THREAD: Today let's talk about... SACRIFICE. As in, human sacrifice. /1

Many times in the past, America has asked its soldiers to risk their own death and/or kill others. It has always purported to have a purpose: to defend America and its values. Our men and women in service sacrificed to protect their loved ones and to serve the greater good. /2

In present times, Trump is deliberately encouraging civilians to die, ostensibly in support of his cause.

The Twitter thread from this past weekend from Senator Chris Murphy ( @ChrisMurphyCT) explains it very well:
https://twitter.com/ChrisMurphyCT/status/1300080949510778881
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it is hard to see how anyone benefits from it. But let's look deeper. /4

When a cult-leader takes glory in requiring his followers to risk perishing senselessly on his behalf, and when cult members are quite vocal in defending their “freedom” to infect and kill others, it is a death cult. /5

It is tempting to make a joke about it as Darwinism in action. Some of them, like Herman Cain, will be gone, and the pandemic will likely impact Trump's base harder than others. /6

But the willingness to potentially sacrifice themselves, and the willingness to inflict senseless death upon others, becomes a bond that actually brings them closer together. /7

It proves their loyalty to the cult (most specifically, the cult leader) is greater than their sense of right or wrong or even of reason. It is how a cult leader gets people to drink poisoned Kool-Aid. /8

(If using the term "cult" makes you uncomfortable, you might find the mafia syndicate analogy more apt. He is putting them through a right of passage that binds them as soldatos in his Cosa Nostra, with Trump, of course, as The Don.) /9

It also seems right out of the Twilight Zone that once America's men (and women) in uniform, like my father, served in the armed services (and in some cases died) to oppose fascism during World War II, ... /10

while Trump's supporters today appear to be willing to sacrifice their lives in support of bringing fascism to America. It feels, prima facie, treasonous. /11

Fascist Germany was a death cult too, and Trump is using the pandemic as an opportunity to apply the same general template to America. Think about the Nazis who participated in the mass murder of millions in Germany in the 1930s and 1940s. /12

The people who committed those horrific acts in most cases started out as decent and moral members of German society, just like your Trump-supporting neighbors once were decent and moral members of American society. /13

But under the culture of fascist Germany, led by a genocidal authoritarian, the normal societal safeguards that prevent such atrocities were removed. /14

Behaviors that had once been considered unacceptable or even insane for a single individual to engage in became "accepted" when conducted en masse by many thousands of people who were bound together by their willingness to commit horrific acts, ... /15

and by their allegiance to their cult leader. During the final weeks of the Third Reich and the war in Europe, many civilians, government officials and military personnel throughout Germany also committed suicide. /16

In addition to high-ranking Nazi officials like Adolf Hitler, Joseph Goebbels, Heinrich Himmler, Philipp Bouhler and Martin Bormann, many others chose Selbstmord (German for "suicide", literally "Self-murder") (Ref: Wikipedia). /17

Trump couldn't care one way or another if his followers live or die as individuals. To him, they are all marks. But he thrives on their willingness to die for him and to kill for him. /18

The loss of support he might incur because of some thinning of the herd is far less important to him than the value and cohesiveness he gets from bonding the group together to support him in a manner that goes beyond rationality ... /19

to become something more akin to idolization or worship.

Watching these individuals self-sacrifice would be bad enough, if it would only end there. There is a price to be paid for an exceptional degree of stupidity and gullibility. /20

But when these cult warriors get infected, they in turn risk the lives of health care workers and many others who provide essential services to them. And they infect their children and their children will then infect the children of others, along with their teachers. /21

Consider a 60+ year-old school teacher with asthma, who is told (by her governor and her school district, following direction from Trump) that she has no choice but to either go to work in a classroom ... /22

and then incur a high likelihood of COVID-19 infection, and then a subsequent high likelihood of an adverse outcome (death) from the infection... or she can resign her job, and lose her income and her ability to pay her bills. /23

It isn't the kind of choice that any human being should ever have to make. /24

Crime analyst Jeff Asher ( @Crimealytics) looked at US crime trends in 2020 and found murders are up 26 percent, trending up in 19 of 25 cities included in his analysis (and reported by Vox). /25

Under Trump's watch, hate crimes in the US reached a 16 year high in 2018 (the last year in which comprehensive statistics have been released), according to the US Department of Justice. /26

The apparent increased volume of hate crime reports in the recent news implies a strong likelihood they have continued to escalate further since then. /27

Once individuals cross a line into a willingness to senselessly kill others for the cult leader, they won't hesitate to do other dreadful things, like destroy ballots, take to the streets to incite violence with peaceful protesters, ... /28

and engage in a wide variety of other wrongful acts designed to create chaos that "only he can fix."

But the reality is that the only ones who can fix it are you and I, this November.

The alternative is simply too dreadful to abide. /29