Living under Hitler, living under Stalin
Commmenter “Tom G” writes:
…[N]on-Jewish “German life in Nazi Germany” before and thru the war was a heck of lot better than “Russian life in the USSR”. Knowing what I know now, if I had to choose how to live thru that time, I’d have chosen to live under Hitler rather than Stalin (being also non-Jewish).“German life in Nazi Germany” before and thru the war was a heck of lot better than “Russian life in the USSR”.
It’s one of those choices that are interesting to talk about but something we can all be grateful we don’t have to actually make (not literally between Hitler and Stalin, anyway).
Of course, attempting to compare even hypothetically is fraught with difficulties, because the analogy doesn’t really work. For example, we are comparing a relatively short number years of Hitler with a much longer Soviet period. We are comparing a very highly developed country which nevertheless was on the ropes after WWI (which it precipitated) to a rather backward country that had undergone a revolution.
But I want to take up the thought experiment at least for a moment, because Tom G’s comment taps into an old issue for me, which is that I don’t think most people are aware of the fact that the majority of the German people did not originally support the Nazis, and that the Nazi rise to power (as well as its cementing of power within the country) was effected by a tremendous amount of intimidation, threat (some of it very physical), and resultant fear in the populace. There was also a rather extensive German anti-Nazi resistance, particularly in certain divisions of the Wehrmacht. Concentration camps were originally designed as gulags for the politically rebellious or merely inconvenient, or for revenge (that was before there were death camps whose sole purpose—rather than their subsidiary one—was to kill people; death camps were reserved mainly for Jews). So the difference with the Soviets were not all that great, especially as time went on in Nazi Germany.
If you’d like to read an important book on the ways in which the Nazis consolidated their power in Germany step by vicious, insidious, and thuggish step, take a look at The Nazi Seizure of Power: The Experience of a Single German Town, 1930-1935
What’s more, during the war years there was universal conscription and a such a high death rate that towards the end of the war the Germans were drafting 14-year-olds. And I haven’t even gotten into the destruction wrought by the war itself in terms of bombings and the destruction of German cities. None of this is to deny that Germany as a whole, and many many Germans who did support the Nazis, were culpable. But we’re not talking about guilt or innocence here; we’re talking (or at least Tom G seems to be talking) about quality of life under each regime.
The Soviets and the Nazis used coercion, violence, and threats, as well as gulags and/or concentration camps, on their own people to keep them in line. Both countries had material shortages. Both lost a lot of population during WWII. I couldn’t begin to compare what percentage of the population in each country was composed of courageous dissidents, what percentage suffered greatly (either as dissidents/resistance or more silently), what percentage was relatively comfortable and just going along to get along, and what percentage was composed of party apparachniks who profited and lived the good life. All I know is that there were very significant numbers of each in each country, and that I would not want to have lived in either place at the time.
Bloodlands by Timothy Snyder of Yale is wonderfully thorough about the lands between Berlin and Moscow 1933-45. I seriously recommend that you do not read it alone, however, but in parallel with a friend or group. It is painful to read, and the need to process it out loud with another human being is important. Conditions and violence were unimaginably bad. The documentation is new, because Snyder is fluent in the necessary Slavic languages as well as the English, French, and German that have previously constituted the bulk of the primary-source material. I hate even thinking about it.
I think it is the difference between short-term and long-term trauma. Hitler was quicker and focused. Stalin’s atrocities were sustained over decades. Those are essentially different types of trauma.
I have long suspected that we Americans, who for a very long time have lived in a politically safe nation insulated by vast oceans from despots, find it easy to say that they would oppose despots and tyrants. But when it really comes down to it, I sadly doubt that many actually would.
If despotism came to your door in the middle of the night, out of the blue, most people with the means to fight would fight for themselves, their families, their block, their country and so on, because the consequences of not fighting back are obvious and inevitable. But as the water boils slowly, we frogs (no reference meant to France) sit quietly, not wanting to risk our lives and livelihoods by speaking up.
For me, the end of the US as we know it came with the Brendan Eich incident, in which a personal donation six years previously, to a legitimate ballot issue, resulted in a forced resignation after a public outcry. That’s insane and absurd, but most of us quietly put our heads down rather than put ourselves at risk.
When it comes to actual violence, actual job loss, actual threat of punishment to oneself and one’s family, very few people are going to stand up and fight back.
On the 17th of May we visited the Normandy American Cemetery & Visitor Center (opened in 2007) and one of the things that struck me so deeply is the personal loss and sufferings (lives & structures) that the people of Normandy experienced and yet THEY EMBRACED THEIR LIBERATORS. Those were Allied bombs that took out cathedrals, churches, houses, and even killed civilians and yet, they were loosed from the evil of the Nazis. Their gratitude is manifest in the gift of land (absolutely breathtaking real estate), American soil, with perpetual honor to those that saved western civilization. I wish every American could visit, and learn.
Kyndyll G:
I am in complete agreement with you about the fact that most people would not be such heroes. And the Eich incident was extremely troubling.
‘who unfortunately felt themselves to be powerless in the face of this evil.’
However, there was a point in time before which they would not have been powerless. Best if they had stopped the Nazi’s before they reached that point of no return.
Neo & Kyndyll,
That is how I feel too. We are such a soft people, imagining slights and making mountains out of molehills, while swallowing whole-hog grave offenses to our day-in and day-out existence. We (speaking generally) lack courage in the fundamentals, while responding to the nth degree to the most incidental circumstances. Interesting road ahead.
The hypothetical choice of whom it would have been better to live under, Hitler or Stalin is ultimately a false one because you cannot be said to actually have a life, to ‘live’ under either. Unless that is, you consider existing on your knees… as ‘living’.
People in N. Korea draw breath, eat, drink and may have children but inside, where it counts, there is no ‘life’. Their ground is barren, they are, whether they admit it to themselves or not, simply existing.
There is one exception to this state, those who embrace the evil and delight in it. For such as they, satisfied ‘appetites’ bring a temporary ‘contentment’.
Steve D:
Please read the book The Nazi Seizure of Power. It is one of the most chilling things I’ve ever read. After reading it, I am convinced there was nothing the Germans could have done to stop the Nazis beforehand (unless they had the ability to predict the future). I can’t explain in a short comment, but the Nazi seizure of power really was a seizing that had many parts and many dimensions, and was absolutely pernicious and like a nightmare. The story is not that well-known. Read it, or at least enough of it to get an idea of what I’m talking about.
The Hitler/Nazi rise to complete control was possible because of the decadence that flourished under the Weimar Republic, the suffering caused by hyperinflation and massive unemployment, and the latent antisemitism shared in all of Europe that the Nazi regime fertilized with crude but effective propaganda. Plus, the humiliation of the WW1 defeat and resentment of the burdens imposed by the Treaty of Versailles were major factors. Hitler promised to be the phoenix that would return Germany to the glory was its due.
IMO the Soviet repression and terror was uniquely Russian. Prior to the revolution, the Russian language contained a verb that translates as “to beat one’s serf”. Russians were used to subjugation and when the communists did not deliver utopia, it was no big surprise. “They pretend to pay us, so we pretend to work.”
Obviously, life for the average person was far more comfortable during the early years of WW2 for the Germans; the average Russian suffered far greater severe circumstances during the war, up until the final year of the war which saw the Red Army roll back the invaders while the Allies rolled back the Germans from Normandy to the Elbe and carpet bombing the cities of Germany.
This is more long winded than my typical post, but in a nutshell comparing the experiences of the average German or Russian under their respective repressive regimes is IMO comparing apples to oranges.
Second guessing people who are caught in the maelstrom is pointless. People who succeed in establishing tyranny, know very well how to isolate any opposition.
Just as a hypothetical. Suppose things got so bad in the United States with an Executive who was using the mechanism of government to run rough shod over the Constitution and the rights of political opponents, that you feared actual despotism. Suppose you wanted to mount an opposition. How would you organize? Who would you talk to and who would you trust? How many could you attract without bringing down the might of the national police state; e.g. FBI, ATF, DEA, IRS, EPA, Executive Protective, Secret Service, Interior Dept? Keep in mind that most of the Agencies cited have their own armed SWAT teams. I may have missed a few. There is a reason that most coups are initiated by the military–the guys with the guns and organization in place. Thank goodness I am talking hypothetically; otherwise people might worry about the enormous growth of the federal police power in the U.S. Some may ask, could members of federal organizations be motivated to actually move violently against fellow citizens? Did Ruby Ridge, and Waco happen?
The only hope is to prevent the wrong people from gaining control of the government. An informed electorate which carefully vets candidates for office, and closely follows its government actions, is the best defense. Oh, wait!
Parker, I do agree that conditions under the Weimar Republic created fertile ground.
I read somewhere today–maybe here–that in WWI, after Great Britain lost nearly a whole generation of strong young men who were willing to fight for their country; leaving behind those weak in body or spirit, it was a near thing that Brit society did not crumble. So much worse for Germany. In addition to the enormous loss of the best of young manhood, their national pride was beset by the stigma of losing the war. Finally, their economy was in shambles, in part due to the draconian reparations. I could not venture to guess whether different political leadership could have thwarted the Nazis and produced a better outcome.
Adolf did not gain much support because he was anti-Jewish. This stance was a vote LOSER.
Adolf gained enormous traction by way of his anti-Bolshevism.
THAT was his ‘money maker.’
Adolf would switch from one class enemy to the other — without breaking cadence.
The Holocaust — in the Western mind and memory — is of the genocide inflicted upon European Jewry.
That conception is in sufficient in scope.
1) The vast bulk of the victims were murdered by BULLETS in the killing fields of Barbarossa
The primary records long used come from the:
Einsatzgruppen (German for “task forces”,[1] “deployment groups”;[2] singular Einsatzgruppe; official full name Einsatzgruppen der Sicherheitspolizei und des SD) were Schutzstaffel (SS) paramilitary death squads of Nazi Germany that were responsible for mass killings, primarily by shooting, during World War II. The Einsatzgruppen were involved in the murder of much of the intelligentsia and cultural elite of Poland, and had an integral role in the implementation of the Final Solution of the Jewish question (Die Endlé¶sung der Judenfrage) in territories conquered by Nazi Germany. Almost all of the people they killed were civilians, beginning with the intelligentsia and swiftly progressing to Soviet political commissars, Jews, and Gypsies throughout Eastern Europe.”
wiki…
As ever wiki gets critical facts wrong. The EG were SD units, not SS as generally understood in the post-war West.
The SD were a sub-set of the General SS — essentially a dedicated murder crew… focused upon — EQUALLY — partisans and class enemies. { Jews, Gypsies, Seventh Day Adventists, Bolshevik activists … the usual suspects. }
These crews kept records — lots of records.
2) The Waffen SS formations in the Barbarossa campaign routinely dispatched company sized formations to abet the EG action groups.
AND
Conducted NO END of murders under their own initiative — and by request of Wehrmacht general officers.
These were machine gun belt murders.
{ ie MG 34 “Spandau” machine guns on tripods were used — with no records — or feeble records — being kept. }
The Wehrmacht high command wanted the evil done — but no paper trail leading back up to them.
One needs perspective here. These SS companies vastly out numbered the bolt-action murder details of the EG.
They operated much closer to the front – and every attempt was made to conflate these atrocities with plain vanilla front line combat.
The only reason we have any decent knowledge of these deployments is by way of tell-alls at the death-bed by bottom rank SS troopers.
ALL of these atrocities preceded the infamous Wannsee conference… were it was decided to fold back the mass murder campaign into Polish territories conquered before June 22, 1941.
This turf, BTW, was DIRECTLY administered by the General SS. ( Not to be confused with the Waffen SS you see in the movies all the time. The Waffen SS romped around conquered lands — the General SS romped around Greater Germany — plus its own Nazi hell it established in south west Poland.
All of the infamous death camps were inside that zone, sometimes, barely so.
Part and parcel of Barbarossa was the genocide of the Red Army and the Bolshevik party.
It was official Nazi policy to starve Red Army prisoners to death… freeze them to death… and so forth. This style of atrocity was used because the targets were all MILITARY AGED MALES.
The end sought was identical for all: death to Adolf’s enemies.
While the gas chambers are justly infamous… it’s striking to read how often train loads of victims showed up — already dead. This wasn’t rare — it was routine.
Depending upon the season, train after train would pull in from the far corners of the Nazi empire — with no survivors — no food or water had ever been provided on a trip that could run a week or more.
For every Jew murdered by the SD in their anti-partisan sweeps — figure on two Slavs. In a typical week, Monday through Wednesday would consist of Jewish victims — the balance of the week would consist of Polish/Russian victims.
Villages and towns along the main rail lines were the earliest targets for such sweeps. Every time a locomotive was sabotaged// de-railed — the SD would liquidate every soul within marching distance. Further, the forests near the rails would be cut down and back — further and further as the war progressed.
Consequently it’s now becoming clear that the victim counts previously assumed to be so accurate — are as worthless as any Nazi promise. They are all way too low.
BTW, to see where Adolf’s head was at, the siege of Leningrad was deliberately intended to starve the city out. In this, Adolf was merely doing in full view of the world — what he’d been doing behind the lines — since June 22, 1941.
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Of course, Stalin had been freezing, starving, and brutalizing his cowering victims for years by the time Adolf picked up the ‘style.’
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Any poor Jew or Slav that retreated to the east to avoid Nazis — was instantly deemed a traitor and placed inside penal battalions — to be roundly abused — and then thrown onto Nazi mines and machine guns at the start of any heart felt Soviet offensive.
This atrocity campaign is also omitted from the Holocaust stats — but belongs in them. The numbers are astounding.
Depressing.
blert,
Starvation as a weapon is an old strategy. Hitler was ruthless no doubt. The seige of Warsaw, Leningrad, and Stalingard all fall into this concept. Where Hitler came up short was his lack of imagination. People cornered like rats dig deep and find the means to resist an eventually push back hard. The Jews in Warsaw managed to kill many Germans with very few weapons. It was a futile endeavor, but they had nothing left to lose.
This is something our democrat would be insect overlords fail to understand. If 900k gunnuts, clinging to a desire to live free decide to go underground and fight a stealth war, it will not be easy to snuff them out. Day by day their symphatizers will grow. If it reaches 10% it will be game over.
Sometime in the 1970s, when my mother was active in Lutheran church activities, she met a woman from one of the Baltic states (Latvia, Lithuania, or Estonia, can’t recall which) who had experienced both a Nazi and Soviet occupation. She told my mother that the Nazis were definitely easier to bear, so long as you were not Jewish or involved in the anti-Nazi underground. As long as you weren’t either of those – they pretty much left you alone. But the Soviets? If you were from a wealth family, or local nobility, or were an intellectual of some kind, a military officer, worked for a bank, owned property, were active in a church, a teacher … or anything which the Soviets declared to be an enemy of the proletariat – you were a target for them.
I actually have this Hitler-Stalin comparison often in my mind — and almost mentioned it the last time you promoted I Will Bear Witness.
In Slovakia, my wife’s Christian father had been sent to the Uranium mines for some fairly short time and was returned to his wife and four daughters before any permanent damage. He remembers Catholic Priest Tiso, leader of war-time Slovakia and an ally of Hitler.
Slovakia lost far more Slovaks in WWI than in the more terrible WW II — because Tiso did the minimum to keep Hitler from full domination.
I haven’t read I Will Bear Witness, partly because Hitler has already been demonized enough. In fact, over-demonized, so there’s not enough honest review of “our ally” Stalin and the commies.
The 20s fear of the commies by working Germans, as perhaps the single biggest reason for normal Germans to support Hitler, has not really been accepted nor promoted. But commies got almost 17% of the vote in Germany, 1932.
In that respect, fear of Hillary/ Bernie Dem Stalinism is leading many, including me, to want literally anything else.
The hope is that Reps stay in control in Congress, with an unknown Trump as Pres, less likely to be an effective authoritarian than the Dem.
Please also note that the press will help stop any Rep from abusing power, while the press will help any Dem to abuse power.
For an excellent fictionalized history of the 20th century, Ken Follett (Pillars of the Earth) has a great Century trilogy: Fall of Giants (WW I), Winter of the World (WW II), and Edge of Eternity (Cold War).
First two great, last one drifting a bit, only very good – too close to current affairs?
Gripping and interesting and very real feeling.
This is not immediately related to the topic, but: have folks here, including Neo, read Jonah Goldberg’s Liberal Fascism? I can’t remember it being discussed here.
I had read a couple of excerpts when it came out (almost 10 years ago) and thought it sounded so-so, and moreover was at that time of less interest to me than now. I just recently, partly at the insistence of a friend, read it, and am quite impressed overall, although with some reservations. In a very over-compressed nutshell, the theme is the very close genetic relationship between communism and fascism, and the *lack* of connection between fascism and American conservatism.
Overall it is an excellent bit of fog-clearing, though unfortunately the fog is too beloved of progressives for the book to make much difference there, and it makes some very important points about American progressivism. I recommend the recent edition which has a post-Obama afterword.
@ parker – that is a common understanding of the seeds of WWII, but at least one thinker I trust disagreed strongly. GK Chesterton, the English journalist and author, believed that we had not humiliated the Germans enough after WWI. We had let them off the mat culturally, not wanting to rub it in, but levied unpayable fines – a combination he felt would doubly breed resentment and lead to the re-emergence of the war. He was writing this as early as 1920. He lived until 1936, correctly identifying Hitler as the leader who harnessed that resentment.
The “culture” GKC believed should have been eradicated was the German belief in their own superiority in all things. After that, he thought we should display magnanimity. This is what happened after WWII, and it seems to have worked.
Assistant Village Idiot:
I’m not sure there was anything we could have done to eradicate that idea within the Germans, if WWI itself didn’t eradicate it. The end of the war was too ambiguous, and also the “stab in the back” theory took hold and helped the Germans let themselves off the hook.
Defeat in WWII was not equivocal, and the Germans themselves probably felt chastened by the events that had transpired. It wasn’t us, but events, that made an impression on them.
TL;DR – Scan the bolded text.
Don’t want to debate history, but do have to say that the “fertile ground” during the Wiemar was not really the “decadence”, but was a combination of several things, mostly from the political and economic chaos, both in their relative infancy of thought/study/understanding, thereby mishandled / misjudged.
Amongst all this, Hitler was able to leverage people’s unhappiness and ignorance in a period of high division on political direction (i.e. out of self interest for power, the political parties refused to cooperate, resulting in several dissolved parliaments/Reichstag and new elections).
If this division and inability to cooperate sounds familiar, look no further than the recent 17 candidates running for GOP leadership, most of them attacking each other to gain leverage within their “lanes”. Trump won by plurality in the vast majority of states he took.
Not sure if mentioned above… The Nazi’s actually lost seats in the final free election (though they carried approximately a third of votes). Nonetheless, With a plurality, Hitler was made Chancellor despite the misgivings of many, with the thinking that “they” could CONTROL him.
Also sound familiar? Many GOP supporters believe Congress and the courts can limit Trump. As Neo mentioned, Obama pushed comfortably through that door (okay, but what does looking back at Obama, or even GWB, buy us, perhaps it points to how much further Trump could take it re: setting new precidence without Congress?). Trump gives every indication he will kick those boundaries wide open, unbound whatsoever by the Constitution.
Hitler was considered a master at speech and media, attracting a wide following, and holding huge rally spectacles.
Sound familiar?…
“Hitler offered something to everyone: work to the unemployed; prosperity to failed business people; profits to industry; expansion to the Army; social harmony and an end of class distinctions to idealistic young students; and restoration of German glory to those in despair.”
http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/riseofhitler/elect.htm
He also had a good many places to lay blame at (e.g. “back stabbing”, Jews, Communists).
Do we hear echos of this with Trump?
Is Trump going to be like Hitler or Stalin? I doubt it, in the sense of military-like control, or driving through an ideology.
Valid or not, comparisons of Trump to these men, and their techniques / strategy for gaining power and using it, becomes a distraction from the real issues.
Ultimately, Trump doesn’t have to be like them to do irreparable damage to the foundations of our country, our liberty. Authoritarianism doesn’t have to go to that extreme. Any “crisis”, big or small, real or imagined, will be a “reason” to implement some set of policies that go against all we stand for. And there WILL BE crises.
Could that be Trump?
Who… Really… Knows?
And THAT is the Point!
We don’t know Trump’s principles, he is amazingly fluid between truth and lies (even on small, unnecessary things), quick to react negatively and personally (even on the smallest perceived disagreement), and equally quick to hint at, or use / support threats.
Is this anything close to the type of behavior we want in a future President to wield its power with?
Any support for Trump HAS to assume he cannot/won’t be “that bad”.
Based on What? … The man has given us nothing solid to base any positives we may want to project upon him.
So, all we’ve got to go on is “at least he’s not a Democrat”.
Small comfort that is, when we all can see what four more years of a Dem as POTUS is likely to bring, if we were honest about it (i.e. not anything close “gulags”, but definitely a continued slide in the wrong direction).
Back to the point… with nothing solid to go on, how can we assume he won’t be “that bad”?
Is it worth the risk, knowing that Congress, and especially the GOP, are unlikely to fence him in?
Should we gamble because we are instinctively opposed to all Democrats?
And, if we think Trump just might be “that bad”, but we cannot support Clinton either, do we sit and wait for a “viable” alternative to magically show up?
Chicken and egg… the same situation as in the GOP candidate race… everybody’s waiting for the “viable” candidate to move ahead. The more we “wait” the more it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy!
Time we rethink our strategy, as what we are doing is not working. Waiting is NOT working.
As opposed to throwing the dice, pick Libertarian (Gary Johnson, their candidate, is an experienced Governor – the least corrupted, most principled of the choices we face – and the party has infrastructure in all 50 states), and GOP down ticket.
Johnson is at 10% now (their historical high) only need 15% to be in the debates (i.e. finally garner media attention), and they can move on from there.
http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/pay-attention-to-libertarian-gary-johnson-hes-pulling-10-vs-trump-and-clinton/
Waiting around is NOT going to work folks, and tempting fate / fortune on Trump carries a huge downside risk (and it is not even an “educated/informed guess” if we are honest with ourselves).
Despite our disagreements with them, vote Libertarian for POTUS.
Big Mac…
Donald Trump does not PROFILE at ALL like the infamous tyrants of history.
The following ALL had horrific childhoods:
Ivan the Terrible
Alexander the Great ( he so loved daddy he assassinated him )
Caligula
Napoleon
Stalin
Hitler
0bama — he polls even WORSE than those listed above. He went so far as to refer to his youth experiences in the THIRD PERSON. He was socially rejected by the socially dominant crowd at every school he attended.
His grandmother — the dominant soul in his life — NOT his mother — was a NIGHTMARE. So the MSM is blank on her.
Hillary Rodham Clinton Goldman Sachs
Alcoholic, browbeating, wife abusing father.
She is every inch his clone, as her abused spouse, Bill, can testify.
Donald Trump polls the exact opposite way — much closer to John F Kennedy or George Bush ( father or son ) in living large — and acculturated towards Liberal New England/ New York values.
He’s really a Democrat running under the GOP label.
Above all, Donald is NOT an ideologue — in that sense — he’s the true opposite of both Hillary, Bernie and Barry,… all three are totally disconnected from the real world.
Being an attorney will do that to you.
In 1964 my Grandparents thought that Goldwater was the anti-Christ.
The safe bet was LBJ… who promptly took the nation straight into the ditch. Most of LBJ’s Big Decisions are still un-reversed — inflicting damage unto this hour.
It was also the era when the curtain was set on White America.
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At bottom, Trump is a PRAGMATIST.
That’s why no-one can figure out his compass direction.
With Bernie, Hillary or Barry — you’ve got ideologues who are not for changing — rather like Maduro in Venezuela.
I can’t speak to their emotional age — but all three are philosophical fossils… laid down as muds in the Cretaceous — to be raised as slates in our time.
I fear she’s slouching towards Washington to be re-animated.
Concentration camps were originally designed as gulags for the politically rebellious or merely inconvenient, or for revenge
And the first was built by the Republic to imprison its dissidents.
Germans were trained for generations for the national socialism. That it bloomed in Nazism is due to the example of the Soviet Union and the adoption of the same violence of the communist agitators by what became the fascists.
A book worth reading about everyday life in Germany after the Nazis took over is “Every Man Dies Alone” by Hans Fallada. It is about a couple in Berlin who develop a resistance campaign when their son is killed in the war. They do it by themselves (the correct translation of the title is “Every Man Dies for Himself Alone”), and in small ways.
Fallada’s earlier novel, “Little Man, What Now”, is set in the late 1920s, but conveys a lot about the conditions that led to the Nazi takeover. The novel is gripping reading, with a remarkable ending.
Actually the life of the Jews in Europe in vast was bad before Hitler and Stalin, this was followed long suffering of Jew ethnics and minorities in France, Spain, Russia Poland, or other eastern Europe countries.
Neo, you put a post some while ago the life in I recall Poland were the Jews have not write to lean, or send their kids to school, more they are on ban no one like trad with them.
So this was before Germany of Hitler or Stalin decades before.
@blert – I think you missed one of my bolded points.
It clearly says that “Trump doesn’t have to be like (Hitler, Stalin) to do irreparable damage to the foundations of our country, our liberty”
Don’t disagree that he seems more like a Democrat, but he has actively been on two sides of most every issue – as Neo says, “mutable”.
Especially don’t think there is anything “Pragmatic” about him, as that word has to have a point of view attached to it.
“Pragmatic” for the country – well, depends on what he’s going to do – and we don’t really know.
“Pragmatic” for you may be something totally different than for me. If so, if all his decisions were to go my way, chances are that you wouldn’t see him as very “Pragmatic”. Therefore, “Pragmatic” should have some guiding principles behind it, a “compass direction” (as you say), to have any meaning, otherwise, how is it different from “Random”.
Before you (or anyone else) goes there… “Making America Great Again” or “Putting America First” are not principles, as they fall under the same problem as above – from who’s point of view?
“Pragmatic” for Trump, okay, but I think “Transactional” is a better word for it. But, where does that get us?
That leaves us with one thing… we have to “trust” him.
But, given his history on his positions, and how he flips, flops, and flips, he’s lost any credibility with anyone looking for an answer as to “what is he going to do?”
Being cagey about it all, and then actively not wanting to be transparent (e.g. his taxes, his reaction to questions about how much donation money he raised and when he sent it) makes matters worse and is no selling point at all.
Having dealt IRL with people like Trump, it is a one way street with a guy like him. He wins! (i.e. for himself, nobody else, as they are merely an instrument to him, and he would quickly throw them under the bus for the next Win!). These people cannot stand being challenged, and are fast/loose with facts.
So, unless another party’s candidate can win, we are going to slow rot under Clinton, or go Base Jumping off a cliff with a guy who gives no indication he knows what he is doing, nor appears to have a plan to get from point A to point B, seems to be comfortable hinting at Authoritarianism, and has a penchant for reactive and extreme positions / statements.
Bottom Line: Trump carries with him a far higher downside / tail risk, and if it is accurate that he is a Dem under the GOP flag, very little upside.
Instead of waiting around for the perfect candidate or party to come forward, we need to get “Pragmatic” and actively support the Libertarians.
They only need 15% popular support to get to the debates and get the media attention they need. They are 10% right now.
We can vote GOP down stream, and hope they don’t get tainted by Trump at the top of the ticket.
If we wait around again, we can kiss another opportunity to stop Trump (and maybe Clinton) goodbye.