I recently finished reading Eric Metaxas’ biography of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, entitled Bonhoeffer : Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy. Born in 1906, Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a Lutheran pastor and noted theologian, but he is perhaps better remembered for his resistance to Adolf Hitler and the Nazi party, and he outwardly opposed Hitler’s persecution of Jews and minorities. He was accused of being associated with a plot to assassinate Hitler, so he was arrested by the Gestapo in 1943 and imprisoned for one and a half years before he was executed by hanging on April 9, 1945. He was executed just 21 days before Hitler committed suicide in his bunker in Berlin.

The biography is superbly written, and includes many excerpts of correspondence and letters between Bonhoeffer and friends, family members and his fiance. A particular quote of Bonhoeffer that stands out in my mind is a quote from a letter her wrote to his sister-in-law, Emmi Bonhoeffer. The quote is: “If I see a madman driving a car into a group of innocent bystanders, then I can’t simply wait for the catastrophe and then comfort the wounded and bury the dead. I must try to wrestle the steering wheel out of the hands of the driver.” I feel that as Americans we are at this moment, a mad man is at the wheel, and we just can’t sit back and watch the impending carnage.

This quote resonates with me, especially now. Our country is in crisis: COVID-19, confederate flags, Q anon, executive orders ranging from the deployment of federal militia to protect monuments and federal buildings to outlawing the toppling of Confederate statues, white supremacists, the loss of millions of jobs and Ivanka Trump telling the unemployed to just “find something new,” people who refuse to wear masks screaming about their rights at store clerks, gerrymandering, billion-dollar bailouts for the rich and Wall Street, Russian bounties on American troops, voter suppression, Trump’s rose garden press conferences that are absolutely incomprehensible, millions of PPP loans going to Trump lackeys and billionaires, the pardoning of Roger Stone, and the manipulation of CDC corona virus data. It’s absolutely insane! Each morning I wake up to yet another report of the slow corrosion of our Constitution. It’s as if POTUS 45 was waiting for a crisis, the right moment when he could push aside democracy for his own gain.

In 2016, the Trump campaign basically ran on disdain and fear, and on catch phrases such as “drain the swamp,” “lock her up,” and “build the wall.” He stoked fears of hordes of immigrants pouring over our borders and taking our jobs, he ridiculed a disabled reporter, he made fun of “do-nothing-democrats,” left-winger communists, LGBTQs, people of color, Muslims, women, and really anyone who wasn’t a straight white American male. The very phrase “Make America Great Again,” implies an idea of a mythical history, of houses with white-picket fences, a prosperous economy, and clean, white neighborhoods. It’s kind of like the “Stepford Wives” but on steroids. One of Trump’s key approaches was his contempt for the government, contempt for the press, contempt for our national intelligence, and even contempt for the Supreme Court: No one is free of Trump’s ridicule or disdain. Just follow his daily tweets where almost no one is immune from his humiliations. If you haven’t noticed, Trump’s rhetoric is straight out of the dictator’s playbook, and his views are shared by the current crop of the world’s current dictators such as Putin, Dutarte, Erdogan, and Bolsonaro. Autocrats and dictators want you to be afraid, they want you to doubt the facts, to reject science, to second-guess yourself, so that you’re constantly walking on eggshells. There’s a name for this mental manipulation, it called “gas-lighting.” The term is taken from the 1944 classic movie “Gaslight,” where the main character played by Ingrid Bergman is psychologically manipulated by her husband (played by Charles Boyer) to believe that she’s going insane. Charles Boyer’s character Gregory goes to great lengths to convince his wife that she is going insane so that he can have her institutionalized, giving him power of attorney to claim all of her wealth. Just as Charles Boyer manipulates Ingrid Bergman, Trump is manipulating the American people.

I’m inclined to think that this escalation of Trumps gas-lighting, and the fast-tracked erosion of our democracy started with George Floyd’s murder. True, we have reached a boiling point that has been brewing for decades: The chronic oppression of African Americans and minorities, and the high rates of police brutality experienced by people of color. George Floyd’s murder has awakened America from her denial of the plight of minorities in this country, and has spurned protests and movements all across the globe. We’ve even finally considered changing the names of sports teams who have hijacked Native American culture, good bye to the team name “Redskins.” It’s about time. But on a darker note, the murder of George Floyd has also spurned another movement, and this movement is a threat to our very democracy. The murder of George Floyd may very well be Trump’s Reichstag moment. Trump has stolen the BLM movement to advance his most authoritarian, and autocratic political plans. Just today, federal law enforcement officers hand-cuffed and seized BLM protesters in Portland Oregon and placed them in unmarked vans. Not so long ago Trump stated in a conversation with governors: “You have to dominate. If you don’t dominate, you’re wasting your time, and they’re gonna run over you and you look like a bunch of jerks. You have to arrest and then you have to try people. “You have to dominate.” “You have to arrest … people.”

What was the Reichstag Moment?

Just as 9/11 was a Reichstag moment for the establishment of the Patriot Act, which made it easier for the government to spy on Americans, to monitor our emails and phone calls, and collect bank and employment records, so the murder of George Floyd was Trump’s Reichstag moment. So what is this Reichstag thing anyway? In 1932 Germany there was an election runoff between independent incumbent Paul Von Hindenburg and Adolf Hitler. Hitler lost to Hindenburg, but Hindenburg appointed Hitler as Chancellor of Germany in January of 1933. During the previous year, Hitler and his National Socialist Party rose to prominence in Germany. The economy was in the toilet, the current government lacked vision and direction, and Germany was still smarting from the effects of the Versailles treaty. Hitler was charismatic, an emotional speaker, he played on fears and prejudices, and he channeled the people’s frustrations with the current Weimar government into support for his struggling new party. In an election held in July 1932, the Nazis won 230 governmental seats, over half of the political assembly of the Reichstag, Germany’s governing body.

Just a few weeks after Hitler was sworn in as Chancellor, on February 27, 1933, the Reichstag building was destroyed by a fire. This was Hitler’s moment, a tragedy that turned the tables in his favor. To this day we don’t know how the fire started, but Hitler seized this tragedy to fan the fires of fear and nationalism. The Nazis accused the communists of starting the fire, and the communists accused the Nazis, everyone was pointing fingers. Amidst the confusion and melee, Hitler used the fire to sign into law the “Reichstag Fire Decree,” which suspended multiple civil liberties that included freedom of the press, personal privacy, freedom of association, and freedom of expression. Basically this decree was used as the legal basis for the imprisonment of anyone who opposed the Nazi regime. All anti-Nazi publications were banned, and Hitler even asked President Hindenburg to use Article 48 of the Weimar Constitution to establish this Decree. Amazing, Hitler used Germany’s own constitution to cripple its democracy! Thousands of German citizens were arrested under the pretense of “state security,” and Hitler suppressed any political parties that might challenge the authority of the Nazis. When the next election took place on March 5, 1933, the Nazis and their supporters won a majority share of the vote, allowing the passage of “The Enabling Act” that made Hitler dictator of Germany. It only took 30 days for all of this to happen after the Reichstag Fire. The use of fear to limit civil liberties is a common tactic in the dictator’s playbook. History has shown us that democracies can be fragile, and that would-be dictators manipulate the public’s fears to justify the destruction of civil liberties in order to grab power.

Our Unpleasant Truth

We’re faced with a very unpleasant truth in the US today. Trump is using the BLM movement and the murder of George Floyd as an opportunity to seize more power for himself, to crack down on political opponents, to free convicted felons such as Roger Stone, to use his office as president to bolster his businesses, and to fan the flames of racial and ethnic division. After all, Trump’s campaign was based on walling out immigrants, and banning certain ethnic groups from entering the US. He also incites violence, fear and anger at his rallies, in 2016 threatening to lock up Hillary, and claiming that he “alone” could fix our problems. At first we downplayed things, thinking Trump would be held in check by the House and Senate, or thinking that he’s a television host, and he really can’t do much damage. Well, we were wrong, weren’t we? Trump is on record praising the Chinese dictatorship for being for it’s response to the Tiananmen Square protesters back in 1989: Thousands of protesters were killed by the Chinese military! Not so long ago, Republican Senator Tom Cotton told Fox News that the military should show “no quarter” to the anarchists. The term no quarter means “kill everyone.” What’s really amazing is that several GOP senators and congressmen and women are all in line with Trump’s rhetoric, previous critics such as Lindsey Graham and Rand Paul are now two of Trump’s most loyal supporters. It’s as if they’ve all been hypnotized.

America, we’re in denial. We really don’t see what’s in front of us, and if we look at the origins of fascism, human denial and disbelief are key ingredients. But there is hope, and we need to be optimistic. With all of Trump’s tweets, the denials of the deadly nature of COVID-19, videos of anti-maskers yelling and screaming, conspiracy theories and attacks on the press, minorities and science.

We need to be hopeful, because if we don’t have hope, we become defeated, and demoralized and that’s the danger. Hope feeds change, activism and mobilization, because without it we are prisoners of propaganda and oppression.

So America, don’t lose hope, we thrive on diversity and unity, keep fighting for democracy.

Take the wheel.