Zustimmingsdiktatur

Pogo strip by Walt Kelly, Earth Day 1971

“We are confronted by insurmountable opportunities.”—Walt Kelly

The Third Reich was a consensual dictatorship

 —that's a Zustimmungsdiktatur in German.

Hitler had “almost until the very end” the consent of the German people.*

Fortune flashed him her intoxicating smile. He knew best, they said.

Twelve years it lasted—just a little while—plus fifty million dead.

Whatever fate may be, it works in painful ways its purpose to perform.

What seems exceptional may shortly be the norm.

It’s 101⁰ F out there today . . . they say there’ll be a storm.

*Tobias Buck, Final Verdict: The Holocaust on Trial in the 21st Century (New York: Hachette, 2024), 247.