New Steps And A Footnote

Children are still separated from their parents, Trump's doing what Nixon and all other guilty folks do - denying everything, the ADN seems to be reporting gun and traffic deaths on a daily basis, but even with that backdrop, we all have to keep on maintaining our daily lives.*

Our front steps have been commented on by friends visiting us for a number of years now.  The railing snapped off last fall and had to be welded back together.  My attempts to envision a whole new entry way kept me putting off the new steps until I had a bigger plan.  But my attempts at that have proven fruitless and so finally today the workers began taking out the old, very cracked and split up steps.

Here's what they looked like Monday.

And here are some pictures from today.

Presumably, the new steps will get put in tomorrow, and we may be able to actually use the front door again in a few days.  It's not raining hard, but it's not sunny either.  And yes, I dug up those hostas that were in front and put them in another hole for a while.

*I've made comparisons to Nazi Germany at times.  Some people reject any such comparisons as hyperbole.  But many of the steps Trump is taking to dismantle democracy ARE similar to steps Hitler took.  We aren't talking about concentration camps, but Trump's detention centers treat immigrants as though they weren't human.  The  MAGA slogan isn't much different from Hitler's call's for reviving Germany's greatness after the humiliation of losing WWI and the Versailles Agreement.   The Trump administration's attacks on the media, the callous treatment of refugees and Muslims, the lies and alternative reality we hear daily from the White House, and the stirring up of hatred and violence, all happened in the 30's in Germany.  He's creating a whole new vocabulary - Fake News, Witch Hunt, the derogatory nicknames he repeats and repeats like Crooked Hillary - as did Hitler's regime.  Hitler too was elected on a populist wave of nationalism and making Germany a great nation again.  Hitler scapegoated Jews, Trump scapegoated Muslims and immigrants.

But, there are a lot of things that make it harder from Trump to pull a Hitler.  For one, he's not nearly as smart as Hitler, who actually did build infrastructure -  the Autobahn, not a wall.  His messages were more focused and consistent.  And the power was centered in Berlin.

Our advantage is states having much more independence from DC than German states had from Berlin.  The various state lawsuits against various Trump policies are examples of this. For me right now, fixing the steps is something that still makes sense.  That wasn't the case for my grandparents in the 1930's in Germany.  So in that sense, things are very different.  For me at least.  For immigrants with uncertain status, repairing steps is probably not something they are thinking about.