How Much Ignorance of History Does it Take to be Doomed to Repeat It?

Lady Gaga's hit "Bad Romance," which debuted in November, 2009 and stayed on the charts for quite a while, including spending about eight weeks at the number 2 spot in the United States, popped into my mind today as I was listening to an afternoon talk show host chat with a guest about the state of politics and the ignorance of history in this country.  There are some lyrics in the song which would be fit descriptions of what we are seeing happen in front of our very eyes. 

"I want your horror, I want your design,

'Cause your a criminal as long as you're mine, 

I want your psycho, your vertigo shtick, 

Want you in my rear window, baby you're sick."  

"Caught in a bad romance." 

Follow My Line of Thinking Here 

We have a former President, running for the office again, who committed the biggest crimes against the Constitution of the United States, and against American representative democracy, that any politician has committed to date, and that's saying something.  If that weren't enough of a "world turned upside down" scenario, this candidate is currently the front-runner in the whole field of candidates in the Republican party.  

The rhetoric that comes out of his mouth has always been anti-patriotic, anti-democratic and anti-American, but in recent days, it has taken a turn for the worse.  As a candidate, he offers nothing of value from a political perspective.  Nothing.  What he is doing is playing on superstition, fear, conspiracy theories and an appalling and inexcusable ignorance of history.  Everything he promotes and says he is going to do is a plan for the dismantling of the Constitution, the elimination of its protections of individual freedom and attacking those people who he has singled out as enemies, basically, any person of color, including those Latinos, African Americans and Asians who are on his bandwagon at the moment, anyone his politics define as progressive or liberal, any Muslim, including those who are fussing with the President over his position on the Israel-Hamas war, and Jews.  Yes, Jews.  

He's referred to anyone who doesn't accept his way of thinking as "vermin," and has announced a plan to build concentration camps for those who he deems to be politically, socially and religiously out of line.  

"I want your horror, I want your design...I want your psycho, your vertigo shtick"  

Explain to me why it is that he can be so open in using that language, in describing his intentions, imitating the world's biggest horror show that led to its most destructive war, the deaths of tens of millions and the laying waste of a good portion of two continents, and it's just a matter of reporting in the news cycle.  How is it that the politicians of his own party yawn, dismissively, and continue to support him, and those of his opposition turn to their infighting over Israel-Hamas, the Ukraine War, and the President's age?  

"Caught in a bad romance..."  

Something is Really Wrong Here

The news media, long accused of rank liberalism by Republicans and extreme conservatives, seems bent on helping this abberration of American values get all the attention it needs to keep this destructive cancer, which is an accurate analogy as far as I am concerned, flourishing.  If the polling numbers that they are pushing and the pollsters they have picked to stand by are correct, then we have a much bigger problem in this country, and in the world by extension, than anyone ever imagined. 

A federal judge in Colorado, in order to avoid rendering a decision with long-reaching political consequences, ruled this week that the President is not an "officer" of the United States, and therefore, is not subject to the provisions of the Constitution, in the fourteenth amendment.  This, my friends, is what we are up against.  That's not just a "bad romance," that's a political nightmare.   

There are some voices that are providing assurance that this "bad romance" cannot be sustained for long, that it is already eroding, and when the election does come down to what may very well be a race between someone incarcerated in federal prison for crimes that fall just short of treason, and the sitting, eighty-one year old President of the United states, the President will win easily.  But it's hardly reassuring that the potentially incarcerated fascist would even be on the ballot.  That itself is a symptom of a much bigger cancer that is ravaging American democracy right now, as we speak.  

Even today, I heard comments from "experts" who are saying that the speculation being used by pollsters is misreading the electorate farther off the mark as it did in 2016, when it altered its polling samples favoring an over-estimate of Democrats', and particularly women's enthusiasm for Hillary Clinton's candidacy, and when it missed the mark again on Republican enthusiasm in the 2022 mid-terms.  I actually heard one comment today stating that one of the reasons the "red wave" that pollsters were absolutely positive was comming in 2022 didn't materialize was, in part, the fact that they kept pushing it and it got liberal voters out to the polls in bigger numbers than they predicted, and that their numbers look better than they really were, because of the massive adjustments they made during October, when the raw data just wasn't going where they thought it ought to go.  

Ok, so maybe there's some genuine reason to be reassured there.  But regardless, the fact that this insanity, and that's just exactly what it is, has been allowed to get to this point is a symptom of serious underlying problems that includes a colossal failure to educate several generations of Americans about our history and the values and principles on which the country was built.  Education has long been promoted as the remedy to the problems of humanity that lead to the kind of political and social collapse represented by Trumpism.  We're now going to see if our values, our Constitution and our government of, by and for the people will survive.