It couldn’t happen here.

It couldn’t happen to me. I frightens me so much when people say that. What makes them so sure? How do they know? All the people to whom terrible things have happened, none of them thought it would be them. And many many people who have done and are doing terrible things, thought and think of themselves as good people.

Every time a war is started, the people who start it think a) it will be short b)it’s completely necessary and c) they will win.

Every time.

Every time there’s repression, every time freedom is endangered and finally lost, the people (most people) who enforce this believe, again, that it’s necessary, that it’s for a greater good. Maybe they think it’s sad, but they shrug: it can’t be helped. It’s how things are. It’s not that terrible after all. We can live without this freedom, and that freedom, and when our neighbors start to disappear, well, better not think about it.

Ordinary people.

Ordinary people who have a vague feeling that this comfort they feel is not based on something good. That this order they wanted and that now surrounds them is hollow. They wanted the old values back and now they feel empty, but hell if they tell anyone, hell if they change their minds. Always forward, never look back.

It has happened. It will happen again. It is happening now.

To you. Bad things will happen to you. And yes, again I mean American People — not only (oh ghosts are rising in Europe too), but primarily, right now, because you just elected a man president that is very likely to make these bad things happen. (His rival in the election could have made bad things happen too, yes. But not like this. Not like this.)

And, listen, listen: you will let him do bad things. You will be quiet, you will look the other way, you will shrug.

Yes, you. And I. And we.

We look at history, we look at fiction even, tv shows, and it’s all so clear. So apparent who’s evil, who’s right and who’s wrong. Of course we would choose the right side, always. We’d never be a Nazi. We’d be the resistance, we’d be the good guys, Oskar Schindler. We would be the soldiers going out to war against injustice, to bring balance back to the world, even if it cost us tears and blood and death.

It’s a nice story to read about. It’s a good movie to watch. Pass on the popcorn.

But that Muslim family that moved in next to you? Them, you don’t trust. What’s with the headscarves? They repress their women, everyone know that. Even when the women tell you they’re just fine, it’s probably because they’re coerced. And what if they are terrorists. They could be.

You want them gone.

They are uncomfortable. They are different. They should be somewhere else. So when they take them away, are you going to fight? Are you going to ask where they are taking them? Are you going to go with them, to make sure they are all right? If they disappear in the middle of the night, are you going to worry? Or are you going to sigh in relief?

That teenager whose friends with your daughter. She dies her hair all colors and you daughter told you she wants that too. And if it were only the hair. It’s the way she talks. Not about normal teenage girl things like boys and clothes and gossip. She reads weird books, she uses words like neuronormative and cisgender and tells you you eat all the wrong foods. How can food you’ve been eating for fifty years, food your mother cooked for you, be wrong.

She annoys you. She frightens you. She stands for a world you don’t feel a part of.

So when they put her in another school, a school for “special” people, people like her, are you going to protest? Are you going to write a letter to the school, to the government, to the media, saying that we need diversity and different ideas in our schools so our children learn about tolerance and dialogue? Or is there going to be another sigh of relief?

Just like the sigh of relief you uttered when they stopped teaching those books at school. You daughter brought home a school essay marked C because, the teacher wrote, she was not straightforward enough, and you are sad because she’s sad, but you tell her you agree: why did she have to use “disconsolate” when “sad” is such a nice, simple word?

Simple things are good.

So when those weird people, loud people who demand rights for no reason except their skin color or the way they like to have sex, when they disappear, you’re not going to the streets, are you? Of they don’t want to be like you, if they don’t want to be simple, well, that’s too bad. They’ve had their time, you’ll think, but now it’s my time.

Again.

The weird people are going to disappear, and the weird books along with them, and the news and school classes about things that are complicated. There’s going to be one opinion, the normal opinion to have. Things will be simple.

The Muslim people are going to disappear. And the refugees. And the foreigners with weird habits who cook weird things who smell weird (there are still going to be Thai restaurants, though. Somehow.)

Won’t that be a wonderful world? A calm world, a prosperous world. A world as it should be.

A great America.

A beautiful world to be a hero in, and watch movies about Nazis in the evening, with a big bowl of popcorn. A world were everything is right.

A world were nothing bad could ever happen to us, and we could never do anything wrong.