hitler is dead. Nazis are over. Trump and Musk and MAGA aren't.

Here is something to remember, deep down in your bones: 

Trump is not Hitler.

Musk is not Hitler.

There are no Nazis, even those who purport to be.  

There used to be.

Now there’s something else.

‘Hitler’ and ‘nazi’ are boogeyman words- concepts and theories that cut through any disaffected consciousness.  But instead of galvanizing us, it triggers us- reminds us of a time in history when things seemed to be inevitable, so atrocious as to never happen again, and expose every country to the cheating that happens with international relations.

The truth is there has been some obvious reading and following the playbook of that regime.  On top of that, they know that the trigger of the nazi words and concepts can make us dysregulate and be distracted by a past fear instead of a present one.

We are not in Germany in the 1940s.  We are not in Vietnam.  We are not in Guyana.  We are not in Russia. We have our own time and place, and we have the tool of foresight.  We can study playbooks, and find how to stop them.  

More than anything, we can look around and not just stand in solidarity, show our thoughts and prayers, trusting on blind justice to see and bring things around.

We can act.  We can fight.  At this point, we are being shown that the government has decided not to represent us.  So, why do we want to follow its guidelines?  What can we do to cause our own shock and awe?

Don’t get me wrong, Trump, Musk, etc. are men who are doing horrible things.  They have their scapegoats, and they have their complex smoke and mirrors so we think we see whats going on, but in fact we need to dig deeper.

Replacing government officials who are not white, male, gay, etc., means that the government is going to be run by white males- those who don’t have a sense for the subtle traps, the microaggressions, the tiny drops of blood in the water, because they never had to deal with any nuance of oppression.  Things will get past them.

And here’s the thing.  SO much has gotten past us already, because of our inability to functionally engage in disagreement, compromise, and problem solving in this country.  What we know how to do is interpret- looking at actions from a historical context.  But we are only doing that passively, wringing our hands as something else happens, and we look after the fact how that fits in to earlier narratives.  Which is worthless.

Get angry.  And don’t lose that anger to fear, to despondency, to anything.  So when we act, it will be a flood outpouring instead of a group the media can ignore.

We are not the children of Atlas, and its time for those who swore to us they would carry our weight to be held to that commitment.

Or stand aside.