I was thinking that it was too bad that Politico wasn’t able to get Wayne Barrett’s take on Trump. Barrett began covering Trump in the 1970s and wrote an excellent biography on him in 1992.
And then I see in the NYT that Barrett died today. I guess he couldn’t stand watching this man become President.
From the bios, it seems that his mother coddled him while his father took care of criticising and belittling him. Little Donny reacted by seeking negative attention, until one day when he was 11 he went too far for even Mommy to save him. Dad shipped him off to military school where he began his career of bullying and grifting in earnest.
I thought the system had enough safety measures built into it to prevent the electorate from making such a horrible mistake. I was wrong.
And his mother was apparently an antagonist who somehow escaped from an early Tim Burton movie.
‘He Has This Deep Fear That He Is Not a Legitimate President’
We can work with that. 
Ah, how nice. He´s got his mothers hair.
That quote cements in my mind that tRump is nothing more than a lucky psychopath.
Heh, tRump is the kind of vain shitheel to get a sex change if he thought it could fix his hair and only his hair.
Not to dump on the trans community at all. Just stating the obvious.
I’ve wondered if that was true, Germans feeling relief at no longer having to be the bad guys, although I guessed that relief came after the worldwide U.S. temper tantrum in the wake of 9/11.
Literally. It crept out of her coffin during the Viewing and latched onto his head.
Yep, on all that. My main concern though is that Trump would trade GOP demands for concessions on his ethics (i.e., businesses).
A broken, loser country that fosters a culture of delusional and insecure self-importance is represented in executive office by a broken loser with a delusional and insecure self-importance.
That’s some 50-cent-army shit, right there. If not, imagine having some self identity of your own and not buying a self from the canned-flag store.
No. The sonderweg was always the wrong answer to the rise of Hitler. The German people of the 1930s were no more or less broken than any other peoples.
The German people were experiencing massive levels of unemployment, violent social upheaval, economic crises, and periods of hyperinflation, so I give them a lot more slack than the American Trump backers whose economic and social issues were something Germany in the 30s could only have wished for.
And even then, the Nazis did not win by a huge majority and Hitler took the government over in a coup, after they burned the Reichstag and blamed the communists and Jews.
The Sonderweg thesis also essentially let the rest of Europe (and the US) off the hook for their anti-semitism.
The German people were experiencing massive levels of unemployment, violent social upheaval, economic crises, and periods of hyperinflation
Just picking a nit- the hyperinflation was years in the past when the nazis became popular enough to join the coalition government. It was austerity and deflation after the American crash in 1928 that really fucked 'em.
It’s just a small nit, but the whole hyperinflation-made-hitler thing is ahistorical (but somehow respectable) propaganda from folks pushing political austerity for the purpose of dismantling government and selling gold to Fox-watchers.
BTW: I’m under the impression that the German working class didn’t go Nazi, they went communist. The Nazis were largely an middle and upper class reaction to that.
However, I don’t know if that’s actually true. Anyone better informed want to chip in?
I think there was some working class support for the nazis, but not overwhelming? it depended on whether or not particular individuals were involved in organized labor that had ties to the leftist/communists/socialist parties. That being said… much of the stuff I read on nazi germany are really more concerned with race as opposed to class, except to note the street fighting in Berlin in the 20s and to discuss the anti-communist elements and the dismantling of the trade unions after 1933.
The nazis did appeal to the middle class and upper classes, drawing on their fears over working class violence (which had been tied to years of political violence by some anarchist and communist groups around Europe and in the US). The appeal to a racialized, national identity is key here, I think, and working class people can certainly have a strong sense of a racialized identity. The glorification of one’s perceived innate identity is pretty strong and can do quite a lot to dissuade people that thinking along the lines of class interests.
I haven’t read this, but it looks like it might address this question:
Sorry I don’t have a better answer. It’s been over a decade since I took the holocaust class and the german history seminars I took as a grad student only had a week or two on the nazi era.
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