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I am writing from a small town named Berg just south of Munich. Berg means mountains, not surprisingly since the Alps are close by. I am here for many reasons, one of which is my desire to become more proficient in German, a task that is not easy at any age, but certainly not mine.

In the midst of seeing incredible beautiful scenery and quaint cities with churches and schools and buildings older than America itself, in recent days I’ve had interesting conversations with two women, one I met while we were standing on the platform at the train station, the other who runs a bakery near where we are staying.

In the first one, the woman spoke English and I spoke German. We both spoke German in the second one. And in both conversation the subject got around to the state of our two countries.

The three of us agreed that our respective countries were not doing very well politically. We didn’t get into a lot of detail about what they meant regarding Germany, partly because of my limited German, but I understood enough to learn that both women were complaining about the state of the German economy and their concern over immigration. 

And as we talked I realized that I could have been talking to two Americans about our country. Most Americans are down on our country for various reasons, but the economy and immigration are probably the most dominant.

A majority of Americans believe Biden is not doing much to help them the same way the two German women don’t believe Chancellor Olaf Scholz, of the  Social Democrat Party, is doing much for them, and many Americans believe the disinformation they are hearing from Republicans about “the southern border.”

Most Germans liked Angela Merkel, the former Chancellor and a member of the Christian Democratic Union Party, but became dissatisfied with her coalition government’s immigration policies, so much so that she decided not to run for re-election in 2021. As a result, the people got a new leader and a new coalition government, neither of which is popular with the two women with whom I spoke, and from the news, many, if not most, Germans. 

As I have reflected on those brief conversations, and on what the polls are saying about the Biden administration’s policies at home, it occurred to me that in today’s political climate around the world, no politician or political party is likely to receive high marks from a majority of voters, due in part, I think, to complex and complicated problems being endemic to a world growing smaller and the fact that all major issues are now global.

Immigration is the most visible one, not least because people don’t risk their lives to travel to a country like the U.S. or Germany because their lives are stable and sustainable. They leave because the opposite is the case, and that is what we are now seeing in record numbers.

Our forbearers did the same thing and for many of the same reason, making it both ironic and shameful that we don’t like being the ones to have to accept these desperate people into our space. Rather than addressing the problem, some leaders with public support prefer political posturing, adding to public discontent about it.

Disinformation regarding a variety of issues has become the primary source of public distrust of government, flooding the news and social media to such an extent that is has become almost impossible to penetrate groups of people who have no interest in knowing facts.

Not that political leaders in every country don’t deserve criticism. Of course, they do. But in today’s climate, public support is as unstable as the weather. Biden, for example, was widely popular when he took office, but the more he has gotten done to benefit ordinary Americans economically, the less popular he has become. 

The German economy is experiencing what Chancellor Scholz is calling “a cyclical weakness,” and after a short period in office he is already being widely criticized, with speculation in the news that he could be replaced by his coalition government next year.

The reality of our world today is that public discontent on the level we are seeing is a dangerous thing, not unlike the way it was when Hitler emerged in German politics in the late 20s and early 30s. He played on people’s discontent, some of it legitimate and a lot of it not, just as politicians are now doing, including many of those in our Congress.

The reason discontent is dangerous is it can be exploited by dishonest politicians to the point where people begin to believe any change is better than none, just as Germans thought Hitler would change things. He did, of course destroying German democracy in the process, and eventually destroying the entire country.

Nobody saw it coming and everybody saw it coming, just as we do today at home. We know what Trump and Trump Republicans want to do. We know where they will lead us if they win the White House or gain seats in the Congress.

Yet, the news media is distracted, focused on Biden’s age, how he looks, how he moves, the groundless Republican impeachment side show, and every word Trump utters, leading voters to believe it’s just another presidential campaign where a change will be better than what we have now.

That’s what the German people thought when President Paul van Hindenburg, at the urging of former Chancellor Franz von Papen, but over his own misgivings, appointed Hitler Chancellor in January, 1933.

The beginning of the end happened quickly. Hindenburg died in August 2, 1934. Hitler was elected later that month in a plebiscite vote to replace him and then immediately used emergency powers to consolidate the Presidency and Chancellorship.

In less than two years Germany went from a democracy to an autocracy, with Hitler as the absolute and supreme ruler.

But here’s the key. It all started with a fundamental discontent among the German people coupled with a national pride susceptible to propaganda about their superiority among the nations of the world Hitler both fed and exploited.

Had Hitler not started a world war he eventually lost, it is possible that he would have held power long enough to ensure permanent Nazis control over Germany.  

Pondering this country’s history is a sobering exercise. Germans never believed what happened to them ever could, which is why it is not surprising that we Americans don’t believe anything close to what happened here could happen to us.

It is true that American democracy has safeguards that were not in place in Germany when Hitler rose to power. Yet, I only have to think about the Republican Party being willing to nominate Donald Trump again for president to realize how utterly naïve it is to think we are not capable of undoing the world’s longest lasting democracy without realizing it until it’s too late.

What we cannot forget is that people are people everywhere, with similar hopes and dreams and similar weaknesses and flaws and that always makes the future uncertain.