Elie Wiesel, Donald Trump, and the near future

[Cyrano]

Elie Wiesel died last week. He was a man who spent his teenage years in a concentration camp and spent the rest of his life testifying that those camps actually existed, keeping the Holocaust fresh in memory, and fighting those who deny that the Holocaust even took place. He spent his life trying to make the world a better place.

And what about Donald Trump? The best guess anyone can make right now is that, if elected, he will be the most ignorant man to ever become president. And what would he be capable of? Many, myself included, expect the worst with him in the Oval Office.

Elie Wiesel spent his life warning us what to guard against. Is Donald Trump the type of "leader" Wiesel was warning us of? Do we really want to find out?

Is there some kind of meaningful, universal symmetry to Wiesel's death and Trump's candidacy? I have no idea. But does anyone really think that Trump is running to make this world a better place?

[Native]

1. "But does anyone really think that Trump is running to make this world a better place?"

Here's an answer from the Department of the Obvious, "No." I firmly believe that only people who are oblivious to the obvious would be duped.

[Sunlei]

2. In 2009 Elie Wiesel spoke with his FRIEND Obama, he said, " You are our last hope."

Holocaust survivor and Nobel peace prize laureate Elie Wiesel has said he is writing a book with President Obama, fresh from election victory. Speaking to Israeli news site Haaretz, the author, 84, said he was working on a project which would pick up again after Tuesday's presidential elections were over. "Obama and I decided to write a book together, a book of two friends," said Wiesel, author of the bestselling memoir Night, in which he recounts the story of his time at Auschwitz, where his mother and sister were murdered, and of the death march which ended at Buchenwald.

Obama first saw Wiesel when the author lectured at the college where Obama was a student, but the pair became friends in 2009 when Wiesel was invited to join the president on a visit to Buchenwald. Obama said to Wiesel at the end of his speech: "The last word has to be yours here," the author told Haaretz. Wiesel went on to make a speech in which he said to Obama: "Mr President, we have such high hopes for you, because you, with your moral vision of history, will be able and compelled to change this world into a better place ... You are our last hope."