CounterPunch Exclusives

CounterPunch Exclusives

Are We Good Americans?

Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair

When I was in High School, I used to wonder how the German people put up with Hitler and his regime. Was there something about the German language that destroyed empathy? Had someone spiked their water? And so on. I wasn’t wondering about the lunatics. I wasn’t wondering about the macho, sadistic souls gone bad. I wasn’t wondering about the top mongrels either, not about Hitler, nor Himmler, nor the rest. I was wondering about what I had sometimes heard called “Good Germans.” Normal citizens. Nice people. Among the most educated and cultured in the world. Millions upon millions of them.

Well, this morning our own Führer said: “A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again.” Many are saying in reaction, “yikes, that isn’t the America I know.” Well, truth be told, what did people think was our America? But I don’t want to quibble about that. I get why so many people think of America as something wonderful, as a promise persistently delivering, as the height of human achievement and freedom, and so on and so forth. It isn’t those exalted things, of course. And it wasn’t ever those things. Not at the start, not now, not in between. But that obvious truth is at our moment beside the point.

The population of the United States, I suspect, more even than the population of Germany circa Hitler’s reign, has been told, over and over, that our government is hell-bent on sadistic mayhem and gore. If Trump can, Trump gleefully acknowledges that he will. Technically, he can. He’s got the guns for it. He’s got the bombs for it. What about socially? That is the question, isn’t it?

Will we be Good Americans, perhaps frowning, perhaps weeping, or maybe even applauding but not working to stop him (where the latter will ironically arguably have less culpability vis-à-vis this........

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