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Author | Topic: The Trump Presidency | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Percy Member Posts: 22500 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 4.9
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Phat writes: In the words of this article, What Trump does and doesn't have in common with Hitler comparisons with Hitler are lazy at best. Thanks for finding this. Boy do I ever want to comment on this one. First, about the columnist, Michael Bradley, he's the managing partner of Sydney law firm Marque Lawyers, and he writes a weekly column for The Drum, which is an ABC News outlet in Australia. Very little in the piece is about the comparison to Hitler. It's near the beginning, and I'll just focus on that portion. The rest of the piece was about the anger of the Trump constituency at being abandoned by the American Dream, and about the psychology of mobs. I don't differ with it enough for it to be worth taking issue with.
quote: This is both true and untrue. The second paragraph about hyperinflation and the Reichsmark collapse and the loss of savings is true, but by 1932 Germany was well on the road back to recovery, no matter what Bradley claims the unemployment rate was. The 30% unemployment rate might be the official statistic, but it doesn't include the large underground economy that arose during the hyperinflation and economic displacement of the previous decade. The Germany of 1932 also had a disaffected class that had been left behind economically, just like the America of today. Trump and Hitler took advantage of similar circumstances.
quote: Fine, he's stating his conclusion up front, but he's wrong except in a literal sense.
quote: Hitler was not irresponsible. Rash and brash and consumed by his own goals , but not irresponsible. I agree that Trump is irresponsible, mostly due to, as far as can be told, ignorance. He's right about Trump and Hitler's narcissism.
quote: This is wrong. Trump has a very "discernible personal ideology." True, he also demands being the center of attention, but his ideology is clear. He believes in small government, autocracy, minimal regulation, unrestrained capitalism, and exploitation of resources. He doesn't understand science and hence rejects its findings, such as environmental concerns and climate change.
quote: He *is* a buffoon and many other things besides, such as racist, nativist, misogynistic, ignorant, bullying, childish, lying, manipulative, insulting...well, I've got better things to do with my time than enumerate the full list of appropriate adjectives. Hitler possessed some of the same qualities, such as racism, nativism, lying, manipulative, insulting, but he was also ruthless, murderous and traitorous.
quote: This is true, and it was true of Hitler, too. Hitler didn't know what he was doing militarily during WWII, but that was later. Hitler's rise to power and his consolidation of that power is similar to Trump's: compromise and intimidate the instruments of government to his own purposes. We can already see the weakening of American institutions in the face of the Trump onslaught. The FBI has reopened the investigation into the Clinton Foundation, and it won't be a surprise if the investigation into the Clinton emails is reopened, and a couple Senators just released a letter demanding an investigation of Daniel Steele for lying to the FBI, he of the Trump dossier requested by the Clinton campaign. This use of governmental power to pursue political enemies is precisely what Hitler did. Trump also knows what he is doing, and goes beyond Hitler, in using the powers of his office to enrich both himself and his cronies. But there are ways in which Trump, unlike Hitler, does not know what he is doing. Regarding carrying out the duties of the office of the president and working with the other branches of government to manage the country's business responsibly, Trump has not a clue what he's doing. On this point Bradley is correct, Trump is not like Hitler. Hitler successfully embarked upon a program of rebuilding and improving German infrastructure and its military, and within a few years of taking the reins of power was enormously successful and popular (those with concerns about his means of taking and maintaining the reins of power were silenced).
...and he exhibits similar mastery of the strings of mass appeal as did Hitler. Yes, both Trump and Hitler were populists.
quote: This is true, too. Trump doesn't want to rule the world - he just wants to be the richest and most admired man in the world. The details of government don't interest him, even those details that would enrich him. He relies upon others to manage the details - Trump just sets the goals, like protecting him from the Russia investigation, raising taxes, eliminating regulations, etc.
quote: Trump's constant complaint as president is that he isn't all powerful. He bemoans that there are things he cannot do. "Where's my Roy Cohn?" he laments (Roy Cohn was McCarthy's chief lawyer. McCarthy and McCarthyism shouldn't need to be explained, but I've linked to the Wikipedia article). Paraphrasing, "My Attorney General should protect me the same way Bobby Kennedy protected John Kennedy and Eric Holder protected Obama," as if Attorneys General's responsibility is to protect a president's illegal activities rather than protect and defend the constitution and the country. John Dean serves as an example, even though he served as White House Counsel (president's personal legal adviser), not Attorney General. He was sentenced to 1-4 years for his efforts to protect Nixon during Watergate. Trump wishes to be an autocrat, and he is moving in that direction, hopefully slowly enough that he neither achieves his goal nor irredeemably damages our institutions. He is merging the goals of government and business, and his efforts to exclude and marginalize Muslims, his racism, his attempts to shape society, his disregard for the rule of law, his belief that he is president for only some of the people, make him far more a fascist than a legitimate president. But I should mention one other significant difference between Trump and Hitler, that Hitler believed war or at least conflict was the natural state of affairs for a nation, that a nation not so engaged was growing weaker instead of stronger, both economically and militarily. This is the point at which Bradley ceases the comparison between Trump and Hitler and goes off in another direction, but I can't help commenting on this:
quote: This is monstrously untrue. The entirety of human history is the same thing over and over. Probably the most common repetition is war. Genocide is another. Economic boom/busts are another. The rise and fall of civilizations is another. I'll comment about one more thing:
quote: All true, and this is a lesson of history we ignore at our own peril. --Percy Edited by Percy, : Formatting.
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Percy Member Posts: 22500 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 4.9 |
Apropos of nothing, here's another political Chad Mitchell Trio song I liked. Still have the record. "Barry" is Barry Goldwater for you younger folk. Though the year was 1964, a lot of it sounds eerily familiar:
--Percy
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jar Member (Idle past 422 days) Posts: 34026 From: Texas!! Joined: |
What folk need to remember is that politically Barry was closer to Hubert than to Ronald.
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Phat Member Posts: 18345 From: Denver,Colorado USA Joined: Member Rating: 1.0 |
Is it true that the John Birch Society was founded by the father of the Koch Brothers?
Chance as a real force is a myth. It has no basis in reality and no place in scientific inquiry. For science and philosophy to continue to advance in knowledge, chance must be demythologized once and for all. —RC Sproul "A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes." —Mark Twain " ~"If that's not sufficient for you go soak your head."~Faith Paul was probably SO soaked in prayer nobody else has ever equaled him.~Faith
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jar Member (Idle past 422 days) Posts: 34026 From: Texas!! Joined: |
Of course not. The John Birch Society was founded by Robert Welch. The Koch family are Texas Oil folk who also developed a new more efficient was of cracking.
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Tanypteryx Member Posts: 4444 From: Oregon, USA Joined: Member Rating: 5.1 |
No.
It was founded by Robert W. Welch jr. What if Eleanor Roosevelt had wings? -- Monty Python One important characteristic of a theory is that is has survived repeated attempts to falsify it. Contrary to your understanding, all available evidence confirms it. --Subbie If evolution is shown to be false, it will be at the hands of things that are true, not made up. --percy The reason that we have the scientific method is because common sense isn't reliable. -- Taq
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Phat Member Posts: 18345 From: Denver,Colorado USA Joined: Member Rating: 1.0 |
Despite hints that he may be delusional, Trump crowns himself as a genius.
A Very Stable Genius': Trump Responds To Renewed Criticism Of His Mental State He commented quote: I guess that nobody can defend us better than ourselves....nor indict us!Chance as a real force is a myth. It has no basis in reality and no place in scientific inquiry. For science and philosophy to continue to advance in knowledge, chance must be demythologized once and for all. —RC Sproul "A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes." —Mark Twain " ~"If that's not sufficient for you go soak your head."~Faith Paul was probably SO soaked in prayer nobody else has ever equaled him.~Faith
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dwise1 Member Posts: 5952 Joined: Member Rating: 5.2 |
And he immediately proves how delusional he is. Typical Trump.
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caffeine Member (Idle past 1052 days) Posts: 1800 From: Prague, Czech Republic Joined: |
This is monstrously untrue. The entirety of human history is the same thing over and over. Probably the most common repetition is war. Genocide is another. Economic boom/busts are another. The rise and fall of civilizations is another. We're getting very tangential to the topic here, but I couldn't let this pass without comment since you stated it so firmly. In a sense Bradley is entirely correct and your response is pretty meaningless. Your categories of repeating events are so broad as to have little meaning. Sure, there's been more than one war, but many of these wars are fundamentally different from one another, especially when we're looking over longer time periods. Saying that wars repeat is like saying history is the same because it's just people doing things over and over. Well yes, but the things are different. One of the things we can learn from history is that similar situations play out extraordinarily differently when the social, technological, economic and political background in which it takes place has changed.
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Percy Member Posts: 22500 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 4.9 |
caffeine writes: In a sense Bradley is entirely correct and your response is pretty meaningless. Your categories of repeating events are so broad as to have little meaning. Sure, there's been more than one war, but many of these wars are fundamentally different from one another, especially when we're looking over longer time periods. Santyana, who said, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it," often comes up in discussions like this, but I don't believe that's true, either. I believe history repeating itself, like war, is inevitable. There's no meaningful difference in a war between Cro-Magnons beating each other over the heads with clubs over prime hunting grounds and modern armies clashing over oil fields. The specifics and details are inconsequential compared to the overriding repeating patterns.
Saying that wars repeat is like saying history is the same because it's just people doing things over and over. Well yes, but the things are different. Are they really so different? Is assassination with a fire-hardened stick all that different than with a ricin-coated pellet jabbed into a leg using an umbrella? Are the human motivations that different.
One of the things we can learn from history is that similar situations play out extraordinarily differently when the social, technological, economic and political background in which it takes place has changed. Not really. At heart it's really just human nature playing itself out in front of different backdrops. I think the most accurate saying is, "There is nothing new under the sun." Ecclesiastes 1:9. --Percy
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Percy Member Posts: 22500 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 4.9
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Gee, check the news at halftime and you never know what will pop up. In this case it's an editorial by Jennifer Rubin of the Washington Post: The ‘stable genius’ isn’t even functioning as president. She cuts through all the excuses and nonsense to deny even Trump zealots any notion of shutting their eyes to the obvious. Here's the first sentence:
quote: What can you say about someone who, when they're charged with mental instability, responds, in effect, "Am not, nah nah"? --Percy
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Percy Member Posts: 22500 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 4.9
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Halftime's over so this has to be short, don't miss this editorial from the New York Times: Trump’s Petticoat Government
"Petticoat Government" refers to when Mrs. Woodrow Wilson was the de facto president of the United States for several months in 1920 while her husband lay ill after a serious stroke. No one in a position of sufficient responsibility was willing to point out the obvious, that the president was incapable of carrying out the duties of his office. In essence the cabinet ran the country while Mrs. Wilson acted as go-between between the cabinet and her bedridden husband. --Percy
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Percy Member Posts: 22500 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 4.9
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The Huffington Post is running the story Trump Says U.S. ‘Not Going To Look Foolish As Long As I’m Here’
The obvious retort? "The US can't help but look foolish as long as you're here." --Percy
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dwise1 Member Posts: 5952 Joined: Member Rating: 5.2
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Santyana, who said, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it," ... I personally prefer the version that says: "Those who fail to learn the lessons of science fiction are doomed to live them."
I believe history repeating itself, like war, is inevitable. Part of that is because we keep making the same stupid mistakes over and over again. In the documentary, Boom Bust Boom, on Netflix, one economist described the cycle in which we have an economic crash, we figure out what caused it and create laws and regulations to keep that from happening again, but then the next generation decides that they're too smart to make those mistakes again so they get rid of those laws and regulations and then actually have the unmitigated gall to look surprised with the next crash happens because all those safeguards had been removed. Sound familiar? Like what the Republicans have been doing this past year? And we have historians telling us that Republicans are now doing the same things that had brought on the Great Depression (eg, on YouTube a clip from CNN in which a Depression historian goes into detail of how the tax bill (now law) is a blast from the past). And we have the recent history of how trickle-down economics was enacted in Kansas and devastated their economy, yet Republicans still want to do the same thing to the entire country. We keep refusing to learn lessons from our previous mistakes, so we keep making those very same mistakes. About 4 or 5 years ago, I read something in a 1945 history book, The Course of German History by British historian A.J.P. Taylor, that sounded exactly like what the Republicans were pushing for and which we are now seeing them doing. The following passages are from pages 195-197 of that book in which he covers the devastating economics of early Weimar. Years ago, a history graduate student explained the Weimar hyperinflation and its causes as he had learned them. Germany wasn't making its reparation payments to France's satisfaction, so France sent in its troops to occupy the Ruhr, the very heart of German industry, in order to take the profits directly. The government declared a general strike, telling everybody to refuse to work for the French. Faced with unemployment payments and no income, the government started printing money without any backing. An issue of Das III. Reich magazine from either 1973 or 1974 has an article on that with both confirmed what I had been told and also showed a series of postcard stamps as the price rose from 10 Pfennig (0.1 Marks) to about 5 Milliarden Marks (5 billion to Yanks and younger Brits). Then Taylor's book filled in more of the blanks. Basically, Germany had entered into the Great War, AKA WWI, without any way to finance it. They expected to pay for the war with the spoils of war from their defeated opponents -- that would explain their absolutely ridiculous demands on Russia in the Brest-Litovsk Treaty which my Russian history professor blamed for the extreme demands made on Germany in the Treaty of Versailles. Most notable is that Germany never did tax the industrialists who profited immensely from war production. From pages 195-197 (note that a milliard is a thousand millions, since at the time in the UK a billion was a million millions which is still the case on the Continent):
quote: Just as we're now doing with this new tax law, they didn't tax the rich and forced the poor and middle-class to bear the tax burden, thus destroying the middle class.
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ringo Member (Idle past 439 days) Posts: 20940 From: frozen wasteland Joined:
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Trump writes:
I went from VERY successful businessman to top T.V. Star ... to President of the United States (on my first try).quote:He should have quit while he was ahead.
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