As the Presidential election year heats up, as more and more lives get squandered in Iraq, the rhetoric between the parties, Democratic and Republican, has gotten nastier. A known Democratic sympathizing website had the audacity of likening George W. Bush to Adolph Hitler. Believe it or not, at the same time, a Republican sympathizing organization had Howard Dean as the new Adolph. Because he is the President, and because the Republicans do a much better job of crying foul, more attention has been given to the Bush/Hitler analogy.
From the right and from the left the review of calling George W., Adolph, have all been negative, with words such as disgusting, disgraceful, inappropriate, outlandish and reprehensible. What is worse, is the fact that these terms have been used for that suggestion, instead of looking at why this analogy is being used.
For many of those who are religious, there is nothing worse than the devil. Yet, no such outrage was shown when William Jefferson Clinton was called nothing short of the devil, by those who actually believe in the devil. In fact, one Republican Congressman, named him Beelzabubba, playing with the bubba terminology that Clinton was famous for. To this day, the political right views Clinton along with the Mrs. as the lowest form of humanity.
To some, no matter how repugnant it may be, Adolph Hitler is still revered. To most sane Americans Adolph Hitler represents the devil incarnate, therefore calling Clinton the devil and analogizing George W. to Hitler is six of one and a half dozen of another. They simply both represent how much one side has learned to hate the standard barer of the other side.
However, Clinton is not in office and George W. Bush is. Although we truly believe that George W. Bush does not have the evil intent of Hitler, that he does not want to exterminate a race, and if he wasn’t in public office he would be a pretty nice guy, one still must look at the purpose of the Hitler analogy.
There are many of us out there who are scared. Just like every other American we are scared of that next terrorist attack. We are scared of the uncertainty of when it will happen, how it will be done, who will be harmed and will it be us or our loved ones that are the victims. But we are more scared of what is going on in this country.
That the Hitler analogy is summarily chastised by the right and the left as opposed to being analyzed if there are any accuracies frightens us. We are scared that we have a leader who took leadership under dubious circumstances. We are scared that this leader used the destruction of a building to amass more power than any of his predecessors. We are scared that the threat of terrorism has caused us to have our civil liberties curtailed drastically. We are scared that a large segment of the population believes that it is necessary and a larger percentage of the population don’t even realize that it is happening. We are scared that our country has attacked another country, with no provocation in the name of national security.
Most of all, we are scared because Hitler came to power under dubious circumstances, because the burning down the German Parliament was used as justification for taking away civil liberties and government repression, because this so-called terrorist attack on the German Parliament was used as justification for the massing of power needed by the government, because Czechoslovakia and Poland were attacked in the name of national need and security, because a large segment of the German population supported measures taken and a larger portion of the society didn’t realize what was being taken from them until it was too late. But most of all, we are scared because they say “history repeats itself”.