The Nero Decree

We may be destroyed, but if we are, we shall drag a world with us.

— Adolf Hitler

While retreating from the Soviet Union in 1944, the Nazis used Schwellenpflüge ("rail rippers") to destroy Russia's railroads.

The Schwellenpflug (literally "crosstie plow") was a railcar that dragged an immense hook behind it.

The hook splintered the crossties under the rails, leaving the railway useless.

Officially named the Krupp C24, thousands of Schwellenpflüge were deployed by Germany to enemy nations throughout the war.

Sowing destruction was not a military tactic, but a scorched-earth policy known among Hitler's inner circle as the "Nero Decree."

“Our nation’s struggle for existence forces us to use all means to inflict lasting damage on the striking power of the enemy,” Hitler wrote in the decree.

The Nero Decree was the product of a fanatic whose ruthless Darwinism knew no bounds.

Today, another fanatical Darwinist, Trump, has his own Nero Decree.

It mandates the deaths of thousands of Republicans—Republicans too weak to overthrow the federal government. 

His Schwellenpflug isn't a railcar, but a microbe we call Covid-19. 

It, too, has hooks.

They rip through Republicans like a red-hot knife slices butter.

Since January 6, tens of thousands have died.

Many more will die in the coming months. 

But what of it? 

To Trump, they're just "losers" who are "actually made of garbage."

The line between between sanity and madness, like the line between victory and defeat, is thin.

POSTCRIPT: In Landslide, journalist Michael Wolff describes Trump's contempt for his followers: “Trump often expressed puzzlement over who these people were, their low-rent 'trailer camp' bearing and their 'get-ups,' once joking that he should have invested in a chain of tattoo parlors and shaking his head about 'the great unwashed.'" Like Hitler's, Trump's Darwinism debases everyone outside his family circle—even his most ardent followers.