We are in for a hell of ride, boys and girls, a Führereid, if you will.

My German vocabulary is extremely limited. Virtually every phrase I know is an idiosyncratic, specialized term I learned while studying the history of the Nazis. I know words like vernichtungslager (annhiliation camp) sonderbehandlung [1] (“special handling” stamped on the papers of Jews being expedited to the camps) and Lebensunwertes Leben [2] (“lives not worth living”, as deemed by the Nazis). Today I added a highly pertinent phrase, Führereid, the blood oath of personal loyalty to the infallible party leader, Herr Hitler.

We are living at a moment when an eighty-nine year-old psychopath, Charles Koch, is excited to see the culmination of his life’s work, his father’s Hitler-admiring dream come true in the administration of seventy-eight year old psychopath Donald “Jesus” Trump (Donald’s psychopath father was literally named Frederick Christ Trump). This is as serious a moment in history as any evil genius (such as Koch) could create in the lab. Wuhan’s got nothing on this gathering plague.

In order to be an elected (or appointed) Republican in good standing, one must do exactly what the leader demands.  If that demand is to publicly stand behind a thoroughly debunked lie about a stolen election that got several of Trump’s attorneys disbarred, and others to take guilty pleas, if you know what is good for you, you will say, at the very least, that there are legitimate and serious questions about 2020 that were never answered (like, why are numerous Stop the Steal riot conspirators not serving long prison sentences?). 

To be a Republican official in good standing you must state that it is perfectly fine for the leader to violate the Espionage Act by stealing (and most likely selling) secret documents, commit crimes while campaigning and then while in office (34 counts of which he’s been convicted for), have a fraudulent university and charity closed down, incite a deadly riot in a crazed attempt to stay in power, make vile, racist misogynistic threats (as a man convicted of committing a close variant of rape and then repeatedly defaming the victim), proudly echo Hitler in overheated rhetoric about vermin, blood poisoning and the “enemy within”.  

Now, all that’s left for you, if your job is important to you, is to argue why it is necessary to shut down FBI vetting of wildly incompetent, badly compromised cabinet nominees, (as was already done with lifetime appointee Boof Kavanaugh), and the way is clear for Führerswortes haben gesetzeskraft (“the Führer’s word has the force of law”.)

For totalitarianism to take hold of a nation several things must happen.  Language and meaning must be distorted beyond rationality, as in “alternative fact”, so that no reasonable discussion may ever take place.  Fear must be so pervasive that citizens and officials obey pressure to conform in advance (Bezos, Mika and Scarboro, etc.) and are terrorized when they think of organizing to dissent.  Political opponents become sick, evil enemies to be imprisoned, killed or otherwise silenced.  Blackmail becomes the coin of the realm and only powerful insiders are excused for crimes, for all others, justice!

Resisting this oligarch-funded tsunami of blind obedience to their collective will is going to require great creativity, organization, doggedness and, unfortunately, a great deal of collective suffering.   We have to be creative, united, resolute and ready to rumble.  The first thing Biden has to do is order FBI vetting of this drawer full of creepy crawlers Trumpie has nominated as his cabinet.  Then, as Steve Bannon (soon of the long prison sentence for defrauding MAGA nation) says “strap in.”

The Hitler Oath (German: Führereid or Führer Oath) — also referred in English as the Soldier’s Oath^[1]—refers to the oaths of allegiance sworn by officers and soldiers of the Wehrmacht and civil servants of Nazi Germany between the years 1934 and 1945. The oath pledged personal loyalty to Adolf Hitler rather than loyalty to the Weimar Constitution of the country. Historians view the personal oath of the Nazi Germany as an important psychological element to obey orders for committing war crimes, atrocities, and genocide.^[2] During the Nuremberg trials, many German officers unsuccessfully attempted to use the oath as a defense against charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity.^[3]

source

(check out the punishments at the bottom for those who refused to take the oath)

[1]

[2] source

Doctors were the ones primarily responsible for applying the plan in order to eliminate people labeled as incurably ill, children with hereditary defects, criminals, the mentally ill, the physically disabled, pedophiles, homosexuals, and adults or elderly people considered “unproductive.”

Aktion T4 was implemented through two channels: euthanasia, practiced on people who fit into those categories, and sterilization en masse, so that there would be no new children with what the doctors considered disabilities that would make people unhappy. And we are speaking here of German patients.

Doctors considered that each of those persons was a “life not worth living” (Lebensunwertes Leben), and presented them as such. It is calculated that between 200,000 and 275,000 people were systematically murdered out of “compassion,” while massive sterilization programs reached more than 400,000 people—always, in every case, against the patient’s will and without consent.