Beer Halls, Brown Shirts and Trump

Oh my!

I haven't lived in Chicago for a long time, but I don't think the big Windy has seen a Friday night like this one since 1968.  I don't think our dear country has been as divided since the illegitimate war in Vietnam that killed tens of thousands of my generation and set the "Love it or Leave it" thugs against the rest of us. Chicago of course has a history of public violence, like the Haymarket affair in 1886 or the gruesome 'Red Summer'  race riots of 1919.  It's no coincidence that St Louis also erupted in violence that evening and it set me to wondering whether those folks, if they're still alive, who blamed the Chicago race riots of 1968 on Martin Luther King would now blame this affair on Donald Trump. King, of course continued to denounce such actions for as long as he lived and as far as I know without once  bragging about his penis.

I'll leave the question of whether those events were part of the "great" period of American history to which our GOP would like to return us to you, but as the New York Post tells us:

The scandal is that a man who aspires to be leader of the United States of America and a role model to its children has behaved like a soccer hooligan, gleefully stirring up violence rather than seeking to calm it.

Of course it's not just the Chicago riots of 1968 that come to mind, but I'm afraid the passionate rabble of  today doesn't connect  its tactics with the passionate rabble in the beer halls of Munich in 1923 or perhaps they don't think history repeats itself if you ignore it.  Who knows, but I'm hardly optimistic about the future of our Republic even if our next president isn't one who promises to wall out minorities, close houses of worship, punish dissent with thuggery or to base our legal system on the "Body of Christ" whatever the hell that means. Indeed the party of Trump, Cruz and Rubio, the one that told us only a few years ago that America's biggest problem was pornography and freedom of the press  is trying to sanctify our traditional bigotry by mumbling about Jesus and freedom of religion (for Christians only) What would the USA be like, it's Humanist and secular government based on the will of the governed be like, transformed into whatever it is that these heroes have in mind?  Perhaps I'll read about it in Costa Rica.