General Discussion

He had spent years in Berlin during the Nazi regime, had witnessed first hand the hate mongering and even some of the atrocities. He and his wife also tried helping Jews who came to them, whenever they could.

But you make a good point. You would think in a nation as relatively prosperous and safe from turmoil it wouldn't be happening. This isn't to say that people aren't suffering, especially with the widening income disparity. But as in Nazi Germany, where the greatest support for the Nazis came from the middle class, we see lots of MAGA supporters who would seem to have no objective reason for feeling oppressed, aggrieved, threatened.

I look at the right wing focus on transgender people, at all the hatred directed against them from folks who never in their lives have met someone transgendered, let alone been in any way hurt by them, and have to wonder: what the fuck?

I suppose in part it's resistance to changing attitudes about gender, race, sexuality. The tolerance of Weimar Germany was a shock to many Germans, who felt their "traditional values" of homophobia, and keeping women "in their place" were being threatened.

There's a book I found interesting on this: Before the Deluge: A Portrait of Berlin in the 1920s, by Otto Friedrich.

We can see the same backlash in America today. I think, for instance, the election of President Obama fried the brains of so many Americans who found their fear of "the other" triggered in a massive way. This is not the America they grew up in, where LGBTQ+ people were consigned to the closet, and women were almost never in positions of authority, and people of color were denied anything close to an equal shot at "the American dream."

I wonder too if our defeat in the Vietnam War also didn't set some of this off. The same "stab in the back" nonsense as took hold in Germany after WWI. I remember seeing "Rambo" and hearing Stallone say something like, "This time, are you going to let us win?" Alarm bells rang in my head.

Anyway, thanks for your comment, and best wishes.