Appeasement in Our Time

Neville Chamberlain with bone spurs.

Let’s see here, we got a high-level international conference in Munich, and a European country about to be sold downriver to an authoritarian aggressor. Anyone else hearing a rhyme?

One hates to ratify Godwin’s law, but damn if the parallels between the OG Führer and the orange one aren’t piling up deep. There’s the lust for lebensraum and the blustery threats; the personality cult; the mandatory loyalty to the God King rather than some candy-ass constitution; vilification of the press and of certain wrongly hued demographics; the suggestion of ethnic cleansing; the neutering of public administrators who don’t lick the royal glutes; the suck-hole enablers and rank opportunists; the cranks and nut bags in high places. All that’s missing now is a Reichstag fire.

And anybody seen Horst Wessel? Cuz I’m feeling a little Völkisch.

That we can make even facetious comparisons is itself astonishing, and would defy belief if the frog of public credulity had maybe boiled a little faster. Alas, we live in the confusing, opaque maze of the present, uncertain where things are headed but sure it’s not upward. It gets confusing, because Donald Trump is both bully and appeaser, two reckless clowns in one bronzed corpulence. Maybe it would help clarify the perversity of the moment to place the latter in some alternative histories:

WASHINGTON, March 3, 1861 — President-elect Trump said today that he would not resupply federal troops at Fort Sumter in Charleston harbor, promising to settle the secession crisis “on day 1” of his administration, which begins tomorrow.

“We’ll make a deal,” said Mr. Trump, “a big beautiful deal. That I can tell you.”

Mr. Trump said U.S. Army Maj. Robert Anderson, who is commanding the stranded troops on the island fortress, is a “loser” who should be executed. “I like people who weren’t stranded.”

Mr. Trump said Confederate President Jefferson Davis “is being unfairly persecuted by radical left lunatics” and “woke” abolitionists.

“They’re calling it ‘abolition.’ aboLIishun. Whoever heard of that?” Trump told a gathering of Copperhead democrats who favor a peace settlement with the Confederacy.

He also praised Southern slaveholders as “heroes” and “loyal Americans who have created millions of jobs for our great African community. A lotta people don’t know that.”

WASHINGTON, April 1, 1917 — President Donald Trump said he would not call for a declaration of war against Germany, despite that country’s resumption of unrestricted submarine warfare against U.S. merchant ships supplying the beleaguered European Allies.

The president told reporters that he would announce a deal “soon, very soon, maybe next week, maybe next month” to end the two-year-old struggle: “We’re talking about a deal like nobody’s ever seen.” He said the agreement would allow Germany to keep Belgium, despite the empire’s widely condemned “rape” of the small, neutral country early in the war.

“The fake news are calling it rape,” said Mr. Trump. “Listen, I know about rape, OK? Nobody knows rape like I know rape,” said the president. “When you’re an empire they let you do it. Just grab ‘em by the port cities.”

WASHINGTON, Dec. 8, 1941 — President Donald Trump said the U.S. would not retaliate against Japan for its surprise attack on the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor yesterday, telling reporters “What, you think our country’s so innocent?”

In the European theatre, Mr. Trump has so far refused Britain’s requests for assistance in its desperate struggle against Nazi aggression. “Churchill is screwing us like nobody’s ever seen. They’re laughing at us,” he said, adding: “Nobody knew diplomacy could be so complicated.”

WASHINGTON, Oct. 22, 1962 — President Donald Trump denied that the Soviet Union is placing nuclear missiles in Cuba, despite CIA aerial photographs verifying their presence.

“My people came to me said they think it’s Russia,” the president told reporters. “I have Premier Khruschev. He said it’s not Russia. I will say this, I don't see any reason why it would be.”

The president said he is unconcerned that an escalation of Cold War tensions might one day require the U.S. actually to launch its nuclear missiles. If we’re not going to use them, he asked, “Why do we make them?”