In a surprise appearance at the Republican National Convention on Monday, President Trump told delegates that expansion of access to mail-in voting was politically driven.

“What they’re doing is using COVID to steal an election,” Trump argued. “They’re using COVID to defraud the American people, all of our people, of a fair and free election. We can’t do that.”

Many political observers have said it is unlikely a winner will be able to be declared on Election Day due to the delays that come with mail-in voting.

Now come fast forward to Friday, Sept 18, 2020, the start of the Feast of Trumpets for many of our brethren.

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the demure firebrand who in her 80s became a legal, cultural and feminist icon, died Friday. The Supreme Court announced her death, saying the cause was complications from metastatic cancer of the pancreas. Then the Democrats began to say the opposite to what they had said four years ago. And the Republicans also said the opposite to what they were saying four years ago when Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia died in President Obama’s final months in office. Actually his death was in February of that year.

If there is a close election and they have to go to the courts, a 9th judge may be needed.

And as I write this, protests are again breaking out in Kentucky over the grand jury’s decision not to indict police officers on criminal charges directly related to Breonna Taylor’s death. Mob rule is what they want. Justice in a court of law is not good enough. Two police were shot in the riot that night.

I want to remind you of your history.

The Nazi Party was one of several far-right political parties active in Germany after the end of the First World War.[1] The party platform included removal of the Weimar Republic, rejection of the terms of the Treaty of Versailles, radical antisemitism, and anti-Bolshevism.[2] They promised a strong central government, increased Lebensraum (living space) for Germanic peoples, formation of a Volksgemeinschaft (people’s community) based on race, and racial cleansing via the active suppression of Jews, who would be stripped of their citizenship and civil rights.[3]

While imprisoned in 1924 after the failed Beer Hall Putsch, Hitler dictated Mein Kampf to his deputy, Rudolf Hess.[4] The book is an autobiography and exposition of Hitler’s ideology in which he laid out his plans for transforming German society into one based on race. In it he outlined his belief in Jewish Bolshevism, a conspiracy theory that posited the existence of an international Jewish conspiracy for world domination in which the Jews were the mortal enemy of the German people. Throughout his life Hitler never wavered in his world view as expounded in Mein Kampf.[5] The Nazi Party advocated the concept of a Volksgemeinschaft (“people’s community”) with the aim of uniting all Germans as national comrades, whilst excluding those deemed either to be community aliens or of a foreign race (Fremdvölkische).[6]

Discrimination against Jews intensified after the Nazis seized power; following a month-long series of attacks by members of the Sturmabteilung (SA; paramilitary wing of the Nazi Party) on Jewish businesses, synagogues, and members of the legal profession, on 1 April 1933 Hitler declared a national boycott of Jewish businesses.[7] By 1933, many people who were not Nazi Party members advocated segregating Jews from the rest of German society.[8] The Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service, passed on 7 April 1933, forced all non-Aryans to retire from the legal profession and civil service.[9] Similar legislation soon deprived Jewish members of other professions of their right to practice.[9] In 1934, the Nazi Party published a pamphlet titled “Warum Arierparagraph?” (“Why the Aryan Law?”), which summarized the perceived need for the law.[10] As part of the drive to remove Jewish influence from cultural life, members of the National Socialist Student League removed from libraries any books considered un-German, and a nationwide book burning was held on 10 May.[11] Violence and economic pressure were used by the regime to encourage Jews to voluntarily leave the country.[12] Legislation passed in July 1933 stripped naturalized German Jews of their citizenship, creating a legal basis for recent immigrants (particularly Eastern European Jews) to be deported.[9] Many towns posted signs forbidding entry to Jews.[13] Throughout 1933 and 1934, Jewish businesses were denied access to markets, forbidden to advertise in newspapers, and deprived of access to government contracts. Citizens were harassed and subjected to violent attacks.[14]

Disenchanted with the unfulfilled promise of Nazi Party leaders to eliminate Jews from German society, SA members were eager to lash out against the Jewish minority as a way of expressing their frustrations. A Gestapo report from early 1935 stated that the rank and file of the Nazi Party would set in motion a solution to the “Jewish problem … from below that the government would then have to follow”.[27] Assaults, vandalism, and boycotts against Jews, which the Nazi government had temporarily curbed in 1934, increased again in 1935 amidst a propaganda campaign authorized at the highest levels of government.[27] Most non-party members ignored the boycotts and objected to the violence out of concern for their own safety.[28] The Israeli historian Otto Dov Kulka argues that there was a disparity between the views of the Alte KĂ€mpfer (longtime party members) and the general public, but that even those Germans who were not politically active favoured bringing in tougher new anti-Semitic laws in 1935.[29] The matter was raised to the forefront of the state agenda as a result of this anti-Semitic agitation.[30]

The Interior Minister Wilhelm Frick announced on 25 July that a law forbidding marriages between Jews and non-Jews would shortly be promulgated, and recommended that registrars should avoid issuing licences for such marriages for the time being. The draft law also called for a ban on marriage for persons with hereditary illnesses.[31]