I read Nagorski’s Hitlerland this summer and found many things that read like warnings. Particularly the degree to which so many, both in Germany and abroad, regarded Hitler more as a joke than as a threat. I think most people imagine that when something that awful comes along it must have been obvious to everyone that it was both awful and potentially powerful. When you read how it really happened, though, Hitler’s arrival on the scene was met with either a shrug or, as often, with snickers. A big enabler of Hitler’s success was precisely that so many suffered a failure of imagination: they could not imagine that this ridiculous little man could get anywhere, that he even was serious in what he was saying, or that many people would take him seriously. While the present situation is probably not so dire, or even near it, seeing how people minimized, rationalized, and even tittered while Hitler rose should caution us against presumption. Sometimes when someone hints at dark things they might do, the dark things actually do follow.