December 7, 2015: A day that will live in ... [FILL IN THE BLANK]

Donald Trump in front of "Make America Great Again!" banner
on Pearl Harbor Day (December 7) 2015 (Image: Getty)

Yesterday, a possible nominee as the Republican candidate to become the next president of the United States proposed banning Muslims from the US. "I think that we should definitely disallow any Muslims from coming in. Any of them. The reason is simple: we can't identify what their attitude is." (See Trump's call to ban Muslim immigration to the US.)

Two things are possible:

EITHER this will be remembered as the moment the US caved in completely to fascism;

OR this will be the big wake-up call to US people, and the beginning of the dismantling of the post-9/11 nightmare.

What's it gonna be, people?


Update: December 9, 2015

The New York Daily News puts it all together:

New York Daily News, December 9, 2015:
"When Trump came for the Mexicans,
I did not speak out - as I was not a
Mexican. When he came for the Muslims
I did not speak out - as I was not a
Muslim. Then he came for me . . . "
(Share this image from the New York Daily News.)

(Read the Wikipedia article on "First they came . . ." -- "a famous statement and provocative poem written by Pastor Martin Niemöller (1892–1984) about the cowardice of German intellectuals following the Nazis' rise to power and the subsequent purging of their chosen targets, group after group.")


Update: December 12, 2015

Yup: "infamy." (That's what I was afraid of.) "Trump’s anti-Muslim rhetoric will live in infamy in American history," by David Ignatius in the Washington Post.



Related posts

I wonder if, years from now, we will be thinking back to today and feeling surprise at how little we thought about some of the developments in our world, and in our country, and how we talked about them even less. Someday will I have to explain to my kids, or to my kids' kids, why it was that "people just weren't talking about it" . . . ?

(See Why Weren't People Talking About It? )





Thinking about the Holocaust Museum's depiction of the reliance on brutality and intimidation during the Holocaust, all I could think of was the repeated use of similar tactics by the U.S. military against prisoners in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantanamo.

(See Holocaust Museum: "Those Nazi Bastards!" )






It looks like foreign affairs are about to take center state in Election 2016.

(See Election2016 after Paris: It's time for someone to show leadership)

The United States is like that alcoholic family member, for whom every circumstance is an excuse to hit the bottle. Except, with the US, the bottle is violence.

(See It's Time for the United States to Stop Hitting the Bottle)






I'm glad that we're starting to debate drone warfare, but I'm concerned that Americans are stuck at the surface of the problem -- the technology, the politics -- and not getting deep enough into the psychology that allows us to tolerate the injury being done to others.

(See Does America Need a Spiritual Awakening?)