There’s a word where you begin to recognize the shapes of words and that leads to comprehension. I for one have trouble reading with saying the words in my head (though I try). It’s mostly visual

I think there’s a word for when you become so familiar with language that you stop sounding it out (reading with your ears) and begin to just recognize and achieve comprehension by the visible shapes (reading with your eyes). This is something that’s always bothered me as I’m a pretty big reader and I struggle with comprehension when I base things too much on sound (I struggle with poetry). So I’ve been trying to get back to an internal voice inside my head, which is difficult.

Things that help though include visualizing the scene, which usually blends the two together (literally trying to see it in your minds eye). Obviously this works better with fiction and the concrete as opposed to the abstract or something like a philosophical treatise. Another thing I’ve found helpful is to read a few pages aloud to get that inner voice going…after a few pages, when you lapse into silence it’s easier to hear the words.

If I’m truly trying to connect or having difficulty I sometimes twitch my fingers so that I’m giving all the words equal weight (as if I’m typing them on a computer.) I think it becomes very easy to skip over certain words but assigning weights and measures helps.

Really though, I’ve found it’s helpful to get in a good state of mind. Like, if I read after eight hours of Call of Duty my concentration will be awful, as opposed to, say, a good nights sleep and an early morning walk. I’ve found limiting distractions (writing down to do tasks on a dry erase board, airplane mode on phone, not reading by a TV, making sure your place is clean) helps me personally though I’m sure everyone’s different.

I agree that Hitler and Nazi comparisons get overused, but I also think it’s worth noting that there are several different “Hitlers.” Like, there’s the Hitler in 39 I believe, who tempered his anti-Semitic language at times because he still had concerns about international opinion then (though of course he’d already written Mein Keimpf). It’s important to note that, to me, it feels like the Nazi horror rolled out by degrees, and that often when we talk about him it’s with the hindsight of everything that comes after. But Hitler when he’s rising to power (I’ve read the Evan’s book as well) looks eerily similar at times to what’s happening in our country today. The way some people are willing to overlook the base pandering of the Republican Party to xenophobia and racism because of an “economic situation.” The way Hitler manufactured a “crisis” with the Reichtstag fire to get emergency powers, and told a lie about how the German army was “stabbed in the back” and lost World War 1, and the way he fed on popular resentments and economic woes. And, I believe the Nazis only won 40% of the vote, and also had their own paramilitary group (the brown shirts) which the Republicans have today.

Idk. I’m a pretty amateur historian who likes to read a lot, but I guess what I’m saying is that I think it makes sense to draw the parallels between what’s happening now and Hitler and the Nazis early on, because the horror that was unleashed after happened after certain safeguards started to be removed, when certain things became permissible and certain men attained power, if that makes sense.

And, one of the reasons why I’m so angry (and why studying history has made me so jaded) is because I feel like you start seeing things on a timeline of like potentiality and what’s to come. It’s perfectly possible that the people you see screaming at rallies and worshipping Trump, given the right circumstances, would be capable of the types of evils the Nazi system perpetrated (also see Rwanda). Of course, the opposite could be true, there could be people who are super into Trump that would resist evil when and if it’s ever brought about - one of the difficulties of human nature I think is that we never really know who we are until a situation or circumstance arises in which action is called for. But it is scary how far fringe beliefs once thought unacceptable by the mainstream party has filtered into Republicans discourse. Hell, even Barry Goldwater, that Republican icon, distanced himself from the John Birch Society when he was running against Johnson. But yeah, I don’t think it’s overblown at all -

Another edit: also, another mark of a fascist and dictator is that they’ll use vague language that they leave to their underlines to interpret and carry out their will. It’s telling that Hitler never actually specifically ordered or oversaw the installation of the Final Solution. Instead (and correct me if I’m wrong I’m going off memory here) I believe he said abstract things like “Jews are scum” etc etc and that his underlings interpreted his words to act in a certain way, which is absolutely something that Trump does in his language (shields from accountability, “I never specifically said that,” though his language gives permission to his followers)