On May 11, Governor McMaster issued an Executive Order to provide a mask opt-out process for families, and this in conflict with pandemic recommendations from the South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control (SCDHEC), the CDC, as well as state and local medical health systems. In other words, our Republican governor, an attorney by training, has decided that he knows better than agencies filled with pulmonologists, epidemiologists, virologists, and other public health experts. It’s a fairly typical Republican, science-doubting response, I think. If Republican scientific ignorance and skepticism doesn’t kill us one way, it will kill us another.

This all happened at the same time the GOP removed Liz Cheney from her leadership position because she had the audacity to recognize reality regarding the 2020 election and the January 6 attack on the Capitol. In doing so, the GOP essentially ceased to exist and the GQP took its place, substituting Qanon conspiracy theories for common sense and trading fealty to a narcissist for the rule of law.

These two events make it clear: the Republican party, as it currently exists today, is in fact an existential danger to our republic. They are not only willing but eager to welcome back into the highest office a man who encouraged a seditious attack against his own country. They have chosen fealty to a man who puts himself above the common good of the country time and time again over the constitution and the rule of law. They have chosen to rally around a man who could, without much hyperbole, be labeled a traitor to his country.

It’s at this point that the parallels to Hitler actually start to come into shocking focus.

After leading a violent attempt to overthrow the government, he not only retained his leadership roll but in fact rallied many people around him. The antecedent of “he” in that sentence is, of course, Trump, but it is an equally accurate description of Adolf Hitler’s rise to power. The only difference: at least Hitler did nine months’ time in prison.