Sorry, But Sometimes It’s Impossible to Avoid Comparing Hitler to Trump

Unless requested to do so, I don’t make comparisons between Hitler and Trump. But, since a reader sent me the piece at left, here are a few thoughts.

A minor point: Unless you’re extremely wealthy, you will actually pay higher taxes under Trump than you did under his predecessor. Not that I expected it, but a little honesty would have been a nice touch.

Far more importantly, it will be very interesting to see how many people actually will die as a result of:

• Removal of healthcare and nutrition programs for tens of millions of Americans and their children.

• Hurricanes, droughts, floods, wildfires, loss of land masses and biodiversity, ocean acidification, and other effects of climate change.

• Gunshots.

• The lies and preventable missteps associated with COVID-19 and its variants.  We can all hope for no further outbreaks, but there are no guarantees.

• Violence associated with rounding up and deporting immigrants.

• Our support of atrocities against the Palestinians.

• The financial devastation that is wreaked upon huge numbers of Americans due to tariffs and trade wars with former allies like Canada.

• Our nation’s retreat from NATO, and support of the murderous Putin regime, inviting Russian aggression further westward in Europe.

• Reduction in the robustness of air safety and other aspects of our infrastructure.

In addition, there are important though impossible-to-quantify aspects of Trump’s leadership that will ultimately result indirectly in many deaths. Though this is all speculative at this point, we are facing a likely end to American democracy and reliance on rule of law.  Trump tried to violently overthrow the legitimate government of the world’s most powerful nation, and has ended all attempts to hold him criminally accountable.  What happens, as a consequence, when the status of United States is globally downgraded, just like its Treasury bonds were last month?

Btw, Trump didn’t “hurt my feelings.”  In fact, he did nothing whatsoever to hurt me personally.  I’m a white male who’s not gay, poor, uneducated,  uninsured, Muslim, Latin American, or young enough to have his life disfigured by climate change.  My kids are grown, meaning that they won’t lose their lives in school shootings.  The only problem I have with Trump is that his insanity and criminality is hurting millions of innocent people around the globe.

I don’t like that, and you shouldn’t either.