Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose
by digby
This quote from Milton Eisenhower (I like Ike’s brother) is via a very interesting piece by Michael Tomasky on that Roanoke mayor’s implied call for internment of Muslims:
“When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, our West Coast became a potential combat zone. Living in that zone were more than 100,000 persons of Japanese ancestry: two-thirds of them American citizens; one-third aliens. We knew that some among them were potentially dangerous. But no one knew what would happen among this concentrated population if Japanese forces should try to invade our shores. Military authorities therefore determined that all of them, citizens and aliens alike, would have to move.”
Substitute Muslims for Japanese and ask yourself if we might not hear that from someone like Donald Trump in the days ahead. I don’t know if he’ll go that far but the fact that one could easily hear him saying that in much cruder terms tells you everything you need to know.
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