America is Headed Down a Dark Path

I think it’s about time we take a good hard look at the state of America, and see it for how it is; we’re not that far from repeating the atrocities of World War II, and it’s not lost on me the similarities of how Trump is attempting to dehumanize so many people like Hitler would. I took a trip to Auschwitz and the parallels are frightening. It’s time for us to buckle down on hate.

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Ever since I was a young kid, I’ve always been fascinated by history. And one point of history that has particularly fascinated me was World War II. And I remember reading a book when I was in middle school about someone who survived living at Auschwitz-Birkenau. And it changed my life and the way that I thought about human beings. And at that time, I wondered, how could this have happened? How could somebody that was the leader of a country be allowed to lead that country into the atrocities that became what happened here at Auschwitz-Birkenau? But now, in 2025, I’m no longer confused. I’m sitting and watching the American government turn down the exact same road that led here.

The American government is functioning going down the exact same path that led here. You know, as I was walking through the grounds today, these very sacred grounds, and they were explaining that when they opened Auschwitz, it wasn’t an extermination camp. There were no mass executions. There was no murders.

They opened it as a deportation center where they deported people that were viewed as being enemies of the state. They deported people that they didn’t think were worthy. And what happens is when you change how you view someone and reduce their humanity, you treat them as less than human or you criminalize them, then you become capable of doing really horrible things to them, and you become capable of excusing when you witness really horrible things being done. It’s happening right here in America.

A couple of weeks ago, I saw a video of Donald Trump being interviewed in the Oval Office about a young man who was an American citizen who was “accidentally’, I say that in air quotes, round up and taken to an El Salvadorian prison. And he had tattoos on his hands, and MS-13 was photoshopped onto the picture. Donald Trump is trying so hard to criminalize this man during this interview that he’s trying to say that the MS-13 on his knuckles was in fact, not added to the picture, but were tattoos on his knuckles. And the message is, if he’s an MS-13 member, then we can do horrible atrocities to him. The message is, if we’re watching him do horrible atrocities to him, if he’s an MS-13 member, then it’s excusable.

But I can’t. I want to scream from the mountaintops. What happened here is evidence that we cannot allow anyone to dehumanize or criminalize huge groups of people when their only crime is being from a certain region, where their only crime is participating in a certain religion. Their only crime is being someone that is of a different sexual orientation.

You know, here In World War II, they criminalized being Jewish. They targeted the Jewish community, and then they blamed all of the societal ills on that community. And once you do that, you are dehumanizing that group. And then you are capable of doing horrible, atrocious things to them, and you’re capable of excusing horrible, atrocious things.

That’s exactly what’s happening in America right now. Except instead of the Jewish community exclusively, we’re now doing this to people of Latin descent, brown and black people. We’re doing this to the LGBT community, in particular the trans community. And we are criminalizing them just for being members of that community. And then we are doing horrible atrocities to them.

Now, look, do I think America has gas chambers and concentration camps? No, I don’t. But remember, that’s not how Germany started. They started with mass deportations. Does that sound familiar? And now I don’t wonder, how did it get so bad? It got so bad, one horrible step at a time. Before you know it, you have what happened at Auschwitz-Birkenau.

We have a responsibility to do better.

We have a responsibility to learn from our history.

One of the things that scares me so much, and in fact, one of the things that motivated me to come here and make this video, is we are removing this learning from our education. We’re removing books about this time period from our education. Kids are growing up not learning about this. And anything that you do not learn about, any part of your history that you do not learn about, you are doomed to repeat. And we cannot afford to continue to repeat this.

We have to do better.

We must do better.

We must stand up and say, I recognize evil when I see it. And we’re going to stand up against said evils because these evils are causing massive, massive harms.

When you visit camps like these, there are several phrases you will hear over and over and over again. One such phrase we heard over and over and over again from the tour guide was, the survivors of these camps used to say, all roads lead towards death. And what they’re referring to is this nationalistic idea when it’s like, my nationality is better than everyone else’s. All roads along that path leads towards death. We heard that constantly.

Another thing that you hear is, never again. They say that here in this community, constantly. Never again. Never again.

One of the reasons why I’m motivated to make this video is because I’m deathly afraid that people don’t realize in America and in other parts of the world that it is currently happening again.

We are driving down this street. And this is where it ends. It is not by accident that we’re making this video on a train track because we’re heading down this train track. And this is literally, not a metaphor, this is literally where the train track ends. And they say never again. And I want to make videos so I can make sure that no one ever misses. That if we don’t learn about our history, we’re going to repeat it.

And then the other phrase you hear constantly is “Do Not Roget…” And we have to never forget. We owe these people who sacrificed their lives unwillingly. We cannot forget them. We have to remember and make sure their sacrifice meant something by ensuring that that level of atrocity will never happen again. That is the entire point of this video. And we have to live better. We have to do better.

You know, usually I make Solution Focused videos, and I’m happy to do that. And to be honest with you, while I was walking around the camp, I couldn’t help but about Solution Focused Brief Therapy, because the way you view the person that you’re talking to matters. The way you view someone impacts how you treat them, which is exactly what I’m trying to say here. Donald Trump is trying to manipulate the way you see groups of people so that he can then do certain things to them. Guys, don’t let it happen.

Be stubborn in your love and belief in your neighbors. Be stubborn in your belief that other people can be different and good. Do not think just because someone’s different that they’re bad to and for you, and they’re bad to and for you intentionally. Because once you start believing that, then you start allowing people to do horribly atrocious things while overlooking.

It’s a really horrible thing that happened here. And it’s scary to me that I feel like we haven’t learned the lesson, so thus we’re going to repeat it.

Our tour guide was this wonderful woman, and she was describing how two of her uncles passed away at Auschwitz. When she was giving us a tour, she showed us they had a room called the Starvation Room. And it was in the basement of one of the buildings, building 20. He was in room 19. And she walked by that room. And this is a tour guide. She works here. She’s working here for lots of years, probably done this thousand times. But every time she walked by the room where her uncle passed away, she found paperwork, which is rare, but she found paperwork going through the archives where it told her that her uncle died in this room. And she would touch that door every time she walked by.

This stuff has real personal connection, like there’s real people really struggling. And I couldn’t help but think as I’m walking through here, the people that suffered here, died here, the people that were taken here. Could they imagine that 80 something years later, almost to the year, 80 years later, a little more than 80 years later, it would be a museum where people would visit it. Things that happened here were so atrocious that we would come and visit it.

Guys, don’t let this happen again. We don’t want people coming to visit something 100 years from now that the American government portrayed on the world. We don’t want to do that. We have the ability to do much better now. And I call on you to recognize evil when you see it, because evil doesn’t show up immediately. Adolf Hitler did not say, I want to become the chancellor of Germany so I can eradicate Jews and open concentration camps. In fact, he was the time man of the year because he started off by saying, I want to bring back the strength and power of Germany. Guys, does that sound familiar? But every little step moved us a little bit closer until ultimately we have hundreds of thousands of people being moved here to the point where millions and millions of people died. It was awful.

So, love your neighbor, love your clients, love your work, but recognize evil when you see it, because evil is upon us. And I think too many of us aren’t recognizing it. So thanks for watching this video.