Don’t Be A Sucker

It’s hard for me to concentrate on anything today besides the white supremacist violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, and how happy the neo-Nazis are that President Trump refuses to condemn them. Other essays and articles already address how deeply this affects those of us who aren’t Nazis (I particularly recommend John Scalzi’s essay) and I don’t want to just virtue signal or contribute to the noise with a long post restating what others are saying.

So let me simply leave this video, made by the US War Department in 1947, called “Don’t Be A Sucker.” The basic brief of the short film is that it “Admonishes Americans that they will lose their country if they let fanaticism and hatred turn them into “suckers.” “Let’s forget about ‘we’ and ’they’ — let’s think about us!”

70 years later, that message seems more relevant than ever. Let’s not listen to those who want to divide us into the “master race” and everyone else, lets say no to violence, and let’s be good to each other, okay?