Nelson’s Corner | May 2025

“Hitler did some good things.” – Donald J. Trump

It takes a certain kind of stupidity to favor Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf over Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.

But that’s the Trump administration for you. Maya Angelou is banned from the Naval Academy library, but two copies of Mein Kampf remain.

In response to a New York Times report on this library malpractice a reader commented:

“The midshipmen are among the best and the brightest of young adults. They don’t get to the Naval Academy by being incurious.  Banning books and censoring speakers will just inspire them to find out what is so dangerous that it needs to be hidden.”

If only.

I offer no argument that midshipmen are not bright young adults. But the reader’s second sentence is naive. They do get to the Naval Academy by being incurious — in part.

The American system of secondary education is designed to extinguish curiosity. It is a system that rewards “right”answers and has little patience for questions. By the time ambitious kids run the gauntlet of standardized tests, honor rolls, PSATs, SATs, APs and perfect GPAs, they have little appetite for curiosity.

I have often told, with relish, the story of my former student Abby, a delightful girl of color who had matriculated at Princeton with curiosity intact, thanks to a progressive education and fierce independence. In a freshman seminar, the professor asked students to write an essay.

Several nervous overachievers asked, “What should we write about?”

The prof answered, “Anything you want. I just want to get a sense of how you think and write.”

“But, but, what do you want us to write??”

“Just write about what you’re interested in.”

“But, but, what are we supposed to be interested in?”

Abby was amused.

So I suspect the Trumpers had no cause for worry. Earnest midshipmen would be unlikely to withdraw either Mein Kampf or I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings from their library.

Fierce competition reduces intellectual breadth. Right wing zealotry suffocates it.

Shortly after the banning of “woke” and “DEI” books from the Academy library, the Supreme Court heard a case involving the rights of parents to remove their children from school if storybooks with LGBTQ+ themes were being discussed. The Montgomery County (MD) system initially allowed opt-out, but then changed course, finding that opt-out was unmanageable and also stigmatized LGBTQ+ kids and families.

Religious parents sued, saying that books like Uncle Bobby’s Wedding violated the First Amendment’s protection of the free exercise of religion. I am amused and amazed that faithful folks are consistently insistent that the mere existence of gay folks violates their “free exercise” of religion. Strange religion, that.

They are likely to prevail. SCOTUS has already supported a web designer who felt that crafting a website for a gay couple caused theological agony. They affirmed the right of a football coach to conduct a public school prayer meeting on the 50-yard line, and they cheered on Catholic social workers in Philadelphia who refused to work with same-sex couples applying to take in foster children.

In America’s accelerating slide into a Christian nationalist, oligarchical fascism, no warning should be dismissed as hyperbole. The seemingly disparate threads with which I began this piece are the ingredients of a parallel to the Hitler Youth.

Starting small, in the 1920s, Hitler’s youth movement gradually subsumed all others and grew to eight million members by 1940. Membership became mandatory and any parents who refused were “investigated.”

At first glance, our contemporary version may appear relatively isolated and benign. But there is a brick-by-brick dismantling of a secular public system while a school choice movement is diverting public funds to conservative Christian schools.

I am not broadly comparing Christianity to Nazism. But the particular form of Christianity being propagated by America’s right wing is frighteningly similar. LBGTQ+ folks are marginalized and dehumanized. Immigrants are kidnapped in broad daylight by hooded thugs and “disappeared.” Disabled women, men and children are denied services and dignity.

And I encourage my Jewish friends to be very, very wary of the right wing’s use of antisemitism as a cudgel against Palestinians and their supporters. That cudgel is likely coming your way too. If you think the Christian nationalists surrounding Trump are supporters of Jews, I’ve got a Tesla Cybertruck to sell you.

In an October 2024 interview with the New York Times, John Kelly, the longest-serving chief of staff in the first Trump administration, warned that Trump met the definition of a fascist and that Trump had said that “Hitler did some good things.”

I’m afraid that’s the world we’re living in.

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