He’s certainly not anything like Hitler.
He’s certainly not anything like Hitler. It’s not the Jews who have to worry now. I get the impression that you are trying to diminish the importance and danger of what he is doing. What I pointed out in the post was that he is obsessed with doing this because of his demagogic character, the way he loves to work a crowd and lives for their adulation… what is clear to me at least is that the people (35-40% of them anyway) are too stupid to realize they are being artificially whipped up with lies and exploited by his speeches (He supposedly did read Hitler’s speeches) to vote for people who want to take away their actual government support and give it to armaments manufacturers. People like every Republican in Congress, who are all in debt to fascist-admiring billionaires… It is obvious to me that 1/3 of the people can take over the government and turn it into a fascist parody of democracy while they hobble the economy with protectionist policies, destabilize the world militarily, and try to stick with the oil economy while the polar ice caps melt. That’s dangerous and I’m sorry if I am repeating myself, crying in the wilderness apparently. It would be boring except that it is terrifying.
I wrote this on March 15 of this year in response to what I would call a troll who commented on my post of that date, which was basically the facts behind he who must not be named and his demagoguery, by which I meant the art and practice of leading large, stupid crowds of people in mobs. In my original post, and I rechecked this right now, I never mentioned Hitler. When I first responded to him, I never mentioned Hitler. It was he who mentioned Hitler, on his response to my cautious response. Spooky.
This is the problem, and I’ve been deeply depressed ever since I realized this: Hitler overtook Germany with roughly 1/3 of the people supporting him. he who must not be named has a roughly 40 percent popularity rating. The similarities are eerie.
Please help by contributing sympathy and likes: my snowflake is melting! snark.
I came across this answer to a Quora question about illegal immigrants and the US economy. It is old, but highly instructive. In short, illegal immigrants are a huge positive for the economy, and I mean putting dollars and cents in your pocket (and getting your lawn cut, with no risk of having your throat slashed.) This answer has been viewed roughly 189 thousand times, and I hope you two will also read it.
That’s what he wants. He wants his people to act towards him the way Kim Jong-Un’s people act towards HIM. Any deviation and you’re an “enemy of the people” unless you apologize and agree to kill the last traitor. This from Tony Plank on Quora, quoting an article in politico.com.
(as before, this image comes courtesy of pixabay.com and its original author)
@Jo Jamabalaya
You state that the senate guarantees that minorities cannot be overruled by the majority. But what you have now is that the majority can be and often times is overruled by the minority. Would you call that democracy? The Eu tokk different measures to ensure the protection of minorities while at the same time ruling out minority rule. If there are decisions made that do not need unanimous agreement, the there needs to a mjority of votes in the European Council that represent more than at least 50% or as I believe even 60% of the EU population. Apply that to the senate rules in the US and you have mitigated the current diproportinate weight of the the votes.
JT
@Todd Huttunen The constitution was compromised by the need to sanction slavery, creating an ever growing bias toward democratic control of the country.
17% of the population controls a majority of the senate. 70% of the senate will be controlled by 30% of the population within a few decades.
The minority Republican party controls two branches of government, since the senate installs the judiciary. The same minority of our population is additionally given an advantage in choosing the president and enacts gerrymandering to control the House. It appears likely that from the 21st century forward-that if a house divided against itself can indeed stand- a popularly elected president will be a rarity and the senate and judiciary will be “elected” by a shrinking minority of the population that likes to refer to the majority as “elites.”
The Republican minority’s M.O. is to act in anti-democratic bad faith to cheat the majority of Americans. It refused to allow a popularly elected sitting president of the other party to appoint judges or a Supreme Court Justice. The senate’s judiciary committee, repreenting a super-minority of voters, ran “Kangaroo” hearings and allowed the unpopular president who badly lost the popular vote to appoint the third branch of government. Those branches together codify voter suppression. As a “kicker,” they enact “tax relief” that increases taxes in “blue” states.
This can’t be fixed.
The Lancet study was reported, again, by Microsoft News application, and I quote:
The total fertility rate — or the average number of children a woman would have if she lived through all her reproductive years — declined from 4.7 live births in 1950 to 2.4 in 2017.
Meanwhile, the global population has nearly tripled since 1950, from 2.6 billion people to 7.6 billion, the report says. An average of nearly 84 million people have been added to the Earth’s population every year since 1985.
The phenomenon of refugees fleeing north that we have recently seen is related to climate change. It is plain. The temperature is going up and the people in the hottest places are fleeing– Central America is particularly prone to this phenomenon. People south of the narrow isthmus between the two Americas are probably fleeing south.
Michelle Obama has come out with a new book, and AP reports that she writes, (paraphrased): His body language at the last debate, stalking her around the stage, implies: “I can hurt you and get away with it.” This is the concept of impunity. When a sociopathic person does wrong and gets away with it (impunity), his or her behavior becomes steadily worse. This is extremely dangerous in the case of he who shall not be named because he has already gotten away with so much.
As a 64 year old person who sat through the House hearings on Nixon’s obstruction in the summer of 1974, with nothing better to do (I even recorded it) I find that in the twilight of my life I feel a strange sense of jamais vu. That’s right, the opposite of deja vu. This is nothing like then. Compared to this, the Watergate was a “pleasant dream.”
We officially entered the Twilight Zone AGAIN today with the White House repeating the doctored video of a White House aide trying to take the microphone away from a reporter during a press conference with the “President.” (He’s not a real President– he just plays one on TV.)
This doctored video, independently produced but ?retweeted by official sources, purports to show the reporter doing something he clearly did not do, either to many, many eyewitnesses, or to the original, or to a slowed down close-up. That the White House press secretary signed on to this obvious fabrication makes it complete: Everyone in the White House is a liar.
The doctored video attempts to back-up the White House’s explanation of why they took away the reporter’s press credentials afterwards– that the reporter TOUCHED the aide in a rude or assaultive (or any other) manner. That explanation was clearly false to everyone in the room. The real reason was that the “President” couldn’t handle the reporter’s sharp question asking why Trump called the refugee column advancing north from Central America an “invasion.” The reporter insisted on repeating the question and Trump simply couldn’t think of an answer that even made a complete sentence. Trump completely lost his temper and repeatedly demanded that the aide take away the reporter’s microphone.
The reporter politely refused to relinquish the microphone and maintained a firm grip upon his instrument of power. The aide attempted, without much success, four times to take it away, each time looking back at Trump to see if he would still insist. Then she ducked down, out of sight of the cameras.
If we’re going to just have a photoplay, as in “Reality TV”, why doesn’t Trump get actors to dress up as reporters and then he can call on them? I pine for those lost days, over fifty years ago, when President Kennedy handled news conferences on his own and really tried to lie convincingly to the press. He really tried to make the reporters like him and accept what he was trying to say. He went into great detail and, when he didn’t know the answer, he’d admit it. But this “President” can’t even handle five minutes of semi-hostile questions about his bald-faced, logic-free lies.
I suggest that every reporter from now on begin the questions with the same one that he couldn’t handle: Why are you calling a column of refugees an invasion?
Simultaneously, a man named Whitaker is suddenly the Attorney General of the United States. This makes no sense. This man has never been confirmed by the Senate to any post at least since 2004 and is obviously a shill for the Donald (he even admitted that he wanted to get a federal judgeship from Iowa, so he was trying to get Trump’s attention.) Worse, he’s committing an ethical breach by not recusing himself from the Russia investigation because he’s been beating the drums for a year or more about how the special investigator’s office is no good, very bad, really awful.
Whitaker is a lawyer but that doesn’t qualify him to be US AG any more than my having a driver’s license qualifies me for the Indy 500. He was obviously chosen to shut Mueller down– come to think of it, isn’t that an act of obstruction of justice?
Doesn’t matter. We’re in the Twilight Zone of impunity.
