I think so. After all, he’s spent a career erecting skyscrapers in plain view of lady liberty, if you know what I’m sayin’
1 Like
9 Likes
Too be fair, probably about 80% of Trump’s under-30 supporters play that game. And hate Hanzo mains.
3 Likes
In talking with people that were part of that movement, they usually expressed to me that it was largely about the fear of the spread of Communism. The kind with a capital “C” that had recently been so messy next door.
The Bolshevik Revolution did provide a popular counterpoint for a lot of Germans who embraced authoritarianism. This is also brought up in the sources mentioned. Of course Nazism didnt exactly turn out swimmingly either.
2 Likes
I will.
I don’t think that Clinton is remotely equivalent to Trump, and if I were in the US I’d be voting for her.
But, yes, by voting for the invasion of Iraq, she was knowingly voting for the deaths of large numbers (she may have mistakenly thought that it could be restricted to tens of thousands, though) of innocent people.
Mass slaughter and a near certainty of war crimes are what happens when you invade countries, and Clinton isn’t stupid and ignorant enough not to know that.
Nothing that happened in Iraq post-invasion was surprising to anyone paying attention in the buildup. The WMD justification was always a transparently manufactured excuse for a war of choice. The historically massive protests against the war that occurred across the world happened for a reason.
8 Likes
I heard on the radio a bit ago, that she’s now walking it back saying she didn’t know the full story and shouldn’t have said anything due to that. Sounded like a real apology, not a faux one, too.
11 Likes
3 Likes
Good to hear it. I still think she’s one of the better Justices.
5 Likes
I don’t think he will turn up for the concession speech.
3 Likes
I was not defending it. I was interested in their motivations for joining, although my interviews were on a related, but different, topic. I don’t think wanting to “embrace authoritarianism” was a prime motivator, at least not in those terms. I am not entirely sure that anyone is going to seek out a movement primarily because it offers the opportunity to serve a ruthless tyrant. Of course, sometimes it ends up that way. One should be careful to not make the followers of any such movement into caricatures of the people they actually were. It is natural and comforting to do so, because it reassures us that we would never fall for something like that.
MB
Top 8, definitely
3 Likes
I didn’t think you were, but I saw no reason not to attack it.
Actually, the idea that Nazism appealed to conservative sentiments in a society that still had romantic recollections of the Bismarck era is hardly turning them into caricatures. Instead I see them as the product of their era. That is why I think looking for certain parallels in America is a problem, because we are the products of our era. So if for whatever reason there’s an American Hitler, he’s not going to be an old-school authoritarian with a toothbrush mustache. The scary thing is that I can’t predict what a successful authoritarian looks like in our era.
12 Likes
Orange?
12 Likes
But this is my point! He’s not successful! He’s losing to a candidate who is calling him out on Islamophobia of all things: Something I’m not sure a lot of Americans think is a thing. That he’s been successful in the Republican primaries isn’t a sign of broader American approval. Call it orange from concentrate. The people who are buying the bullshit hook, line, and sinker are a loud minority. The electoral college is the only reason Trump ever had a chance, and now he seems to have blown it.
The people who are responsible for his rise are also congenitally incompetent, too.
6 Likes
Until last week it looked like he had a very good chance of being successful.
Unless the orange one is crushed utterly on November 8, I think the next attempt will be similar, but they’ll do a more thorough background check.
5 Likes
I realize Nate Silver isn’t omniscient, but his projections always had Trump losing the general as far back as I can remember, and bear in mind that Trump was always relying on the inertia of partisan politics to give him his red states. I’ve been disappointed that Hillary wasn’t doing better, but it’s been a long time since I had any fear he would win. It’s not just wishful thinking. Trump was an incompetent garbage fire of a candidate from the beginning. He doesn’t know how to run a campaign.
Gerrymandering means being utterly crushed is unlikely, but the next candidate is going to look a lot more like Pence. Not great, but not fundamentally Hitler.
5 Likes
5 Likes
One of the reasons Trump got approval is a very common mindset shared by most USians:
Having lots of money = doing something right = being right. Money makes you not only successful in the public eye but admirable, intelligent, morally superior. It’s probably rooted in puritan/calvinist morals.
4 Likes
He was also relying on an aggressive campaign of voter suppression and polling-booth intimidation.
He needed to go into the election with momentum for that to work, though. Fascists can’t handle ridicule.
3 Likes
