As Bernie Moreno’s gloating victory speech droned on and on like a used car salesman can do, Ohio looked forward to not one significant MAGA race but two, and the US Senate could shift if Sherod Brown were to lose.

It can’t possibly get any worse, but wait until Moreno floods local media with hateful anti-immigration ads. In a 2022 GOP Senate primary which he lost, Moreno spent what he described as the most expensive political ad campaign ever for an Ohio primary.

“They’re changing our nation. Let’s stop them,” Moreno said during the commercials. “Build the wall and make English our official language.”

Demonizing hard working immigrants is MAGA’s only policy – if it can even be called as such. Sticking up for immigrants – as diverse as Franklin County has become – of course will be the Ohio Immigrant Alliance, which once again will call on all people of faith and good conscience to denounce these attacks.

“Immigrants make enormous contributions and keep Ohio industries like agriculture, protein processing, and manufacturing alive,” says Ohio Immigrant Alliance director Lynne Tramonte.

A couple of years ago, the iconic gate to the infamous World War II-era extermination camp at Auschwitz was stolen. As far as I know, the “crime” has not been solved. At the top of that gate was this classic bit of Nazi propaganda, proclaimed to the millions of doomed incoming victims: “Arbeit Macht Frei” (Work Makes One Free).

 “Arbeit Macht Frei” is a pretty good summary of what is otherwise known as “the Protestant work ethic” that started in Europe during the Protestant Reformation. Right-wing nationalists, anti-communist, pro-capitalist, pro-war, anti-Semitic, racist and religious reformers such as John Calvin and Martin Luther would have agreed that “Arbeit Macht Frei” supported their dogmatic teachings about fulfilling one’s patriotic duty to the state, the church or the industry that employed the people. 

 Following Hitler’s fascist takeover and the total destruction of Germany’s liberal democratic government in 1933, Germans were indoctrinated to believe that it was their patriotic duty to defend the Nazi’s Thousand Year Reich by any means necessary, including laboring, killing or dying for the cause.

When the foreign policy of a country as large and significant as the United States is governed by a case of cognitive dissonance, terrible things happen. 

 These terrible things are, in fact, already taking place in the Gaza Strip, where well over 100,000 people have been killed, wounded or are missing, and an outright famine is currently ravaging the displaced population. 

Nearly 25 million Black and Latino people are missing or incorrectly listed in the voter databases sold by the political industry and used by campaigns to conduct voter outreach, according to a report from the Democracy & Power Innovation Fund. While 40 percent of Black and Latino people were effectively invisible in the vendor databases, only 18 percent of white people were missing or mislisted.