A Rhyme?

I think it was Mark Twain who suggested that while history may not repeat itself, it seems to rhyme.

Today, an administration is sowing handfuls of seeds of doubt about the legitimacy of our election. It seems not to matter whether these seeds are fertile. They may be cracked, outdated or in some other way had their germ rendered ineffective. Their fertility though, their effectiveness in growing into real proof of election fraud, has not been their purpose.

The purpose of President Trump and his lawyers has really been to stir up and reinforce his base of support. Otherwise why would they be talking about campaign-like rallies to muster large crowds. Their hope is to enrage Americans into believing that core values and institutions are corrupted. Truth is not the goal, propaganda is.

A rhyme? On this day in 1938, a ‘spontaneous, popular riot’ was fomented in protest of the killing of a German diplomat by a Polish Jew. The Nazi Government did not officially endorse the popular response of smashing windows of Jewish businesses and the burning of premises. But police and firemen were restrained from responding. This Night of Breaking Glass, Kristallnacht, is considered to have initiated the massive persecution of Jews. Propaganda Minister Goebbels had launched the Holocaust.

Have we forgotten, probably we did not even know, that Nazi is an abbreviation for the German word Nationalsozialist and is short for Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, NSDAP, National Socialist German Worker’s Party. Here the word ‘socialist’ is proudly proclaimed as a Fascist identity, meaning ‘popular.’ There is no corresponding alliteration or rhythm in this rhyme, but an analogy is hard to miss.