Indeed, we are at risk. Thank you for shining a light on it. Unfortunately, most Americans seem to know only three things about Hitler: he started WWII, he lost WWII, and he caused the Holocaust.
At the time Hitler came to power, nothing like the Holocaust had happened in its scale or impact, though the Armenian Genocide was recent history. The Holocaust, therefore, was unimaginable. Now, even with a presidential candidate who has threated armed intervention against U.S. citizens, what you have described still is dismissed by half the populace. That, by itself, puts us at risk.
Thank you for clarifying the risk. It is one of my biggest disappointments that our journalists and media (not all, but most) failed the American people at this time by minimizing the threat or by ignoring it all together.
The Wall Street Journal editorial page this am (Mon 10-21-24) called these warnings "Democrat's Fascist Meme" . Joe S on Morning Joe (& guests) immediately condemned the WSJ but... still.
I wonder if the big media companies are just hedging their bets on Trump not wanting to fully offend him lest he win and literally yank their licenses (which he will do).
This election was always going to be a contest of two ideas of America.One of them is rooted in the principles of the American constitution, the other is authoritarian in origin echoing the examples of almost any strong man dictatorship.
The question was would Americans understand this and if they did would they care?
Three weeks out from the election the question is answered(sort of) and the answers explain why the election looks close.
1. There is a group, maybe 35% to 45% of the electorate who are just fine with an authoritarian strong man, thank you. They have what Hannah Arendt has called 'authoritarian mind sets' . They like to be directed, like to know what to do, like to preserve traditional power hierarchies, particularly race and gender, like to preserve traditional directional religious values and are hostile to change(unless it is recidivist). This the core of Trumpism.
So in the Land of the Bold , and the Home fo the Free . over a third of people neither want to be bold nor be free.
2. Nearly all Democrats understand the risk but that balances out the Trump follows.
3. Now there is another 20 %to 25 % of the electorate wandering around in a fog with little interest in or understanding of politics. This group is totally unaware of the issues at stake. It's this group that will decide the election.
One thing I have learnt after a life time in advertising and consumer research is you can not be conceptual if you are seeking to win people over to your product. Everything come back to meat and potatoes on the table. So talking in conceptual terms about the constitution, fascism, threats to democracy is incomprehensible to people who can barely bring themselves to vote.
Rather the Democrats should , in the next few days, make Trump a practical threat to things people value and take for granted.
There is a lot of talk about abortion, but what about the end of fault free divorce, the end of no co-pays on medicare, the end the ability to organize a trade union, the end of watching pornography(if we are worried about young male voters). And so on and so on.
This is a different sort o'f end times' but the Democrats must spell out with brutal simplicity what everyone is going to lose that they feel belongs to them..
I agree. I cannot overstate how much I love, for instance, the ad campaign Pornhub is doing right now—every time someone goes to open a video they’re given a warning about Project 2025’s plan for pornography.
Last year I saw that they reason that so many people in Europe and the US didn't believe that Hitler would do what he was saying he would do, was because it was so extreme, as to be unimaginable. It turned out that Hitler did, what he said he would do. The people of the world should have listened. If we do not learn from history, we are do doomed to repeat it.
One in five Gen Z do not believe that the holocaust happened, is because it is so unimaginable, but it did.
Trump saying the enemy within is him saying he will come after Americans. Black, Brown, Arab, AAPI, Muslims, LBGTQ, women and men. But, he will come after white Christians. During Trump's incompetent handling of the Covid pandemic up to 400,000 Americans died because Trump was up to being President.
If, we re-elect Trump the number of dead will be so very much higher.
It is happening here. I will close with Martin German Niemoller, a 1930's German quote;
First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.
Please act before it is too late. We have all the power we need, our vote. Use it before we do not have it anymore.
This is of course, chilling. I have been singing this tune to deaf wars for a few years now. I get the "you are just overreacting refrain". I am kept awake at night over this quite literally. The media has been complicit as usual. It is a surreal situation. But if anyone things I will lay down and not fight them tooth and nail, they have another think coming.
I was at a party Saturday night with several attorneys who are scared of Trump, but maintain some skepticism about his ability to do the things he wants to do. I am not an attorney, but my BA is in History and I’ve been interested in WW2 and the Holocaust for more than 30 years. What I told these attorneys was that they were too focused on what could happen within the confines of our laws. They needed to instead imagine a system where there were no constitutional or regulatory constraints; to wit, what they learned in law school would be utterly useless: the law would be what Trump and his leaders say it is at any time, consistency and precedent be damned (remember McConnell’s “no SCOTUS appointment in an election year” that then turned into “no SCOTUS appointment in an election year when the president is a Democrat”?). The Rest is History’s series on the rise of Nazism in Germany is a must listen for anyone who is skeptical about what a United States under Trump will look like.
An excellent wake up slap which I have shared. Sadly, so many undereducated Americans have no idea how Mussolini and Hitler rose to power. Not enough people were aware, not enough took the threat seriously. I worry that we, as a society, think "it can't happen here," but all it takes is one psychotic demagogue to get the ball rolling. The danger with Trump is in the fact that he has formed one of the biggest personality cults in modern history.
I can recommend a very short book by the Umberto Eco ( the erudite author of the Name of the Rose ) How to Spot a Fascist - just 51 pages comprised of 3 essays . He was a child in Italy in the 1940's and won a national essay contest on "Should we die for Mussolini?" . Eco was child , and recovered fully from the lure of fascism , so for once a hopeful note
Indeed, we are at risk. Thank you for shining a light on it. Unfortunately, most Americans seem to know only three things about Hitler: he started WWII, he lost WWII, and he caused the Holocaust.
At the time Hitler came to power, nothing like the Holocaust had happened in its scale or impact, though the Armenian Genocide was recent history. The Holocaust, therefore, was unimaginable. Now, even with a presidential candidate who has threated armed intervention against U.S. citizens, what you have described still is dismissed by half the populace. That, by itself, puts us at risk.
Thank you for clarifying the risk. It is one of my biggest disappointments that our journalists and media (not all, but most) failed the American people at this time by minimizing the threat or by ignoring it all together.
The Wall Street Journal editorial page this am (Mon 10-21-24) called these warnings "Democrat's Fascist Meme" . Joe S on Morning Joe (& guests) immediately condemned the WSJ but... still.
I wonder if the big media companies are just hedging their bets on Trump not wanting to fully offend him lest he win and literally yank their licenses (which he will do).
This election was always going to be a contest of two ideas of America.One of them is rooted in the principles of the American constitution, the other is authoritarian in origin echoing the examples of almost any strong man dictatorship.
The question was would Americans understand this and if they did would they care?
Three weeks out from the election the question is answered(sort of) and the answers explain why the election looks close.
1. There is a group, maybe 35% to 45% of the electorate who are just fine with an authoritarian strong man, thank you. They have what Hannah Arendt has called 'authoritarian mind sets' . They like to be directed, like to know what to do, like to preserve traditional power hierarchies, particularly race and gender, like to preserve traditional directional religious values and are hostile to change(unless it is recidivist). This the core of Trumpism.
So in the Land of the Bold , and the Home fo the Free . over a third of people neither want to be bold nor be free.
2. Nearly all Democrats understand the risk but that balances out the Trump follows.
3. Now there is another 20 %to 25 % of the electorate wandering around in a fog with little interest in or understanding of politics. This group is totally unaware of the issues at stake. It's this group that will decide the election.
One thing I have learnt after a life time in advertising and consumer research is you can not be conceptual if you are seeking to win people over to your product. Everything come back to meat and potatoes on the table. So talking in conceptual terms about the constitution, fascism, threats to democracy is incomprehensible to people who can barely bring themselves to vote.
Rather the Democrats should , in the next few days, make Trump a practical threat to things people value and take for granted.
There is a lot of talk about abortion, but what about the end of fault free divorce, the end of no co-pays on medicare, the end the ability to organize a trade union, the end of watching pornography(if we are worried about young male voters). And so on and so on.
This is a different sort o'f end times' but the Democrats must spell out with brutal simplicity what everyone is going to lose that they feel belongs to them..
Do that and you win by ten points
I agree. I cannot overstate how much I love, for instance, the ad campaign Pornhub is doing right now—every time someone goes to open a video they’re given a warning about Project 2025’s plan for pornography.
Last year I saw that they reason that so many people in Europe and the US didn't believe that Hitler would do what he was saying he would do, was because it was so extreme, as to be unimaginable. It turned out that Hitler did, what he said he would do. The people of the world should have listened. If we do not learn from history, we are do doomed to repeat it.
One in five Gen Z do not believe that the holocaust happened, is because it is so unimaginable, but it did.
Trump saying the enemy within is him saying he will come after Americans. Black, Brown, Arab, AAPI, Muslims, LBGTQ, women and men. But, he will come after white Christians. During Trump's incompetent handling of the Covid pandemic up to 400,000 Americans died because Trump was up to being President.
If, we re-elect Trump the number of dead will be so very much higher.
It is happening here. I will close with Martin German Niemoller, a 1930's German quote;
First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.
Please act before it is too late. We have all the power we need, our vote. Use it before we do not have it anymore.
This is of course, chilling. I have been singing this tune to deaf wars for a few years now. I get the "you are just overreacting refrain". I am kept awake at night over this quite literally. The media has been complicit as usual. It is a surreal situation. But if anyone things I will lay down and not fight them tooth and nail, they have another think coming.
Deaf ears I mean
I think you are correct about how fascism will be implemented.
I was at a party Saturday night with several attorneys who are scared of Trump, but maintain some skepticism about his ability to do the things he wants to do. I am not an attorney, but my BA is in History and I’ve been interested in WW2 and the Holocaust for more than 30 years. What I told these attorneys was that they were too focused on what could happen within the confines of our laws. They needed to instead imagine a system where there were no constitutional or regulatory constraints; to wit, what they learned in law school would be utterly useless: the law would be what Trump and his leaders say it is at any time, consistency and precedent be damned (remember McConnell’s “no SCOTUS appointment in an election year” that then turned into “no SCOTUS appointment in an election year when the president is a Democrat”?). The Rest is History’s series on the rise of Nazism in Germany is a must listen for anyone who is skeptical about what a United States under Trump will look like.
An excellent wake up slap which I have shared. Sadly, so many undereducated Americans have no idea how Mussolini and Hitler rose to power. Not enough people were aware, not enough took the threat seriously. I worry that we, as a society, think "it can't happen here," but all it takes is one psychotic demagogue to get the ball rolling. The danger with Trump is in the fact that he has formed one of the biggest personality cults in modern history.
I can recommend a very short book by the Umberto Eco ( the erudite author of the Name of the Rose ) How to Spot a Fascist - just 51 pages comprised of 3 essays . He was a child in Italy in the 1940's and won a national essay contest on "Should we die for Mussolini?" . Eco was child , and recovered fully from the lure of fascism , so for once a hopeful note