Kristallnacht In America

Germany, 1938

New York, 2010

On November 9, 1938, thousands of Jewish owned businesses in Germany were destroyed by Nazi mobs who hurled bricks through the storefront windows, ransacked the buildings, and burned many of them to the ground. By the next morning, almost 100 Jews had been murdered, and tens of thousands of them were arrested. Forever known as Kristallnacht (crystal night) or “Night Of Broken Glass”, this was effectively and symbolically the beginning of the Holocaust.

On March 22, 2010, Democratic offices in New York, Kansas, Arizona, and Ohio were vandalized by brick-throwing vigilantes in response to the passage of the healthcare reform bill the day before. Even more Hitleresque are the reports that several Democratic lawmakers received death threats against their children because of their support of the bill.

Anyone who has read this blog knows that i do not appreciate comparisons to the Holocaust. But I find these tactics by the extremist opponents to healthcare reform to be too similar to ignore.

The irony is, these are the same people who called President Obama “Hitler” and healthcare reform “Nazi Healthcare.”

There is a group taking responsibility for this action, but I am not going to give them exposure here. You can look it up on the internet.

I’m just saying: Be careful, America has lost its mind.

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Healthcare is NOT the Holocaust

All of my grandparents survived the Holocaust. Most of their families back in Europe did not. As survivors my grandparents never shied away from teaching me about the horrors they experienced: starvation, torture, mental abuse, and the grind of always being aware of the death surrounding them, closing in on them everyday. My grandparents told me about the Holocaust because they wanted me to be aware of the hatred that exists in this world–NOT because they wanted to exploit their experience for any other reason. What they went through is a very personal tragedy, whose lessons should only be harnessed for the power to do good, not more evil.

So when Republican Congresswoman Michele Bachmann and her GOP cronies organized a “House Call” rally that exploited the Holocaust by comparing healthcare reform to the atrocities at Dachau and other concentration camps, I became absolutely infuriated.

Let’s be clear–the Democratic Party’s plans for healthcare reform, no matter what you think of them, have nothing to do with the following:

murder, starvation, rape, beatings, torture, medical experimentation without anesthesia, bayonetting live babies, mental anguish, imprisonment, genocide, assembly line extermination, cramming people into windowless cattle trains for 3-day rides with no food or toilets or beds, random killing for intimidation, mass graves, eating rats and bugs, ghettos, tattooing serial numbers on your arm, branding with hot irons, death marches, humiliation, family separation, typhoid, crematoriums, and gas chambers.

All too often the GOP plays the Hitler card in this debate. They make signs of Obama with a Hitler mustache, or call healthcare reform “Nazi Medicine”.

Where is the outrage of America’s Jewish population?

BOOya! Scary Images For Halloween! (w/ apologies to Steve Bartman)

Holocaust Denial

Predators

Guns at Obama rallies

The Healthcare Reform Debate

Cowboy Diplomacy

Sarah

Fate/What If?