"Should opponents of a regime that has shattered norms respond in ways that presume those norms still exist?"

what enlightened centrism this is! Americans not liking nazis destroying democracy and villifying Jews is clearly the same as Nazis disliking our democratic socialism, certainly.

"Why did so many Americans choose to act as if Hitler was like any other leader, Germany like any other country? I don’t think it was a product of strategic calculation, but of conceptual failures. It was easier to maintain established modes of courtesy, greetings and theology, than to consider alternative responses."

"Americans, including American Jews, didn’t want to be consumed by the fascist threat across the ocean. They wanted to live their lives. The best way to do that, and still be considered a good and moral person, was to pretend the news was exaggerated, that the persecution would ease in time."

everyone prefers a quiet life, in favour of being outraged by the destruction of norms around you. that's exhausting. I worry that's much more so the case nowadays in the world of unlimited on-demand entertainment at our fingertips. no one wants to go outside, much less to protest.

"Nasty anti-Nazi protests therefore were unnecessary and staged by nasty people. Similarly, Donald Trump may not mean the awful things he says. It’s performance, reality television. If he’s just kidding and yet the opposition gets down in the dirt, then his opponents are indeed the ones responsible for the decline in civil discourse."

"The only way to avoid the same conceptual failings, which admittedly still might not remedy the fundamental problem, is to perceive situations clearly. German representatives were monsters. Conditions in Germany were horrible. Making nice and being polite didn’t make Nazis nice and polite.

We see that now. We could have seen it then. The response then and now is not civility, but ruthless honesty."