It’s a common trope that when the word “Nazi” is thrown around in social discourse, that all bets are off and reason has left the building.
However, with the latest round of persecution inflicted on the DACA kids, it’s time for the point to be made.
Fresh off the Supreme Court rebuke for trying to arbitrarily (i.e. politically) remove the DACA protections for thousands of young people, whose sole recourse would have been to return to countries they know nothing about, the Trump Administration executes new orders to reduce DACA enrollment and shorten protections.
What does this look like? Picking on a helpless minority, through relentless administrative actions? Moving a political agenda at a price to humanity? Taking every opportunity to pervert the legislative system to foster one’s own gains?
It resembles Nazism.
Just how far away are we by analogy to the persecution of the Jews by Nazi Germany? What makes this situation different?
Is our obliviousness to the situation reminiscent of the Emperor’s New Clothes?
Look at the cast of characters.
At the very top, is Mr. Donald, our very own Hitler, though he looks and sounds more like a knockoff Mussolini.
Next is Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Donald’s own Hermann Göring, always ready to add a smiling reassurance or a crocodile-apology: Mr. Relative, Mr. Rationalization. ‘Jamal Khashoggi was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.’
As for some of the nastier members of the ensemble, let’s take Steven Miller “Special Advisor to the President.” He’s a perfect stand-in for Reinhard Heydrich, the “right hand man,” “The Hangman,” and “The Butcher of Prague.” Check out Heydrich’s Wikipedia resume and tell me if the parallels do not fit. Note the similarity in ambition and effort.
Yes, of course Steven Miller hasn’t gone to these extremes, nor, potentially, would he, but what are these people playing at?
Is this for votes, or to assure a continued pipeline of government funds going to those most favored, or for what?…
What makes it acceptable to do these things?
These are people, children, whose situation is manifestly clear. If they return to their countries, they will be faced with economic dead-ends and often violence. Some don‘t even speak their native languages.
What justifies this callousness, and cruelty?
What higher purpose makes this any of this acceptable?
Because someone in the heartland hates immigrants?
Is our country really built on hate?
(At this point, the Black Lives Matter Movement is shaking its head in disbelief that I am even asking this question.)
Hate serves a purpose for the frustrated, and so much of what is done in politics is meant as theater, but these are human lives we are talking about.
And the principle of tormenting the vulnerable should remind us of a history we must never forget. Bad things come from persecuting little people.
When persecution becomes government, all is lost, except the momentary gains.
How can we sleep, knowing others are reinventing history, for the same sordid purposes that led to so much pain?
Pull back the veil of time and call these people what they are.
And shame them.