September 7: Howard W. Campbell, Jr., Seth Shellhouse, Poetry Workshop

The Americans in the slaughterhouse had a very interesting visitor two days before Dresden was destroyed.  He was Howard W. Campbell, Jr., an American who had become a Nazi.  Campbell was the one who had written the monograph about the shabby behavior of American prisoners of war.  He wasn't doing more research about prisoners now.  He had come to the slaughterhouse to recruit men for a German military unit called "The Free American Corps."  Campbell was the inventor and commander of the unit, which was supposed to fight only on the Russian front.

 I recently read an article comparing Howard W. Campbell, Jr., to Donald Trump.  The parallels were a little frightening.  The author, Seth Shellhouse, concludes his little piece like this:

The impotent old men and the impudent young boys whose fear of losing their “superior” ethno-national identity and all of the advantages that come with it got them all Hitler’d-up-and-enlisted at a time when their war was all but over. They live in the same hog house with their prisoners who, at this point, are no longer prisoners but just Americans following the rules and taking mutual shelter with the Germans. In the end, the bombs fall and the Russians come and collect the guards and their POWs all the same. The guards probably thought the hog house was theirs, and at one time that may have been the case, but it’s not anymore. I’m not saying the Trump folks are bad people. This is a metaphor. I’m not saying they’re (all) Nazis. But I am saying that they are the really, really sad and broken leftovers of something that never should have been.

That's a little unnerving.  Kurt Vonnegut, almost 50 years ago, foresaw the rise of Donald Trump and his supporters.  For me, Shellhouse's comparison makes sense.  It explains how the United States has suddenly become a mirror of Nazi Germany.  Trump backers are disaffected and angry, and they're looking for somebody to blame.  Those somebodies are Muslims and African Americans and Jewish people. 

I don't have any answers here.  I have a lot of questions.  The United States, my country, has been transformed in nine months' time into a place I don't recognize.  A place where hatred and bigotry are accepted.  I want to believe that, eventually, love and acceptance will prevail.  Right now, I'm not so sure.

Tonight, however, Saint Marty is teaching a poetry workshop, filled with people who do choose love and acceptance.  That's something to be thankful for.