Civility and politeness in the face of Trump and his allies' cruelty, violence, and attack on democracy is dangerous, foolish, and will end in defeat for all true patriots who want to save the United States. My new .@salon
salon.com/2018/07/03/for…
salon.com/2018/07/03/for…
"When they go low we go high" is a nice feel good slogan that won't defeat Trumpism. It didn't win the 2016 presidential election either. Trump and his minions are borrowing from an old playbook. They are violent and accuse those who resist them of actually committing the crime.
History holds other lessons as well about how kindness and civility in the face of fascism is a formula for defeat and being conquered.
In June 1934, Henry Cadbury, who was chairman of the American Friends Service Committee -- an honorable Quaker organization -- spoke at the 45th annual convention of the Central Conference of American Reform Rabbis.
He cautioned the Jewish people against resisting Hitler in angry or forceful fashion. Cadbury said: "Persecution of the Jews in Germany by Hitler and his Nazis can be ended not by the hate that the Jews may display but by the good will which they should show....
By hating him and trying to fight him, you will only help make him worse in his attack on the Jews.
But if the Jews the world over would try to convey to Hitler and the people of Germany their ideals and appeal to their conscious sense of justice, the problem would be solved much sooner."
If there are any Henry Cadbury types offering such advice to those black, brown, Muslim, gay, differently-abled, immigrants, women any others who Trump has deemed the enemy, they had best be ignored.
