Trump vs. Hitler and Mussolini
DiscussionsHistory: On learning from and writing history
Rejoignez LibraryThing pour poster.
Ce sujet est actuellement indiqué comme "en sommeil"—le dernier message date de plus de 90 jours. Vous pouvez le réveiller en postant une réponse.
1Urquhart
Opinions are cheap and everyone has one. However, what historically based facts do you have for believing the Donald Trump is either similar to or different from Hitler and Mussolini?
2proximity1
Leaving aside the fact that all politicians, all demagogues and all objects of cults of personality share a certain number of common traits both among their fellow-peer types and, less so, between these three types--the distinctions are not neat and clear but rather blur across a continuum--there are a few commonalities I see between Trump and Hitler which separate them from the rest of the crowd of their less similar look-alikes.
There is in Trump a similar aspect of what Hitler exhibited in these ---
■ Each presents himself as Destiny's chosen agent --his imperiled nation's sole savior. Both have a complete and irrational faith in his ability and cannot accept the possibility of his failure. ETA: As Hitler believed about Germany, Trump regards the U.S., which he views as a nativist nation of an organic tribe--ironically, its immigrant settlers--and their "America," as an organic historico-mythic "whole" entity which is transcendant and endowed, like great American men and women in history, with a special meaning and purpose. These make America, as, for Hitler, they made Germany, more than a political construction, more than the United States of America as a set of accidental historical facts. Hitler saw his role and duty to be the guardian and savior of this historical-mythic nation from social and economic forces which threatened to destroy the unique German identity of its tribal people and Trump seems to have something of this view of his role.
■ ADDED since original posting : In Hitler's time (Weimar republic) weak, ill-functioning and ill-established democratic institutions and habits; in our own, a long and woefully debased and corrupted set of democratic institutions and practices.
■ a primacy on force, on coercion, over achieving things through persuasion (not that Trump is incapable of this)--"the art of the deal" is all well and good where force meets force but where Trump senses that he can impose his will on others, then, rather than "let's make a deal," "It's my way or the highway." In general, what's regarded rightly or wrongly as the "practical" is prized over the "theoretical."
□ As a corollary to this, he admires this view, this attitude, when he sees it in others: Vladimir Putin, Egypt's Abdel Fattah el-Sisi*, the drearily conventional view of the "strong-man"-type. (That may be effective in the business-world where, as chief executive officer, you can order people around and fire those who aren't compliant but in Trump's U.S. national government (unlike Hitler's Nazi Germany), power comes from your official powers combined with what you possess in public support. Those ranged against Trump have these, too, and Trump cannot simply fire or eliminate them as it suits him --Hitler, on the other hand, could and did do that.)
■ A profound and unrelenting sense of insecurity about his own inner self-worth. For the compensation of which he seeks power, wealth and domination and control of subordinates and has an insatiable appetite for these and for praise from others.
■ Hitler had a gift for public speaking and, in a quite similar way, (reductive concepts, oversimplification, the use of gross terms of power and force and of vague but emotionally-charged terms ) so does Trump. The rhetorical style is similar. Both appeal to emotion rather than to cold unemotional "reason" even though these are not neatly distinct things. Reason and emotion are always bound up together but one may play on one aspect more than the other in rhetorical appeals.
■ Each is fortunate in having audiences whose hard experiences have brutalized them and rendered them susceptible to such rhetorical appeals. Both have audiences who surrender their critical faculties and devote themselves to a figure viewed as their savior.
■ Each successfully imposed himself upon other supposedly wiser, more responsible and powerful contemporaries in business, social and political affairs.
■ Each exhibits reckless tendencies and is not inclined to draw back from impending damage. The tendency is rather to double down than to cut losses.
■ Each is exceptionally well-suited to his confused and chaotic times.
----------
Obviously none of this is my own original insight.
For all these points I've relied on my reading of others' views of Hitler and made the correspondent connection to Trump where it seems to me to fit :
William Shirer : Rise and Fall of the Third Reich; Berlin Diary.
Ian Kershaw : Hitler.
Victor Klemperer : "LTI ( Lingua Tertii Imperii). Notizbuch eines Philologen" (French edition : "LTI, la langue du IIIe Reich : carnets d'un philologue") ;
" I Shall Bear Witness the Diaries of Victor Klemperer 1933-41 (v. 1)" & 1942-45 (v. 2).
George Orwell: "Essays, Letters & Journalism" 1939-1945 (views and writings on Hitler)
---------
* Updated correction.
There is in Trump a similar aspect of what Hitler exhibited in these ---
■ Each presents himself as Destiny's chosen agent --his imperiled nation's sole savior. Both have a complete and irrational faith in his ability and cannot accept the possibility of his failure. ETA: As Hitler believed about Germany, Trump regards the U.S., which he views as a nativist nation of an organic tribe--ironically, its immigrant settlers--and their "America," as an organic historico-mythic "whole" entity which is transcendant and endowed, like great American men and women in history, with a special meaning and purpose. These make America, as, for Hitler, they made Germany, more than a political construction, more than the United States of America as a set of accidental historical facts. Hitler saw his role and duty to be the guardian and savior of this historical-mythic nation from social and economic forces which threatened to destroy the unique German identity of its tribal people and Trump seems to have something of this view of his role.
■ ADDED since original posting : In Hitler's time (Weimar republic) weak, ill-functioning and ill-established democratic institutions and habits; in our own, a long and woefully debased and corrupted set of democratic institutions and practices.
■ a primacy on force, on coercion, over achieving things through persuasion (not that Trump is incapable of this)--"the art of the deal" is all well and good where force meets force but where Trump senses that he can impose his will on others, then, rather than "let's make a deal," "It's my way or the highway." In general, what's regarded rightly or wrongly as the "practical" is prized over the "theoretical."
□ As a corollary to this, he admires this view, this attitude, when he sees it in others: Vladimir Putin, Egypt's Abdel Fattah el-Sisi*, the drearily conventional view of the "strong-man"-type. (That may be effective in the business-world where, as chief executive officer, you can order people around and fire those who aren't compliant but in Trump's U.S. national government (unlike Hitler's Nazi Germany), power comes from your official powers combined with what you possess in public support. Those ranged against Trump have these, too, and Trump cannot simply fire or eliminate them as it suits him --Hitler, on the other hand, could and did do that.)
■ A profound and unrelenting sense of insecurity about his own inner self-worth. For the compensation of which he seeks power, wealth and domination and control of subordinates and has an insatiable appetite for these and for praise from others.
■ Hitler had a gift for public speaking and, in a quite similar way, (reductive concepts, oversimplification, the use of gross terms of power and force and of vague but emotionally-charged terms ) so does Trump. The rhetorical style is similar. Both appeal to emotion rather than to cold unemotional "reason" even though these are not neatly distinct things. Reason and emotion are always bound up together but one may play on one aspect more than the other in rhetorical appeals.
■ Each is fortunate in having audiences whose hard experiences have brutalized them and rendered them susceptible to such rhetorical appeals. Both have audiences who surrender their critical faculties and devote themselves to a figure viewed as their savior.
■ Each successfully imposed himself upon other supposedly wiser, more responsible and powerful contemporaries in business, social and political affairs.
■ Each exhibits reckless tendencies and is not inclined to draw back from impending damage. The tendency is rather to double down than to cut losses.
■ Each is exceptionally well-suited to his confused and chaotic times.
----------
Obviously none of this is my own original insight.
For all these points I've relied on my reading of others' views of Hitler and made the correspondent connection to Trump where it seems to me to fit :
William Shirer : Rise and Fall of the Third Reich; Berlin Diary.
Ian Kershaw : Hitler.
Victor Klemperer : "LTI ( Lingua Tertii Imperii). Notizbuch eines Philologen" (French edition : "LTI, la langue du IIIe Reich : carnets d'un philologue") ;
" I Shall Bear Witness the Diaries of Victor Klemperer 1933-41 (v. 1)" & 1942-45 (v. 2).
George Orwell: "Essays, Letters & Journalism" 1939-1945 (views and writings on Hitler)
---------
* Updated correction.
3Urquhart
2 proximity1
Thank you very much for taking all the time to answer my question. Your answer is greatly appreciated.
It is no secret that the response you posted was information and insight not available anywhere else.
Books, magazines, and the internet are sources for lots of noise but very little signal or meaningful analysis. The signal to noise ratio is always a very poor one in the best of times.
Thank you. I just wish your posting was available to more people. It is important and is my reason for starting this History group, ie, a place where people can truly inform others through history and learn from others.
Thank you.
Urquhart.
NB: My wife's father see's a very strong resemblance between Hitler and Trump. He was in the camps in Germany during the war and after the war moved here.
Thank you very much for taking all the time to answer my question. Your answer is greatly appreciated.
It is no secret that the response you posted was information and insight not available anywhere else.
Books, magazines, and the internet are sources for lots of noise but very little signal or meaningful analysis. The signal to noise ratio is always a very poor one in the best of times.
Thank you. I just wish your posting was available to more people. It is important and is my reason for starting this History group, ie, a place where people can truly inform others through history and learn from others.
Thank you.
Urquhart.
NB: My wife's father see's a very strong resemblance between Hitler and Trump. He was in the camps in Germany during the war and after the war moved here.
4proximity1
You're welcome.
It strikes me as very peculiar and ill-considered that so many people see something useful in trying to make a taboo of comparing Hitler's characteristics to certain of their contemporaries.
I think that part of the motive is a desire to preserve Hitler's crimes and his personality as being what are supposedly the unique and ultimate in outrageous statecraft. (That has the perverse effect of making it more likely that they won't be the ultimate.)
But people like Hitler have always existed and will continue to exist in different circumstances which heighten or diminish their actual danger to the public. If people can and do publicly recognize how Trump's (or some other political figure's) personality resembles Hitler's, then, by that publicly acknowledged recognition alone, the potential danger is reduced.
--- I should add this, to me, paramount point which I very nearly overlooked :
If one accepts, as I do, that political figures more or less Hitler-like are almost a given of the political landscape but that they ordinarily pass without being either much noticed or very influential because the circumstances are usually simply not propitious, then one can see, first, that, what's much more worrisome than their budding presence in the political landscape is the presence of a set of political conditions which favor their rise, their thriving and their coming to power. About the latter we can, in theory at least, do something effective. And then, one can see, secondly, that if we're vigilant, we can maintain democratic institutions in a robust condition which allow little or no favorable conditions for one of the Hitler-like types, waiting for their chance, to find and to seize it.
Third and finally, one can see that, if, on the contrary, democratic institutions are allowed to be so corrupted and debased that they are rendered ineffective, then, by the time a Hitler-like figure has risen to prominence, it's likely to be practically too late to do very much to stop him (or her).
Therefore, our focus ought to be where it's earliest and most effective--denying any so-far unknown candidate the conditions which make his rise and success practically inevitable. (One might deduce from this that it means that political assassination as a supposed remedy is, on the contrary, not a dependable remedy because it leaves the prevailing conditions unaffected or perhaps even worsens them by inviting violent reactions. This makes the next demagogue's appearance more rather than less likely.)
Obviously we've failed ourselves in that latter respect. So, now we find ourselves in circumstamces which, unless and until the conditions favorable to the rise of such political figures are addressed, unless and until healthy democratic institutions are rehabilitated, we'll remain prey to this kind of politician's appeal and, eventually, one of them shall be elected.
If Trump's bid fails this time, there shall be another attempt by someone else later--and that next candidate might be a great deal more dangerous and more like Hitler --if we allow the conditions which favor this to prevail.
That is why, to my way of thinking, stopping this or that candidate is secondary in importance to rehabilitating our political institutions.
Obama did virtually nothing in that regard despite having two terms in office. Hillary Clinton, complacent in her view of our circumstances, seems not inclined to do much of anything about them, either.
I believe that should concern us even more than Trump himself in these circumstances.
It strikes me as very peculiar and ill-considered that so many people see something useful in trying to make a taboo of comparing Hitler's characteristics to certain of their contemporaries.
I think that part of the motive is a desire to preserve Hitler's crimes and his personality as being what are supposedly the unique and ultimate in outrageous statecraft. (That has the perverse effect of making it more likely that they won't be the ultimate.)
But people like Hitler have always existed and will continue to exist in different circumstances which heighten or diminish their actual danger to the public. If people can and do publicly recognize how Trump's (or some other political figure's) personality resembles Hitler's, then, by that publicly acknowledged recognition alone, the potential danger is reduced.
--- I should add this, to me, paramount point which I very nearly overlooked :
If one accepts, as I do, that political figures more or less Hitler-like are almost a given of the political landscape but that they ordinarily pass without being either much noticed or very influential because the circumstances are usually simply not propitious, then one can see, first, that, what's much more worrisome than their budding presence in the political landscape is the presence of a set of political conditions which favor their rise, their thriving and their coming to power. About the latter we can, in theory at least, do something effective. And then, one can see, secondly, that if we're vigilant, we can maintain democratic institutions in a robust condition which allow little or no favorable conditions for one of the Hitler-like types, waiting for their chance, to find and to seize it.
Third and finally, one can see that, if, on the contrary, democratic institutions are allowed to be so corrupted and debased that they are rendered ineffective, then, by the time a Hitler-like figure has risen to prominence, it's likely to be practically too late to do very much to stop him (or her).
Therefore, our focus ought to be where it's earliest and most effective--denying any so-far unknown candidate the conditions which make his rise and success practically inevitable. (One might deduce from this that it means that political assassination as a supposed remedy is, on the contrary, not a dependable remedy because it leaves the prevailing conditions unaffected or perhaps even worsens them by inviting violent reactions. This makes the next demagogue's appearance more rather than less likely.)
Obviously we've failed ourselves in that latter respect. So, now we find ourselves in circumstamces which, unless and until the conditions favorable to the rise of such political figures are addressed, unless and until healthy democratic institutions are rehabilitated, we'll remain prey to this kind of politician's appeal and, eventually, one of them shall be elected.
If Trump's bid fails this time, there shall be another attempt by someone else later--and that next candidate might be a great deal more dangerous and more like Hitler --if we allow the conditions which favor this to prevail.
That is why, to my way of thinking, stopping this or that candidate is secondary in importance to rehabilitating our political institutions.
Obama did virtually nothing in that regard despite having two terms in office. Hillary Clinton, complacent in her view of our circumstances, seems not inclined to do much of anything about them, either.
I believe that should concern us even more than Trump himself in these circumstances.
5Urquhart
4>proximity1
I only wish it were possible for you to take your last two postings and combine them into an article that could be published elsewhere, ie. NYTimes, Washington Post, etc.
Your depth and breadth of insight on this issue is simply not available to people elsewhere and definitely needs to be more widely distributed.
Both posts, and especially the second one, provide a totally different perspective through which to view the current election cycle. But not only is the perspective different, it is also genuinely empowering, which in this day and age is very rare.
Thank you.
I only wish it were possible for you to take your last two postings and combine them into an article that could be published elsewhere, ie. NYTimes, Washington Post, etc.
Your depth and breadth of insight on this issue is simply not available to people elsewhere and definitely needs to be more widely distributed.
Both posts, and especially the second one, provide a totally different perspective through which to view the current election cycle. But not only is the perspective different, it is also genuinely empowering, which in this day and age is very rare.
Thank you.
6Kriselle_Jhean
Hitler could have been a great artist but instead he became a bigoted mass murderer.
7proximity1
>5 Urquhart:
Thank you. As for the utility of the analysis, "p.r.n."*
;^ )
I do think the country is in peril. But it isn't a recent peril and it's not simply the rise of Donald Trump who, with all his similarities to Hitler, is in no way necessarily bound to repeat the very things Hitler did to his country and people and to others. My point is far from a simplistic claim that Trump = Hitler.
It was not Hitler's project to destroy Germany and certainly won't be Trump's (or the Clinton's) project to destroy America.
My concern, rather, is the temptation which I suspect many shall feel to conclude from a Clinton victory in November that, as the pithy expression has it, "We dodged the bullet." Unfortunately, that won't be the case.
------------
* Slogan on a registered nurse's T-Shirt : "Hug a nurse, p.r.n."
Thank you. As for the utility of the analysis, "p.r.n."*
;^ )
I do think the country is in peril. But it isn't a recent peril and it's not simply the rise of Donald Trump who, with all his similarities to Hitler, is in no way necessarily bound to repeat the very things Hitler did to his country and people and to others. My point is far from a simplistic claim that Trump = Hitler.
It was not Hitler's project to destroy Germany and certainly won't be Trump's (or the Clinton's) project to destroy America.
My concern, rather, is the temptation which I suspect many shall feel to conclude from a Clinton victory in November that, as the pithy expression has it, "We dodged the bullet." Unfortunately, that won't be the case.
------------
* Slogan on a registered nurse's T-Shirt : "Hug a nurse, p.r.n."
8DinadansFriend
I concur in the two posts by Proximity1. As well as the Shirer reference which has the advantage of Shirer being a newspaper correspondent in Berlin during the rise of AH, there is a longer and less war centred analysis in Volume 1 of Richard J. Evans' more recent trilogy on Nazi Germany. It is titled "The Coming of the Third Reich."
>6 Kriselle_Jhean::
I have seen examples of the postcard art of Hitler, and don't see his ability to become a great artist. His talent, was a psychological one, he could survey a room and find those persons in it who were the most nervous, the ones who were insecure perhaps not at the issue under discussion, but overall insecure, and trend the conversation to those fears. Take a salesmanship course, though not from Trump's organization, and you do get a list of such tells.
>4 proximity1::
The Godwin rule was created on the internet about ten years ago. The CBC radio program "As It Happens" later talked to Mr. Michael Wayne Godwin, who formulated the Godwin Rule to cover such contests as PTA meetings, internet squabbling, Wikipedia articles on trivial points when he was editing for Wikipedia and municipal politics. He is on record as saying that use of Hitler analogies was perfectly permissible in state and national contests and discussion.
I reiterate my position that if the USA wanted real change, they should have nominated Bernie Sanders, but Hil'ry is the best remaining choice...Trump frightens Canadians who fear that after the Mexicans face him down, will turn on us as villains.
>7 proximity1::
I think the best slogan for any democracy is "So far, so good!" Hitler did have personal nerve, a quality DJ Trump probably lacks as anyone viewing the video of the confrontation in Flint Michigan between the lady preacher and DJT over his attempt to give his stump speech in her church can see.
>6 Kriselle_Jhean::
I have seen examples of the postcard art of Hitler, and don't see his ability to become a great artist. His talent, was a psychological one, he could survey a room and find those persons in it who were the most nervous, the ones who were insecure perhaps not at the issue under discussion, but overall insecure, and trend the conversation to those fears. Take a salesmanship course, though not from Trump's organization, and you do get a list of such tells.
>4 proximity1::
The Godwin rule was created on the internet about ten years ago. The CBC radio program "As It Happens" later talked to Mr. Michael Wayne Godwin, who formulated the Godwin Rule to cover such contests as PTA meetings, internet squabbling, Wikipedia articles on trivial points when he was editing for Wikipedia and municipal politics. He is on record as saying that use of Hitler analogies was perfectly permissible in state and national contests and discussion.
I reiterate my position that if the USA wanted real change, they should have nominated Bernie Sanders, but Hil'ry is the best remaining choice...Trump frightens Canadians who fear that after the Mexicans face him down, will turn on us as villains.
>7 proximity1::
I think the best slogan for any democracy is "So far, so good!" Hitler did have personal nerve, a quality DJ Trump probably lacks as anyone viewing the video of the confrontation in Flint Michigan between the lady preacher and DJT over his attempt to give his stump speech in her church can see.
9dajashby
I don't wish to detract in any way from Proximity1's well-considered posts, but I do think Urquhart's reaction indicates that he should get out more. The quality press is awash with oped pieces like this:
http://www.smh.com.au/comment/comparing-donald-trump-to-hitler-isnt-as-farfetche...
As far as I'm concerned, Trump hasn't been elected yet - worry about it if it happens. And Hitler's been dead for 70 years; why not try a comparison with Robert Mugabe, a living example of the democratically elected murderous tyrant?
http://www.smh.com.au/comment/comparing-donald-trump-to-hitler-isnt-as-farfetche...
As far as I'm concerned, Trump hasn't been elected yet - worry about it if it happens. And Hitler's been dead for 70 years; why not try a comparison with Robert Mugabe, a living example of the democratically elected murderous tyrant?
10proximity1
>9 dajashby:
..."why not try a comparison with Robert Mugabe, a living example of the democratically elected murderous tyrant?"
I'll offer the three reasons which spring to mind :
First, unlike Hitler, Mugabe doesn't occupy a tyrant's position in what is arguably a nation among the contemporary world's top most culturally and technologically advanced and influential. (Japan could be cited along with Hitler's Germany as a similarly-advanced nation.) We're not comparing brutality or body-counts here--at least at this point--we're comparing a historical figure's arguable potential for global political impact. (This is of course why, in >8 DinadansFriend:, there's a voiced concern about Trump but not about Robert Mugabe.) For the potential for wide-ranging harm on a global scale, a German chancellor's (still today) is simply far beyond what Robert Mugabe has done and reasonably might do. If Mugabe were on a par with Hitler, by now he'd have overrun a dozen African nations and installed his own dictatorial rule in them (while not necessarily engaging in international genocide).
Second, unlike Hitler's example, I can't think of any conventionally respected world figures who actually admire Mugabe and point to him as a model of a progressive head of state, as Henry Ford, Charles Lindbergh and Ambassador Kennedy and others did regarding Hitler.
Third, mass-murder is not the only metric which should concern us. A Hitler-like figure can do immense harm to his or her nation and, if unimpeded, the world, without necessarily taking up genocide. It ought to concern us that, from a corporato-technological point of view, rather than being defeated along with Hitler, his army and his personal rule, the forces of all-powerful centralized and technologically-driven command and control--another way of saying "the German-style "military-industrial complex"--wasn't defeated. Rather, the Allies joined in, and their successors today embody what both General Motors/Ford/ G.E. /Westinghouse/ and BMW / Mercedes-Benz/Krupp laid the foundations for in a highly technicized and centralized world order. To defeat Hitler, the Allied powers actually had to catch up with and copy and surpass him in what Germany possessed in industrial organizational and tecnological power processes. (See C. Wright Mills' book-review essay on Franz Neumann's (1940/5) Behemoth. and see James Beniger (1989), The Control Revolution .)
Other aspects excepted, strictly in terms of technology's dominating and centralizing control, we might as well be living in Hitler's Germany. None of them--neither the Clintons, the Obamas nor Trump intend doing anything serious about reining it in.
..."why not try a comparison with Robert Mugabe, a living example of the democratically elected murderous tyrant?"
I'll offer the three reasons which spring to mind :
First, unlike Hitler, Mugabe doesn't occupy a tyrant's position in what is arguably a nation among the contemporary world's top most culturally and technologically advanced and influential. (Japan could be cited along with Hitler's Germany as a similarly-advanced nation.) We're not comparing brutality or body-counts here--at least at this point--we're comparing a historical figure's arguable potential for global political impact. (This is of course why, in >8 DinadansFriend:, there's a voiced concern about Trump but not about Robert Mugabe.) For the potential for wide-ranging harm on a global scale, a German chancellor's (still today) is simply far beyond what Robert Mugabe has done and reasonably might do. If Mugabe were on a par with Hitler, by now he'd have overrun a dozen African nations and installed his own dictatorial rule in them (while not necessarily engaging in international genocide).
Second, unlike Hitler's example, I can't think of any conventionally respected world figures who actually admire Mugabe and point to him as a model of a progressive head of state, as Henry Ford, Charles Lindbergh and Ambassador Kennedy and others did regarding Hitler.
Third, mass-murder is not the only metric which should concern us. A Hitler-like figure can do immense harm to his or her nation and, if unimpeded, the world, without necessarily taking up genocide. It ought to concern us that, from a corporato-technological point of view, rather than being defeated along with Hitler, his army and his personal rule, the forces of all-powerful centralized and technologically-driven command and control--another way of saying "the German-style "military-industrial complex"--wasn't defeated. Rather, the Allies joined in, and their successors today embody what both General Motors/Ford/ G.E. /Westinghouse/ and BMW / Mercedes-Benz/Krupp laid the foundations for in a highly technicized and centralized world order. To defeat Hitler, the Allied powers actually had to catch up with and copy and surpass him in what Germany possessed in industrial organizational and tecnological power processes. (See C. Wright Mills' book-review essay on Franz Neumann's (1940/5) Behemoth. and see James Beniger (1989), The Control Revolution .)
Other aspects excepted, strictly in terms of technology's dominating and centralizing control, we might as well be living in Hitler's Germany. None of them--neither the Clintons, the Obamas nor Trump intend doing anything serious about reining it in.
11proximity1
>8 DinadansFriend:
..."He (Godwin) is on record as saying that use of Hitler analogies was perfectly permissible in state and national contests and discussion."
Unfortunately, that is a relatively little-known or unknown fact compared to the widespread familiarity with his stunningly harmful and ill-considered "law."
I have a "law" to propose for any budding Godwins :
"In this, the internet-age, promulgating any home-brewed universal laws for social comportment will most likely provoke a viral spread and practice of whatever is worst, stupidest and least-intended by a well-intentioned "law-giver" while doing little or nothing to improve popular habits."
..."He (Godwin) is on record as saying that use of Hitler analogies was perfectly permissible in state and national contests and discussion."
Unfortunately, that is a relatively little-known or unknown fact compared to the widespread familiarity with his stunningly harmful and ill-considered "law."
I have a "law" to propose for any budding Godwins :
"In this, the internet-age, promulgating any home-brewed universal laws for social comportment will most likely provoke a viral spread and practice of whatever is worst, stupidest and least-intended by a well-intentioned "law-giver" while doing little or nothing to improve popular habits."
12dajashby
"Second, unlike Hitler's example, I can't think of any conventionally respected world figures who actually admire Mugabe and point to him as a model of a progressive head of state, as Henry Ford, Charles Lindbergh and Ambassador Kennedy and others did regarding Hitler."
So who are the conventionally respected world figures who admire Trump and think he will shape up as a model progressive head of state?
So who are the conventionally respected world figures who admire Trump and think he will shape up as a model progressive head of state?
13proximity1
>12 dajashby:
We haven't seen them yet--Trump is still just a candidate at this point. My reference concerned people who had observed Hitler in power and viewed him favorably.
It's this which I don't see for Mugabe.
We haven't seen them yet--Trump is still just a candidate at this point. My reference concerned people who had observed Hitler in power and viewed him favorably.
It's this which I don't see for Mugabe.
14proximity1
Our oligarchic elite are refusing the vital lesson from Weimar Germany. Even though a simple and direct translation and application from past circumstances to the present doesn't work, our ruling elite could and ought to draw broad general lessons from that time. They do not understand that similarly desperate material living conditions, while sufficient, are not a necessary precondition. Other forms of despair than material deprivation could reasonably suffice to produce a somewhat similar demagogue. Nor does our own debased political order make the material deprivation any the less likely to come to pass eventually.
Our elites fail or refuse to recognize that only very desperate conditions finally led masses of Germans in the 1930s to enthusiastically embrace Hitler's NAZI party.
Had Weimar rule not been so disastrously corrupt, venal and politically inept, Hitler should not have found a ready audience. They were Weimar's corrupt ruling elite who paved the way for Hitler, rather than its desperate victims who saw completely correctly that their immediate survival left them no alternative to embracing Hitler.
These desperate and politically betrayed people did not have the luxury of time to wonder about whether Hitler was worthy of their trust or faith or to second-guess Hitler's real intentions. The idea that, even if the vast majority of them had read Hitler's Mein Kampf, they'd have had or taken any other course is wildly ridiculous.
In the same circumstances, with their imminent ruin the only certainty just ahead, any other politically sane people would once again reason and act just as they did.
While I do not regard Donald Trump as either clearly or likely the agent of a new period resembling, this time, in America, quite what Hitler's unique person and circumstances meant for Germany and its people, I do believe that Trump's success today is a very clear indication of our heading in that direction.
Unless elites recognize the political catastrophe their corrupt rule has already prepared and unless they make a serious, openly-avowed and lasting break with it, we are inviting similar circumstances to those which made mass recourse to an eventual Hitler-like demagogue not just possible but the only sane course open to people whose backs are, both figuratively and literally, against the wall.
Our elites fail or refuse to recognize that only very desperate conditions finally led masses of Germans in the 1930s to enthusiastically embrace Hitler's NAZI party.
Had Weimar rule not been so disastrously corrupt, venal and politically inept, Hitler should not have found a ready audience. They were Weimar's corrupt ruling elite who paved the way for Hitler, rather than its desperate victims who saw completely correctly that their immediate survival left them no alternative to embracing Hitler.
These desperate and politically betrayed people did not have the luxury of time to wonder about whether Hitler was worthy of their trust or faith or to second-guess Hitler's real intentions. The idea that, even if the vast majority of them had read Hitler's Mein Kampf, they'd have had or taken any other course is wildly ridiculous.
In the same circumstances, with their imminent ruin the only certainty just ahead, any other politically sane people would once again reason and act just as they did.
While I do not regard Donald Trump as either clearly or likely the agent of a new period resembling, this time, in America, quite what Hitler's unique person and circumstances meant for Germany and its people, I do believe that Trump's success today is a very clear indication of our heading in that direction.
Unless elites recognize the political catastrophe their corrupt rule has already prepared and unless they make a serious, openly-avowed and lasting break with it, we are inviting similar circumstances to those which made mass recourse to an eventual Hitler-like demagogue not just possible but the only sane course open to people whose backs are, both figuratively and literally, against the wall.
15DinadansFriend
>14 proximity1::
A great many of Trump's followers do have legitimate concerns, but I feel they have a faulty analysis of their own circumstances. Apparently many of Trump's strongholds are in areas where the economy still provides a reasonable number of good jobs, with a standard of living higher than the inner cities and the depressed agricultural and formerly industrial areas, where DJT has been found to have little support. The mid-America where he is strong is the geographical mid-America, where most jobs are in Agricultural pursuits and servicing the Agriculture but this area is particularly open to damage from Climate change, as increased tornadoes, droughts, more earthquakes due to petroleum "fracking", and the exhaustion of the aquifers and mining activities is leading to smaller and smaller returns on investment, and a general lowering of the standard of living is easy to predict. The anxiety of his followers is often for the future not for the present.
But DJT and his small number of intimates, have few or no answers to these problems, and instead tell their audience that reducing regulation, less backing of scientific responses, and penalties applied to immigrants will result in the return of good jobs. But there are fewer good jobs, and Trump is not the man for policies that will provide them.
If they wanted a leader with some possible answers then the "Bernie" frame of mind, that is "Socialism" the philosophy that the overriding need is for "The Greatest Good For the Greatest Number" sets politicians up for actually pursuing policies that do benefit the greatest number. Germany did have a large and active Social Democratic Party that Hitler very specifically targeted. See "Richard Evan's "The Coming of the Third Reich" for information on this front. Germans and Austrians did have another course that they could have taken. The truly desperate were not the members of the Nazi party, they were the Social Democrats.
Hitlerism, the search for poetic answers to real world problems is never "a sane course open to people whose backs are both figuratively and literally, against the wall." Nazism told the Germans that the survival of the "Aryan" Race was the first duty, and that ordinary capitalism inside the "Aryans" could answer all their needs, physical and spiritual. But Hitlerism could not replenish the silver mines of the Harz, keep a perpetual supply of coal and iron feeding the Ruhr, or provide markets eager for the products of the German film industry. So wars of conquest were necessary to provide these supplies. Even if military victory had crowned their efforts, there would not have been the richer cultural and material environment that we enjoy today.
Yes, there is a conflict between the Elite of our material economy, and the world's population. To resolve it with a purely national response, one country at a time, is the method we have at our political disposal, and it's not the easiest course. But you have to start somewhere.
A great many of Trump's followers do have legitimate concerns, but I feel they have a faulty analysis of their own circumstances. Apparently many of Trump's strongholds are in areas where the economy still provides a reasonable number of good jobs, with a standard of living higher than the inner cities and the depressed agricultural and formerly industrial areas, where DJT has been found to have little support. The mid-America where he is strong is the geographical mid-America, where most jobs are in Agricultural pursuits and servicing the Agriculture but this area is particularly open to damage from Climate change, as increased tornadoes, droughts, more earthquakes due to petroleum "fracking", and the exhaustion of the aquifers and mining activities is leading to smaller and smaller returns on investment, and a general lowering of the standard of living is easy to predict. The anxiety of his followers is often for the future not for the present.
But DJT and his small number of intimates, have few or no answers to these problems, and instead tell their audience that reducing regulation, less backing of scientific responses, and penalties applied to immigrants will result in the return of good jobs. But there are fewer good jobs, and Trump is not the man for policies that will provide them.
If they wanted a leader with some possible answers then the "Bernie" frame of mind, that is "Socialism" the philosophy that the overriding need is for "The Greatest Good For the Greatest Number" sets politicians up for actually pursuing policies that do benefit the greatest number. Germany did have a large and active Social Democratic Party that Hitler very specifically targeted. See "Richard Evan's "The Coming of the Third Reich" for information on this front. Germans and Austrians did have another course that they could have taken. The truly desperate were not the members of the Nazi party, they were the Social Democrats.
Hitlerism, the search for poetic answers to real world problems is never "a sane course open to people whose backs are both figuratively and literally, against the wall." Nazism told the Germans that the survival of the "Aryan" Race was the first duty, and that ordinary capitalism inside the "Aryans" could answer all their needs, physical and spiritual. But Hitlerism could not replenish the silver mines of the Harz, keep a perpetual supply of coal and iron feeding the Ruhr, or provide markets eager for the products of the German film industry. So wars of conquest were necessary to provide these supplies. Even if military victory had crowned their efforts, there would not have been the richer cultural and material environment that we enjoy today.
Yes, there is a conflict between the Elite of our material economy, and the world's population. To resolve it with a purely national response, one country at a time, is the method we have at our political disposal, and it's not the easiest course. But you have to start somewhere.
16dajashby
Derrick here. Previous posts were Christine. It might be worth considering the similarities between our current times and the period immediately before the First World War, rather than the Second. We are at the end of the period of history that followed the Second World War, and we are living through a period of great economic, social and technological change. What's more we are the pointy end of an ecological crisis that could finish of civilisation as we know it. The period before the First World War was similar, apart from the urgency of the climate crisis, and mostly as a result of extremely poor leadership the world blundered into a world war that killed millions. The Second World War was a direct result of the folly of the First - Hitler and Mussolini were products of their times. If you look around the world at the moment, you don't see much signs of quality political leadership, but replacing Obama with Trump would be a huge qualitative decline. I've got questions about Hillary Clinton's personal and political judgement, but I think she has much more policy cred than her opponent. My concern is that Trump, Putin & others could create the kind of crisis that led to WWI, and from there the Great Depression and WWII. The Middle East and the South China Sea are just 2 possibilities.
17proximity1
>15 DinadansFriend:
Some questions :
Do you blame a German "lumpen-proletariat" as the single most important and decisive factor in Hitler's coming to power? --i.e., except for their support, "No 'Hitler'?"
Does that, if your view, also describe your assessment of Trump's supporters' import?
When, in your opinion, did Germany's savaged classes have a realistic opportunity to elect an effective socialist government? Wasn't the Weimar Republic's disastrous failure itself a glaring and compelling case against expecting salvation from this quarter? Why shouldn't these savaged desperate people have taken Weimar as the dying proof that they had nothing to hope for from what they'd just seen in socialist government?
>16 dajashby:
" but replacing Obama with Trump would be a huge qualitative decline."
Could you actually demonstrate good reasonable grounds for that belief by a fact-supported case --even a brief one?
In other words, why should a reasonable person who doesn't already share your belief simply take your word for the validity of your claim?-- or can you not even conceive of such a person?
Some questions :
Do you blame a German "lumpen-proletariat" as the single most important and decisive factor in Hitler's coming to power? --i.e., except for their support, "No 'Hitler'?"
Does that, if your view, also describe your assessment of Trump's supporters' import?
When, in your opinion, did Germany's savaged classes have a realistic opportunity to elect an effective socialist government? Wasn't the Weimar Republic's disastrous failure itself a glaring and compelling case against expecting salvation from this quarter? Why shouldn't these savaged desperate people have taken Weimar as the dying proof that they had nothing to hope for from what they'd just seen in socialist government?
(From WikipediA ® "Weimar Republic" page)
-------
In 1933, Hindenburg appointed Adolf Hitler as Chancellor with the Nazi Party being part of a coalition government. The Nazis held two out of the remaining ten cabinet seats. Von Papen as Vice Chancellor was intended to be the "éminence grise" who would keep Hitler under control, using his close personal connection to Hindenburg. Within months the Reichstag Fire Decree and the Enabling Act of 1933 had brought about a state of emergency: it wiped out constitutional governance and civil liberties. Hitler's seizure of power (Machtergreifung) was permissive of government by decree without legislative participation. These events brought the republic to an end: as democracy collapsed, a single-party state founded Nazi era.
Even so, German Foreign Office official Harry Graf Kessler had predicted as early as February 1919 that the Republic was doomed. "The paradox", he wrote, "by which a Social Democratic Government allows itself and the capitalist cash-boxes to be defended by royalist officers and unemployed on the dole is altogether too crazy."7 His friend and socialist liberal Democrat Party colleague Walther Rathenau was assassinated, just like Matthias Erzberger before him, by right-wing assassin squads Organization Consul. Like the Nazis the Consul was founded by the Freikorps. Opting for a military solution the republic in Germany was destroyed by gangsterism, infighting, incompetence, political naivete, and international debt obligations."
-------
Reasons for failure
The reasons for the Weimar Republic's collapse are the subject of continuing debate. It may have been doomed from the beginning since even moderates disliked it and extremists on both the left and right loathed it, a situation often referred to as a "democracy without democrats".64 Germany had limited democratic traditions, and Weimar democracy was widely seen as chaotic. Since Weimar politicians had been blamed for the Dolchstoßlegende ("Stab-in-the-back myth"), a widely believed theory that Germany's surrender in World War I had been the unnecessary act of traitors, the popular legitimacy of the government was on shaky ground. As normal parliamentary lawmaking broke down and was replaced around 1930 by a series of emergency decrees, the decreasing popular legitimacy of the government further drove voters to extremist parties.
No single reason can explain the failure of the Weimar Republic. The most commonly asserted causes can be grouped into three categories: economic problems, institutional problems and the roles of specific individuals.
------
Related :
(president of the Weimar Republic : 1919 - 1925)
Friedrich Ebert (4 February 1871 – 28 February 1925) was a German politician of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) and the first President of Germany from 1919 until his death in office in 1925.
In those six years under Ebert, a Social Democrat (of that time), Germans saw nine Chancellors come and go. Ebert, succeeded by Hindenburg, had been a chancellor himself before becoming president.
Chancellors 02/1919 - 02/1925 :
1) Philipp Scheidemann / Political party Social Democratic Party
2) Gustav Bauer / Political party Social Democratic Party
3) Hermann Müller / Political party Social Democratic Party
4) Konstantin Fehrenbach / Center party
5) Joseph Wirth / Catholic Center party
6) Wilhelm Cuno / no formal party membership
7) Gustav Stresemann / Political parties : National Liberal Party (1907–1918); German Democratic Party (1918); German People's Party (1918–1929)
8) Wilhelm Marx / Center party
9) Hans Luther / no formal party
Luther was succeeded by the return of SPD member Hermann Müller who served until March, 1930. Germany was then three more chancellors -- Bruning, Von Papen & Von Schleicher-- from Hitler.
>16 dajashby:
" but replacing Obama with Trump would be a huge qualitative decline."
Could you actually demonstrate good reasonable grounds for that belief by a fact-supported case --even a brief one?
In other words, why should a reasonable person who doesn't already share your belief simply take your word for the validity of your claim?-- or can you not even conceive of such a person?
18dajashby
>17 proximity1: I don't expect anyone to take my word for anything. I stated my opinion. As to what grounds I have, I would say that I've read a couple of books about Obama, and I've observed his career since becoming President. I've been aware of Donald Trump for rather longer. Obama is intelligent, he is charming, he has wit. He cares about other people. He's been in a hellishly difficult job for the last eight years, constantly thwarted in what he wants to do. It's amazing what he has managed to accomplish. He must be a superb negotiator. By contrast Donald Trump is deeply ignorant. He's got where he's got by bullying, sharp practice (which he confuses with being smart) and lies. Clearly a man who has declared bankrupt 11 times and still claims to be a billionaire has plenty of stuff that he needs to hide. He cares about no-one but himself. He is sexist and racist.
It's obvious that Obama hasn't succeeded in doing everything that he might have wanted to do when he came to office, but he has I think (my opinion again) made a positive contribution. If Trump succeeds in doing anything that he claims he wants to do the US and the world will be significantly poorer for it.
It's obvious that Obama hasn't succeeded in doing everything that he might have wanted to do when he came to office, but he has I think (my opinion again) made a positive contribution. If Trump succeeds in doing anything that he claims he wants to do the US and the world will be significantly poorer for it.
19proximity1
>18 dajashby:
"Obama is intelligent," --but why do you think so? based on what facts about him?
"he is charming," -- So what? Even if true, is this really such an important factor for a head of state? If so, tell us, please, who are the heads of state you regard as being or as having been most and least charming? Would I be wrong to expect that those you like were nearly all charming and those you don't like have in common a marked lack of "charm"? Was Woodrow Wilson charming? Georges Clemenceau? Lloyd George? Queen Victoria? Napoléon Bonaparte? Ronald Reagan? Is Arnold Schwarzenegger charming? Tony Blair? David Cameron? Jeremy Corbyn?
"he has wit." -- So what? Even if true, is this really such an important factor for a head of state?
"He cares about other people." -- but why do you think so? based on what facts about him?
"He's been in a hellishly difficult job for the last eight years, constantly thwarted in what he wants to do." -- but why do you think so? based on what facts about him?
It's amazing what he has managed to accomplish. -- but why do you think so? based on what facts about him?
He must be a superb negotiator. -- but why do you think so? based on what facts about him?
----------------------
Again, all you're doing here is asserting your unsupported personal opinions as though these were facts despite my specifically having asked you {with emphasis in italics} :
--- which you ignored.
I'm concluding, then, that you've given us your answer by implication and that the answer is, "no," you cannot offer other than your unsupported personal opinion.
QED.
"Obama is intelligent," --but why do you think so? based on what facts about him?
"he is charming," -- So what? Even if true, is this really such an important factor for a head of state? If so, tell us, please, who are the heads of state you regard as being or as having been most and least charming? Would I be wrong to expect that those you like were nearly all charming and those you don't like have in common a marked lack of "charm"? Was Woodrow Wilson charming? Georges Clemenceau? Lloyd George? Queen Victoria? Napoléon Bonaparte? Ronald Reagan? Is Arnold Schwarzenegger charming? Tony Blair? David Cameron? Jeremy Corbyn?
"he has wit." -- So what? Even if true, is this really such an important factor for a head of state?
"He cares about other people." -- but why do you think so? based on what facts about him?
"He's been in a hellishly difficult job for the last eight years, constantly thwarted in what he wants to do." -- but why do you think so? based on what facts about him?
It's amazing what he has managed to accomplish. -- but why do you think so? based on what facts about him?
He must be a superb negotiator. -- but why do you think so? based on what facts about him?
----------------------
Again, all you're doing here is asserting your unsupported personal opinions as though these were facts despite my specifically having asked you {with emphasis in italics} :
Could you actually demonstrate good reasonable grounds for that belief by a fact-supported case --even a brief one?
--- which you ignored.
I'm concluding, then, that you've given us your answer by implication and that the answer is, "no," you cannot offer other than your unsupported personal opinion.
QED.
20dajashby
I notice you have no objection to what I said about Trump. Does that mean you don't object to those opinions? If you don't believe that Obama is intelligent and has charm and wit nothing I say could convince you otherwise - even if I presented a whole slew of "facts". All you have to do is watch him speak for 5 or 10 minutes. The same goes for Trump.
21BruceCoulson
Trump has, unknowingly or not, tapped into the free-floating anger of a great many Americans who feel that their lives are not as good as they should be, and that their childrens' lives, far from being easier, will be harder than theirs.
These people can't clearly identify what has caused the change in circumstance resulting in this condition, and Trump both acknowledges things are wrong (Make America Great Again!) and promises solutions. (Stupid, unworkable solutions; but solutions.) And yes, this is some of what Hitler did in his rise to power; Germany was in terrible shape, Germans were suffering, and he had answers to make Germany great again.
Re Obama: " He graduated magna cum laude from Harvard Law in 1991." I submit this is not the accomplishment of an unintelligent man, given that Obama's family background would not qualify him as a legacy student. (And keeping in mind that Intelligence is not a single number or set of characteristics; it's quite possible to be profoundly intelligent in some areas of life, and remarkably stupid in others.)
Most of the other statements are matters of preference/opinion, as there is no objective measurement of 'wit', 'charm', or other personable characteristics.
Being POTUS is a very stressful job, given the evidence of accelerated aging shown by most modern Presidents since FDR.
These people can't clearly identify what has caused the change in circumstance resulting in this condition, and Trump both acknowledges things are wrong (Make America Great Again!) and promises solutions. (Stupid, unworkable solutions; but solutions.) And yes, this is some of what Hitler did in his rise to power; Germany was in terrible shape, Germans were suffering, and he had answers to make Germany great again.
Re Obama: " He graduated magna cum laude from Harvard Law in 1991." I submit this is not the accomplishment of an unintelligent man, given that Obama's family background would not qualify him as a legacy student. (And keeping in mind that Intelligence is not a single number or set of characteristics; it's quite possible to be profoundly intelligent in some areas of life, and remarkably stupid in others.)
Most of the other statements are matters of preference/opinion, as there is no objective measurement of 'wit', 'charm', or other personable characteristics.
Being POTUS is a very stressful job, given the evidence of accelerated aging shown by most modern Presidents since FDR.
22proximity1
>20 dajashby: :
"I notice you have no objection to what I said about Trump."
You apparently "notice" and respond to only what serves your designs. The rest you ignore. Why is that?
"Donald Trump is deeply ignorant."
True; and I can see both that he is and that, as president, his ignorance might present important--though perhaps very hard--lessons for us about the dysfunction of our political which we really need and which Obama, despite being so much better-informed, in eight years, did nothing to help us learn. Meanwhile, you notice only the former, completely missing the latter.
"He's got where he's got by bullying, sharp practice (which he confuses with being smart) and lies."
Also true. Not to mention taking risks, daring to speak bluntly rather than hide behind disingenuous and insincere euphemism; questioning things where few or no others would; acting on common sense rather than simply knowing of it.
"Clearly a man who has declared bankrupt 11 times and still claims to be a billionaire has plenty of stuff that he needs to hide."
I'm not well-versed in bankruptcy law but, as I understand it, rather than a convenience for those with much to hide, it requires exposing rather fully one's financial circumstances, and in bankruptcy that is neither flattering nor comfortable. And he's done this 11 times!? ---I ask because, in my experience, you so frequently state things which are not factually accurate.
For example: "He cares about no-one but himself."
Going on,
"He is sexist and racist."
Yes--But you don't mean, like Hillary or Bill Clinton, too, right?
"If you don't believe that Obama is intelligent and has charm and wit nothing I say could convince you otherwise - even if I presented a whole slew of "facts".
"A whole slew of facts" would certainly be a good start--if you had that. Given the facts I've already seen about evidence of Obama's alleged superior intelligence, I'll hardly find myself convinced if, having these facts which could and should show me mistaken, you fail to present them--arguing, instead, what amounts to, "Anyone who needs supporting facts in order to be convinced of what is obvious, could never be convinced by facts anyway"-- that's a very convenient piece of illogical nonsense.
But I suspect you don't have any such facts. Instead, behind your unsupported opinions are still other unsupported opinions.
You're projecting onto me your own lack of respect for facts. I've repeatedly asked you for some and all you've offered is unsupported opinion and resentment at being challenged to back those opinions with other than your blatant prejudices.
These tactics of yours are intellectually disgraceful--and they're typical of closed-minded people.
"I notice you have no objection to what I said about Trump."
You apparently "notice" and respond to only what serves your designs. The rest you ignore. Why is that?
"Donald Trump is deeply ignorant."
True; and I can see both that he is and that, as president, his ignorance might present important--though perhaps very hard--lessons for us about the dysfunction of our political which we really need and which Obama, despite being so much better-informed, in eight years, did nothing to help us learn. Meanwhile, you notice only the former, completely missing the latter.
"He's got where he's got by bullying, sharp practice (which he confuses with being smart) and lies."
Also true. Not to mention taking risks, daring to speak bluntly rather than hide behind disingenuous and insincere euphemism; questioning things where few or no others would; acting on common sense rather than simply knowing of it.
"Clearly a man who has declared bankrupt 11 times and still claims to be a billionaire has plenty of stuff that he needs to hide."
I'm not well-versed in bankruptcy law but, as I understand it, rather than a convenience for those with much to hide, it requires exposing rather fully one's financial circumstances, and in bankruptcy that is neither flattering nor comfortable. And he's done this 11 times!? ---I ask because, in my experience, you so frequently state things which are not factually accurate.
For example: "He cares about no-one but himself."
Going on,
"He is sexist and racist."
Yes--But you don't mean, like Hillary or Bill Clinton, too, right?
"If you don't believe that Obama is intelligent and has charm and wit nothing I say could convince you otherwise - even if I presented a whole slew of "facts".
"A whole slew of facts" would certainly be a good start--if you had that. Given the facts I've already seen about evidence of Obama's alleged superior intelligence, I'll hardly find myself convinced if, having these facts which could and should show me mistaken, you fail to present them--arguing, instead, what amounts to, "Anyone who needs supporting facts in order to be convinced of what is obvious, could never be convinced by facts anyway"-- that's a very convenient piece of illogical nonsense.
But I suspect you don't have any such facts. Instead, behind your unsupported opinions are still other unsupported opinions.
You're projecting onto me your own lack of respect for facts. I've repeatedly asked you for some and all you've offered is unsupported opinion and resentment at being challenged to back those opinions with other than your blatant prejudices.
These tactics of yours are intellectually disgraceful--and they're typical of closed-minded people.
23proximity1
>21 BruceCoulson:
"He graduated magna cum laude from Harvard Law in 1991." I submit this is not the accomplishment of an unintelligent man, given that Obama's family background would not qualify him as a legacy student."
He has a Nobel Peace Prize, too. As evidence of what talent, trait or quality in him might we cite that honor?
A degree from any Harvard University school is so often taken as the impeccable evidence of a superior intellect--especially since, for centuries, so many of those who've held so many of our society's key posts in defining what superior intellect is, what it looks and sounds like and where it comes from also happened to be Harvard alumni.
A degree "magna cum laude" from H.L.S. is probably a much more certain marker of the "not unintelligent man" than it is a very reliable marker of what was in question: intelligence significantly superior to that of Donald Trump.
"He graduated magna cum laude from Harvard Law in 1991." I submit this is not the accomplishment of an unintelligent man, given that Obama's family background would not qualify him as a legacy student."
He has a Nobel Peace Prize, too. As evidence of what talent, trait or quality in him might we cite that honor?
A degree from any Harvard University school is so often taken as the impeccable evidence of a superior intellect--especially since, for centuries, so many of those who've held so many of our society's key posts in defining what superior intellect is, what it looks and sounds like and where it comes from also happened to be Harvard alumni.
A degree "magna cum laude" from H.L.S. is probably a much more certain marker of the "not unintelligent man" than it is a very reliable marker of what was in question: intelligence significantly superior to that of Donald Trump.
24proximity1
>15 DinadansFriend:: "A great many of Trump's followers do have legitimate concerns, but I feel they have a faulty analysis of their own circumstances." ...
>21 BruceCoulson:: ..."tapped into the free-floating anger of a great many Americans who feel that their lives are not as good as they should be, and that their childrens' lives, far from being easier, will be harder than theirs.
"These people can't clearly identify what has caused the change in circumstance resulting in this condition," ...
There you have it -- some "legitimate concerns" will be conceded, some "free-floating anger" acknowledged. Those relegated to "the basket" rarely get even that much consideration.
Still, I suspect that the privileged should object if the injustices they suffered were treated in those terms.
Their concerns would not only be "legitimate" but justified, their anger grounded, anchored, not "free-floating."
Having already been long shut out of any real effective part in the political order, those to whom you're referring have seen their lives or their life-prospects--or both--savaged by and for the benefit of the elites who've kept them shut out.
25theoria
>1 Urquhart: I don't believe Mr Trump wishes to exterminate millions for the sake of Valhalla. However, a "stab in the back" mentality fuels the Brexiteer's rage at the EU and Mr Trump's grope on the American deplorables.
>21 BruceCoulson: "Trump has, unknowingly or not, tapped into the free-floating anger of a great many Americans who feel that their lives are not as good as they should be..."
This review of three books which refer to Trump's base of support might be of interest. http://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2016/10/10/being-a-bumpkin/
>21 BruceCoulson: "Trump has, unknowingly or not, tapped into the free-floating anger of a great many Americans who feel that their lives are not as good as they should be..."
This review of three books which refer to Trump's base of support might be of interest. http://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2016/10/10/being-a-bumpkin/
27theoria
>26 LolaWalser: Unfortunately, they were well armed...
28DinadansFriend
"Do you blame a German "lumpen-proletariat" as the single most important and decisive factor in Hitler's coming to power? --i.e., except for their support, "No 'Hitler'?"
No, I do not blame a curious entity you describe as a "Lumpen Proletariat" (whom, I believe Marx described as the factory workers and the agricultural day workers who had no land of their own, the most destitute workers of the 1840's )as the single most important factor...because I find it very hard to believe in any single factor being decisive in historical events. What one may follow in clear analysis comes in Evans' book, "the coming of the third Reich" pps 1 to 230. I have coupled to that the analysis of Trump's followers as not the completely poor but the upper working class and the lower Middle Class, people who are missing their former factory jobs, and who serve the various needs of the resource industry and the agricultural industry. A glance at the map should show that they do have a graphic clustering in the American map.
"
"When, in your opinion, did Germany's savaged classes have a realistic opportunity to elect an effective socialist government?" The best chance of the Social Democrats had was to implement a very great emphasis on education in the decade following the Great War, with a clear message and pressure on the police services in Germany to crack down on political violence, even if it did mean locking up their friends in the SA and the other pro-right wing militias in Germany. The upper and Middle classes in Germany had a great tolerance for Right wing violence handing down very lenient sentences to Right wing extremists. The amount of right wing violence in Germany in the period 1919-22 is not often covered in the history written about the Nazis and it needs more exposure. In the period after 1925 a very good case can be made that the violence was far more from the right than the Left, and the police were not doing their job in suppressing it.
I concur with the quote from the foreign office official.
.... German Foreign Office official Harry Graf Kessler had predicted as early as February 1919 that the Republic was doomed. "The paradox", he wrote, "by which a Social Democratic Government allows itself and the capitalist cash-boxes to be defended by royalist officers and unemployed on the dole is altogether too crazy."7 His friend and socialist liberal Democrat Party colleague Walther Rathenau was assassinated, just like Matthias Erzberger before him, by right-wing assassin squads Organization Consul. Like the Nazis the Consul was founded by the Freikorps. Opting for a military solution the republic in Germany was destroyed by gangsterism, infighting, incompetence, political naivete, and international debt obligations."
And today the airwaves are full of a right-wing extremist plot to blow up Somali Immigrants in Kansas...Trump could be seen as enabling this kind of activity.
Concerns of the less-well off Americans should be dealt with, but it must be recognized that the right-wing in America and their well-heeled masters the Global elite don't have the answers. Jobs should be found in the USA and there are policies on the table to provide them. If government spending is channeled to the well proven economic drivers of :
1) Infrastructure, not Military spending
2) Housing initiatives,
3) Education spending and scientific research
4) providing Child Care and single payer health care (it does fuel economic growth over the insurance company lobby's current patchwork.)
5) Direct spending on the informational and performing arts (Yep, public broadcasting pumps a good deal of money back into the community.
6) and even providing direct income for the unemployed or partially employed.
There will be more jobs in the USA, and retail will be more of an economic driver if Walmart is broken up...it is active warfare on the populace in general.
Obviously, the Canadian Bureau of statistics are not staffed by American Republicans....but they do have the facts on industrial growth and individual prosperity.
And yes Bernie's platform would be better than Hillary's but she is still miles ahead of the Trumpery campaign.
No, I do not blame a curious entity you describe as a "Lumpen Proletariat" (whom, I believe Marx described as the factory workers and the agricultural day workers who had no land of their own, the most destitute workers of the 1840's )as the single most important factor...because I find it very hard to believe in any single factor being decisive in historical events. What one may follow in clear analysis comes in Evans' book, "the coming of the third Reich" pps 1 to 230. I have coupled to that the analysis of Trump's followers as not the completely poor but the upper working class and the lower Middle Class, people who are missing their former factory jobs, and who serve the various needs of the resource industry and the agricultural industry. A glance at the map should show that they do have a graphic clustering in the American map.
"
"When, in your opinion, did Germany's savaged classes have a realistic opportunity to elect an effective socialist government?" The best chance of the Social Democrats had was to implement a very great emphasis on education in the decade following the Great War, with a clear message and pressure on the police services in Germany to crack down on political violence, even if it did mean locking up their friends in the SA and the other pro-right wing militias in Germany. The upper and Middle classes in Germany had a great tolerance for Right wing violence handing down very lenient sentences to Right wing extremists. The amount of right wing violence in Germany in the period 1919-22 is not often covered in the history written about the Nazis and it needs more exposure. In the period after 1925 a very good case can be made that the violence was far more from the right than the Left, and the police were not doing their job in suppressing it.
I concur with the quote from the foreign office official.
.... German Foreign Office official Harry Graf Kessler had predicted as early as February 1919 that the Republic was doomed. "The paradox", he wrote, "by which a Social Democratic Government allows itself and the capitalist cash-boxes to be defended by royalist officers and unemployed on the dole is altogether too crazy."7 His friend and socialist liberal Democrat Party colleague Walther Rathenau was assassinated, just like Matthias Erzberger before him, by right-wing assassin squads Organization Consul. Like the Nazis the Consul was founded by the Freikorps. Opting for a military solution the republic in Germany was destroyed by gangsterism, infighting, incompetence, political naivete, and international debt obligations."
And today the airwaves are full of a right-wing extremist plot to blow up Somali Immigrants in Kansas...Trump could be seen as enabling this kind of activity.
Concerns of the less-well off Americans should be dealt with, but it must be recognized that the right-wing in America and their well-heeled masters the Global elite don't have the answers. Jobs should be found in the USA and there are policies on the table to provide them. If government spending is channeled to the well proven economic drivers of :
1) Infrastructure, not Military spending
2) Housing initiatives,
3) Education spending and scientific research
4) providing Child Care and single payer health care (it does fuel economic growth over the insurance company lobby's current patchwork.)
5) Direct spending on the informational and performing arts (Yep, public broadcasting pumps a good deal of money back into the community.
6) and even providing direct income for the unemployed or partially employed.
There will be more jobs in the USA, and retail will be more of an economic driver if Walmart is broken up...it is active warfare on the populace in general.
Obviously, the Canadian Bureau of statistics are not staffed by American Republicans....but they do have the facts on industrial growth and individual prosperity.
And yes Bernie's platform would be better than Hillary's but she is still miles ahead of the Trumpery campaign.
29dajashby
>22 proximity1: Your attachment to "facts" reminds me a lot of our recently elected Senator Malcolm Roberts, of the far right One Nation Party. Until fairly recently Roberts occupied himself running the climate denier website "The Galileo Project". His idea is that a fact is an expressed opinion that he agrees with (e.g. There is no proof that climate change is being caused by humans because CO2 is natural). Any opinion he doesn't agree with can't be based on facts.
You take as a given that the current state of politics and society in America is the result of a "corrupt oligarchy" which you compare with that of Germany in the Weimar Republic. Where are your facts in support of this opinion?
It seems to me that your belief that a good dose of Trump is just what the American people need to wake up to their situation is exactly the same attitude that was common among upper class Germans with respect to Hitler, and look where that got us.
For your information, the main purpose of bankruptcy is avoiding paying your debts. It isn't uncommon for business persons of the Trump stamp to declare bankruptcy having salted away as much of there assets as possible. As for being a risk taker, in fact Trump shifted $900 mil from corporate to personal debt so he could declare it and avoid paying tax for 20 years. That's an example of shifting risk onto the ordinary taxpayer via the government. He described that as "being smart".
I agree that democracies in the West generally are in serious trouble, and that it can mostly be sheeted home to the prevailing set of beliefs of the governing classes. That set of beliefs is based on the neoliberal flavor of libertarianism. I don't believe that Trump represents any antidote to that.
You take as a given that the current state of politics and society in America is the result of a "corrupt oligarchy" which you compare with that of Germany in the Weimar Republic. Where are your facts in support of this opinion?
It seems to me that your belief that a good dose of Trump is just what the American people need to wake up to their situation is exactly the same attitude that was common among upper class Germans with respect to Hitler, and look where that got us.
For your information, the main purpose of bankruptcy is avoiding paying your debts. It isn't uncommon for business persons of the Trump stamp to declare bankruptcy having salted away as much of there assets as possible. As for being a risk taker, in fact Trump shifted $900 mil from corporate to personal debt so he could declare it and avoid paying tax for 20 years. That's an example of shifting risk onto the ordinary taxpayer via the government. He described that as "being smart".
I agree that democracies in the West generally are in serious trouble, and that it can mostly be sheeted home to the prevailing set of beliefs of the governing classes. That set of beliefs is based on the neoliberal flavor of libertarianism. I don't believe that Trump represents any antidote to that.
30proximity1
>29 dajashby: :
"It seems to me that your belief that a good dose of Trump is just what the American people need to wake up to their situation is exactly the same attitude that was common among upper class Germans with respect to Hitler, and look where that got us."
I've never claimed that and your comment does not represent my belief.
Trump is not what the country needs. But it's clear that the public, while often failing to learn even when lessons come wrapped in disaster, cannot learn the kinds of lessons concerning the things now terribly lacking in the understanding of so many other than by real hardships --often borne most by those who had least responsibility for or occasion to have prevented the proximate causes of the mess occasioning the need for lessons by disaster.
Yes: do look where it got us! My point exactly! Rather than elect "Hitler" --which of the two main candidates, by the way, should we see as his heir?, Trump, Clinton, or either of them, for rather different reasons?-- our elites ought to have grasped long ago where their corrupting practices were leading them--and us with them.
My point is not that we need Trump vs. Clinton or the converse. My point is rather that, becuase so many have been so stupid, so irresponsible and so inattentive for so long, we're going to take a lesson via disaster --sooner or later-- whichever of them is elected.
But Clinton's election would signal our stubborn refusal to see and understand that; it would signal a continued desperate attempt to take refuge in a pathological denial of our circumstance.
Trump's election would present only potentially better possibilities for the things learned and the chances of learning them but would in no way assure that the lessons were taken, learned and profited by.
There's every chance that the country could suffer Trump and learn nothing by it. It learned nothing from suffering Reagan or the Bushes, the Clintons or the Obamas.
¤ So we're going to continue to live under a persistent menace of a dangerous demagoguery until we learn some rather basic political lessons; and the Clintons, too, are demagogues at least as dangerous as is Trump. ¤
But our public is very complacent and stupid politically; and our elites are very venal and blinded by their selfish greed.
People, like the Obamas, for example, who alternate between optimism & warnings of harm to come if their prescriptions aren't heeded, and yet who've squandered their own opportunities to teach and to help attenuate this wreck-now-underway, are fucking idiots and deeply part of what actually menaces us so much.
"It seems to me that your belief that a good dose of Trump is just what the American people need to wake up to their situation is exactly the same attitude that was common among upper class Germans with respect to Hitler, and look where that got us."
I've never claimed that and your comment does not represent my belief.
Trump is not what the country needs. But it's clear that the public, while often failing to learn even when lessons come wrapped in disaster, cannot learn the kinds of lessons concerning the things now terribly lacking in the understanding of so many other than by real hardships --often borne most by those who had least responsibility for or occasion to have prevented the proximate causes of the mess occasioning the need for lessons by disaster.
Yes: do look where it got us! My point exactly! Rather than elect "Hitler" --which of the two main candidates, by the way, should we see as his heir?, Trump, Clinton, or either of them, for rather different reasons?-- our elites ought to have grasped long ago where their corrupting practices were leading them--and us with them.
My point is not that we need Trump vs. Clinton or the converse. My point is rather that, becuase so many have been so stupid, so irresponsible and so inattentive for so long, we're going to take a lesson via disaster --sooner or later-- whichever of them is elected.
But Clinton's election would signal our stubborn refusal to see and understand that; it would signal a continued desperate attempt to take refuge in a pathological denial of our circumstance.
Trump's election would present only potentially better possibilities for the things learned and the chances of learning them but would in no way assure that the lessons were taken, learned and profited by.
There's every chance that the country could suffer Trump and learn nothing by it. It learned nothing from suffering Reagan or the Bushes, the Clintons or the Obamas.
¤ So we're going to continue to live under a persistent menace of a dangerous demagoguery until we learn some rather basic political lessons; and the Clintons, too, are demagogues at least as dangerous as is Trump. ¤
But our public is very complacent and stupid politically; and our elites are very venal and blinded by their selfish greed.
People, like the Obamas, for example, who alternate between optimism & warnings of harm to come if their prescriptions aren't heeded, and yet who've squandered their own opportunities to teach and to help attenuate this wreck-now-underway, are fucking idiots and deeply part of what actually menaces us so much.
31dajashby
>30 proximity1: Sorry if I misinterpreted your position.
32Phlegethon99
America is doomed anyway, no matter who gets elected, and so is most of western Europe. The majority of the world is quickly moving out of the influence sphere of the so-called First World by cooperating with large parts of the former Second World (Reagan's "Evil Empire") and investing in a real economy (hard science, manufacturing, agriculture) instead of trading derivatives and managing Hedge funds and going bankrupt over it. The demographic time bomb will turn the First World into the next Third World within the next two or three generations.
34DinadansFriend
I do not believe Obama "squandered his opportunities" but that he was deliberately defeated, firstly by the decision of Americans in depriving him of a friendly House and Senate perhaps due to the influence of the Private Health Insurance Lobby who proved as dangerous to democracy as the Gun Lobby, and secondly by the Republican's publically stated aim of making sure that Obama would get no more useful legislation out of the Republican Party...no cooperation at all. It wasn't lack of "Leadership" it was deliberaTE OBSTRUCTION, CUTTING OFF ONE'S NOSE TO SPITE ONE'S FACE...AND THE RESULT WAS tRUMP. i'll leave in the shouting..it seems justified.
35Rood
Your "shouting" certainly is justified, DinadansFriend. I've never read a better five line analysis of the situation, even the tRUMP!
36DinadansFriend
Aaaah, well.....thanks (draws line in dirt with toe) :-)
I surely am waiting for tomorrow's debate...even up in Canada we are interested. I'm hoping Hillary shows up in her red "pantsuit of lights" carrying a smallsword and a cape!
I surely am waiting for tomorrow's debate...even up in Canada we are interested. I'm hoping Hillary shows up in her red "pantsuit of lights" carrying a smallsword and a cape!
