Germany, 1933: How to Survive Madness and Remain Human

It's Sunday afternoon. I've dusted off my recession skills today and baked my own bread. Not that bread machine crap that's roughly the consistency of half-dried cement and tastes like hungarian hogwash; the kind your mother or grandmother used to bake. It had a smell that could drag you in from outside, even when you were having fun, for a slice of that fresh, home-baked lovin' from the oven. It was so tender that you had to cut it with an electric knife. Peanut butter and Jelly? Not on your life. That's for day-old balloon bread made in a factory. To paraphrase Steinbeck, uniform loaves--and uniformly tasteless. Spread it with butter that's been sitting out ever since this morning to make it soft, so it wouldn't tear the bread. Then watch it melt and fill the sponge-like interior.

Yes. Home-baked perfection.

Here's the recipe. In fact, here's two of them--depending on how big your mixer or your oven is.

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Once there was a man who ran for President. Things were going well. He was ahead in the polls and by all appearances, he was going to win. He had served his country in the armed forces and won distinction for his services. His choice of running mate was a little hasty, but he was a gambler.

At some point he started falling behind. The economy soured and he, being a member of the incumbent party, had some of the blame land on him. Realizing that he couldn't win by discussing how he planned to fix the economy, the Presidential candidate began raising questions about his opponent's character. This was not abnormal: it had been done many times successfully. It had been done once to the Presidential candidate during his party's primaries by the current President; the President had sandbagged the candidate by convincing people that he'd fathered an illigitimate black daughter. The truth was that he had adopted a daughter who was black, but the lie worked.

The economy continued to get worse, and the candidate slipped farther in the polls. He became desperate--so desperate that he began accusing his opponent of things that he knew were false. Again, this was nothing new. But his rallies took on a mob environment. People yelled epithets at members of the press who shared the opponent's ethnicity. As his running mate spoke about the opponent's questionable associations, they yelled, "Terrorist," and "Treason," and someone even yelled "Kill him!"

Things had gone too far, and a responsible candidate would have reigned the crowd in. And the Presidential candidate appeared to be trying. At a rally, a man told him that he was afraid of what his opponenet might do to the country. The candidate assurred them that they had nothing to fear from his oppenent. A woman referred to his opponent as an "Arab terrorist." He corrected her and said his opponent was a decent family man. The woman seemed confused. Everyone was.

They were confused because they were repeating what the candidate's campaign had been telling them. These were not random strangers, but people who had volunteered for his campaign. Furthermore, the candidate was continuing the tactics that had whipped his crowds into a violent frenzy. A tracking poll showed that his mob was growing; he gained three percent, even after his running mate was found guilty of ethics violations. . . .

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Bad things happen to great nations. Germany was in the beginning stages of democracy when National Socialism used an underlying German ambivalence toward Jews and Bolshevism to gain undisputed power in the Reichstag. The Reichstag fire of 1933, blamed on the communists, and which resulted in the outlawing of all parties, except National Socialism gave way to the Night of the Long Knives in 1934, in which the Nazi Party purged the S.A. of its homosexuals, which gave way to the Night of Broken Glass in 1938, in which an entire nation of Germans on the Jewish population. It took a five years for Germany to fully embrace the National Socialist's agenda of hate, but the people were completely against the Jews before the war started, before the death camps, before genocide.

I keep repeating Germany's story because they have proven to be an innovative, intelligent, thoughtful, and conscientious people, who had their worst instincts brought out by people willing to take advantage of their weaknesses, their ignorance and their underlying ambivalence toward a group of people they had marginalized. The right has been openly scapegoating, "Minorities and risky folks," as the cause of the mortgage meltdown. McCain's campaign has distributed fliers which refer to Senator Obama as a Muslim terrorist. This is a deliberate play on their ignorance and underlying racism, since many of McCain's supporters do not distinguish between "Arab" or "Muslim." His campaign is aware, as I am, that many evangelicals are (falsely) told by their ministers that the Q'uran has commanded the Muslims to kill for Allah. And his campaign uses this with the knowledge that Senator Obama is neither "Arab" nor "Muslim," and certainly not a terrorist. Somewhere between their attempts at forcing an association with Barack Obama and William Ayers, added to constant references to "Hussein" Obama by uniformed peace officers (which is illegal), and finally, asking the question, "Who is this guy?" implying that he is a dubious character, what conclusions are faithful conservatives supposed to come to?

McCain has placed a powder keg of fear, hate and ignorance at the feet of his opponent, and has done little to discourage the disturbing outbursts by his followers. Ideas have consequences, said Richard M. Weaver. And so, McCain's ideas or Steve Schmidts ideas, or whoever decided that they would take this next step in lowering the polticial bar, has set something in motion that they cannot hope to control.

The last eight years have already taken us places that we never dreamed we would go; who would have dreamed that our President would ever think of trying to justify torture? The dangers inherent in the precedent set by giving one's political campaign over to mob rage, ethnic and religious prejudice have well documented historic consequences: innocent people get killed.

The Presidential candidate who said he would rather lose an election than lose a war, has decided he would rather win an election than lose with honor. I hope--for Senator McCain's sake--that the American people reject these ideas, reject this campaign and reject him. The Ku Klux Klan, the neo-Nazis and Aryan Nations had been relegated to the farthest fringes and we are a better society for it. A victory for McCain, won on his present platform, would only serve to embolden such people.