The Reichstag Fire 2018

THE REICHSTAG FIRE----2018

     One hour after the car flying a flag emblazed with Arabic lettering slams into a crowd of tourists waiting to get into the Smithsonian National Museum killing 34, President Trump goes  on the air. The two men shot dead by security guards were Isis members, he informs a nation in shock, part of a network that has slipped into the country and gone underground. Others are at large and citizens face danger from every side.  Our enemies cannot be allowed to spread lies and sow confusion lest the nation be destroyed. Marshal law must be imposed, he avers. Suspects must be rounded up. Anyone whose actions place citizens in danger must be taken into custody.

    In the wake of his remarks, television commentators, arms waving, screaming incoherently are dragged away as screens go black. The jails fill quickly,  spilling over into school gymnasiums as round ups take place. And as evening comes, gun fire can be heard in the streets. None know what the dawn will bring.

     What is being described is as a ‘Riechstag fire’ scenario. An authoritarian figure is in power and a staged or actual incident occurs,  offering  justification for closing the gap between ‘great power’ and ‘total power.’ The survival of the nation is said to be at stake. The enemy is among us. Legal niceties must be foresworn lest his evil grip tighten around the nation’s neck.

     Over the next 48 hours President Trump is a constant presence on television, agitated, bellicose, declaiming on  plots uncovered and plotters seized, warning of dangers yet to come. Leaders of the opposition party and various other prominent figures across the land have shown themselves to be feckless weaklings, unwilling to support  the steps necessary to protect the nation, he declares,  and are now under house arrest. Others have already fled abroad, clear evidence of their guilt. Newspapers and other media outlets sowing confusion and doubt have been shut down or taken over, able no longer to lie to the nation and attack those sworn to defend her.

     A series of occurrences in Germany prior to World War II gave rise to the term ‘Reichstag fire’ event. Adolph Hitler was appointed Chancellor on January 30, 1933, the Nazi party having won a plurality in parliament in the depression ravaged country. Four weeks later the building where parliament met, the Reichstag, was set afire, leading Hitler to pressure President Paul Von Hindenburg into supporting implementation of an emergency decree suspending civil liberties. And the rest, as they say, is history.     

     Let it be said at the outset that Donald Trump is not Hitler. Trump is a vulgar, feckless, con artist, with  a short attention span, no fixed beliefs, and little knowledge of anything outside the narrow sphere of his personal experience. But while he lacks the energy and imagination to construct a Reichstag fire scenario, others around him do not.  Steve Bannon, his chief advisor, Jeff Sessions, his attorney general, and Stephen Miller, a key White House appointee, are known to have a ‘blood and soil’ vision of America, a vision of the “real” United States as white and Christian. Indeed, Jeff Sessions has spoken approvingly of the 1924 immigration law that favored people from western Europe and the British Isles while disfavoring people from Southern and Eastern Europe,  Italians, Jews, and Slavs.

 

      This “real” United States is said to be under assault from the outside as third world foreigners flood the country, taking jobs from real Americans and committing crimes. And there are also internal forces ravaging the culture, militant blacks, liberal apologists and champions of a political correctness that libels the country’s proud heritage, stifles free speech, and seeks to instill guilt about such phantasms as ‘white privilege’.

    The real Americans must now do whatever it takes to stop the foreign hordes from continuing to flood our shores, we must turn loose the police to restore law and order in inner city jungles, and we must pass the toughest voter laws possible to keep the freeloaders and the takers and the liberal, ‘hate America’ crowd from putting politicians into office who sell out the real America. 

      And if these things do not work, maybe it is time to look for the kerosene and a match.

    “The only limits to what we can achieve is what we believe we can achieve----” proclaimed Trump whisperer Stephen Miller.