"The United States is extremely lucky that no honest, charismatic figure has arisen. Every charismatic figure is such an obvious crook that he destroys himself, like McCarthy or Nixon or the evangelist preachers. If somebody comes along who is charismatic and honest this country is in real trouble because of the frustration, disillusionment, the justified anger and the absence of any coherent response. What are people supposed to think if someone says ‘I have got an answer, we have an enemy’? There it was the Jews. Here it will be the illegal immigrants and the blacks. We will be told that white males are a persecuted minority. We will be told we have to defend ourselves and the honor of the nation. Military force will be exalted. People will be beaten up. This could become an overwhelming force. And if it happens it will be more dangerous than Germany. The United States is the world power. Germany was powerful but had more powerful antagonists. I don’t think all this is very far away. If the polls are accurate it is not the Republicans but the right-wing Republicans, the crazed Republicans, who will sweep the next election.”
Ahem. What part of Donald Trump is HONEST? Dude couldn't keep his positions straight through the course of a debate, let alone a campaign. And who's marching tonight? Who is refusing to accept the rule of law? Peaceful protest, sure, and I'm glad they're doing it. But I think it's intellectually lazy to go Godwin in less than 24 hours and I think it's a hell of a reach to dig up a quote from six years ago, ignore all the shit that doesn't fit and declare Chomsky to be Nostradamus.
Fair point. It's not exactly clairvoyant, I just respect Chomsky.
And I respect Chomsky. But the slavish adulation for Chomsky by people who know a little about economics and history gets tiresome. I reckon that if you asked him "hey, did you predict Trump in 2010?" He'd point out that he's been tying Trump to Nazis for the better part of a year and anybody who does that needs to study Nazis more.
Are Trump and his followers LITERALLY HITLER? No, but there are many obvious and disturbing similarities. Obama won with HOPE and Trump has won with HATE and that is definitely a dangerous path with historical precedent. I think that was Chomsky's point.
See, and... I don't see it. At a base level, Germany was an upstart world power encircled by old cultures wary of the remnants of the Hapsburgs. It stumbled its way into WWI through the arrogance and idiocy of its absolute monarch and ended up engaged in total war on its borders until it became clear that the stalemate was a war of attrition both parties would lose. It was hit with punitive reparations (that, depending on the accounting, were actually money paid by the USA to Germany) in the midst of a global economic collapse that led to out-of-control inflation. At a base level, the United States has been the undisputed heavyweight champion of the world for nearly 30 years now, and one of two titans standing for sixty. The only war it has ever lost was a foreign misadventure that ended up not mattering to its borders or its trade policies. It is a democratic institution with generally-effective checks and balances that has never so much as paid reparations to the slaves it took or the natives it exterminated and is one of the strongest economies in a world of strong economies. Inflation, meanwhile, has been under 5% for 30 years; lately all the economists are talking about deflation. At a base level, Adolph Hitler was a populist demagogue who railed against the power structure of the elites based on his brutally wrong understanding of genetics and sociology. He came to notice through an attempt at armed insurrection and grew to fame through championing a policy of mass deportation of the world's oldest scapegoat, the Jews. The Jews, for their part, were more likely to be in positions of banking or mercantile through centuries-old policies forbidding them from working the land or holding office; it's not like the Jews were in a righteous spot prior to Hitler and it's not like Europe hasn't been turning on them every 50 years or so like clockwork going back to the goddamn Roman Empire. At a base level, Donald Trump is a billionaire TV star who railed against the power structure of the elites based on his reception on Twitter. He came to notice through a TV game show and grew to fame questioning the legitimacy of a popular president. He's happily scapegoated Mexicans and Muslims, but never with any consistency or repeatability. Whereas Hitler had Mein Kampff, the majority of Donald Trump's The Art of the Deal wasn't even written by him. The Mexicans, for their part, apparently make the best taco salads and muslim women don't talk because their husbands don't let them. ...see, Germany was in a bad.fucking.way during the Depression. America has rising inequality. Hitler was a single-minded ideologue who deeply believed that the world needed to return to a primordial "survival of the fittest" state for the betterment of all mankind and if the Jews managed to wipe out the Aryans, it was proof that the Jews were superior so better fucking get the jump on them first. Trump? Trump is about Trump. And I know he's said some shockingly callous shit about protestors and secret service and all the rest but he says this horrible shit with no planning and no forethought and no introspection into the consequences of his words. Hitler was a premeditated mutherfucker who took a country literally burning money for warmth and mobilized it into WWI part II. Trump is a rich douchebag who likes people to notice him. I know everyone's all twitterpated that he's about to have launch codes and shit but for a dude who legit went to military academy he's shown a single-minded disinterest in foreign policy or military escapades of any kind. So who's going to start the goose-stepping? David Duke? 3% of the vote, yo. The III% Well... similar problem. Trump and his supporters aren't even figuratively Hitler. They're pissed off Americans that don't need to understand the problem to demand a solution and Trump never has and never will burn down the Reichstag. It would just mean more work for him.
I'm not going to argue with your superior grasp of history. I David, you Goliath. I'm not expecting any overt goose-stepping but you will never convince me that hate and xenophobia aren't the main drivers of the average Trump voter. Trump's "disinterest" with foreign policy is exactly why we should be terrified, if we are indeed the lynchpin of the world we love to say we are.
It's more subtle than hate, I think. When I think about the Trump voters in my life, they don't hate anyone, per se. They think that White Man is the standard bearer for a reason, and that all other groups exist in America at their pleasure. One could make an argument that that's a form of hate, but it's not classical hate. It's a form of the thought that humanity isn't universal, and America (and the world) has been fighting that demon since the Constitution was adopted. Let's not forget (most people aren't even aware) that the reason Democrats haven't had the last four Presidencies now is that they lost the Electoral College, WHICH WAS CREATED SO THAT SLAVE STATES WOULD RATIFY THE CONSTITUTION. It wasn't created to protect "small" states as you often hear repeated in the media. Rhode Island is pretty fuckin' small, and they were on board with direct voting. Slave states needed over representation as a precondition to ratification so that we wouldn't always have a Northern President. The over representation they had in the House (via slaves counting as 3/5 of a person) still wasn't enough to guarantee that the President wouldn't always be from a Free State. So they came up with the two extra votes as a way to even out the voting between states. Slavery isn't dead, and we continue to let this vestige oppress us, the real moral majority. We need an amendment to rectify this. And we need to stop the PC bullshit about "small" states when we mean "slave" states. It's hurtful to our existence.
My position is evolving every day at this point. And believe it or not, I'm not trying to "win" I'm trying to dissuade some of the blinkered terror that comes up whenever a learned scholar invokes Hitler, because invoking Hitler does not improve discourse. Hate and xenophobia, sure. But what kind of hate? Xenophobia why? And "main" is a tough allegation to make because most Trump voters don't know any Muslims, let alone Syrian refugees. I worry that there's a tendency on the Left to say "they hate our Freedoms" and move on as if they've somehow parsed the main argument and don't have to think about it anymore. I mean, I have a high suspicion that I wouldn't like to see the voting results of Lawrenceburg, KY, yet I enjoy Wild Turkey rather a lot. There has to be a reason normal humans would vote Trump because I can't accept that half the country is rabid psychopaths. I said it earlier today and I'll say it again: a disinterested executive isn't the end of the world for the executive branch. Bush II was disinterested. Reagan was demonstrably senile for the last two-three years. But Trump has never existed in the structure he's about to exist in and while I have no doubts that the machinery surrounding him has every intent to Make America Gasp Again, they're going to have to do it at the behest of a man who takes selfies with taco salads. I dunno. Everybody on the Left is seeing Triumph of the Will. I think it'll be a little too Weekend at Bernie's to get that grim that quick.
I haven't read a Cracked in forever, thanks. I wasn't being snarky, I really do appreciate your grasp on this shit. Just experiencing some serious fucking disillusionment with everything right now. Life will, hopefully, go on.
I know. I'm aware. And obviously I enjoy the discussion. My disillusionment is tempered by the observation that the whole of the chattering class is flat-footed and floundering and that the only honest ones are writing variations of "what the fuck just happened". The ones that are claiming bullshit like "noam chomsky called this political moment 6 years ago" are the ones that are looking for a safe place to stop thinking. There are a lot of fundamental tenets of neoliberal thought and policy that aren't questioned because fuck you, that's why. For 30 years it's only been the howling moonbats that talk about the "creature from Jeckyll Island". And first Strauss and Howe, and then Ha-Joon Chang, and then Piketty raise real questions about economics and its effects but nobody listens and now? Well, now everyone is floundering around for answers and I hope some alternative theories get some real investigation. Sometimes we need some real fuckin' hubris before we can move on. I guess, in a way, Trump=Hitler is a part of that.