One of the most useful things about history is it allows us to see the present more clearly.
When ordinary, "decent" Austrians and Germans treated Adolph Hitler and his gang as if they were just normal people, they played a critical role in legitimizing everything he said about Jews and Slavs and Gypsies and the Master Race, and the importance of making Germany the dominant "race" which had to expand to civilize the rest of Europe and, ultimately, the world.
Mr. Hitler had written quite clearly what he believed in "Mein Kampf" with all his racist beliefs but apparently German gentry either didn't bother to read it or if they did they reacted much as many in the crowds at Trump events do today--they smile and say, "Well, I don't buy EVERYTHING he says but he's honest and strong and he's what we need right now."
So they became willing accomplices and they went home to their nice homes, and their nice families and they looked the other way when the Nazi thugs stomped people to death on the street, when they threw bricks and Molotov cocktails through the windows of Jewish owned business and homes. When the odor of burning flesh wafted into their villages from nearby concentration camps, they shut their windows.
When Jimmy Fallon jokes and musses Mr. Trump's hair on his show he becomes a willing accomplice. He is saying, "This is a man like any other man. We can laugh together." When Kai Risdol, on NPR, assails Ms. Clinton for not releasing the text of her Wall Street speeches while not assailing Mr. Trump for having no economic plan besides fantasy--we'll pay for day care by wringing fraud and abuse out of the system--, when Dr. Oz has him on his show, they play that crucial role of laundering the money, of making crime into legitimate transaction.
There has never been in the world's history a despot who has exercised his will without willing accomplices.
Look around, see those enablers.
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