Back in my mid-20s I stumbled upon a copy of The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. It was my first deep dive into the Nazi regime. With its you-are-there-in-the-room-as-witness immediacy (the tone was buttressed by Shirer's own experiences in Germany during part of that time), I was gripped, experiencing both dread and fatalistic dismay at the inexorable descent into Hell chronicled therein.
I've re-read it twice since. And much else covering that crucial period of history.
I've often wondered why enough people then didn't see the signs clearly enough, to realize the terrible fate awaiting so many millions, and thereby avert disaster.
Today I feel much the same dread at the approaching potential for calamity. Likely not at the same awful scale and magnitude as that which gripped the world in the 1930s. But of a nation-wounding level nonetheless. And not confined to the US, as the web of nations does not permit to hermetically seal in and isolate a ructious disruption within a Great Power.
The particular form of American Capitalism is inimical to a healthy society, in that its inevitable end result is an ever increasing wealth divide. This kind of Capitalism really is a coddling, socialistic favoritism for the wealthy, and a rough, hardscrabble fighting for scraps for the rest. In order to keep the disenfranchised from rising up against the rapacious few, a political system has been devised where the poor are given lessers to kick down upon, enemies to hate as the cause of their ills.
This mass insanity around the almighty dollar, the naked chasing and veritable worship of which has put so much into so few hands, is approaching breaking point. Too many of the citizenry are jaded, disillusioned, desperate. While some may not perceive the full and real picture, a general cynicism has resulted in either malaise or nihilism.
One result of disillusionment is a cleaving by some to a messiah-like Leader who they are lead to believe will deliver them from their current difficulties. Not unlike Hitler during the economic woes and political chaos of Weimar Germany. In America today this manifests in much the same cult-like adherence to a populist, where reality is ignored and delusion and fantasy are ferociously clung to.
To cut this short, I fear that, as in times past, too few will perceive the danger in time, and a terrible price due to inaction, or action taken too late, will be exacted. Just as for the dread- and frustration-inducing shenanigans during the rise of Hitler, Goebbels, Roehm, Goering, etc., the antics of Trump, Barr, McConnell and company have me almost shrieking to the heavens, "Wake up, fools!"