The Scene staff
During my sophomore year of high school, our history teacher instructed us to write an essay with one of those classic writing prompts: “If you could have dinner with any three people, living or deceased, who would they be and why?”
It didn’t take me long to figure out my first choice.
While others might have deemed it controversial, I selected Adolf Hitler as one of my hypothetical guests, creating strict conditions to make it “safer.” Knowing this was purely fictional, I stated that some sort of barrier would surround the dinner, be it magical or futuristic, to keep everybody at the table, instantly translate all communication and keep others from lying.
Obviously, I wasn’t interested in justifying Hitler’s actions or finding some hidden reason to empathize with him. Instead, what I wanted was to understand what could drive a person to orchestrate such cruelty and the thoughts that ran through his mind when he decided millions of people should die.
How do you rationalize genocide?
At the time, it felt like more busywork to replace yet another assignment to keep us quiet and focused on something other than our phones and tablets. It was a little bit annoying at first, but interesting enough to explore and safely removed from anything I thought could happen in real life.
Now, in a cruel and ironic twist, I’ve started getting answers without ever needing that dinner.
With Donald Trump back in the White House and the normalization of dehumanizing language returning to political discourse, it’s hard not to see the parallels. The environment we’re living in now feels eerily like the early signs of the kind of regime I once thought only existed in history books.
For years, people warned this might happen. Activists, political commentators, and even TikTok influencers like Chris Mowrey, said Trump’s return would be more dangerous the second time around. Many of them were dismissed as paranoid or overdramatic. Then came Project 2025, a detailed roadmap for reshaping the executive branch to expand presidential power, released in 2023. Former vice president and presidential candidate Kamala Harris warned the public that Trump would act on it.
He said she was lying, and people believed it.
Now here we are.
Under Trump’s renewed leadership, we’re watching citizens get stripped of their basic protections. United States-born citizens have already faced deportation threats based on ancestry or the perceived legitimacy of their documentation. DEI programs, which provided necessary protections and representation for marginalized communities, have been eliminated across multiple federal agencies. Trans identities have been erased from government websites and official documents. Social Security Disability Insurance and Supplemental Security Income are now on the chopping block, with discussions in Congress about slashing funding in the name of “entitlement reform.”
Trump has floated the idea of awarding medals to women who give birth to six or more children, framing it as a patriotic duty. He has also suggested paying mothers to encourage higher birth rates, echoing historic pro-natalist policies used by authoritarian regimes to control demographic trends.
Perhaps most chilling, recent leaked memos and whistleblower reports have revealed that members of Trump’s advisory circle have discussed establishing government-run residential programs for neurodivergent individuals. These would include people with autism spectrum disorder, many of whom may be institutionalized against their will under the guise of care or public safety.
But here’s the kicker: We’ve already completed half of the requirements outlined in Project 2025. According to the Project 2025 Tracker, the roadmap designed to reshape and centralize power in the executive branch, we are already halfway through implementing policies that echo past authoritarian regimes. The fact that these changes are already under way is a stark reminder that the slow creep toward authoritarianism is happening right before our eyes.
This isn’t about whether Trump is the same as Hitler. He isn’t, and the United States is not 1930s Germany. But there is a pattern. Authoritarianism rarely arrives all at once. It moves slowly, shifting norms, redefining truth and eroding rights until the unthinkable feels ordinary.
So no, I never had that dinner. But I’m watching a version of it unfold in real time.
And the scariest part? This time, the guests aren’t hypothetical.