I find myself thinking a lot about this passage from Benjamin Carter Hett's book Death of Democracy. "Alongside the viciousness of politics...was an incongruous innocence: few people could imagine the worst possibilities...How could a German government systematically brutalize its own people?"
I think there's a large percentage of Americans who can easily understand (not imagine) how the U.S. government (and state governments in particular) can systematically brutalize its own people. And a perhaps larger percentage who want exactly that.
Their example is not helping us however because people still cannot imagine the worst. Weirdly, it reminds me of a Strange New Worlds epi, where La'an talks about surviving the Gorn while others didn't simply bc she understood she could die while her family and friends never believed they would.
I offer one of my favorite quotes from Stefan Zweig, a popular author of the time, if only to confirm how few could foresee.
When I look back, I’m perhaps angriest at the people who voted the right way but then mocked the women’s march or what not. One male friend dismissively told me that it wouldn’t make a difference. And maybe it didn’t. But when Hitler was coming, what did he do? Nothing. At least I did something.
That last sentence.
It's such a good book, I urge people to read it all the time.