A Fork in the Road

I believe that my country is approaching a fork in the road, and I am afraid we may choose a very dark path. Never before, in my lifetime, have we had a presidential candidate who declares that members of an entire religion should be unwelcome in the United States. Never before, in my lifetime, have we had a presidential candidate who wants a policy of making all members of an entire religion register in a national data base and carry special ID cards. Never before have we had a presidential candidate say that if elected he would put a political opponent in jail “after what she said about me today”. Never before has a candidate threatened to force another country to pay for something done by the US. Rarely before have we had a presidential candidate who has blamed so many of the difficulties in the United States on foreigners. And rarely before have we had a candidate who has stated so many untruths as fact, even though checking the accuracy of his statements shows them to be clearly wrong. The leaders of this candidate's party have repeatedly accused the current president of criminal conduct as president. Yet this presidential candidate has a reasonable chance of harnessing the economic and social discontent of ordinary Americans to get elected.

I was not alive at the time the National Socialist German Workers Party (the Nazis), under the leadership of Adoph Hitler, came to power, but I have read the history. They focused worker discontent on members of one religion and on the policies of foreigners. They falsely claimed that Germany's loss of World War 1 was the result of criminal conduct by the leaders of the previous government. When they achieved power, they eliminated the checks and balances of the government so that the head of the party could jail his opponents. They threatened and eventually carried out war against their neighbors. They insisted that opposition to the head of state was unpatriotic. And they denied the rights of citizenship to anyone who was not of their cultural and ethnic background; eventually they put about 11 million people who were different from them in ability, culture, or ethnicity to death. Perhaps I am an alarmist, but it seems to me that presidential candidate Donald Trump is using the same ideas and methods used by Adolph Hitler and the Nazis in their rise to power. I believe that our presidential election in November represents a real fork in the road for America, and I fear the path that we may take.

Written as an assignment for the writers' group at The Fountains in June 2016 on the topic "A Fork in the Road".