10.15.16
Going Full Hitler
From the Guardian today, two of the six-figure swells go full Hitler: “Accusations of betrayal. Demagoguery and hatred. The bunker in Berlin. Comparisons with Adolf Hitler have been tempting throughout Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign for the presidency – never more so than at its mad, destructive climax.
“The Republican’s presidential bid appears to have become the campaign equivalent of the last days of the reich, when Germany’s leadership raged at bearers of bad news from the battlefield, ordered non-existent divisions to launch counteroffensives, and embraced a nihilistic plan to burn it all down and take everyone along.”
Real close to our predicament, huh?
Berlin was in ruins, encircled by three or four tank armies, not Americans, but the Red Army which had been left to take down the Fuhrer for obvious reasons. It had born the vast weight of casualties inflicted by the Fuhrer’s armies in the war.
And Germany’s leadership, plural, was not involved. It was the Fuhrer and only the Fuhrer who moved “non-existent” units, OKW — the supreme command of the Wehrmacht, and OKH, the general staff of the German army, had given up. There’s was to stand idly by and send out the Fuhrer’s senseless commands.
In the US, the capital is not rubble. And young school boys are not everywhere, manning 88’s at street corners and jumping out of hiding places to fire Panzerfaust’s (rocket propelled grenades) at the Red Army. The GOP higher ups are not going to be captured and tried as war criminals. And the entire country is not in ruins.
There are no real similarities between the last days of the Third Reich and election 2016. C’mon. Tthe digital flights of fancy are just a matter of the pampered taking the time to make themselves the center of attention, in comparing the catastrophe of the election to what was the climax of the inferno of World War II.
No, collectively, we’re just not that important.
This is going to pass and after November and when Barack Obama finally leaves the scene, the United States will still have no effective government. And there will be no fighting of global warming because the global chemistry is in, we’re way too late. Wall Street will go on as usual because the new President appreciates that they live successful, sophisticated and complicated lives there.
But our lives will continue to be boiled down by tech in synergy with corporate America. The police will continue to kill African Americans at will and acquire armored fighting vehicles.
Eighty percent of evangelicals will have voted for the man, in spite of everything. The majority of the US military will have voted for him, in spite of everything. Louisiana, Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee, Kentucky, West Virginia, Arizona, Indiana and quite a few more states will have voted for him, in spite of everything. The six figure swells will be stunned, just stunned by the number of people who, even in losing, voted for Trump. And there will be no more mood to join together and accept things, even if only for a little while, than there is now. There will be less, much less.
The most expensive global military in history will keep behaving as if nothing is going on at home and continue to bomb the poorest places. That is, until maybe we stumble into a war with Russia, that country that took down the Fuhrer. And then we’ll have a great new series of events to write stupid similes and metaphors about, up until rubble-ization comes home.
They’re never going to get it until things begin to get torn down right around them.
From Taibbi, at Rolling Stone:
Trump’s shocking rise and spectacular fall have been a singular disaster for U.S. politics. Built up in the press as the American Hitler, he was unmasked in the end as a pathetic little prankster who ruined himself, his family and half of America’s two-party political system …
That such a small man would have such an awesome impact on our nation’s history is terrible, but it makes sense if you believe in the essential ridiculousness of the human experience. Trump picked exactly the wrong time to launch his mirror-gazing rampage to nowhere. He ran at a time when Americans on both sides of the aisle were experiencing a deep sense of betrayal by the political class, anger that was finally ready to express itself at the ballot box.
The only thing that could get in the way of real change – if not now, then surely very soon – was a rebellion so maladroit, ill-conceived and irresponsible that even the severest critics of the system would become zealots for the status quo.In the absolute best-case scenario, the one in which he loses, this is what Trump’s run accomplished. He ran as an outsider antidote to a corrupt two-party system, and instead will leave that system more entrenched than ever.