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.yellowstone123 wrote: ↑Mon Jul 15, 2024 2:10 pm"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.
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.
