They Can't Imagine

This morning, I found myself writing two similar series of tweets on the poor coverage of the Republican health care initiatives, and the points here seem worth gathering, editing into paragraphs, and repeating.

In response to Charles Pierce, who commented "Am I wrong, or is the multi-faceted deliberate sabotage of the ACA the most undercovered element of this debate?"

I think most journalists just can't grasp how strange and horrible this is, and the big media outlets are covering for the Republicans. The journalists cannot imagine something like Nazi policy in the USA. We are looking at the "culling of the unfit," which is something out of the bad old days and most US journalists lack the imagination to even believe it is possible in the 21ˢᵗ century USA.

In response to @Trumpnado2016, who commented: "It walked talked & tweeted like an authoritarian kleptocrat it's whole life, why would anyone have doubted Trump'd be a wannabe dictator?"

People lack imagination, seems to be the basic answer. It's the same way that Kissinger was allowed to plan atrocities, and Nixon execute them (and sometimes Kissinger bypassed Nixon.) The so-called "normal" people couldn't imagine them, couldn't believe in them, and didn't act to prevent them. Rather like "good Germans," come to think of it.

Are we to lose our republic because we cannot imagine its enemies?