🌈 I Like to Look For Rainbows 🌈

I grew up surrounded by Disney Princesses, and by friends who latched on to those Disney princesses. I never really related, though.

I liked reading, but never saw myself as a Belle. I am an extrovert, but had way too much social anxiety to be anything like an Ariel. I felt something of a kinship with Prince Phillip, but of course that didn't get to count, either, because he was a boy. Gasp.

The first time in my life that I saw a Disney princess on screen, and thought, "she's me!" was when Frozen came out in 2013. Finally, we had a socially awkward extrovert with just the right amount of clutziness and naivete. Who had intense bed hair, was problematically impulsive, and often dove into a complicated project without thinking it through first.

I was 28 years old before I finally saw a Disney woman carry personality traits that felt like mine. That's a long time and many Disney movies to cover. To someone who has seen characters just like themselves on the screen all the time, that may not feel like anything noteworthy, but to me it was everything.

It felt very different. Like people could finally see me, and I wasn't alone out there. Intellectually I had known that before, but knowing something and feeling it are not at all the same.

Representation is important. 

Seeing others like yourself gives you hope that you can succeed just like those characters did. It gives you a feeling of comfort that you have been seen and heard. Others out there are aware that people like you exist. And it can even give you a sense of relief as you discover that you are not alone. 

Symbols, too. That's kinda how we roll, as human beings.

People wear the logo of their favorite sports team. People wear religious symbols and decorate their houses with statues and art of important figures in their history. People get tattoos with names or images that carry deep meaning to them. As a species, this is something we have always done.

I'm sure I latched onto many symbols over the years, but the first one I remember that really meant something deeper to me was during my first watch-through of Avatar: the Last Airbender. There's a particular episode where Aang is trying to learn to earthbend, and it's coming into very direct conflict with his innate nature as a person.

During that episode, I realized that I have a very earthbender-esque personality. I thought that was fun, and I was enjoying the show. (Which, by the way, is VERY good.) So I made myself some Toph-like wrist cuffs decorated with the earthbender symbol, and wore them every day for years.

At first, it was just a goofy fandom thing. But as those years went on, I got deeper and deeper into some really complicated headspace. My finances were stretched razor thin. My time was split between three jobs. I started having seemingly-random panic attacks about several personal issues, including church and dating.

All in all, not really a great time.

But as I wore those earthbender wristbands, I would look down at the symbol, and think "I am tough. I can get through this."

That might sound silly to some people, but it did help. Keeping a symbol of strength and endurance on my person helped me lean into that part of myself.

And if a fandom symbol can do that, imagine how much more important other symbols might become.

I Like to Look For Rainbows

I don't know the first time I really took to the rainbow symbol. I've always liked full-rainbow tie dye, and the brightness of big, bold color, instead of sophisticated matching palettes of muted tones. But I sincerely can't remember the first time I recognized the rainbow as a symbol of the LGBTQ+ community.

I do know that I was scared to roll with it, at first, because I was not only hesitant to admit things out loud to people, but I was hesitant to admit them to myself. Wearing a rainbow was like saying it verbally, and somehow that made it more real. 

This is a hard thing to describe to many people who have never NOT seen themselves in the books, tv, art, and movies that surround them. A football bro, for example, has thousands of movies about people like him. There are entire TV channels dedicated to his passion. Schools all over the country dedicate massive amounts of educational funding to the sport.

There is nothing wrong with football being the thing that sparks joy for that guy. The point is just that he's never had to hide it. There are very, very few places in the United States where being a football fan would be embarrassing or derided or bullied in any kind of way. It's considered so natural for a dude to like football that often people just assume it about others, and get confused when that assumption is wrong.

When the thing that sparks joy for you, and that makes you feel youer than other activities, is something that millions of other people around the country also share, it's easy to forget that not everyone has that luxury.

In fact, it's almost instinctive to see something that does not represent you at all, and feel offended by it. To feel ostracized by it. To feel left out. Because you're so used to being 'in' that you don't even know how it feels to not be included in everything ever.

So, What's My Point?

My point is that I like to look for rainbows.

At some point along the way, rainbows stopped being a scary way to accidentally out myself to strangers, and started to become just like the earthbender symbol. It was a sign of community. A sign of strength and belonging. A physical representation of the concept that I had finally stopped trying to wear a mask.

Masking takes an enormous amount of energy, and I regret zero things about deciding to stop pretending I was someone I wasn't. Literally everything in my life is better when I'm not putting up a front, and constantly on my guard about who might or might not know some deep, dark, sinister secret about me.

When I see rainbows around my house, on my wrist, and on my backpack, they serve as a tangible reminder that I'm not broken or evil. (Living in Utah requires that reminder a little more often than I'd wish.) They remind me that I am strong and whole and a human deserving of the same respect as everyone else.

And when I see rainbows in places where I didn't put them there? It proves to me that I'm not alone.🌈

Just as it's hard to explain media representation to people who have never not had it, it's next to impossible to explain what it feels like to see a public symbol that represents who you are. 

Seeing public symbols like the above lighted-Y on the mountain is a little bit like being surrounded by enemy troops on all sides, and then suddenly catching sight of the banner of your own troops coming in at the 11th hour.

Or being alone and lost in a dark cave, only to look up and see the lights of search and rescue.

Dramatic examples? Maybe. But no less apt. To look up into the sky and say, "that's for me. They did that for me," is a dramatic feeling.

And yet, so very, very many local people started whining about "shoving our beliefs down their throats" and "vandalism" and feeling the offense of seeing something that they loved and that traditionally represented them, being "desecrated."

I hope you never, ever have to experience the feeling of having the town you live in look at the symbol that was put up for you, and say that it was abhorrent. Disrespectful. Repulsive. Representative of something they find utterly disgusting, and that something is you.

But We Didn't Mean It That Way. You're Overreacting.

After all, it's just lights on a mountain? Who cares if they took it down? Who cares if its intentions were good? It bothered more people than it helped, right?

Well. That amounts to the same thing as, "look, we're cool if you do you, okay. Just... don't be visible about it. It offends people to be reminded you exist."

When you put it that way, it sounds a lot harsher. And most of the people I've spoken to feel like that translation is very unfair. It puts them in a much worse light, and misses the spirit of their objection. So I say to everyone who feels that way, "how else would you describe it?"

I ask that sincerely, but also in something of a rhetorical manner. Because to me, there's no possible way to say "that was offensive. Please take it down" without also implying, inferring, or even just outright stating that the people it was meant to represent are also offensive. You cannot "support and love" a group of people at the same time that you actively oppose symbols and messaging that is directly meant to help them, when those symbols are not hurting anyone.

You just can't. That's not how any of this works. If rainbows make you uncomfortable, or you actively participate in dismantling them, then you do not actually support your LGBTQ+ friends, neighbors, and family. Point blank. No caveats. There's no way around that one.

Which Brings Us to the Original Catalyst For This Post

A few weeks ago, there was a talk given at BYU by Jeffrey R. Holland, and that talk caused more division than anything Dallin H. Oaks ever said. (A high bar, indeed.) In that talk, Holland said a lot of stuff that doesn't seem to have been thought through as much as it should have been, for someone in such an influential position.

The more power your words have, the more careful you have to be when you say them. "I didn't mean it that way" no longer becomes a viable excuse. Your entire job as a public figure is to consider the way your words will be taken, and speak accordingly.

Even worse, many people I talked to about these words got truly angry with me because I wouldn't take "he didn't mean it like that" for an answer. Now, do I think Holland actually meant to say "go shoot muskets at gay people"? No. I absolutely do not.

But did he still do it? Yeah. And did he still call out the rainbow as a symbol of division, which we should all strive not to display? Yes. Yes he did. Literally.

Let's get further into that.

(For the full text of the speech, link is here.)

1) Holland spent the whole first half of his talk discussing why he thinks BYU is the greatest place on earth. That's fine. A little weird for some of us, but nothing all that crazy. 

From there, he leads into a letter he got from a concerned citizen.

"Then, imagine the pain that comes with a memo like this one I recently received. These are just a half-dozen lines from a two-page document:

“You should know,” the writer says, “that some people in the extended community are feeling abandoned and betrayed by BYU."

 

and later in that same letter:

 

“Please don’t think I’m opposed to people thinking differently about policies and ideas,” the writer continues. “I’m not. But I would hope that BYU professors would be bridging those gaps between faith and intellect and would be sending out students that are ready to do the same in loving, intelligent and articulate ways. Yet, I fear that some faculty are not supportive of the church’s doctrines and policies and choose to criticize them publicly. There are consequences to this."

"I'm not opposed to people feeling differently about policies. I'm just opposed to them saying anything about it." That's... helpful and loving.

In reading this section, and knowing the current events surrounding BYU, it's abundantly clear that this anonymous writer is referring to the strife between BYU and the LGBTQ+ community. There is nothing else in the news or the politics of the school that it could be about.

So what I get from this is that people are mad about attempts at inclusivity, (see the fiasco with the rainbow Y for an example) and that the General Authorities agree. There is no other reason for an apostle to have read one letter from Some Guy TM and to decide to give an entire speech about it to the whole student body of BYU.

Whether he intended it or not, what Holland said to me by choosing to give this speech at all is that he cares more about the voices of the people offended by the rainbow Y than about the students it was designed to encourage. He agrees with the people who want the LGBTQ+ students to stay invisible. Because, as the anonymous letter writer says, being visible is bad for BYU's rep.

Does that sound harsh? Yes. But tell me how else I could possibly interpret it? I sincerely, legitimately, non-aggressively, cannot think of a single reason to have brought this topic up at this exact time except to remind everyone that the church doesn't condone gay people. That's it.

2) The next thing that seems a little crazy to a lot of us is the use of an extended metaphor involving musket fire.

"Three years later, 2017, Elder Dallin H. Oaks, not then but soon to be in the First Presidency where he would sit, only one chair — one heartbeat — away from the same position President Nelson now has, quoted our colleague Elder Neal A. Maxwell who had said:
“In a way[,] [Latter-day Saint] scholars at BYU and elsewhere are a little bit like the builders of the temple in Nauvoo, who worked with a trowel in one hand and a musket in the other."

Followed by:

"Then Elder Oaks said challengingly, “I would like to hear a little more musket fire from this temple of learning.” He said this in a way that could have applied to a host of topics in various departments, but the one he specifically mentioned was the doctrine of the family and defending marriage as the union of a man and a woman."

Using musket fire as a way to tell people to defend the church against gay people 1000% went straight to the heads of a lot of the DezNats, who started threatening people online with gunfire, and other death threats. Did Holland (and Oaks) literally say to go start shooting gay people with real guns? No. They did not.

But did they use a metaphor that could so easily be twisted and taken out of context? Yes. Did they choose to use metaphors with violent imagery? Yes. Could they have used a number of other metaphors to still accurately describe defending the home turf? Absolutely yes.

(Here are some stats about how bad Utah is already, without further encouragement. Over 2,000 victims just in 2020 due to homophobia? Not okay.)

But because they went with gunfire, things online got out of hand QUICKLY. And saying "they didn't mean it that way" doesn't help. That doesn't fix anything. That doesn't make what happened unproblematic. The answer is not "oh, I didn't mean it." It's "I am sorry I said that thing. I retract it."

Not taking accountability for words in that way is textbook manipulative behavior. If it would be bad for a husband to do it to his wife, why would it be somehow more okay for a general authority to do it to a whole church?

3) In the same beat, Holland moved from musket fire as a metaphor to "let's all get rid of divisive symbols." Yes, the irony of that is not lost on me. But more importantly, these are the exact words:

"We hope it isn’t a surprise to you that your trustees are not deaf or blind to the feelings that swirl around marriage and the whole same-sex topic on campus. I and many of my brethren have spent more time and shed more tears on this subject than we could ever adequately convey to you this morning, or any morning. We have spent hours discussing what the doctrine of the church can and cannot provide the individuals and families struggling over this difficult issue. So, it is with scar tissue of our own that we are trying to avoid — and hope all will try to avoid — language, symbols, and situations that are more divisive than unifying at the very time we want to show love for all of God’s children."

This is the one that hurts me the most. Why? Well, not just because I am reduced to "that whole same-sex topic" as though we're talking about something so very petty that we shouldn't even need to be here. 

Despite that, you'd be right that on the surface it sounds like a totally reasonable plea. "Stop being divided, and get together to protect what needs to be protected". Not a weird thing to ask.

But it hurts because it's extremely clear that the "divisive symbols" he says are so dangerous are the same ones I look to to feel whole. To feel strength and community. To feel a sense of not being utterly alone in hostile territory.

He literally wants us to silence symbols that are meant to show love to certain groups of people, in an attempt to "show love for all of God's children" and those two things feel incompatible to me. If an apostle, and official spokesperson for the entire church, thinks that lighting the Y was offensive, then he thinks that the things that give me hope are offensive. He thinks that the very act that made so many people in Provo to feel not so alone was "more divisive than unifying."

What it meant to the rest of us doesn't matter, because a bunch of straight people in Provo felt threatened by a rainbow. The way it shone in the darkness as a little beacon of community means nothing, because Some Guy TM cried about it in a letter.

Jeffrey R. Holland, a guy I had come to trust to "say it like it is", in very specific words told me that I should stop wearing rainbow merch because some people don't like it. Literally.

I am not allowed to wear the symbols and decorations that give me strength and hope because Some Guy doesn't like being reminded that I exist. I am not welcome to display things that tell the world who I am as a person because they are not the same as the things that define other people. Doing so would "shove my opinions down their throats."

After years of trying to get brave enough to take off my mask in front of the world, an apostle and extremely influential man in a position of great power, just told me to put it back on.

Well. I hope it's very obvious why that hurts.

Conclusion

There's a lot more in the talk that continues to cause issues. For example, taking a former valedictorian, whose speech was approved by BYU, and throwing him under the bus as some kind of example of "pushing individual license over institutional dignity." But it's now 3am, and I have to wrap this up eventually. So we'll leave that one with a simple "that was highly inappropriate."

I understand why a lot of people don't get the big deal about this talk. If it hadn't affected me personally, I might not either. It's so easy to not see things when they don't change our personal lives.

But this one did affect my personal life. This one did, in direct, exact words, tell me to try to play nice by being more invisible. I'm supposed to hide who I am to make other people more comfortable. I'm supposed to put an institution's reputation over my individual rights.

That's something I refuse to do.

Not only do I refuse, but I can't. I cannot do it anymore. For thirty years I acted like someone I wasn't, and I just can't take that weight back onto my shoulders again. Not even if Holland tells me I'm supposed to. Not even if doing so will make me the good little follower I'm supposed to be.

And if my rainbows make someone feel uncomfortable, tough. Because they make other people feel like part of a community that cares about them, and that's more important to me than "institutional dignity".

I like to look for rainbows.

"Do Not Put Substantial Effort Into Pleasing Men"

I recently reposted this, and as usual, I ran into the "not all men" crowd. I want to talk about that. Not why "not all men" is stupid (although I do think it's problematic), but why this advice is good, whether or not you take "men" to mean "literally all male humans in the history of the planet".

I understand where many of the not-all-men folks are coming from. I really do. These people have husbands and brothers and dads that are good people. It's natural to want to defend them. To want to protect them from being grouped with the garbage of the world.

But there are several problems with automatically assuming that broad statements like "completely ignore men" mean literally "don't interact with a single male person ever, because they are all trash."

1) The first of which is that this isn't how the English language works.

In fact, it's really, really normal to use generalizations and broad statements to communicate. We do it constantly. So much so that it seems rather backward to me that anyone even thinks of assuming this statement means "literally all men in the history of the planet are the problem, and there's never been a good one."

A statement like that is just too absurd to think anyone would make it seriously.

To me, with my current understanding of the subtleties and complexities of human communication, taking a statement like this literally feels so out of the blue that it can only be a willful misunderstanding. A purposeful attempt to twist my words and opinions into something to suit their own agenda. It often feels like an attack.

I have learned that it's not. But it's hard to get on the same page enough to discuss that with someone, when we're starting from such radically different interpretations of how English word structure works.

Let's try, though:

When people say "politicians are corrupt" do we literally mean exactly every single person ever elected to office? Almost never. But is it enough of the people elected that we are justified in making a broad statement? Yes.

When people say "I hate country music" do they literally mean every single country song ever written? Almost never. There's usually at least one exception. But is it enough of them to make a broad statement? Yes.

When people say "I hate everything" do they literally mean everything in the entire universe or multiverse? Not usually. Sometimes it's just a bad day and finding good things is hard. But we all know we don't mean it literally. That's a given.

When people say things like "Humans are stupid, and I never want to interact with another one again," do they literally mean they will become a hermit entirely off the grid, who will never speak to anyone ever again? Usually not. And usually said person wouldn't seriously enjoy that level of  distance from the people they love. But enough humans have been problematic that a broad statement doesn't feel that out of place, some days.

This is a super normal way for people to communicate with each other, and it's more out of place to assume they do mean things literally because they didn't specify otherwise, than it is to make the assumption I did that this post is using men as a broad term, and not as a an all-inclusive literal statement.

Additionally, people are allowed to use words in different ways during different parts of a discussion. This isn't a choose one and stick with that choice forever kind of deal. That goes back to language being subtle and complex. To really give people the best chance at communicating to you, you in return have to be willing to look for those complexities and interpret each portion to the best of your ability, rather than just assigning blanket values to things like a mad lib.

Engaging in discussion like this invokes something of an unspoken contract to not willfully misunderstand one another (which includes not applying blankets, as mentioned above). If you break that, then no coming to terms or an agreement or even a compromise/stalemate can happen. (That's why internet fights often are what they are. People are breaking the unspoken contract to actually put effort into learning from each other.)

2) Men (as a category) really are actually the problem here.

To enter a discussion on the arbitrary and unattainable standards of a thousands-of-years-old patriarchal system by saying "Not all men" is to actively ignore that those arbitrary and unattainable standards exist and/or matter. It relegates them to an afterthought. It essentially says, "Yes, but this other thing is more important."

That other thing being the feelings of a man you know who isn't trash. And sure, it's true that there have been men known to exist in the world that are decent human beings. That's a thing. But he's also fine. He already lives in a world that is designed to treat him more importantly than the rest of us. He isn't going to be in any kind of danger or drama if we don't immediately acknowledge his existence and make everything about him.

But making his feelings more important than acknowledging a message that's trying to teach young girls that their self worth doesn't hinge on conforming to what the current male gaze desires? That will--not might, but absolutely will--hurt someone.

Making his feelings more important than acknowledging a message that's trying to teach young girls that they are allowed to have dreams and ambitions, and to work for them? That will hurt someone.

Turning a message of self-value and self-care and self-love into "how dare you not acknowledge that this man that I like has managed to exceed the expectations of that low, low bar that was set for him"? Nah. We ain't doing that today.

I learned just yesterday that Karen Carpenter was only 32 when she died of complications from anorexia. Let me just ask: would eating disorders like that even be a thing if we didn't have centuries of social custom indoctrinating us with the idea that our worth as a human is based on how well we conform to the desires of the male gaze of the day? I can't help but feel that they'd be dramatically reduced.

Messages that remind people that a man's opinion isn't the end all be all of our self worth isn't just cute or nice. It's life-saving. It's absolutely vital to our physical and mental well-being to get in tune with ourselves. To find out what we want and need. To understand who we are as individuals. To pay attention to our goals and dreams and joys and the tiny stuff that makes us happy in a true and deep way.

The problem is that, in our society, patriarchal standards are often the biggest thing that gets in our way of doing just that. It IS men (as a category) that are the problem so, so often. "Not all men" doesn't just ignore that by making the situation about men's feelings; it actively makes the case that men (as a category) aren't at fault at all by falsely conflating "men as a category" with "literally all men in all of history", as though the two just HAVE to be connected, and can't exist without each other.

They can, in fact, both exist. That's a thing.

3) The question of whether "Stop Trying to Please Men" is literal (all men ever) or not (men as a category) is kind of irrelevant anyway.

This advice is good, whether you're talking about it in terms of "you should stop trying to spend all your time pleasing men as a category" or in terms of "you should stop trying to spend all your time pleasing every man who ever lived."

Either way, the point is to focus on what you need, and not others.

But let's say we do want to take the road less travelled, and assume that this meme is not an inspirational way to tell young women that they are their own people. Let's say she is literally trying to tell people to literally ignore all men, even the good ones.

Well, as it turns out, even men who have really good intentions, and are not bad people, have perpetuated problematic stuff. The same kind of problematic stuff that we are talking about that has been caused by men as a category.

My dad is an example. He's the absolute first person so show up anytime anyone needs help, 100% of the time. He is generous with his resources, wakes up insanely early to work hard, and takes care of an enormous number of people. He's even one of the few Trump voters I've met who cares more about family than being right, so he accepts that we won't agree on that matter and allows us to be what we are.

But despite all this, he was very insistent, while I was growing up, that he loved our hair super long. He wanted it to be as feminine as possible. No, he never outrightly forbade us to cut it, but he didn't have to. We were trained by media and society from a young age that his opinion about the femininity of our hair was important. And so I had my hair super long for 28 years of my life.

I hated long hair. I couldn't function with it. I didn't know how to fix it or care for it well. Most of all, it didn't feel like me. If you've never experienced feeling like a stranger in your own skin, that's an incredibly hard aspect of this situation to explain. I can tell you, though, that it sucks so hard. There's a constantly looming impression that you're just wrong. Not that you did something wrong, but that YOU are wrong.

That kind of feeling permeates everything, to the point where you start to be convinced that ALL of you is something to be ashamed of. It shouldn't feel wrong, but it does, so are you just broken?

It seems weird, and appears kind of shallow, to say that hair and style matter this much, but they do matter. Not in an "I'm better than you because my clothes cost more" way, but in an "I can get on with my life when what I see and what I feel match. When the discord between what I am and what I'm pretending to be doesn't loom heavy in the background."

I never once, in the entirety of my life, looked in the mirror and thought "I have great hair today" until long, long after I chopped it all off. And it took me 28 years to do it because I spent all my time up to that point being scared that if I cut it short that I'd be disappointing people. That it would look terrible, and my dad would hate it, and I'd (somehow?) be even worse off than I was before, regarding my self image and lack of confidence.

Even though I don't even like boys in a romantic sense, I still spent all of my formative years working hard to please men, and their ideas about me, instead of caring about myself.

I've gained more healthy self confidence in the handful of years that I've had my hair short than in all of my teens and twenties combined. I can barely even imagine what it would have been like to spend my 20s with a positive image of my worth as a human. How confident and fulfilled and ready to take on the world would I have been if I hadn't spent all that time trying to be what men thought I was supposed to be? Trying to care more about what they thought than what I did?

Not just about hair, but that really was a major factor in learning how to find my own style and feel good in my own skin. Which I do, now. At least as well as anyone with a normal amount of flaws can. The first time I ever thought the words, "my hair is amazing today" was... life-altering. And I was in my 30s before that happened.

Would I be where I am now without the influence of my dad? No. Is he generally good? Yes. But would I have gotten started with my own life YEARS earlier if I hadn't spent so much time trying to please that image that he wanted of me, and trying to please that image of what boys would want to date? Oof. Yeah. And I have been sad about that hundreds of times since discovering the fact.

That's why I like this advice, whether we take it literally or as generalized discussion. Because I desperately wish I had been given and understood this same advice when I was a teen.

Ignore the judgments. Ignore the insincere romances. "Do not put substantial effort into pleasing men." ie, don't spend your formative years focusing only on what someone else thinks you should be. Focus on learning who you are. Accepting yourself. Discovering what YOU like and dislike. Learn how to overcome your flaws and increase your strengths. Don't spend that energy on someone else's ideas of how that should go.

So, do I care about whether or not some man in your life is validated about being actually decent? Not really, no. Especially not when it comes at the expense of accepting, perpetuating, and supporting the original point of the post, which is to help young women succeed in life without trauma, abuse, and wasted time.

The Red Flags of Trump: Part 1

I have some thoughts bumping around that need to be extracted from my head. So Mamma Mia, here we go again. Another political blog post. (Or two. Turns out I had too much to say for only one.)

Today’s ramble is brought to you by the letter T, the number 4, and several different discussions on various people’s walls, wherein I was asked many times to point out the specific time and place where Trump used the exact words “I want you to invade the capitol building”.

Other similar questions include “What has Trump done that’s so bad?” and “Where did he actually specifically say to go start a riot?” and “I'm confused. What exactly did Trump say to incite violence?”

Honorable mention to “ma’am I was there!!! I’m not sure what I could send you to change your mind. I’m very sorry that you trust “reputable” news sources and the FBI who in fact lie ALL the time over people that were there.”

That last one was a follow up on directly implying that because she was there and didn’t see the capitol break in, it either didn’t happen, or was a trick by anti-trumpers in disguise. But trusting reputable news sites is now a sticking point.

So let’s dive right into this: Y’all. That’s not how language works, and it’s not how dictators rising to power works. It’s not how any of this works.

As someone who is neither a historian, nor a political expert on dictatorships, I have, nevertheless, done a fair bit of historical reading. Some of that was specifically on the rise and fall of Hilter and the third reich. So let me tell you one thing I learned: Hitler was always radically nationalist, but he didn’t always just stand on tables telling people to kill Jews. There’s evidence he wasn’t even always anti-semitic.

When he started his political career, he was a no one. Just this guy who fancied himself an artist, but couldn’t get into art school, and couldn’t work the common physical labor jobs. He was a drifter, living from Vienna hostel to Vienna hostel for several years, until WWI began. He moved to Munich and joined the German army where he was still a no one, but a fed and trained one.

And that’s where he really got started. Germany’s economy was a mess. The working class was poor, starving, and struggling to survive in post-war defeat. And the army hired Hitler as a guy to make speeches to working class people about the things they wanted the working class to hear.

Now, these things Hitler started out preaching weren’t “let’s build concentration camps today!” They were “let’s make Germany great again!”

He talked about helping the German working class regain some semblance of stability, and of bringing Germany out of the hole it fell into after losing The Great War. None of those things were inherently bad, and all of them sounded really good to the struggling people surrounding him. 

He was so good at building people up, that by the time he got to the part of his speeches where he blamed Jews for the massive collapse and loss of the war, people were willing to believe it. It gave them something solid to hang on to. It made them feel better about Germany being in such a bad place. It gave them reason to feel like things could get better if they just did something about all those pesky Jews. And it didn’t sound all that crazy anymore.

“The stock market in the United States crashed on 24 October 1929. The impact in Germany was dire: millions were thrown out of work and several major banks collapsed. Hitler and the Nazi Party prepared to take advantage of the emergency to gain support for their party. They promised to repudiate the Versailles Treaty, strengthen the economy, and provide jobs.”

Long story made slightly shorter, fascism came gradually. His nationalism became extreme nationalism, which then became nazism. But it didn’t start out that way. Germany may not have accepted him as chancellor if he’d come through the door swinging that hard. In fact, he did try to stage a coup and set his party in power more suddenly, in 1923, but Germany wasn’t ready for that, and Hitler spent some time in prison instead.

Certainly much of the European appeasement may have not have happened if other world leaders saw how truly radical the guy was right from the get go. But they didn’t, because they were looking for the explicit wording, and missed red flag after red flag. (After red flag after red flag after red flag…)

This is true of a lot in life. (Not all bad.) Many people who cosplay don’t start out building complicated and beautiful sets of full fantasy armor. They start out with a simple costume, find they enjoy that, and start learning more. First it’s makeup. Then wigs. Then simple armor. And honestly, you wouldn’t get very many new people into cosplay if you taught them that they DID have to build elaborate fantasy armor on their very first costume.

You don’t start out being an avid basketball fan by knowing the stats of every player on every team. That’s something you learn as you go along. And quite a few people would avoid basketball altogether if you had to either know every stat ever from the very first day, or not watch at all. You start small and build. It’s not just sensible, but much more convincing.

Now, basketball and cosplay are not dangerous examples, of course. But Trump? Well. There are a lot of things he apparently doesn’t know. Much like Hitler, he doesn’t have a lot going for him as far as personal graces, or intellect. But also, much like Hitler, the one thing he really, truly IS good at is demagoguery. It’s astounding that the man who can barely string sentences together coherently is so good at being a firebrand, but he really is. People who are desperately looking for something to clutch onto can easily latch onto him.

And you’ll notice this principle in the whole outcry about the claims of vote fraud. Evidence and investigations have suggested that this has been one of the most secure elections in US history, but somehow a lot of people are extremely convinced that there's very deep ballot stuffing and cheating going on on the scale of millions of votes.

That didn't happen because Trump showed up on the day of the election with "hey, they might cheat today." It happened because of a line in one speech, and a mention in another, and more lines and more mentions that build up over a time period.

That's just the way rhetoric has always worked. Trump knows that. And we can see it happening. Without any evidence at all, people are convinced of mass-scale vote fraud because rhetoric was very effectively used.

The point of saying all this is that waiting to check a leader's actions until the time when they are literally saying "start a riot" is probably way, way too late. We saw it with Hitler. Appeasement after appeasement in stretches of foreign policy that seem to us, in hindsight, like the blindest a government could have possibly been. How could they not see how dangerous all this was?

But Hitler was good at demagoguery, and he knew how to use rhetoric. And it worked not just on Germany, but on the British and French government leaders as well.

Am I trying to say that Trump is basically Hitler? No.

You see, Hitler was an extreme nationalist. Trump cares about nothing at all but his image and his cash. Given totally equal dictatorial powers, both would do radically different things with them. Trump wouldn’t be a second Hitler. He’d just be a first Donald.

But their voter bases are very similar. And their rhetoric is following a very similar line. Trump even suggested not-particularly-jokingly that he might not leave, even if the election said he lost.

So no. I am not saying Trump is going to reinstate the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei. But what I am saying is that we’re seeing signs. There are red flags everywhere. The man literally said, on the record, that he sexually harasses women and gets away with it because he’s rich and powerful. Nothing crazy that he has ever said or done is out of the blue. There are signs. There have always been signs.

But those signs haven’t been explicit calls for government mutiny. Not yet. If we wait until they get to that point, though… well, history is going to look on us just like it does Neville Chamberlain. And no one wants to be Neville Chamberlain.

***Addendum: Neville Chamberlain

The reason I use this reference, for those who may not be familiar, is that the years leading up to the start of World War II were filled with basically this:

Hitler: Give me the Sudetenland part of Czechoslovakia

France: What? No!

Neville Chamberlain (Britain): We can’t do—

Hitler: do it, or I’ll start a war!

Neville: GIVE IT TO HIM! GIVE IT TO HIM! WE CAN’T HAVE ANOTHER WAR!

France: Ugh. Fine.

Czechoslovakia: Uh… guys? This is our country.

Neville: Shhhhhhhhhh. Sudetenland belongs to Germany now.

Hitler: Now I want the rest of Czechoslovakia

France: Look, bro. We just gave you—

Neville: okay, fine! It’s yours!

Czech president: really, I think we need to—

Neville: Nope. Can’t have a war. Do what he wants.

Czech president: he’s literally carrying out terrorist attacks.

France and Britain: *shrug*

Czech president: look. We have a good military. We’ll fight back, but we can’t do it without you. Give us the signal, and we’ll take this guy down while he’s weak.

Neville: sorry, what was that? Couldn’t hear you. Must be a bad phone line. Oh no! I’m being cut off! *click*

France: Czechoslovakia… just stand here outside the door. The grown ups are talking.

(Watch Germany become stronger and harder to defeat. See it invade the rest of Czechoslovakia anyway, followed by Poland and Norway. World War II starts anyway.)

This is why we don’t want to be remembered as Neville.