Hitler made the German armed forces swear an oath of loyalty to him. Not the state; not the constitution, not the government, not even to the Nazi party, but to him, the Fuhrer, personally.

Tyrannies are big on oaths, especially those taken in public with everyone watching. Of course, the Trump call to voters is not directly comparable to Hitler's coercion of the Army, but it reinforces a pattern. Its comparable to the "oath" taken by GOP candidates during a debate to refuse even a token concession of raising some taxes 10% in order to allow an overall tax cut of 90%. And then there's the the infamous Norquist "Taxpayer Protection Pledge" that has made tax negotiations in congress impossible by making it impossible to elect a fiscally moderate Republican. Public oaths, over and above those prescribed by law at solemn but voluntary actions, like taking political office or joining the armed forces, is a thinly disguised technique to get the enslaved to collaborate in their own enslavement. It all goes back to the Pledge of Allegiance. Can you imagine anything more vile than making little kids in school swear to something they barely understand, to use peer pressure and coercion to plant and enforce ideological purity?

Oh yeah, the defenders of this obscenity will immediately object to this, but they can't see how failure to publicly swear an oath will immediately employ the threat of public violence and group pressure through ostracism to establish a common civic religion. Of course the indoctrinated won't see it that way, but just think how it looks to someone from outside the system, someone who hasn't been exposed to it since childhood.

When my cousin left Cuba at age 16 (on the Pedro Pan program), he came to stay with us in Florida. It was about 1962. In our first day together in high school, we were subjected to the morning Pledge of Allegiance/Lord's Prayer ceremony. My cousin was stunned, he remarked to me, "Getting me away from political indoctrination like this is why my parents got me out of Cuba in the first place."

And at our first football game, when the audience rose to sing "Dixie"
(with much more passion and enthusiasm than was lavished on "The Star Spangled Banner"), he gasped in astonishment as I explained to him just what was happening. "But the your Civil War was fought and lost a hundred years ago."

No, he was wrong about that. Its still being fought.