Posted on 02/23/2016 1:42:28 PM PST by Citizen Zed
To understand the rise of Hitler and the spread of Nazism, I have generally relied on the German-Jewish emigre philosopher Hannah Arendt and her arguments about the banality of evil. Somehow people can understand themselves as "just doing their job," yet act as cogs in the wheel of a murderous machine. Arendt also offered a second answer in a small but powerful book called "Men in Dark Times." In this book, she described all those who thought that Hitler's rise was a terrible thing but chose "internal exile," or staying invisible and out of the way as their strategy for coping with the situation. They knew evil was evil, but they too facilitated it, by departing from the battlefield out of a sense of hopelessness.
One can see both of these phenomena unfolding now. The first shows itself, for instance, when journalists cover every crude and cruel thing that comes out of Trump's mouth and thereby help acculturate all of us to what we are hearing. Are they not just doing their jobs, they will ask, in covering the Republican front-runner? Have we not already been acculturated by 30 years of popular culture to offensive and inciting comments? Yes, both of these things are true. But that doesn't mean journalists ought to be Trump's megaphone. Perhaps we should just shut the lights out on offensiveness; turn off the mic when someone tries to shout down others; reestablish standards for what counts as a worthwhile contribution to the public debate. That will seem counter to journalistic norms, yes, but why not let Trump pay for his own ads when he wants to broadcast foul and incendiary ideas? He'll still have plenty of access to freedom of expression. It is time to draw a bright line.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
later read
Well said Doremus Jessup! Sinclair Lewis was America’s first Nobel Laureate in literature. What a decade he had in the twenties: Main Street, Babbitt, Arrowsmith, Elmer Gantry and Dodsworth!
THE WASHINGTON POST ENDORESES TRUMP!
You're wrong.
Sanders is a national socialist.
Clinton and Obama are transnational elitists.
Yea, I imagine Trump is going to send his daughter to the camps.
Talking with Hannity the other night, he mentioned Obama’s deal with Iran. And how he said we were supposed to defend them against Israel.
Trump said no way.
Stopped reading right there. For pity's sake, girl, find another metaphor. This one's been done ever since 2000.
(Only against Republicans, that is.)
The Left's Eight Commandments
I
Thou shall create an illusion of invulnerability shared by most members to foster excessive optimism and encourage extreme risks taking
II
Thou shall not allow any member to question the group's inherent morality; instead members shall be encouraged to ignore the ethical or moral consequences of their decisions
III
Thou shall promote collective efforts to rationalize in order to discount warnings, or other information that might lead members to reconsider their assumptions before they recommit themselves to their assumptions
IV
Thou shall reinforce stereotyped views of enemy leaders as too evil to warrant genuine attempts to negotiate, or as too weak and stupid to counter whatever risky attempts are made to defeat their purpose
V
Thou shall self-censor any deviation from the apparent group consensus, inclining each member to minimize the importance of their doubts and counterarguments
VI
Thou shall create and maintain a shared illusion of unanimity concerning judgment conforming to the majority view
VII
Thou shall apply direct pressure on any member who expresses strong arguments against any of the group's stereotypes, illusions, or commitments, making clear that this type of dissent is contrary to what is expected of all loyal members
VIII
Thou shall appoint mind guards to protect the group from adverse information that might shatter their shared complacency about the effectiveness and morality of their decisions
-Eddie01 (adapted from Janis '82)
I couldn't either... watching MSNBC, the entire last 20 minutes I bet is all about who and what can take down Trump and how they should best do it, etc. Incredible, I remember no such thing when Obama was on the rise...
Hit the nail on the head. America handed congress to the GOP specifically to stop Obama and instead they cozied up to him and enabled him. At some point even the dullest minds will stop accepting the line about having to vote for RINOs because the alternative is so much worse when it turns out that the alternative would have been exactly the same.
They’re just following Godwin’s Law.
Although our modern socialists' promise of greater freedom is genuine and sincere, in recent years observer after observer has been impressed by the unforeseen consequences of socialism, the extraordinary similarity in many respects of the conditions under 'communism' and 'fascism'. As the writer Peter Drucker expressed it in 1939,'the complete collapse of the belief in the attainability of freedom and equality through Marxism has forced Russia to travel the same road toward a totalitarian society of unfreedom and inequality which Germany has been following. Not that communism and fascism are essentially the same. Fascism is the stage reached after communism has proved an illusion, and it has proved as much an illusion in Russia as in pre-Hitler Germany."No less significant is the intellectual outlook of the rank and file in the communist and fascist movements in Germany before 1933. The relative ease with which a young communist could be converted into a Nazi or vice versa was well known, best of all to the propagandists of the two parties. The communists and Nazis clashed more frequently with each other than with other parties simply because they competed for the same type of mind and reserved for each other the hatred of the heretic. Their practice showed how closely they are related. To both, the real enemy, the man with whom they had nothing in common, was the liberal of the old type. While to the Nazi the communist and to the communist the Nazi, and to both the socialist, are potential recruits made of the right timber, they both know that there can be no compromise between them and those who really believe in individual freedom.What is promised to us as the Road to Freedom is in fact the Highroad to Servitude. For it is not difficult to see what must be the consequences when democracy embarks upon a course of planning. The goal of the planning will be described by some such vague term as 'the general welfare." There will be no real agreement as to the ends to be attained, and the effect of the people's agreeing that there must be central planning, without agreeing on the ends, will be rather as if a group of people were to commit themselves to take a journey together without agreeing where they want to go: with the result that they may all have to make a journey which most of them do not want at all. - F A Hayek,
The Road to Serfdom (Reader's Digest Condensed Version)
“...this could have been written 8 years ago....”
That was my thought. But, no, no one, Ms. Allen in particular, sees any comparisons or parallels there. Nope.
It’s always amusing to watch the Nazi propagandists at the WP calling someone Hitler.
I disagree.
The Uniparty does exactly 100% what the left wants done.
Trump will randomly do half of what the left wants and half of what the right wants. Then later, he’ll completely switch around, so we’re getting the other half, and the left is getting the first half.
The beauty of Trump is that an ox goring sacred cows will get half of yours and half of your neighbor’s. That’s an improvement over losing 100% of the time!
The bad news is Trump is Jesse Ventura + Arnold Schwarzenegger.
The last time the mainstream media and left has acted this way was after Sarah Palin was nominated for vice president. Once they saw how she electrified conservatives, they had to destroy her.
Gingrich yesterday called Trump an anti-left American Nationalist, very complimentary.
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