Trumpland uber alles

I had a boss once, not a big boss, a little boss, the kind of boss you see every day.

And this boss and I disliked each other in the way two cats dislike each other if you put them in the same pillowcase.

I was disagreeing with the boss one day, and the boss reminded me that she was my “superior.”

And I remember the boss paused before using the word because it wasn't that kind of job. We all called the bosses by their first names, and we'd all been to college.

And the boss paused and swallowed a bit of her own spit and said “superior” in a sentence.

“I'm your superior,” the boss said.

I laughed of course, because laughter is still free, at least while you're still laughing. It only gets expensive later, after your superior gets a chance to think about you laughing.

I could have quit, and I know it sounds kind of Charles Dickens, but I really did use the money from that job to support my widowed mother, and I'm an only child, and no one was gonna come around to help with Ma's rent if I broke the boss's superior nose.

So, I took the shot because, as The Greatest Generation used to say, “Sometimes you have to go along to get along.”

But the boss could call herself my superior forever after that, even though she'd been nervous the first time.

And that's the trick. If you're going to say things like that, you've got to slip 'em in quietly the first time, hesitantly even. After that, the word becomes a toddler and starts running around breaking things.

Former President and current defendant Donald J. Trump's social media account recently shared a campaign video with a headline about a “unified Reich.” “Reich” is the German word for “state,” but it's forever tainted with “Third Reich,” the name of Nazi Germany's failed murder state.

The MAGA folks are slipping the words in here and there, then and now. Some immigrants “poison the blood of the country.” “Jews will not replace us,” the Heil Hitler Homies chant at the rally.

You take a little breath, you take a little pause, and you swallow a little of your own spit, and you say the word, and you wait.

And nothing happens. Maybe there's even a cheer or two, and maybe there's some objections from people who are “weak,” but most people go along to get along, and nothing happens to you, which is the important thing.

And the words are loose, organizing a torchlight parade, doing the cannibals' death dance.

Used to be, if that kind of thing happened in your country, you watched the barbed wire go up, and the cattle cars clickety-clack off into the night, and you prayed the Americans would come. To which god do you pray when it happens in America?

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