CommentsBELL VIEW-The outrage comes so quickly these days. From North Korea to Nazis, all in the course of a weekend. Trump takes credit -- through the sheer audacity of his “tough talk” -- for backing Kim Jong Un off his threat to annihilate the US -- as if all the other presidents in history have just let North Korea bomb us back into the Stone Age.
The North Korea situation caused me to suggest to some of my "Christian" friends that perhaps wishing for the incineration of five million North Korean children because the man holding them prisoner was "evil" might clash with their professed belief in the Prince of Peace. That raised some hackles and a back and forth discussion ensued between the right and left factions of my online community. As that discussion raged on Facebook, the president of the United States forgot that Nazis were bad people.
VICE put together a "chilling" video of the Nazis who descended on Charlottesville, Virginia over the weekend. Chilling, horrifying – yeah, yeah -- but what a bunch of douchebags. Seriously. In all my years around white supremacists, I've never been able to figure out just what made them feel so superior. My racist "friends" who continue to support Trump (and, if nothing else, Charlottesville has finally put to rest the quaint notion that the entirety of Trump's support doesn't come from white supremacists and Nazis) keep talking about how Trump is working to bring our country back. But I don't remember an America where it was ever kosher to walk down the street waving a swastika and sieg-heiling your new BFFs. And I can't even conjure the image of a president who couldn't denounce a Nazi rally before you could say Jack Robinson. Even Nixon and Dick Cheney never trucked with Nazis.
During the second Bush Administration, before Facebook, I used to frequent Townhall.com to get into it with wingnuts. Once -- after the five-millionth comment suggesting we kill all the Muslims on Earth -- I took one of them up on the offer. You know, I said, let's say killing all the Muslims isn't such a bad idea. How you gonna do it? There are a billion Muslims. I mean, Hitler had an industrial genocide machine, and he could only get to about eleven million. Do you propose dropping nuclear weapons on them? Because, you know, they have a few of them too. Do you think they won't shoot back? And -- with nuclear weapons -- it really doesn't matter where the bomb drops. A half dozen of them, and we're all toast -- no matter how much Walmart SPF 40 you slather over your pale selves.
You see, one obvious fallacy at the heart of white supremacy is the absolute impossibility of all their professed goals. There is no homeland, pal. The planet's too small. In less than a century, Lagos Nigeria will be home to 88 million souls. That's just one town. Where do you suppose you're going to squeeze your little Norway on the Mississippi? You think all those people are going to let a bunch of tiki-torch terrorists hang on to all this prime real estate while the seas rise all around them? Why would they? Because you're a shining beacon on a hill, a symbol of freedom to all of mankind?
Nah.
You're just a bunch of Nazis, clinging to your guns and waiting for Jesus to come back and tell you all where to go.
There’s nothing subtle about a swastika. Displaying one, goose-stepping next to one chanting “blood and soil,” or equivocating in your condemnation of what the swastika represents all put you in the same camp. There is no gray area. If Trump speaks for you when he suggests that there were some fine people marching beneath those swastikas, or suggests that people incited to violence by the sight of a swastika on an American street are just as bad as the Nazis, then you have chosen sides and it is the wrong one. The question is: how do we get our country back?
(David Bell is a writer, attorney, former president of the East Hollywood Neighborhood Council and writes for CityWatch.) Prepped for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.
