America is Woke

Yes Santa, You Can Compare Hitler to Trump

Yes, but is she Woke? Photo by Clay Banks on Unsplash

The slogans made by the right-wing supremacists are often mocked routinely on the left and in the mainstream media. Everyone likes a good laugh from the late-night hosts. The pronouncements by YouTube commentators abound talking in exaggerated headlines about how Trump is Afraid, Lindsey is Terrified, the Walls are Closing around Rudi, Jared is in BIG Trouble. But this is America, not Nazi Germany. The mockery of their Supremacy has never destroyed it, only covering up the open hatred the right-wing extremists wield against them.

I came across the most insidious phrase that truly shocked me like a cold bath at midnight when going to turn the streaming TV off. Suddenly, the sarcastic humor I enjoyed against Trump and his ilk seemed like gaslighting about the depth of problem and the threat it made and makes on American democracy. I had looked on the Netflix menu and saw someone started watching a 1977 documentary about Hitler. I can imagine it could not be my kids or wife, who only watches Korean serials. So, I pressed on it and for a few minutes the sounds and sights of Hitler’s rise to power were in explained as a career path to power through the 1920s. A banner flashed by. And I read it, my brain recognizing a word from thirty years ago in my German classes: Erwache. Deutschland it said on top of the banner, and underneath the symbol, Erwache…