Obvious signs from the past of future bad times

I recommend you read the news with a palate cleanser of historical non-fiction so you can see where all this goes.

The man I was talking to had a buddy standing next to him and when I asked them about Trump, which I had to do because I was writing a story about the South Carolina Republican Primary, the buddy started to walk away and said of course he’s not voting for Trump. “He might have me killed,” the buddy said. Later, I thought about how it was the first time in my entire life I’d ever heard anyone say that they thought a person who had been president and could become president again might have them killed. 

The buddy was joking, but just a little bit. He was an old Black man named Smalls who was standing with his friend, Othello Brown, outside the D&D auto repair shop in Denmark, S.C. I wrote down what the two men said and then drove back to Savannah where I finished up a story on the Republican primary for The New Republic. Then I went on with the rest of my night and the next day which involved not really thinking about the things Brown and Smalls said as I concentrated on other work. That other work entailed reading the news and learning about things that fit more or less in line with Smalls’ statement about being killed by the former president of the United States, because if you read the news as much as I do you’ll see some very obvious signs that there are people who are clamoring for authoritarianism and the violent punishment of their political foes. 

Before bed last night I pulled up a story about Trump’s plans to round up immigrants, put them in camps or makeshift shelters, and start loading them on plans by the millions and sending them back where they came from. Then I put my phone down and picked up a book because reading things that aren’t on my phone is supposed to be better for me right before I go to sleep. The book I picked up is a massive three-inch thick doorstop with a swastika on the front of it and my wife hates that it’s on the bedside table. She jokes that she doesn’t want people getting the “wrong idea” if they happen to glance into our bedroom while visiting the house. The book is called the Rise and Fall of the Third Reich and it’s instrumental for anyone wanting to understand how the Nazis came to power. I’m not yet at the part where the Nazis have begun rounding people up and putting them in camps but the funny thing about history is that I forgot that the Nazis sort of did that all along. It was only once they started killing people by the millions that the rest of the world took notice.