Are Rural Texans The Only Ones Who Don’t See Trump-Hitler Connections? Or Do They Celebrate Them?

After 4 years of seeing Trump in action, 74,216,154 Americans (46.9% of voters) decided they wanted to give him a second term. In some of the most socially backward counties in the country, over 90% of the voters, cast their ballots for Trump. Here are 30 of them, seething with bigotry, hatred and ignorance:

• Roberts Co., TX- 96.2%

• Borden Co., TX- 95.4%

• King Co., TX- 95.0%

• Garfield Co., MT- 94.0%

• Glasscock Co., TX- 93.6%

• Grant Co., NE- 93.3%

• Wallace Co., KS- 93.3%

• Armstrong Co., TX- 93.1%

• Motley Co., TX- 92.6%

• Wheeler Co., TX- 92.4%

• Hayes Co., NE- 92.2%

• Cimarron Co., OK- 92.0%

• Harding Co., SD- 92.0%

• Sterling Co., TX- 91.4%

• Arthur Co., NE- 91.2%

• Shackelford Co., TX- 91.1%

• McPherson Co., NE- 91.1%

• Loving Co., TX- 90.9%

• Oldham Co., TX- 90.9%

• Cameron Parish, LA- 90.7%

• Logan Co., NE- 90.4%

• Jack Co., TX- 90.4%

• Beaver Co., OK- 90.4%

• Winston Co., AL- 90.3%

• Hansford Co., TX- 90.3%

• Throckmorton Co., TX- 90.2%

• Haakon Co., SD- 90.2%

• Ellis Co., OK- 90.1%

• LaSalle Parish, LA- 90.1%

• Dewey Co., OK- 90.0%

In 1932, Hitler ran for president Germany. 13,418,517 people voted for him (36.8%), giving him a second place finish, after Paul von Hindenburg, who won 19,359,983 votes. That was Germany’s last free election until 1949. In parliamentary elections in both July and November of 1932, the Nazi Party came in first, as they did in March and November of 1933, although in the November election they were the only party allowed to run. 39,655,224 people voted for them (92.1%). There was also an “election” in 1936 in which the Nazis won 44,462,458 (98.8%) and then the final Third Reich one in 1938, in which 48,905,004 people voted for them (99.1%).

Criminal law absolutely rejects the notion of collective guilt. In even Roberts County, Texas not everyone can he held ethically— let alone legally— responsible for Trump’s criminality. After World War II, there was a greta deal of discussion of the notion of German collective guilt for the Holocaust and a systemic war crime regime. In his book, The Question Of German Guilt, German psychologist Karl Jaspers wrote "an acknowledgment of national guilt was a necessary condition for the moral and political rebirth of Germany,” asserting that that no one could escape this collective guilt, and taking responsibility for it might enable the German people to transform their society from its state of collapse into a more highly developed and morally responsible democracy. He believed that those who committed war crimes were morally guilty, and those who tolerated them without resistance were politically guilty, leading to collective guilt for all.

Decades after the War, when I was living in Amsterdam— and for several months as part of an exchange program, in Berlin— I never met a young German who didn’t feel that collective guilt. It was eery— and far more present than anything generally felt by Americans in regard to the way Native Americans were treated or the way African slaves and their descendants were treated. Lars Rensmann wrote that “The Holocaust against the Jews of Europe is internationally recognized as a modern genocide that changed the world. It has become a universal moral paradigm in democratic societies and continues to have a significant impact on world politics and international law. Its remembrance provides an ethical background for democratic decision-making and its institutionalization today. In Germany, the memory and legacy of this past has special implications. The much-lamented burden of guilt has been influential in post-Holocaust German society; Germany's national guilt has deeply affected both collective memory and national identity since the end of the war. In subtle ways, guilt plays a key role in many facets of contemporary German social and political life. Germany, therefore, provides a central arena for analyzing the impact of collective guilt. How has Germany's guilt been processed on the individual and political levels? More precisely, what is the emotional, cognitive, behavioral, and political impact of this negative legacy on cohorts who share a German identity but are free of personal guilt for any criminal action? Further, how does this affect the cognitive and affective identification with a group identity that is both part of one's self-image and, at the same time, the source of guilt feelings? How Germany's guilt and the emotional processing of its collective responsibility influences collective identification in contemporary Germany touches on the very core of German social identity.”