It was this headline…
Trump says American Jews ‘no longer love Israel’ and Jewish people ‘run The New York Times’
…that set off klaxons.
When I was a kid, I remember hearing conversations about World War II, and hearing words like ‘fascism,’ and ‘fascists,’ and ‘dictators,’ and ‘atrocities.’ I didn’t fully understand the words, at first, but as I got older, I began to know their meaning.
That’s why what the former president said, in the headline – his assertions – triggered memories, concerns and chills.
Suggesting that Jewish people in America “no longer love Israel” — which the Encyclopedia Britannica describes as “the only Jewish nation in the modern period” — you’ve got to wonder what Mr. Trump was basing his assertion on.
Had he asked hundreds, thousands, or millions of Jewish people, throughout America, if they “no longer love Israel?” Did he have any statistical data, polling results, or anything, whatsoever, to back up such an assertion?
And what he also suggested, in the headline, about The New York Times… could that have been some kind of code for something else… other than, simply, one particular newspaper?
The former president has been described as a blowhard, by a number of people, in a number of articles, in a number of media. And if this assessment of him is accurate, does his manner of speaking, as he spoke in the headline, and as he’s spoken over the years about various other people – and groups of people – suggest something more concerning and menacing?
It’s one thing to hear folks in government or business spouting off, asserting one thing or another, and to think of them, simply, as blowhards. But it’s another thing, entirely, when spouting off and asserting things turns dangerous.
Like when someone, almost 4,000 miles from America’s East Coast, was asserting, many decades ago, “the general state of despair,” in his country… and “deterioration in all sectors of life.”
“The magnitude of the distress,” the speaker went on to say, was “crippling (the) political, moral and economic life” of his nation. He proposed “an absolutely authoritarian leadership at home to create confidence,” as he put it, “in the stability of conditions.”
The person speaking, back then, on March 23, 1933, was Adolf Hitler, who ruled with an iron fist.
Even though few things are perfect… as Santa said, in my article the other day in the Daily Post: “may we all enjoy the gifts of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”
With those gifts in mind, and needing to preserve them… watch out when people, sounding off from their bully pulpit, want us to believe they support liberty, when what they’re actually doing – such as seeking to restrict voting rights – is undermining it.
And beware when people, expressing grievances… mostly creep up on liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
Harvey Radin is former senior vice president in charge of corporate communications and media relations, Bank of America Western Region. He makes his home in Redwood City, CA.