"...they let themselves go to a point of hysteria, then in panic flee to -- God knows where." -- William L. Shirer

 We've taken a few days mostly off, though I've ventured out for groceries and some small items. The weather has been hot and we've finally cooled off with some rain. We've created our own evening ritual of going over to the park across the street to smoke and have a drink and just talk while we watch the neighborhood wind down each day. The light rain wasn't an issue this evening, though my pants were a bit damp when we came back. I'm enjoying the pipe smoking again -- something I used to do ages ago but dropped due to its fidgety maintenance. These days I enjoy it.

This plaque is important and is one of many similar around this beautiful and historic city. It basically notes the former residence of a respected socialist who vacated in 1938 as the Nazis were ascendant and then returned in 1964 to be a respected political education teacher. In a city full of history going back 700 years and more, through royalty, dictatorship and democratic socialism, it is remarkable in its unapologetic approach. Yes, this was the X period and this was the Y period and here we are now and here's the evidence of it all and we're glad to be where we are and we're still learning. There is a point to my rambling.

William L. Shirer was an early journalistic hero of mine, starting as a Chicago newspaper reporter then moving to the old International News Service (part of what became UPI) then to CBS as one of Ed Murrow's guys and finally to a writer of books such as Berlin Diary, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich and The Nightmare Years, released in 1984. It's this last one that has my attention these days, as it was a description of his personal experiences in Europe and specifically Germany in the 1930s. He and his family barely made it out after World War Two had started. It is excellent reading about how the Nazis went from lunatic fringe to actually having some power to governing to becoming a dictatorship and lurching off that cliff to war.

As mentioned earlier, our plan is to end our year abroad in France early next summer and then return to the US for six months or so to get better acquainted with growing grandkids, see our own kids and see friends. Our plans after that are nebulous (even more than now) and based mostly on how we feel and what's going on. We'll both be about 70 and, well, nothing's guaranteed physically or otherwise. But the other consideration is, well...

What if we go back to the US and can't leave if we want?

I know it sounds hyperbolic. But it's also more possible by the day. The election this coming fall will be a huge factor in how we feel about things and in our planning. Sure the GOP continues to become more radicalized and its few platforms fly in the face of public opinion. Every poll shows most of the US favoring Roe v. Wade, improved election access, more basic gun control and a host of things that are opposed by only about one third or less of our population.

Listening to a minority is part of our Constitution, as evidenced by the Electoral College and reinforced by a number of Supreme Court decisions over two centuries. Simple majority rule is problematic on several levels. But when a minority's will becomes a potential public menace or bumps up against bodily autonomy, there's a different issue.

The Nazis never won a public opinion poll. They simply gained enough votes in the Reichstag to pass an Enabling Act that allowed the chancellor to pack the courts and other offices to bypass public opinion and do what the party wanted. They fabricated allegations against opponents and strong-armed internal opposition. Sound familiar?

I don't worry about Donald Trump. He's an old man of limited intelligence and fading influence. My concern is more about a Ron DeSantis, who is younger, smarter and more patient. His message is smoother yet more ruthless.

I am currently living in a place that has learned some harsh lessons over the past century or so about government by edict, royalty and minority. Reminders are everywhere, from the glorious royal palaces to the plaques that remind of previous residents to the newer developments in places that were bombed flat. The US has done a remarkable job of showing the world how self-government can work but, frankly, most nations here are doing a much better job of it than the US anymore. Half our Senate represents less than a quarter of the population and Los Angeles County alone contains more people than many states combined. We are, to borrow a phrase, hoisted on our own potard.

Certainly, the US Constitution was framed largely by slaveowners who would be mystified by your average washing machine. There is a move by some states to call a new constitutional convention to completely rewrite and/or replace the document, but I don't think it's needed. What we need is those who recognize it's a fluid document that invites amendment as education and progress continue. Our very Bill Of Rights nods to that.

It's too late to just say "go vote." The groundwork has already been laid to bypass public opinion in too many of our state legislatures, school boards and city councils. We run from our own history and hide from inconvenient truths in the name of a patriotism that has always been a lie. We don't want our nation to be better. We just want it to be comfortable, and if ignoring or suppressing part of our population is part of that, well, it sucks to be you.

I hope I am terribly wrong but I don't think so and it's what concerns us about going back. We'll know a lot more come this fall. We'll be in England at election time and we will have voted and we hope our votes will actually have counted this time. 

"On the whole, people did not seem to feel that they were being cowed and held down by an unscrupulous tyranny. On the contrary, they appeared to support it with genuine enthusiasm." -- Shirer (again)

Look at the antics at the CPAC in Dallas this past week, with Trump claiming he has been "persecuted." The 1/6 apologists who say sedition is really the work of "patriots." The constant confusion of religion and statecraft.

 I am afraid that's just enough of the US these days -- just enough of the uneducated and the willfully ignorant led by the evil and the malcontent to send this nation around the bend and into the trees. Just enough to think authoritarianism is more efficient and therefore worth trashing actual representative government.

The playbook was written a century ago with the rise of Mussolini's blackshirts, followed by SA thugs in German streets to our own America Firsters in the 1930s to the McCarthyites in the 1950s and so forth to now.

The US hasn't learned how all this works. My fear is it's about to learn in a very nasty way.