I wake up.
I get my daughter up, make her lunch, get her clothes for the day, put her hair in a braid. Her grandma gets her breakfast ready.
We talk about mundane topics I cannot remember.
I go into the bathroom and look into the mirror. I notice the positive affirmations still written on sticky notes:
"Everything is going to be ok."
Then I glance through the news and think to myself,
I'll give this Nazi white supremacist named Bannon a chance. What's the worst that could happen? What's one group taken out, more or less? I'm not them so I should just be fine. I won't worry about what comes next.
Then I get my coffee and cream. "Everything is going to be ok", I tell myself, just like the positive affirmations still stuck to my mirror.
Now I happen to notice there's a low-grade anxiety that lingers inside my gut.
Something about a Nazi with power just doesn't sit right in my body. I had never even considered the possibility of this scenario. It never seemed like something that would happen in my lifetime. Something in my body doesn't feel right when I think about this. As I go back in forth in my mind, I take note of another thing happening inside me. The more I consider such a thing, the less shocking over time, it feels to me. The exposure of such an idea seems to be like having small doses of anaethesia sent into my system, each dose makes me more numb to the idea. The less I feel. I begin to gauge other people in my life for their reactions, to see if my reactions are unique to me. Others are shocked at first too, but as time goes on, their shock lessens. The anaethesia is being administered to them, too, in tiny doses, day by day.
I look back at the little sticky note, "Everything is going to be ok". I memorize the little saying, trying to push aside my internal signals that are still there, sending me warning of clear threats.
Everything is going to be ok
The hollow, empty sentence hangs on, drowning out reason, morality and common sense.
I turn away from the signals inside of myself and turn on my computer. I surf the internet mindlessly reading. I see that many of my friends have decided to just carry on as if nothing has changed. The low-grade anxiety returns. Some of my friends though have decided to listen to their internal signals.
Then I ask myself, "how did the Nazis first rise to power in Germany?" I do some research and discover the following:
The Nazis gradually devised an electoral strategy to win northern farmers and white collar voters in small towns, which produced a landslide electoral victory in September 1930 (jump from roughly 3% to 18% of the votes cast) due to the depression. Refused a chance to form a cabinet, and unwilling to share in a coalition regime, the Nazis joined the Communists in violence and disorder between 1931 and 1933.
The Nazis won their support primarily from the lower middle class and the peasantry. These voters were strongly nationalistic in their political views and feared that the depression would deprive them of their standard of living.
There is little evidence to support the view that Hitler received substantial financial support from big business. The conservative upper classes generally regarded Hitler as an uneducated demagogue and gutter politician. - Hitler's Rise To Power
And from Pookleblinky's Twitter we learn how obedience fits into the scenario that is currently being thrust upon Americans:
Each obedience test will occur after the results of the last have been sufficiently normalized.
There is never one single test, a poll asking "is it ok to kill Jews?"
Instead: a series of tests, each edging toward atrocity, each relying on the previous one to have normalized the outcome of this one.
The moment America normalizes the result of this obedience test, there will be another, with slightly higher stakes.
Those higher stakes will not look higher. After you put the first nazi in power, is a second one really that huge a thing to get around?
After you put a nazi in power, is him doing anti-semitic things really that shocking?
So: the next obedience test will have higher stakes, and will look as hard as this current one.
How you react to this obedience test, is exactly how you will react to the next. It'll feel just as easy/difficult morally.
It'll seem identical in stakes and difficulty as this obedience test. But, it'll have higher stakes, and take more effort to fail it.
That last test will not feel like it has any higher stakes, or any more moral difficulty, than the very first already forgotten test.
That last obedience test, pretty much sets the bar for how obedient you are. And, requires nothing but war as a means of disobedience.
How long? It took Hitler, in an age before instant ubiquitous communication, 4 months to lead up to that question.
Fascism moves, let us say, 5 times faster than you expect. You don't have 4 months, you have 24 days before that last exam question.
You have 3 weeks to loudly, visibly, and angrily disrupt the process that allows each test to set the baseline of normalcy for the next
After those 3 weeks, those obedience tests will keep coming, and will keep establishing the grounds of what is normal.
I look inside myself and it tells me that having Bannon, a confirmed White Supremacist is not ok. It will NEVER be ok.
This is the first obedience test spoiled Donnie is giving us, the American people. We will not allow this. We will not be sheep and we reject this first obedience test. You know deep within you that having a Nazi in power is not right. I'm asking you to look inside yourself.
What can you do to stop this? There are many things, but one simple thing you can do now is send a postcard to Trump Tower with the words, NOT BANNON written on it. Here are the details
fyi the part of about the positive affirmations stuck to my mirror is parody.
