It all started with a group of savvy kids on TikTok, of all places, discussing our politics. In a moment of curiosity, Jean asked Peter, “Have you ever seen Donald Trump laugh?” This seemingly innocent question sparked a wave of AI software searches, leading to a surprising revelation—Donald Trump, it seems, has never laughed.

Admittedly, I may be a bit unconventional, but this question has undeniably become one of the most thought-provoking revelations of the campaign. The meme, which originated from a TikTok chat and spread, has now become a serious political issue and a testament to the power of social media in shaping public discourse.

Former FBI Director said it was true; Trump has never laughed.

What a mess we are in.

This revelation didn’t just resonate with the young minds on TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube. As many described it, it was a wake-up call, prompting me and others to delve into what psychologists say about the significance of laughter in our lives.

The shrinks I saw quoted did think it was a bit chilling. The Atlantic wrote thoughtfully about the historical meaning of a woman’s laugh.

I wasn’t sure what to make of it until I saw Trump ridiculing (or trying) to ridicule Harras and her laugh, calling her “lying Kamala” and also “crazy” and “dumb as a rock.” (Is Jesus, my childhood hero,   behind all of this?)

This triggered yet another backlash across social media. Lots of people like Kamala Harris because she laughs loudly and often. They like that about her; they see it as warm and human.

The new and softer Trump is getting close to the old and clueless Biden. He doesn’t get how he looks and how out of sync he is with women, African American women, moderates, independents, and young people all over the place. He positions himself as a savior and warrior. He is not fun to listen to.

The world is not a Trump rally, and Trump, once known for his savvy, has lost touch with many Americans. His jokes are not funny, his speeches are not inspiring, I wince at his cruelty, like so many others, and I am a lot more hardened and cynical than millions of people about to vote.

We’ve all gone too far when talking about political opponents. George Washington warned us in his Farewell Address that our appetite to defeat the other side could lead us to ruin. We’re not at ruin yet, but it’s getting close.

In my revitalized interest in our politics, I have also come across a growing number of people, even those who should know better, comparing Donald Trump to Adolf Hitler.

I have never been willing to jump on this train; evocations of Hitler rarely are justified in the context of our country or our politics. People evoke Hitler too often and for all of the wrong reasons.

For one thing, Hitler was a lot more murderous than Trump and was a masterful politician, which Trump is not. There is no evidence that Trump is planning genocide or advocating it. However, when he talks about the illegal immigrants crossing the border, he is getting closer to the language and venom that Hitler used to pump up hatred of the Jews.

Trump is not one for fighting global wars; he opposes all of them and claims he can prevent all of them from happening.

In our country, half of the people at least come from other countries; our diversity is not a woke fad but a significant element of our country and past. In Hitler’s Germany, there were no large groups of outsiders other than the Jews; they were the closest thing he could find for someone to blame the failures of the government on and the embarrassment of Germany losing World War I.

Hitler had his horrific kind of integrity; he never wavered or wobbled because he was determined to wipe them out. It seems he believed what he said. I’ve never thought that Trump believed a word he said. Otherwise, why lie so often? What he says seems shaped mainly through what he thinks an audience likes to hear.

I see no Hiter blend of determination and hatred in Trump; he calls all of his opponents the most awful names he can think of; he is vulgar, cruel, dishonest, and destructive. It isn’t limited to any one group; almost everyone gets it sooner or later. The trigger is disloyalty to him.

I’ve read Hitler’s memoir Mein Kampf once or twice and browsed through some Hitler quotes the other day. One thing Trump does that reminds me of Hitler is his repeated depiction of immigrants – working people, just like the many millions who have fled to America since its inception – as murderers and thugs.

When he calls them “scum” and “rapists” and “parasites” and invaders coming after our women and children and plotting slaughter and ruin and the destruction of our communities and values, he is using the same tactics that Hitler used to get Germans to justify and even celebrate the holocaust.

With Trump, I always think he doesn’t mean harm; he has no fresh ideas or goals. Every speech is a TV script, the hero persona that has taken him over.

He seems to know nothing about history and cares even less.

He has admitted to reading Mein Kampf and has been winking at Nazi and Christian nationalists ever since he took office. He wants to stand with the tough guys.

He has his way of communicating with them, and they get the message: outsiders are pouring into the country to rape our women and children and ravage our communities and traditions.

To me, that doesn’t make him a Hitler, as uncomfortable as it is; it just makes him a clown who has no idea what America is about or how weak a political candidate he is.

I was born Jewish, but I have never suffered from any anti-Semitism. I am grateful to this country for saving my family and giving me a life of freedom. I don’t believe for a second that Donald Trump wants or is capable of taking that from me.

Skimming through Mein Kampf, I found a passage Adolf Hitler wrote that does remind me of the hateful language Trump uses when he wants to make immigrants the most evil thing facing America, next to the radical evil scum liberals who would thwart and challenge him and turn their children into sexual mutants.

Wrote Hitler: “Only the Jew knew that by an able and persistent use of propaganda, heaven itself could be presented to the people as if it were hell and, vice versa, the most miserable kind of life can be presented as if it were paradise. The Jew knew this and acted accordingly. But the German, or rather his Government, did not have the slightest suspicion of it. The heaviest penalties had to be paid during the war for that ignorance.”

So perhaps Trump’s inability to laugh is chilling; I can’t say for sure. The question is more significant than me.

Hitler understood rather than co-opted the idea that most middle-class Germans, just like most working and middle-class Americans, can be frightened into hatred and dread of the outsiders. “The most miserable kind of life can be presented as if it were a parasite.”

That would be the radical leftists evoked at Trump rallies, the secret plotters of the most miserable kind of life. Or the plotting Jews stabbing the Germans in their backs.

Trump has learned, intentionally or not, the lesson of outsider hatred. It has worked for him and is now enthusiastically embraced by what’s left of the Republican Party.

People are genetically programmed to fear outsiders and to believe and turn to people who promise to drive them out. That thread has existed all through American history. Trump didn’t invent it; he exploited it.

Trump has pledged to build the most significant concentration camps we have ever seen to house the illegals he plans to hunt down (like dogs, he said during one speech) and drive out of the country. Yet another stunningly stupid wording for a presidential candidate who is asking – demanding – that Jews vote for him.

It isn’t that he is evil; he isn’t smart enough.

He is just plain dumb behind the thinning mask of a great entertainer. Raising his fist as he was being hauled out of his rally was genius; it is what Trump does best. He never stops thinking of the image of himself he wants to project.

Hitler understood that making the others, outsiders who came from elsewhere, into rabid dogs could become perfectly rational, even patriotic when repeated often enough and hateful enough.

The issue for me is not whether Trump wants to be Hitler (can you imagine Hitler in Margo-a-go Largo? That is not remotely possible, even if true.

The problem is that those kids got me thinking, something most of our pundits have been unable to do while texting from their laptops all day to one another to learn what is happening.

I also learned that Adolf Hitler was never seen laughing or smiling. His grave and angry persona gave credibility to the idea that the country was in grave danger, and only he could fix it. Trump used exact words and images in his speeches.

This does not make me believe that Trump is a Hitler, perhaps only that he has learned a few things from him and from the other autocrats he loves to hang out with.

The war against outsiders got him to the White House once, and he thinks it will work again. But unlike battered and defeated Germany, America is just crawling with people who came from the outside or who have been made to feel like outsiders.

America has become more diverse today  but it is not the same country as in 2016. Millions of women have changed their ideas about politics.

The Jews don’t work any longer as open targets, and Christian Evangelicals have curiously embraced them as sacred to Christianity. Women have had it with grumpy and nasty old white men telling them how many babies to have and when and how.

The Christian Nationalists still hate the Jews; they seem to love Trump. Yes, it’s getting complicated.

The immigrants coming over our borders will do just fine as targets; they are the new Jews of extremist politics.

You can call me an ostrich hiding his head in the sand; I do not believe that Hitlerism will happen here.