What Do We Call It?

 

Times have changed,
And we've often rewound the clock,
Since the Puritans got a shock,
When they landed on Plymouth Rock.
If today,
Any shock they should try to stem,
'Stead of landing on Plymouth Rock,
Plymouth Rock would land on them.

--Cole Porter

What do you call it when one side decides to play a different game entirely and you've shown up with your football helmet and shoulder pads?

Just Normal Tourists on January 6th

"Game changer," hardly covers the situation.

"Moving the goal posts?" Inadequate, as the idea of a touchdown or field goal no longer applies.

In olden days a glimpse of stocking
Was looked on as something shocking,
But now, God knows,
Anything Goes.

Good authors too who once knew better words,
Now only use four letter words
Writing prose, Anything Goes.

So, when Hitler decided that the new game was not to define borders differently, or to talk about international law or to pay attention to judges and lawyers about what was constitutional or legal, he did not waste time on details.

The world has gone mad today
And good's bad today,
And black's white today,
And day's night today,
When most guys today
That women prize today
Are just silly gigolos
And though I'm not a great romancer
I know that you're bound to answer
When I propose,
Anything goes

His game was all about racial consciousness, racial purity and making the state the guardian of race and using the state to enter the mind of the population under his control to make them function to enhance "racial health."

.

When mothers pack and leave poor father
Because they decide they'd rather be tennis pros,
Anything Goes.

If driving fast cars you like,
If low bars you like,
If old hymns you like,
If bare limbs you like,
If Mae West you like
Or me undressed you like,
Why, nobody will oppose!
When every night,
The set that's smart
Is intruding in nudist parties in studios,
Anything Goes.

So, in the Third Reich, young healthy men were told there duty was not to themselves as individuals, but to their race and the German race,  so they were to marry and produce as many children as possible. The Reich saw the fecundity of Black Africans and Jews as a threat to racial dominance. Fertile German males were advised, in a booklet distributed widely through schools and clubs, to look at women not as playmates but as potential mothers of their children, and to investigate the lineage of their mates to be sure they were not Jews or anything other than of German origin or of "Nordic" origin--so Scandinavians were allowable.

White Mothers Welcoming the White Messiah

The world has gone mad today
And good's bad today,
And black's white today,
And day's night today,
When most guys today
That women prize today
Are just silly gigolos
And though I'm not a great romancer
I know that you're bound to answer
When I propose,
Anything goes

Anything which advanced the cause of expanding the race was morally and legally good. Anything which helped reduce the population of competing inferior races was good: So dragging children off the trains at concentration camps and marching them, along with their fertile mothers, into gas chambers was not murder, but racial hygiene, a necessary cleansing and controlling of populations. 

For Hitler's willing accomplices, marching a village of Jewish women and children into a church and burning them alive was a joyous thing, something they did with the sense of excitement you might see on youtube watching hyped up men hunting wild pigs in Texas, shooting them from helicopters, or trucks, or rounding them up in pens and shooting them through the bars.  People were regarded much as the wild pigs are seen now, as destructive, threatening pests, big vermin, a joy to kill, and a good community project.

So what the Third Reich did was to change the whole game entirely.  It wasn't about defeating an army any more, or drawing a new border or extracting wealth and resources (although that followed on the heels of the invasions) but it was about cleansing and purifying.

If saying your prayers you like,
If green pears you like
If old chairs you like,
If back stairs you like,
If love affairs you like
With young bears you like,

Why nobody will oppose!

At first, some British diplomats did not really get this, when they confronted Hitler's demands for a new chunk of territory, pushing back borders. They thought they were still playing the Treaty of Versailles border and nation state game.

The Reich said quite baldly, there was no such thing as universal human values that all societies,  no matter how different, embraced as part of being human or civilized. So killing people, killing woman and children was not necessarily a bad thing if it was racial cleansing. 

The Reich rejected participation in any international court. It rejected the idea that all men are created equal. White people are not equal but superior. Germany withdrew from the League of Nations because it no longer shared any values with that group.

And we are facing the same sort of phenomenon now with Trump. People are still saying, "It's unprecedented. It's never happened before in American history. It's unconstitutional. It's illegal. It's lawless."

Well, duh. Of course it is. It's a new game entirely.

There are no longer three branches of government. The judiciary has been decapitated, although some lower courts are still running around like chickens with their heads cut off. No matter: when the case gets to the Court of Last Resort, it will rule for Trump.

There is no longer an independent legislature as a check on the President's power. Congress does not really develop spending programs--Trump only spends what he wants to spend and anything Congress sends him he doesn't like, like money for medical research or vaccines or food stamps or healthcare, he just redirects to himself or to his billionaire clients.

When the fourth estate, the free press, challenges him about demanding $230 million from the Treasury because he's been offended by the cases brought against him by the DOJ, he tells the reporter she is a terrible person and directs her to leave the room.

New game.

New rules.

Anything Goes

His minions get it. They ape him: Karoline Leavitt tells reporters the Democratic Party is made up of terrorists, criminals and illegal aliens, she gets it. When Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. recommends unpasteurized milk and there are outbreaks of Listeria, salmonella and bovine tuberculosis, there is nobody to gainsay him in the government. When he attacks vaccines and measles resurges and kills children and adults, well they were just defective people with weak immune systems and it's probably better they are gone and that means the nation is made of tougher stock now.

Modern Day Anne Franks 

So we are now no longer on a hundred yard field with boundary markers and goal posts. Nor do we play on a baseball diamond with bases and umpires who call balls and strikes. There is a new strike zone for each player, depending on how much Trump likes him.

We are not in a Brave New World. 

And though I'm not a great romancer
And though I'm not a great romancer
I know that you're bound to answer
When I propose,
Anything goes...
Anything goes!

--Cole Porter, "Anything Goes"

We are in an Orwellian dystopia, where there is no truth, only Truth Social.