What Happened In Nazi Germany Could Have Happened Here

7-22-24
   For many years, people in the United States have said that what happened in Nazi Germany during the 1930s and ‘40s would never happen here. No way. Americans would never follow a vicious, authoritarian dictator. No way.
   But the fact of the matter is: it could have happened here, and what’s even scarier is that it still could.
   Don’t believe me? Well, consider the following.
   The Milgram Experiment experiment was conducted at Yale University during the 1960s. The setup was as follows. Volunteers would be in a room sitting down with an authority figure wearing a white lab coat being in the same room. The authority figure was the person who was supposed to be in charge of the experiment. The volunteers were told that they were to ask a series of questions to someone who is in the next room and was hooked up to electrodes. Each time the person in the other room got a question wrong, the volunteer was to administer an electric shock. With every wrong answer, the voltage was to be increased. Remember, the volunteer could not see the person in the other room. What the participant did not know was that they were the actual subjects of the experiment. The person in the other room was not actually hooked up to anything and had a script of how they would respond as the electric shocks worsened. At 75 volts, the person would scream in pain. From 150 to 330 volts, the person would protest with increasing intensity and begin to say that their heart was bothering them. At 330 volts, the person would refuse to go on. Above 330 volts, there was only silence. The volunteer would have no idea whether the person had stopped, was unconscious, or dead. The experiment wanted to see how far ordinary Americans would follow orders. The results were truly frightening. All the participants continued asking questions up to 300 volts (remember the person in the other room started screaming at 75 volts). 65% of the volunteers continued all the way to the maximum 450 volts, beyond the point when the person in the other room had gone silent. Think about that. Really think about it. The reason the volunteers continued was because the authority figure with the white lab coat told them to. They followed what the authority figure instructed them to do even though it was clear what they were doing was wrong.
   Now, let’s take a look at what’s going on today. Donald Trump’s behavior has been seriously narcissistic with severe lying (to the point that many would call him a pathological liar) for years. We’ve seen this over and over. He says the most outrageous lies in order to gain and hold as much power as he can. Even though he legitimately lost the 2020 election, he still promotes lies claiming that it was stolen from him. The world saw what happened on January 6th, 2021 when a mob of his followers stormed the United States Capitol Building to try to stop Congress from doing its Constitutional duty in confirming the 2020 election, an election that had been free and fair. The mob was doing what they thought Trump wanted them to do. They were stimulated by the outrageous false rhetoric he and other Republican leaders were spewing out. And now, Trump refers to them, especially the ones who have been convicted and sent to prison, as “patriots” and “hostages.” He’s actually said that he’ll pardon them if elected president. Donald Trump has even gone so far as to say that he’ll act like a dictator on day one of his presidency and has also made it clear that he plans on taking revenge on political opponents as president. This sort of behavior is seriously dangerous, undemocratic, and authoritarian in nature. Yet despite this, millions of Republicans are blindly following him while many others are willingly going along with him even though they know they shouldn’t.
   Democracy is a precious thing and should not be taken for granted because it could be lost at any time. And one of the greatest dangers to democracies comes from within the country. This is what we are seeing today in the United States with Trump’s narcissistic authoritarian behavior and the millions of Americans who blindly follow him even though they should know better.
   So, could something like what happened in Nazi Germany in the 1930s and ‘40s happen in the United States? Unfortunately, the answer is yes.
   Think about that when you go to the polls this November. Think really hard about how you cast your ballot because our democracy is at stake.