I didn't just have a few chuckles while reading Alaska Republican Party communications director Suzanne Downing's May 13 commentary. I laughed so hard I startled a brown bear outside my window. The bear kept going, so no harm, no foul.
What I found most humorous in Downing's ode to Trump was the awkward contorting she did to talk about everything else but him. I suppose facing down a competent and experienced opponent with a guy like Trump leading the ticket would inspire desperation.
[Suzanne Downing: Candidate Alaskans fear most is Clinton, not Trump]
Watching this primary season has been unnerving, but it hasn't been surprising. On the red side of the aisle, there seems to be an increasingly simplistic worldview regarding friendships, conflict and warfighting. Candidate Trump's outright denunciation of NATO, cheap shots at the British prime minister and fawning over the former-KGB-agent-turned-mass-murdering-de-facto-dictator Vladimir Putin are merely a logical next step in the devolution of conservative statecraft.
That Mayberry version of the universe does not exist. An instantly kinetic approach to statecraft cannot work in the real world. The heavily combative nature of American foreign policy in the last 15 years has destabilized huge swaths of the planet's geopolitical patchwork, giving more than one despot the opportunity to rise. Accomplishments of this approach include hundreds of thousands dead in Southwest Asia, millions of refugees and an ever-growing sentiment against the United States. If the blowback of the CIA-orchestrated coup in Iran during the 1950s led to the present mess, then I shudder to imagine what our children or theirs will face.
Effectively doubling down on this trend, as suggested by most of the candidates during a Republican primary that was more of a monkey fecal fling-a-palooza, will do nothing but make the problem worse. And the simplistic, belligerent rhetoric of candidate Trump brings this philosophy from ignorance to outright insanity.
[Related: Hawks calling for war with Iran ignore war's human toll]
While the old Roman proverb: "If you want peace, prepare for war" still stands largely true, spending hundreds of billions of dollars on warfighting supplied by no-bid logistical contracts is not what they meant.
The idea was to present a deterrent that would give a sane opponent pause before crossing the threshold. Even that philosophy takes into account that there is no possible deterrent against rogues and nonstate actors, which can be expected to be as sensible as your average violent sociopath. Since the only language that those actors understand is violence, the ultimate deterrent as Trump suggests would necessarily involve building a monolithic fighting force and deploying it almost at will in a twisted, perpetual crusade.
Such a weapon deployed in such a manner would leave even our allies quailing with fear, especially if there is a perception of unpredictability.
I was dating a nurse while I was stationed in Germany years ago, and her family had me over for dinner one night to meet her grandparents. It turned out to be a history lesson. Her grandfather and I spent a large part of the late evening with a bottle of schnapps (German moonshine, not that weak American swill) and a pack of Lucky Strikes, talking about his experience with Panzers, and our mutual love of tanks.
Eventually, I got up the nerve to ask how Hitler came to power and why the German people didn't stop him. He told me it was easy. Germans had been hit by the one-two punch of Versailles and the Depression, and Hitler had promised to make them great again. And for a time, he did just that. By the time things got crazy, it was too late.
That story is familiar. Paul Drey was a German Jew working for the American consulate in Munich during the early 1920s, in part by attending political rallies and translating for American diplomats. According to deputy consul Robert Murphy's memoir, every time he would ask Drey how it was possible for the National Socialists to be so popular, Drey would reply that it was just a passing fad, that Germans wouldn't fall for it en masse.
After the Nazis burned a Munich synagogue in 1938, Murphy attempted to get Drey out of the country, offering him a job at the Paris embassy. Drey refused saying, "No, this is a temporary madness. Self-respecting Germans will not tolerate these louts much longer."
Drey later paid for his unwavering faith in the German people. He was among the 283,000 murdered at Dachau Konzentrationslager.
I've been to the room where he died, a poorly lit Zyklon-B bathhouse with ovens on the other side of the far door. Disgusting. Infuriating. Abhorrent. Everywhere you look in Dachau, there are plaques in many languages, all solemnly declaring "NEVER AGAIN."
While a direct comparison to Hitler would be hyperbolic, Trump is stirring up the same authoritarian fervor that led to the darkest part of the 20th century. And we have a duty to stomp out these flickering embers of tyranny, injustice and hate before they consume us all.
To my friends who think they'll leave the country if Trump wins: It is impossible to run from America. There is no fallback position safe from a country armed with Predator drones and intercontinental ballistic missiles.
To my committed Republican friends: Fight. If you can't bring yourself to vote for Clinton, then find a principled conservative worthy of your vote and draft him. If you recoil from this solemn duty, there will be consequences. Maybe the 1,000 years of darkness Reagan warned us about in 1964. Maybe destruction of the party, breaking our national balance of power and allowing the left to get whatever they please without compromise.
Show the world that Republican values will not die whimpering piteously under the jackboot of a demagogue.
Bryan Box is a veteran of the 173rd Airborne Brigade and is currently using his Post-9/11 G.I. Bill at UAA to earn a B.S. in Biological Sciences, which he considers a gift from the American people for which he is truly grateful.
The views expressed here are the writer's own and are not necessarily endorsed by Alaska Dispatch News, which welcomes a broad range of viewpoints. To submit a piece for consideration, email commentary@alaskadispatch.com. Send submissions shorter than 200 words to letters@alaskadispatch.com or click here to submit via any web browser.