This is the title I chose for my personal blog, which is meant to give me an outlet for one of my favorite crafts – writing – plus to use an image from my favorite sport, golf.  Out of college, my first job was as a reporter for the Daily Astorian in Astoria, Oregon, and I went on from there to practice writing in all my professional positions, including as press secretary in Washington, D.C. for a Democrat Congressman from Oregon (Les AuCoin), as an Oregon state government manager in Salem and Portland, as press secretary for Oregon’s last Republican governor (Vic Atiyeh), and as a private sector lobbyist.  This blog also allows me to link another favorite pastime – politics and the art of developing public policy – to what I write.  I could have called this blog “Middle Ground,” for that is what I long for in both politics and golf.  The middle ground is often where the best public policy decisions lie.  And it is where you want to be on a golf course.

I cannot believe this reality:  Donald Trump is like Adolph Hitler!

Perish the thought.

I hate to start a week with this sobering comparison, but, yes, it’s real.

Unfortunately, it is true that the person who wants to be U.S. president again, Donald Trump, is a lot like Hitler, the despot who brought the world to war, even as he methodically killed more than six million Jews in what came to be called, “The Holocaust.”

It would not be an exaggeration to say that Hitler was the most evil person in history, though he would have competitors for that designation, including some we don’t know as well as Hitler.

Trump doesn’t oppose the Hitler comparison.  He welcomes it.  For one thing, he keeps a book of Hitler speeches close by so he could read them at leisure. 

Some might argue that the Trump-Hitler comparison is over-blown, but here is a summary of evidence that supports it:

• All reputable media outlets reported what Trump recently said.  He accused immigrants of “destroying the blood of our country” during a campaign rally in Iowa, repeating hateful rhetoric that echoed white supremacists and the genocidal Nazi dictator Hitler.
• More:  “They’re destroying the blood of our country.  That’s what they’re doing.  They’re destroying our country.  They don’t like it when I said that — and I never read Mein Kampf, referencing Hitler’s manifesto.  They could be healthy, they could be very unhealthy, they could bring in disease that’s going to catch on in our country, but they do bring in crime, but they have them coming from all over the world.  And they’re destroying the blood of our country. They’re destroying the fabric of our country.”
• For his part, Hitler, who repeatedly compared Jewish people to a blood poison within German society, wrote in Mein Kampf that “all great cultures of the past perished only because the originally creative race died out from blood poisoning,” and blamed Jews and other “undesirable” groups for said contamination. 
• Within hours of Trump’s “they’re poisoning our country” comment, President Joe Biden’s campaign released a statement attacking Trump for having “channeled his role models as he parroted Adolf Hitler, praised Kim Jong Un, and quoted Vladimir Putin while running for president on a promise to rule as a dictator and threaten American democracy.”
• On a different point, ABC News reported that, when he was president, Trump reportedly complained that America’s military leaders were not “totally loyal” to him, telling his chief of staff, retired Marine Corps General John Kelly, “Why can’t you be loyal to only me.”  Which is exactly what Hitler said to German officers from whom he expected total loyalty.
• Trump boasted to a Republican congressman that German Chancellor Angela Merkel had told him there was “only one” leader in history who had attracted crowds as large as Trump.  The Republican congressman, an ally of Trump, couldn’t tell whether Trump knew that Merkel was referring to Hitler, who, of course, attracted massive crowds throughout his rule in Nazi Germany.
• Aaron Blake, writing in the Washington Post, says Donald Trump has long toyed with the language of famous autocrats, authoritarians and fascists.  Think: “enemy of the people,” “retribution,” and the frequent, years-long allusions to political violence.
• The Washington Post summarized Trump’s Veterans Day speech with this headline: “Trump calls political enemies ‘vermin,’ echoing dictators Hitler, Mussolini.”  Trump not only likened his political opponents to “vermin,” but suggested they represent a “threat from within” that is more dangerous than threats from beyond borders.  Both are themes seized upon by strongmen to foment movements.

So, I say to all voters this year:  Don’t give in to Trump on all his “trumped up” rhetoric, much of which is patterned after Hitler.

Recognize what Hitler did to his country, if not the world, and don’t let Trump get away with “Hitler-ism” again in the United States.  He did once.  Stop him a second time.