When I was a kid, I was fascinated by World War Two. Veterans of the war were still around in large numbers, my parents had lived through the war as pre-teens, and there were movies and board games and dozens of books to read. I soaked up as much as I could. Some kids gravitated to the Civil War, but I was all about names like Anzio and Iwo Jima and Stalingrad.
Much later, I finally grimly sat down to take a look at Mein Kampf. It was so sickening that I couldn’t complete it. What struck me, though, is how Hitler had laid out his ideas and plans so clearly. I’d been told so many times that people didn’t know what he was going to do (or even what he was doing), but in the book it was all spelled out in detail.
I mention this because my inclination is to kind of discount it when Donald Trump talks about his desire to torture and massacre Muslims, and to desecrate their religion. I’ve been around Trump since I was a pre-teen growing up in the shadow of the Big Apple. I’ve never taken him seriously about anything. And I’ve never seen him as any kind of threat. For most of the time I’ve been watching him, he hasn’t even been a hateful person.
So, it’s hard for me to adjust to the things he’s saying now. It seems like an act, and almost like a prank.
But I haven’t forgotten how people misjudged another guy who said he wanted to massacre a religious minority.
That’s why I think we ought to err on the side of caution and take him at his word.
