Let us stipulate that Donald Trump has not started a war that has killed 50 million people, and has not tried to systematically murder any ethnic or religious group. Other than that, let the Hitler analogies fly. A man who came to political prominence solely by promoting vicious, racist lies. A man whose “talent” if you want to call it that is his ability to tap into the anger and rage of his followers, exclusively cultivating the worse devils of our nature. And if Hitler, is obviously, the worst chancellor in German history, from Bismarck to Merkel, by some exceptional exponential magnitude, the same can be said about Trump among his presidential peers, let us say, Franklin Pierce, James Buchanan, and Andrew Johnson. They were terrible politicians, who failed the United States at a critical hour in its history. Donald Trump, on the other hand, is simply a monster. And yesterday’s events were an absolute nadir. We make comparisons to Hitler because he is the best-known example of a legally elected head of a democratic government who systematically destroyed his country’s democracy.   Donald Trump never had any intention of leaving the presidency voluntarily. He will have to be pried out, excavated and dynamited out.

So pick your analogy. Are his saturation in vile conspiracy theories about powerful forces thwarting him and his followers akin to the Protocols of the Elders of Zion? Were yesterday’s events his equivalent of the Beer Hall Putsch, when he and his armed thugs tried in 1923 to overthrow the Bavarian government, in the event that brought Hitler to international attention for the first time? And how about our Franz von Papens, the Cruzes and Hawleys who aided and abetted Hitler’s rise to power, and thought that they could ride the tiger rather than being devoured by it? (And who thought Hitler was a viable alternative to “socialism.” Or Hitler’s actions in his first months as chancellor that destroyed the Weimar Republic? Or was his egging on his thugs like the Night of Long Knives, or the shattering of the Capitol’s glass reminiscent of Kristallnacht, a pogrom against the members of congress? The point is that violence becomes fascist violence, Hitlerian violence, when street thugs are supported by the state, and the organized forces of law and maintaining order stand by and allow it to happen. And that is just what happened yesterday. It is the quintessence of Trumpism. No one, certainly no one who voted for him, can be allowed to be surprised. Their condemnations are totally hollow.   Like the many ex-Nazis who claimed after the war that they didn’t know what Hitler was really like, and conveniently discovered that they were anti-Nazis.

Trump must be censured impeached, removed from office, not allowed to run for public office, be stripped of his pension, and frankly, have a Nuremburg trial. I don’t think any of that will happen. After the Civil War, to change analogies, northern Republicans accused the Democratic Party of being the party of rebellion and insurrection. It was called waving the bloody shirt, reminding Americans who started the war to defend slavery.   With Confederate flags being waved in the Capitol again, it is time to wave the bloody shirt again. Trumpism is nihilistic evil, and we saw its potential yesterday. If Biden wishes to bring us together as a nation, he must make clear that there can be no reconciliation with evil.