Plenty of people have compared Trump to Hitler, including me, but we’re not saying he’s currently equivalent to Hitler in the arena of mass murder. What we are saying is his rise to power resembles that of Hitler’s and other autocratic shitlords: a charismatic speaker scapegoating ethnic minorities coupled with a rise of populist nationalism under the guise supporting “law and order” and other bullshit that plays well. We’re saying Trump is probably just as warped and potentially dangerous as Hitler – though, and this is important, in somewhat different ways.

2017 and the 1930’s are very different times as are the modern United States and pre-Nazi Germany, so if the proverbial shit and fan scenario played out it would probably look different too. While we did round up Japanese Americans and it’s even been cited as a “precedent” by a Trump surrogate, in the age of instant communication and social media an executive action like that would be struck down by a judge before the ink dries and even without judicial intervention more than a few states would simply not comply. That’s not to say it’s impossible, just unlikely. But given a national security crisis like a terrorist attack the administration might have a viable avenue to try.

But Trump and Republicans are doing a lot of other things like cracking down on immigration by stepping up ICE raids. Rounding up “illegal” immigrants might sound great to some, but in practice not only is it super dickish to kick out decent, hard-working people, they deport Americans citizens regularly because it’s an entirely flawed system – it’s barely a real system at all. Conveniently, those are some of the exact type of people that have no place in Trump’s America.

However, it probably wont be through explicit and overt aggression by  the government that kill and imprison people. Congress and certain Trump appointees are attempting to legalize discrimination under self-righteous labels of “religious freedom” and “school choice,” which would allow businesses and schools to just opt out of accepting anyone who doesn’t meet their religious beliefs, or some other arbitrary standards. They’ve also decided that cutting virtually everything in the budget that’s not the military: this includes education, infrastructure investments, health and human services, the justice department, departments in charge of safety regulations, it’s literally almost everything – even fucking Meals on Wheels. And all the while that they’re doing this and trying to take away health insurance for tens of millions Americans, they’ll be giving tax breaks to themselves and corporate sponsors.

What we’ll be left with is a country with fewer social safety nets; increasing costs and barriers to education of decreasing quality which will surely give a boost to the school-to-prison pipeline; increasing water and food contamination akin to Flint thanks to no infrastructure investments and the slashing of safety regulations; unaffordable health insurance options; increased sentences for non-violent drug offenders if Jeff Sessions and private prison industry have their way, and the list goes on. The proposed Republican “healthcare” bill would potentially kill tens of thousands of people a year alone. Contaminated food and drinking water will certainly add to that number as will rising levels of poverty because of fewer social programs, a lack of quality education, rising costs, and falling wages.

These cuts and policy proposals will impact the poorest Americans and disproportionately hurt the elderly and people of color. Make no mistake, these cuts will ruin and take lives, it wont be the spectacle of evil like the Nazis with concentration camps and firing squads, but an insidious, silent rot slowly eating away the final remnants of the American Dream.

~D.T. Kukulkan~