gracchusdixit

In the grim and gory worldview of Norse mythology, the culminating event was a battle of cataclysmic proportions, in which all the combatants—gods and giants, dwarves and men, as well as the very world itself—came crashing down in a firestorm of cinders and blood. This mythic calamity was immortalized in Richard Wagner’s stirring and at times terrifying opera, Götterdämmerung, the “Twilight of the Gods.”

Few could have imagined that, a mere 70 years later, the myth would become reality, when Adolph Hitler, holed up in his Berlin bunker, committed himself and the German nation to their own Götterdämmerung, a final inferno of death and destruction that consumed Hitler himself, his “Thousand-Year Reich,” and countless millions of innocent human beings.

The Presidential nominee of the Republican Party, Donald J. Trump, appears to have made a similar decision.

With his standing in the polls plummeting after the revelation of his unspeakably crude comments about women, with establishment Republicans and big-money donors turning their backs on his candidacy, with his defeats in the first and second Presidential debates, Trump has turned inward, toward his own, entirely self-referential world—a world in which he is always right and can never be wrong, in which anyone who disagrees with him is by definition an enemy or the embodiment of evil, in which he and he alone can save us from the imaginary catastrophes that his feverish imagination has conjured up.

Having surrounded himself with conspiracy mongers from the so-called “alt-right,” having turned his back on anyone who might give him honest or realistic advice, Trump has all but abandoned the Republican Party whose presidential candidate he is. Indeed, he has declared war on many of its most prominent figures–Paul Ryan, Mitch McConnell, John McCain, and innumerable others–for refusing to defend his indefensible behavior. Along with abandoning the Republican Party, Trump has abandoned reality itself.

It was clear from the beginning of Trump’s campaign that he was a sad and pathetic man, an insecure narcissist whose only response to criticism is to bully and browbeat his critics. What we have learned in the last few days, however, goes far beyond all that. It is now inescapably obvious that Donald Trump is as demented and unhinged as Adolph Hitler. The only difference is that Trump’s “bunker” is a luxurious penthouse in Manhattan.

To compare Trump with Hitler, as all comparisons with Hitler inevitably do, runs the risk of trivializing the unique awfulness of the Nazis, their Führer, and the Holocaust for which they were responsible. In this case, however, the similarities are too patent to be ignored, and the peril to the nation is too great to pretend that they do not exist.

In Trump, as with Hitler, we have an authoritarian dictator who believes that he, and he alone,hastherighttodictatethelawsofthenation. ItisfarfromclearthatTrumphasever read the Constitution of the United States. It is abundantly clear that he doesn’t care. He proposes to use the presidency to take vengeance on his opponents and overturn the rule of law. Withoutshame,hepraisesthelikesofVladimirPutin,anex-KGBcriminalwhoseeksto undermine everything our country stands for. If Donald Trump were to become our president, it is no exaggeration to say that our democracy would come to an end.

In Trump, as with Hitler, we have a man who lives in his own, alternative universe. Instead of confronting uncomfortable realities, he is hell-bent on replacing them with those of his own making. If he is losing in the polls, it must be because the polls have been “rigged.” If he loses the election, it will have to be because the election has been “stolen.” If he has been assailed for boasting about sexual assault on videotape, it must our problem—because we don’t understand “locker room banter.”

In Trump, as with Hitler, we have a charismatic psychopath whose followers adore him with an almost erotic fervor. Not only are they immune to facts and reason, they spurn them. Every new piece of evidence indicting Trump for his misogyny, mendacity, and racism is, to them, proof positive that he is their hero and savior. The more he lies, the more they love him. As one Trump supporter said of the Access Hollywood videotape that most of the nation found to be so utterly repugnant, “It proves that he’s a healthy heterosexual male.”

Worst of all, in Trump, as with Hitler, we have a man—and a “movement”—that are fundamentally destructive, a man and a movement that feed on chaos and disruption, that glory in tearing up social and moral norms and tearing down established political institutions.

Let us be clear: the sole goal of Trump’s so-called “movement” is an American Götterdämmerung. If by some evil twist of fate, he succeeds in becoming our next president, we will have only ourselves to blame. Donald J. Trump is not only unfit to become President of the United States. He is unfit to be considered a member of the human race.