Good Americans

After the war – the big one, as Archie Bunker used to say – it was common for Americans to castigate the German people for going along with it. More specifically, for doing nothing about it. To stop it. Well, how about Americans, today?

America has its own warlord. A man who simply decided – his unshakeable will! – it was time to hurl the country’s armed forces against a country that had not attacked this country, ostensibly because that country was going to. The claim was that if this country didn’t attack, it would be attacked. The German warlord said the same things. The German people were hectored to believe it. Many didn’t. The war – when it began – was not met with cheers but unsettled quiet. It was only after the war seemed to be going very much in the Germans’ favor that the cheering and rose-petal’ing for the warlord commenced. This is probably what our warlord had been hoping for. Instead, he got something like a fast-forward from 1939 to 1943 – without the initial exultation of 1940.

In the German warlord’s defense, the initial gains were good for Germans. This warlord’s war has been an unmitigated disaster for Americans. Not a single even temporary benefit came their way. The Germans at least got some land – for awhile – and (for while) enjoyed some spoils. It is understandable why the average German cheered, for awhile. What do Americans have to cheer for? They are already getting a taste of what Germans experienced as their war went sour. It’s just an appetizer, for now. The main course – in the form of scarcity plus exorbitant costs – is coming. It is probably no longer possible to avoid it being served. Diesel shortages – this critical fuel is being diverted to fuel the warlord’s war – will lead to food shortages. Not for the paunchy warlord, of course. Like his German antecedent – who never missed the Bavarian cream desserts he loved so much, even in the final days down in the bunker – our warlord will lack for nothing.

It is us who’ll lack.

There is still time to stave off the worst of what’s otherwise almost certainly coming. Just as there was still time, in 1943, to stave off the worst of what eventually came. Had the warlord been blocked (as by arrest) from continuing his war, it might have been possible to stave off the Götterdämmerung that came for the Germans. There were some brave German officers who eventually made the attempt  – in 1944 – but they failed and so the war went on and Götterdämmerung came.

The other day, Republicans voted as one to do nothing to prevent America’s Götterdämmerung. The vote included (apparently) the vote of Lindsey Graham’s sister, who now – somehow – wields the power of her late brother’s office. Every one of these Republicans is now overtly complicit. They are our era’s Marshall Pétains and Vidkun Qusilings. They are worse than that. Pétain and Quisling were installed puppets. These Republicans are puppets also, but installed by Americans rather than an occupying authority that defeated this country. And yet they are also the representatives of an occupying country. One that has defeated this country – just not on the battlefield. Everyone knows which country that is – which is why everyone knows we are not supposed to say so out loud. Even though America’s Pétains and Quislings go so far as to wear on their lapels the standard of the occupying country – and have it outside their offices also. Marshall Pétain – to his credit – at least never wore the armband of the country that occupied what had been his country.

We are at a fork in the road. If the wrong fork is taken, Americans may soon be facing their own Götterdämmerung. It is still perhaps avoidable. There is still time, perhaps, to stop the fire before it burns everything down. If nothing is done, the Americans will have it done to them. It is a tragedy because most Americans didn’t ask for this, much less vote for this. If anything, they voted for exactly the opposite of this. Does anyone remember when the warlord promised peace? Most Germans probably thought they were voting for the same and at least – for awhile – they got it. They also got jobs and the Autobahn and the stability they understandably craved after the chaos of the Weimar years. They got some good times. Hence the nostalgia in some quarters for them.

What did Americans get? They got a few months of the DOGE and pony show, some rhetorical hiney-kicking of LGBTQ pieties. For a brief interval, they got somewhat lower gas prices. Then everything changed. It changed so fast and so abruptly as to be difficult for the normal brain to process it. A kind of shell-shock permeates land. How did this happen? How could it have happened?

Well, it has happened.

Worse is going to happen. When it does – after it does – Americans will have to come to grips with how it did and what they might have done to prevent it from happening. The answer to that being probably nothing.

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