A View From the Left

[Dwight]

I remember sometime past an observation that when an argument reaches the point that someone is described as just like Hitler the argument and criticism has reached a point of failure.

I can think of reasons I do not trust Mr Trump but he is not like Hitler. He is not going to try to get rid of Jews. He is not going to invade to conquer Canada and central America. But there can be a wide variety of authoritarian leaders. There can be differences of degree.

I think saying Trump is like Hitler is lame political propaganda, poor and ineffective political propaganda.

Yet discussing and thinking about political authoritarianism, how it works and dangers it poses is certainly necessary

Godwin’s law. Though he doesn’t think it is a conversation ender, but can be a starting point. He also felt that the unite the right rally that Trump said “very fine people on both sides” that comparing them to Nazis was actually appropriate.

[Kishkumen]

Wait - Are you moving the skateboard?

I thought you were suggesting that, if Trump wins, you would be extremely sad to live is a lost Republic and something about not being able to move out of the country with folks like Dinero. Are you now suggesting that the Republic might be lost now? With Biden in charge?

The unconstitutional powers ceded to the president by the Supreme Court could be called the death of the Republic. I can tell you that in January 27 BC, the Senate gave Augustus a giant military assignment that laid the groundwork for the institution of the Principate, or an empire ruled by an emperor. When that assignment was extended to him, very few people would have said that the Republic was over. In fact, they were praising him for laying down his power, in return for which they invested him with power. The event was actually heralded as the restoration of the Republic at the time. But in hindsight people often place the end of the Republic at that point. Big historical changes are topics of debate. What a republic or democracy is, in the fine details, is also up for debate. What you would happily call a republic or a democracy I may not agree with.

Most people today would agree that the traditional Roman republic was decisively dead in January 27 BC. At the time, most people would not have thought that. I tend to go with modern opinion on the topic. I think it is this difference between a historian's perspective and a layman's point of view that might account for some of the chasm between me and other members of this board. As someone who has studied the death of the Roman Republic for over two decades, my view is likely to be different than those who do not possess a similar background.

[yellowstone123]

"firehouse rhetoric" comes from both side's extremes that are creating paranoia. It does concern me that both sides point to each other not seeing their own part in the chaos. How many times have we been told that Trump will bring in a Hitler-level dictatorship. It all over this board. Donald Trump and Hitler are not even in the same universe. Even Sam Harris has said that he generally feels sorry for those who have fallen for his - whatever type charisma he reportedly has - but Donald Trump is nothing like Hitler; Harris's concern was the same process that brought Donald Trump in could actually bring a Hitler-level threat. Then you have publications, main stream periodicals that are putting Trump's face with a Hitler mustache. Lots of them during the last six months, some showing an obese Trump in an Uncle Sam costume goose stepping. YOU HAVE BIDEN OVER AND OVER SAYING HE IS A THREAT AND MUST BE STOPPED. CNN and MSNBC putting on guest that says Trump must be eliminated in many disgusting ways. So then you have a crazy little zoomer who watches this over and over and over and decides to action. As the actor in Casablanca said, I'm shocked, shocked that there is gambling in this place as another actor walks up and says, "sir, your earnings' in which he takes the money, puts it in his pocket and leaves.

Thanks, yellowstone. I think your post is a good illustration of how democracies hand the keys over to authoritarian dictators. Hitler didn't start out as the Hitler of the final solution. Under your standard, we couldn't accuse even Hitler as being Hitler in the early stage of his take over of government.

It is undeniably true that Trump is not literally Hitler. It is also false that the two are in different universes. Trump lives in the very same universe that Hitler did. The same planet even. And, in fact, both are leaders of mass movements of followers whose brains are those of homo sapiens. And that means that the followers of both have the same basic cognitive biases that every human on the planet has. The major difference is that modern opinion leaders have the benefit of 80 years of psychological and cognitive research that gives them the ability to push the buttons of anger, resentment, and fear that we know drives mass movements.

Arguing over whether "Trump is Hitler" is asking the wrong question. In fact, it is a red herring -- a bright shiny thing to argue over instead of stopping and thinking about what is happening. The question is whether Trump and the billionaires who feed the MAGA movement are using the same techniques that resulted in the extermination of millions of Jews, homosexuals, and gypsies.

How did the holocaust happen? The punitive response of the winners of WWI toward Germany created an economic hellscape in Germany. Quite naturally, this created a huge pool of people who were angry, resentful, and frightened about their future. Hitler's "one quick trick" to creating the holocaust was to channel was to feed that fear, anger and resentment toward a scapegoat -- the Jews. Stoking fear, anger, and resentment -- combined with depersonalizing rhetoric -- is at the heart of every tragic mass slaughter of human beings by other human beings.

But the final solution to the problem of the Jews -- the extermination camps -- was not the first solution to the problem of the Jews. Forced, mass deportation was an earlier solution to the problem of the Jews. Only when deportation became unfeasible was the final solution implemented.

Donald Trump is the leader of a mass movement that is motivated by anger, fear, and resentment. He portrays America as a hellscape that only he can fix. And from the very inception of his candidacy in 2016, he has channeled that anger, fear and resentment toward a scapegoat: brown skinned illegal aliens. He scapegoats those fellow humans beings just as Hitler scapegoated Jews. And his current "solution" is identical to Hitler's -- mass deportation.

From the beginning, Trump has dehumanized those fellow human beings -- portraying them as an existential threat to America. Although the evidence we have is that "illegal aliens" commit crimes at lower rates than "legal" Americans, he sensationalizes every tragic instance in which an illegal alien does commit a violent crime for the purpose of demonizing all illegal aliens. He scapegoats illegal aliens for fentanyl deaths, even though we know that drug smuggling overwhelmingly is done by people legally crossing the border at official points of entry.

These fellow human beings have been dehumanized and demonized to the point that a frightening number folks in the MAGA movement find it perfectly moral to drown people who try to swim across the border. Now, think about the logistical nightmare presented by forcibly deporting 8 million people. Will there be detention camps? Inevitably. Will legal American citizens be erroneously rounded up and illegally and unconstitutionally deported? Inevitably. Will the same political party that over and over again solemnly declares the family to be the bedrock foundation of our society destroy families by tearing them apart? Is there any question? Trump already did it last time around. Will violence against Latinos -- here legally and illegally -- increase? You'd have to ignore the history of human behavior to think otherwise. So, now, what happens when it turns out that mass deportation is incredibly difficult if not impossible. What is the MAGA final solution to the illegal alien problem?

Now, if we were in the same room, I'd ask you to look me in the eye and tell me that the two men are not in the same universe. You want to know how holocausts and genocides happen? You are living how it happens. Right. Now. Sadly, it turns out that even frogs recognize the increasing temperature of a pot of water and will climb out before it boils to death. Only humans wait until it's too late.

But brown skinned fellow humans here without legal permission are just today's scapegoat de jure. Mass moments based on fear, anger and resentment require an enemy. So, even if Trump were able to wave a magic wand and teleport every single person present in the U.S. without permission back to their country of origin, the MAGA movement would not declare victory and disperse. It would find a new scapegoat, and then another, and then another. That's what those mass movements do. So who's next? That's been pretty well telegraphed: transgender folks. And that is an existential threat to my family. I already carry the burden of having to worry about some MAGA fanatic with a gun or a truck or his fists taking out my daughter after the extreme dehumanization campaign of transgender folks carried on by the right over the last few years. I don't want to even think about the consequences of them becoming the primary scapegoat.

But that's today. What's happening today is the product of a decades long campaign to turn ordinary Americans trying to live their lives and be good people against each other: people like me and Ceeboo. I like Ceeboo and consider him a friend. I'd love to invite him to dinner or hang out and visit. We're on opposite sides of two of the most significant divides in the U.S. today: religion and politics. I know that we each say things on this board that makes the other wince. But we've got things in common that I think should overwhelm those differences. When I step back out of the swirling chaos of today's politics, the extraordinary effort made by politicians, the media, and political leaders to try and convince Ceeboo and I that each is an existential threat to the other is stunningly unbelievable. The time, effort, and money spent in that effort is massive.

The people who are promoting the narrative that there are two groups of ordinary Americans, each of which is an existential threat to the other, are not just playing with fire -- they are playing with nuclear weapons. The existential threat to our humanity, let alone our Democratic Republic, is the people with the money and the megaphone who are promoting that narrative. I don't believe for a second that those people are a conspiracy like the claims of a "uniparty." It's more like market failure -- people end up pursuing a strategy that works for them, but is destructive for the people as a whole. Fox News proved that a media outlet can make big bucks by making its audience believe that other Americans are an existential threat. MAGA politicians proved that doing the exact same thing allows them to win elections. It should surprise no one that other media outlets and other politicians adopt proven, successful strategies. No conspiracy required -- just people pursuing their individual and rational self interest.

I don't think there is a magic solution for what I think is an existential crisis. The forces that brought us to this point go back decades. Its going to take a whole lot of people to reject a whole lot of big lies that have been drummed into folks for a long time. It requires ordinary Americans to strongly reject the voices on their own side of the divide who promote the biggest of the Big Lies -- that people on the other side of the political divide are evil, want to destroy the U.S., are enemies of America, etc. Reject dehumanization of fellow Americans by the people on your side of the divide. Pointing fingers at the other side today as if one's own side is blameless is a fool's game and leads only to escalation that history tells us is very likely to end in tragedy.

If Ceeboo and I can't tell those who promote the notion that we are existential enemies to go to hell, we're all screwed.

Thanks Rep Ipsa. I agree with what you wrote.

Last year I was wondering what was happening 100 years ago and was surprised to learn that in November 1923 Hitler and his little henchmen attempt to gain power via the Beer Hall riots. He was arrested, tried for treason and put in a prison. It was there that he wrote Mein Kampf. It was there also that he decided to get power but he was going to do it legally. By 1933 he was Chancellor and in 1934 when President Hindenburg died he quickly combined the office of the President and Chancellor to become the fuhrer, the position to only be dissolved when he dies when the office of Chancellor and President will then reappear.

For some reason I'm very interested in literature and politics in 19th century Europe. My thought are how did Stalinism come about. I also want to understand German Nationalism. To me a lot of writers in the area of Europe and Russia wrote about poverty and the Serfs; there are so many names. They wrote about the abuse of the Monarchy, who had so much wealth that needed to be attended to so they exploited the poor to maintain the property and wealth. We have people like Lenin, Trotsky and the issues they pushed. The thing about power is that it tempts you with goodness and then at the end does a 180 and says, sorry, we lied. There was talk about workers ownership and elections that Trotsky and Lenin pushed so much but once they were in power they quickly took out any thought that dealt with workers ownership, elections and instituted a dictatorship.

Many soldiers became disillusioned with WW1 and many read what Trotsky was writing and sided with him. I don't think anyone today is writing that the U.S. Military is supporting Trump or anything like it. I think in a way they are the great independent force who aren't leaning either way but just fight when they are told to fight. If the press starts writing about what happen with the military in Russia in 1917 was happening here then I would be concerned.

People that go for power use others until they are no longer useful and then get rid of them. Everyone knows about Germany annexing the German speaking areas of Czechoslovakia in 1938, and I just learned the Poland also went in and annexed parts of Czechoslovakia. Then Germany and Russia attacked Poland. Then Germany attacked Russia and I'm reading all about Operation Barbarossa. It's just simply heart breaking to read how Germany attacked from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea and how Germany went into the Ukraine from Romania. Two million people died in the first year and when Germany started retreating, there was a scorched earth program, and what Germany didn't destroy on the in they then completed in on the retreat. So much horror, so much heart break. So much death.

Lastly, nothing wrong with being a liberal in my book. There should be a medal for "bleeding heart liberal" which should be worn with honor.

Thanks, again.

[Kishkumen]

Yaaaaaaaaaaaaawwwn. Again. This is an example of what I was saying. This is the Cheney, Kinzinger line. The Romney line. The mainstream media line. It doesn't phase anyone anymore. It is like calling someone racist for driving a diesel pickup truck or Nationalist/Fascist/Nazi for going to their mother's funeral at a church. Mmmmmkay, it is that again.

Exactly right - It just doesn't impact most people anymore and/or people just don't care anymore.

Due to the extreme overuse and frequency that they are tossed around, the original meaning of these words and statements (Like Nazi, fascist, racist, homophobe, threat to democracy, etc) has been so diluted that they are rendered useless. They have been cheapened and no longer possess value.

The unfortunate and unintended consequence: What do we do when we encounter an actual racist/fascist/homophobe?

Ah, I get it. If Liz Cheney, Adam Kinzinger, or Mitt Romney said it, then it must be too boring to take seriously. Thanks. It is good to see what the parameters of debate are here. If we don't like who said something, or we can caricature what was said, then there is no reason to entertain it at all. What a relief! [/sarcasm]

[Res Ipsa]

Dude, you just said that there is something called a "uniparty" that is "controlling us" with its "minions." And you provided 0 evidence that any of this is more than your favorite dark fantasy culled from the flotsam and jetsam of conspiracy tropes du jour! If you wanted to sound credible, you blew it right out of the gate.

Just sayin'.

But, yeah, my refusal to buy what you are saying without any evidence on offer is indicative of some problem I have. Hah!!!

For those reading this, it is pretty simple. The rich want to get richer and will do anything to get there. At the top of the scale, capitalism doesn't work like Res said in the opening. The ultra rich who contribute to both republicans and democrats want a return and that is through endless war spending since WWII. We've spent trillions on war since 2000 and there is no stopping in sight. They want to attack Russia and got rid of Sanders in order to do it with Biden. Trump is vilified for wanting to stop the Ukraine war. Assange pointed out the endless washing of tax dollars through warzones into the hands of the billionaire campaign contributors and was imprisoned. I think it is easy to see, if you want to.

As I didn't purport to explain how capitalism works, I don't understand your comment. Capitalism his based on the assumption that everyone working in their own rational, economic self-interest will result in the greatest good for the greatest number. So, of course the rich act in their own individual self interest.

As I said, Capitalism is an economic theory that is based on assumptions, some of which don't reflect reality. One such assumption is that no single capitalist can influence the market rather than simply be taker of market prices. An implicit assumption is that owners of capital do not have sufficient power to rig the rules of the game. That assumption is false today. The ultra-rich are able to rig the rules of the game in their favor by using their wealth to rig the rules of the game. I'd refer folks to Robert Reich, who writes extensively on that topic.

I might go a little farther than you on what drives military spending. It's not just the owners of the military industry that benefit. Today's military represents an enormous government jobs program that props up the economy. Politicians know that cutting the defense budget by any substantial amount will deal the economy a severe blow, as unemployment will rise and wages in general will fall. On top of that, the political right has for decades attacked any politician who attempts to cut, or even slow, the rate of military spending as being soft on defense.

But, as is typical, you go far in an attempt to promote your conspiracy narrative. Has Trump ever proposed a reduction in military spending? He promotes your never ending escalation of military spending, both by the U.S. and by our allies. His position on Ukraine has nothing to do with his position on military spending, so why are you holding him out as being some kind of hero on military spending?

The military-industrial complex is not a new thing -- Eisenhower warned about it. Assange didn't have to break the law to warn people about that.

[Res Ipsa]

2. The conspiracy is among the rich to get richer at the expense of the rest of us. They control our politics. They control our economy.

They also control the information flow (as well as information that they decide should not flow) as well as the narratives constructed from the information flow. This has great impact and influence. The strategic intent is for ultimate control, instilling fear, and the manipulation of people.

Ceeboo, does what you describe apply equally to Fox News and the New York Times?

[ceeboo]

They also control the information flow (as well as information that they decide should not flow) as well as the narratives constructed from the information flow. This has great impact and influence. The strategic intent is for ultimate control, instilling fear, and the manipulation of people.

Ceeboo, does what you describe apply equally to Fox News and the New York Times?

Yes - Of course!

[Res Ipsa]

We all have the ability to cast our votes in the next election, and I hope that takes care of it. Sure, I will be extremely sad to live in a lost Republic

"Extremely sad to live in a lost Republic" is a statement that in littered with the intentional promotion of fear and political rhetoric. These personal opinions, that are masked as facts, have been heard, and heard, and heard, and heard. Repeating something, no matter how many times they are said, does not make them true. They are personal opinion and I have no issue with you having your opinions. The issue I have is when you suggest your opinions are factual.

How could you know, factually speaking, that our Republic will be lost - Or that this would be the end of our democracy, prior to the election happening and the supposed awful events taking place?



 

Hi Ceebs. Isn't it clear from context that Kish is expressing an opinion? Maybe a smidgen too much mustard?

[Res Ipsa]

Ceeboo, does what you describe apply equally to Fox News and the New York Times?

Yes - Of course!

I thought so, but wanted to confirm. Thanks for doing so.

[ceeboo]

"Extremely sad to live in a lost Republic" is a statement that in littered with the intentional promotion of fear and political rhetoric. These personal opinions, that are masked as facts, have been heard, and heard, and heard, and heard. Repeating something, no matter how many times they are said, does not make them true. They are personal opinion and I have no issue with you having your opinions. The issue I have is when you suggest your opinions are factual.

How could you know, factually speaking, that our Republic will be lost - Or that this would be the end of our democracy, prior to the election happening and the supposed awful events taking place?



 

Hi Ceebs. Isn't it clear from context that Kish is expressing an opinion? Maybe a smidgen too much mustard?

Perhaps I am a little slow (I am politically right leaning after all ) but no it wasn't clear to me that this was an opinion. It looked like a factual statement - That's why I suggested that they were opinions masked as fact.