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I mean, yeah, this guy is wrong for thinking Trump will keep us out of wars, and the idea that you would vote for someone you think it like Hitler to stop new wars is both contradictory and morally reprehensible. But I've heard this take before (well, except the Hitler part, that's bat-shit insane) and it might be worth reflecting why a lot of the electorate no longer sees the Democratic party as the anti-war party. That's a big shift that's occurred in my lifetime, and it's worth examining.
But I’ve heard this take before (well, except the Hitler part, that’s bat-shit insane) and it might be worth reflecting why a lot of the electorate no longer sees the Democratic party as the anti-war party. That’s a big shift that’s occurred in my lifetime, and it’s worth examining.
Because they're idiots?
Every major war started in my lifetime (including the "war on drugs") was started by Republicans.
The Democratic party is the party of complacency, I'll grant them that, and we were in wars for several administrations that Republicans started. So it's hard for their donkey brains to remember when and why the wars started and when they ended. A lot of people think that Obama was in office when 9/11 happened. The country is full of idiots.
I think you can't approch it from a party line issue. People want to see it in fact as action for the candidates, and at least right now Biden dropped the ball on Isreal badly. He should have put harsh levers on Isreal to get them out of Gaza quickly, Ukraine is a more complicated problem, but the US should focus more on ending conflicts quickly rather than let them drag on forever. But that takes real policy and leadership.
It's because they aren't. Clinton and Gore were 100% interventionist, and had no issues with preemptive war, some accused Clinton of starting a war to boost his popularity. Kerry was anti war historically, but pragmatic on Iraq, Hillary again with Bill not at all anti war-->
Obama's military adittude was ''a Democrat can't say no to the military'' and allowed whatever the joint chiefs wanted, which is never going to be anti war. And Biden was the same. Harris clearly not anti war either. Trump says he is, and that's more anti war than any Dem in my lifetime. Can he effectively govern for war reduction? No. He's an idiot, and liar. But he's selling it.
Being "pragmatic on Iraq" turned off a lot of the left. Ralph Nader's running mate, Peter Camejo, remarked at the time "Kerry isn't Bush Lite. He's Bush Smart! We do not need a smarter Bush!" Apparently the electorate agreed, because W. Bush went on to win a second term.
it might be worth reflecting why a lot of the electorate no longer sees the Democratic party as the anti-war party
The only reflection I am able to accomplish is to look at the GOP and say "Worse, tho".
If you aren't voting for the lesser evil, I have to assume you hate America and want it to fail. And that's worse than genocide.
The only reflection I am able to accomplish is to look at the GOP and say "Worse, tho".
OK, but so far, that hasn't been a very effective electoral strategy. I think we should try something else.
It doesn't need to be effective, because the pendulum of politics always swings back in the end. Trump will become the next scapegoat of American politics just like he was back in 2018 and then 2020. If the economy tops itself (as is increasingly likely), they'll be facing even bigger headwinds. Even if it doesn't, inflation and sky high rents aren't going away. Consumer debt isn't getting any lighter. The Trump Admin isn't going to be nice to people.
That's the electoral strategy at the end of the day. Just to keep being the Other Option and wait for people to come around. Wait as long as it takes. Maybe it'll take twenty years, like in Arizona. Maybe forty years, like in Georgia. Maybe it'll be over 60, like in Utah. Doesn't matter. Just keep squatting on the Other Option until the day comes.
It seems like having policies that make people want to vote for Democrats would deliver more immediate and lasting results than allowing American conditions to continue deteriorating and hoping our opponents receive the blame.
Dems have to deliver on those policies when given the opportunity. If all they can deliver are excuses, they won't have a base that trusts them.
Go down to Mexico and see how this is done. AMLO and Sheinbaum have been on a historic electoral tear, in large part because they've been so effective at delivering their reforms. They're crazy popular right now.
Done went from being the guy we'd kill if we had a time machine to the guy we voted for in less than a decade. Pretty impressive trick.
In times past, I was fascinated by Hitler and WW2. It was a lifelong obsession that I had since childhood. But ever since the Trump era started it started to wane due to the fact that WW2 and Hitler just didn't seem so distant anymore... the world felt like a repeat of what was happening in those days and looking up facts felt, in part, like learning more to understand what is happening now instead of about history.
But if there is something that I need to point out is that Hitler was a SHIT leader. Germans and Germany ever since the Kaiser era were portrayed as hyperefficient and militaristic, and people then claim the Nazis were the same. They weren't. Nazi bureaucracy was bullshit and most of their economic growth was based on plunder (initially from German Jews and other marginalized groups and later from other countries) and almost purely military build up. Germany actually lagged behind in technological build-up to most countries, despite the stereotypes of the Wunderwaffen of WW2 (Fritz-X bomb, the ME-262, etc), and industrially as any technology that didn't have a direct military benefit was discarded. They didn't even have any proper anti-biotics during the war!
Even agriculture was fucked by the Germans. Despite the romanticization of the German peasantry and the countryside by the Nazis, they could not sustain their population at all. Most German food was imported, and they were preparing their population for harsh wartime rationing even before the war started. They fed their population almost entirely on stolen food from Poland, France, the Netherlands, and Ukraine. Also by killing a lot of people in the death camps they saved on food that way as well.
People stereotype communist countries as having no food when they don't realize that fascist nations just can't feed their own folk. Nazi Germany wasn't alone in having serious food problems. Imperial Japan couldn't feed its own population and would have had widespread hunger if they didn't start plundering China during the war.
Hitler lead Germans and Germany into death and destruction and misery and mayhem. He did nothing good for Germany. None at all. Even towards the end of the war he would have been OK with the German people being genocided since if they were defeated by the barbarian orc-like Soviets and the mongrel Americans they were not the master race he thought they were and they deserved to die. There is a reason why he is remembered as one of the world's greatest monsters.
I remember in 2016 thinking how similar Trump was to Hitler and rhetoric and everything. I was written off is basically being nothing but hyperbole and physical form unfortunately I wasn't wrong which sucks
I see where you're coming from. Perhaps not as obsessed, but I always had a historical interest in the era until it became an alarming parallel to present day news. Most people do not know much about what went down in the pre-war period. They just have knee-jerk reactions to it. "Traditional values" were trending at the time, Nazism was marketed as the modern, cool choice. Education, administration and even scouting and chess clubs were Nazified at the time. I see it with the freaking MAGA hat everywhere nowadays. I just see it and say, fuck this is some Nazi Germany shit. To me now there are two kinds of people, those who see it, and those who don't. People are so precious thinking that Germans went nuts with the mass murder shit and elected this guy, but themselves have been on the exact same track as Nazi Germany for years: idolizing a dangerous man without ever questioning him. Soon they will have no excuse either, only collective guilt. Some of us won't be here to see it though, for one reason or another. I have pointed this out in my other comment: once fascists get hold of the state apparatus, there is no horror we can put past them.
i think it's at least in part because we have always been taught to see Hitler as a monster instead of a person. We dehumanised him and the entire nazi party so much for many it sounds like a myth instead of history, the take away seems simple - just don't be a monster.
The lesson was - some people are born evil
Instead of - anybody can fall the wrong path and find themselves committing atrocities. Even your friends, even your family, even you
i've been saying this for a long time - Hitler wasn't a monster, he was human just like you and me, and that's a hundred times more terryfing
Indeed, dehumanization of the Nazis made most people think they are immune both to similar propaganda and similar atrocities. They think that Hitler advertised the Holocaust to be elected. It was a war time state secret (although there was the "Hitler's Prophecy" but no-one took it at face value).
Hitler regime rose to power with the now familiar rhetoric: traditional values, family, order, capitalism, down with the trans degenerates, beat up leftists they poison the blood of our country.
That is why Trump goes out so easily saying "Hitler mught have said that but in a very different way". He didn't. It was the same fucking way.
Having said that, consider how the "abstractio ad Hitlerum" advertized as a fallacy actually enabled, eventually, Trump to get away with Hitler shit, just by saying it is a fucking fallacy. (I think this is in turn called the "Fallacy fallacy") This timeline is history repeating itself as a farce, exactly as Marx predicted.
I feel for some Nazi-like propaganda in times past, and I am PISSED at the people who tricked me and I will never forgive them. They weren't born evil in some nefarious manner, I will agree, but they did fall for the same shit that anyone can fall for. This was the critical lesson that most people forget.
Also the depiction of Nazi Germany as this hyperadvanced tech nation also played a role in it. While the Germans did have some very interesting secret weapon projects, people don't realize the following:
1: They were in trial stages and were often rushed into production well before the underlying technology was sufficient to make them operational. Meaning they would NOT have been able to turn the tide of the war no matter what.
2: The Germany military was seriously lacking in many BASIC components. They didn't have enough trucks and automobiles to do most of their shit. The Americans were fully mechanized, on the other hand and had FAR more of the nuts and bolts needed to win the war.
3: Much of the secret weapons they tried to make were wastes of time and resources. If they had put their efforts onto the stuff that is needed to win they might have held out for longer, but their failure was their attempt to win by a magic bullet instead of real bullets.
4: The Allies also had their own secret weapons projects that were just as funky and cool as the Axis. The Allies had jets and radar controlled stuff, too (and need I mention THE ATOMIC BOMB!). The Allies even had operational jet fighter squadrons during the war, but they didn't throw them at the enemy. Even the Soviet Union, a backwards nation compared to the UK and the US, had their own secret weapons projects, too. But Stalin, like Roosevelt and Churchill, realized that the war would not be won by magic bullets, but real bullets, and focused more on getting the basic needs of the military done.
In short the Nazis weren't any more advanced with their tech. Their attempted use of fancy shit was done out of desperation and not an sign of better thinking.
Well, Hitler and the nazis were inspired by the USA...
Reference: https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691172422/hitlers-american-model
Maybe he just meant all the good qualities of Hitler. Like the ones he used to get away with his evil fucking mass murder for so long.
Say what you will about that Hitler guy - but at least he did do a good thing or two, like killing Hitler!
Maybe, even if they hate him. Know he is bad. The one takeway is that they liked Kamala even less. It is combination of desperation and despise. If the Dems don't learn from this, they will repeat the same mistakes over and over. Pick someone likeable
No matter who Democrats pick they will always be painted as unlikeable, losers, and evil by Republicans. If you think picking a "likeable" candidate is the trick then you too have fallen for the endless Republican framing trap.
Shoulda ran Walz as prez from the get-go. Dude ticks all the masculinity boxes the right loves while being a real human being.
That was my first thought when I heard Walz speak: "Wow! Can this guy be president instead?"
Now he has no hope of becoming president, because he's connected to a historically losing campaign. The Democrats would never nominate him now.
Whiskey Tango Foxtrot...I call BS on Wolfson's reasoning. The bastard is most likely a neo-Nazi shitbag and knew exactly what he wants out Putin's Sock Puppet.
Ya know.... if I thought someone was literally Hitler, the last thing I'm gonna fucking do is help them literally have control of... everything.
Everyone keeps looking for answers to why trump won. I keep coming back to media directed stupidity
And social media feeds.
How much you wanna bet this guy scrolls facebook a ton? Or listens to railing radio/podcasts on drives? This opinion didn't spawn from a vacuum.
They should be following up and asking him where he got those ideas.
“I voted for the guy that I think is like Hitler to end conflicts and keep us out of wars.”
Did he not read the part where Hitler genocided Jews, Europeans, and the disabled?
Did he not read the part in history where Hitler caused a war so large that it wiped out entire European families, literally tens of millions of Europeans?
The white working class in this country is going to get everything they voted for. I hope Trump floods their neighborhoods with immigrants, LEGALLY.
It's such an alien thought process that I don't even know where I would begin with discussing politics with such a person.
