Children entering shower houses with their parents only to find out there would be no water falling onto their heads; only lethal gas creeping into their chest.
Men in uniform blindly taking orders to murder six million Jews — for being Jewish. One and a half million of them — children.
At least another 500,000 non-Jewish lives snuffed out — because Hitler deemed them undesirable.
Mass graves. Cattle cars loaded with innocent people. Some children, some pregnant women — packed in like sardines with the stench of their own feces rushing up from the floor.
I can hear some folks out there right now thinking: “Good Lord, Golden — change the record. Why are you talking about the Holocaust again?”
The reason is because some people — especially people who know better (or are supposed to know better) — just can’t seem to stop offending victims and survivors. People like Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
This morning, Kennedy was asked on national television about moronic comparisons he made earlier this year between his descriptions of his voice being silenced during COVID — and Jews who were slaughtered in the Holocaust. He failed miserably.
Here’s what Kennedy originally said in January:
“Even in Hitler’s Germany, you could cross the Alps to Switzerland. You could hide in an attic like Anne Frank did…The mechanisms are being put in place that will make it so none of us can run and none of us can hide.”
He was complaining about the new 5G wireless communication networks and about vaccine passports.
Kennedy subsequently apologized for these remarks, just as he did a few years earlier ago after using the word “Holocaust” as a comparative to children who were being harmed by vaccines.
These apologies haven’t seemed to mean much to him, as he’s whipped out this moronic analogy at least three separate times. And when asked to reiterate his apology this morning, this announced challenger to Joe Biden, Jr. in the 2024 Democratic Primary rolled the dice again. He tried to justify his January Holocaust remarks. Talking in circles; making it worse.
What an easy political question. “Thanks for bringing that up, Michael. Of course I stand by my apology. I would never intentionally try to hurt anyone, much less families that have experienced the indescribably horrors of the Holocaust. The point I was trying to make was that right now…” Too easy. But nah, not Junior.
And save me the whole “politically correct” thing. Even Forrest Gump knew that “stupid is as stupid does.”
The dumb comments are also dangerous, because there are just too many stupid/hateful people out there who’re ready to scoop up these words with relish and mangle them into something worse. They don’t know any better. People who are long in the public eye and claim public service as their calling are supposed to. Minimum bar.
Here’s the thing, Bob.: Anne Frank was 16 years old and died at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. The reason you know her name is because of a diary she wrote. But there are more than 6 million other names that you don’t know — real people — who died sickening deaths at the hands of the Nazis. Systematically killed.
Respect these victims and their descendants. It’s the easiest possible thing you can do when making whatever case you’re making in public. If you can’t manage that, then sidle yourself back to the sidelines. Stat.
Stop. Being. Stupid.