America; The Rise of the Cowardly Lion

Today I have heard several POTUS candidates screaming about "Patrolling Muslin Neighborhoods" and I have to ask myself, what exactly IS a Muslim Neighborhood? Wookie and I have traveled the U.S. extensively and I have yet to see a specific geographic area that could be identified as a Muslim Neighborhood.

I have seen neighborhoods that are predominate to a specific race [e.g. Chinese, Hispanic, Black, White, Middle Eastern, Native American, et al,.]. but the religious/sexual preference affiliations in all of them have been rather diverse.

So again I ask, what exactly is a "Muslim Neighborhood"? From what I can decipher, it is a free slate to patrol every neighborhood, or even worse, target specific neighborhoods based on race, not religious affiliation.

On 07 December 1941 The Japanese Empire attacked Pearl Harbor, effectively entering the United States into WWII (Karn, R., 2003). In February 1942, President Roosevelt, under poor advice, signed an executive order directing over 127,000 Japanese Americans to be relocated to concentration camps, simply for the crime of being of Japanese ancestry ( ushistory.org, 2016).

In 1918 Germany suffered a tremendous defeat in WWI, and in 1919 was subjected to the Treaty of Versailles, which required Germany to pay reparations to Britain and France for costs associated with the war (A Teacher’s Guide to the Holocaust, 2005). A result of these demoralizing defeats to the German people, the German Worker’s Party was established in 1919. A Teacher’s Guide to the Holocaust, (2005) states “Adolph Hitler (1889-1945) joined this small party in 1919 and rose to leadership through his emotional and captivating speeches. He encouraged national pride, militarism, and commitment to the Volk and racially “pure” Germany”.

Hitler Condemned Jews, and openly exploited prevailing antisemitic sentiments common in Europe (A Teacher’s Guide to the Holocaust, 2005). In the latter part of 1919 Hitler renamed the German Worker’s Party to the National Socialist German Worker’s Party, commonly referred to as the Nazi Party or NSDAP, which grew to 3,000 members strong by 1920 (A Teacher’s Guide to the Holocaust, 2005). In 1933 Hitler became Chancellor of Germany and served as dictator from 1934 until he committed suicide on 30 April 1945 (biography.com, 2016). During Hitler’s reign as Chancellor and Military commander of Germany, the Nazi regime implemented numerous social reforms, including anti smoking campaigns, dietary restrictions like abstinence from alcohol and meat (A Teacher’s Guide to the Holocaust, 2005; Biography.com, 2016).

One of the main concepts of the Nazi regime was a radical notion of racial hygiene. This concept prohibited marriage between Jewish and non-Jewish Germans, and revoked or denied benefits of German citizenship to any individual viewed as non-Aryan (Biography.com, 2016). The concept of racial hygiene also included eugenic policies that authorized the euthanasia of children with developmental and physical disabilities, and was later expanded to disabled adults; a concept that lead to the Holocaust in 1939 (A Teacher’s Guide to the Holocaust, 2005; Biography.com, 2016).

Listening to these two frightened little men speak today, I realize that we are heading back to the mentality of WWI and the horrific treatment bestowed upon citizens of a country by scared little men who chose to persecute people based on religious beliefs, racial profiles, and sexual orientation. I see weak, pathetic men who use Nazi tactics to scare a country into the same mentality that created the German Worker’s Party, and imprisoned Japanese Americans. The thing that scares me most is all the people in this country that believe in and openly promote this mentality. These people are my friends and neighbors, and I am forced to wonder when America the Great truly becomes America the Scared that they will not only turn on people of certain races and religious beliefs, but also on me as a gay man, or will it possibly be the Jews, the Hindu’s, or Buddhists first?

References:

Adolph Hitler Biography, Military Leader, Dictator, 2016 http://www.biography.com/people/ado...

A Teacher’s Guide to the Holocaust, Florida Center for Instructional Technology, 2005 https://fcit.usf.edu/holocaust/time...

Karn, Ryan: Japanese Internment: Facts and History, 2003 http://study.com/academy/lesson/jap...

U.S. History: Pre-Columbian to the New Millennium, 2014 http://www.ushistory.org/us/51e.asp