2016 Postmortem

If you criticize them, they retaliate.

We saw this in Germany in the 1920s and much more so in the 30s.

First you had the identifiable supporter 'uniforms,' which in the Nazis' case were brown shirts, military billed caps, and swastika arm bands.

Trumps are red caps that say 'make America great again.'

As an aside the slogan is nearly identical - Hitler assured his supporters he would make Germany great again.

Then, in Germany we had threats followed by the creation of a huge secret police/army apparatus at odds with the regular German Wehrmacht (formation of the SS into Gestapo, the Einsatzgruppen and Waffen groups).

After this was Krystallnicht, where they began overt terrorization of minority populations.

Then the eugenics programs killing the disabled.

Then the race laws.

Then the camps.

Finally, in 1942, Nazi leaders met at Wannsee near Berlin and came up with the 'final solution.'

At any time in this horrible period, you might wake up in the morning and see that your neighbor's house had been ransacked and your neighbor gone. Hitler called this policy of terror by night 'nacht und nebel' night and fog.

It doesn't surprise me. But it does appall me.