When the world is turned upside down

Rough Draft

We are not the first to experience a world turned upside down.

We are not the first to see our most cherished values, the lodestars we have followed our entire lives, trampled upon, dismissed, and violated in the most horrendous manner imaginable.

Think back to what many people must have been thinking and feeling in Germany in the 1930’s as the Nazi Party gained in strength and its Leader become Chancellor of Germany (on January 30, 1933) and an absolute dictator following the Reichstag fire (on February 27) and passage by the Reichstag of the Enabling Act (on March 23, 1933).

There were undoubtedly millions of rational people who did not succumb to the Nazi virus which infected growing numbers of the population as the Nazi Party became the Nazi state.

Imagine what other thinking Europeans must have thought as reason was swept aside by the mass emotions manipulated and directed by Adolf Hitler and Josef Goebbels, his propaganda minister.

Undoubtedly many reacted in horror, much as many are reacting to the latest outrages of Amrrica’s 47th president since his inauguration on January 20, 2025.

Undoubtedly many Europeans reacted with outrage and dismay over the Nazis’ actions and assumption of dictatorial oowers.

But they reacted too late.

In the international sphere, so did the French and the British. They reacted too late. When the Germans remilitarized the Rhineland in 1936, when Germany annexed Austria in March 1938. When Germany seized the Sudetenland as the result of the threat of military invasion in September and October 1938, sanctioned by Britain and France at the Munich Conference.

When Germany seized the rest of Czechoslovakia (“rump Czechoslovakia”) in March 1939. When despite their mutual defense treaty with Poland, after the German invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939, the French failed to engage the German forces on the Western Front.

Everyone assumed they had more time, much more time.

But then time ran out, much more quickly than anyone might have thought possible.

Today, it seems that the majority of people including business and political l leaders have reacted to the fascist challenge of 47 and his Republican supporters with what Timothy Snyder in On Tyranny (2017) describes as “anticipatory obedience”.

It feels like the fascists are in power, and that for the moment at least they have triumphed.

Acquiescence is the norm.

Aside from a few intellectuals, no one seems to take the warnings of experts on fascism and authoritarian rule seriously.

Instead we face the brilliance of the fascist propagandists who have taken advantage of public discourse as a kind of vaudeville act and what Neil Postman described in Amusing Ourselves to Death (1985) as a form of "baby talk".

Those who have not studied and learned from the history of the Nazis and the Third Reich are among our most dangerous fellow citizens.

Stop and think for a minute.

On the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi concentration vamp at Auschwitz, where more than a million Jews and other human beings were murdered, Elon Musk, America's unelected super-advisor, gave a very intentional Nazi salute at a meeting attended by right-wing extremists, and a few days later admonished the neo-Nazi AfD (Alternative for Germany) Party not to get hung up on historical guilt.

Cassandra received the gift from the gods of being able to foresee the future, coupled with the curse that no one would believe her.

In America today, we have numerous Cassandras, but no one is paying attention to them or heeding what they are saying.