Everyone loves to compare their political opponent to Hitler. He is the 'go-to' bad guy. Unarguably evil, unarguably a bad military and governmental leader - despite having significant public speaking skills, he makes for a powerful and therefor overused comparison.
Let me be very clear - Donald Trump is not Hitler. There are several ways that Trump is better. Hitler was stupider than Trump (Hitler dropped out of college and repeatedly screwed up good military strategy). Few if any people will disagree when I say that Donald Trump is nicer than Hitler. (Good T Shirt...) That statement is pretty clearly true. A low bar, but Trump can make it over the bar.
But there IS a World War II leader that Trump is comparable too. No, I am not going to compare Trump to other bad guys. It's not Stalin or Mussolini. It's Henri Petain, leader of Vichy France, the 'Lion of Verdun' that surrendered to Nazi Germany, and was later sentenced to death for his treason (sentence was commuted to life in prison).
The similarities are clear. Petain was a bigot, that refused to help
refugees based on things he had heard about their religion. Previously he demanded a giant wall to keep invading murders out.
Petain was an anti-Semite that went beyond preventing Jews from entering France, he also specifically removed protections originally granted to french Jews. (source) He was scared that the Jews would not be loyal to France - and instead would engage in acts of violence, perhaps try to take over France. In truth, the Jews were just fleeing persecution. Trump, like Petain, want's to block a group of refugees - Muslims in Trump's case - from entering the US.
Petain was one of the major forces behind the Maginot Line - a giant wall that was supposed to keep Germans out of France. (source) But the Germans had airplanes to fly over the wall. It was also so big, that it had week spots - too expensive to build a strong wall that large. Similarly, Trump want's to keep Mexican out because he thinks they are murders. Petain at least was right about Germany, but Trump doesn't even have that going for him.
Petain also married a woman 20 years younger than him, violated the Constitution of France, and ran the government along the lines of his previous profession (military) rather than using the normal political means. Trump has married a woman 20 years younger than him, has been told by the military that they will not obey illegal orders to torture the family of enemy soldiers, and claims that he will run the government like his previous profession (business).
Donald Trump is nothing more than America's Henri Petain. We can't afford to let Trump do to America, what Petain did to France.
We need to do better. We need someone that does NOT simply try to offer up simple, obvious solutions to complex problem. Because if the answer was simple, we would have already solved it.
Real life is complex and requires harder, more difficult solutions. Simple solutions are simply wrong. Walls haven't worked since the invention of the airplane. Judging people - even for a short amount of time - on their religion is called prejudice, and history has shown that it is evil, not good.
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