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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsA lesson from the Third Reich: Don't waste time trying to understand the haters and their motives.
http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/217831/what-to-do-about-trumpIm not sharing this particular story at this particular point in time to make some kind of historical analogy. Those are rarely useful even under the best of circumstances, and to compare Donald Trump to the Fuhrer or his ascent to the rise of the Third Reich is an absurd and reprehensible proposition. But Ive been thinking a lot about my grandfathers story this past week, and in it I find three simple commandments I cant bring myself to dismiss.
The first, and most obvious, is this: Treat every poisoned word as a promise. When a bigoted blusterer tells you he intends to force members of a religious minority to register with the authoritiesmuch like those friends and family of Siegfrieds who stayed behind were forced to do before their horizon grew darkerbelieve him. Dont try to be clever. Dont lean on political intricacies or legislative minutia or historical precedents for comfort. Dont write it off as propaganda, or explain it away as just an empty proclamation meant simply to pave the path to power. Take the haters at their word, and assume the worst is imminent.
Do that, and a second principle follows closely: You should treat people like adults, which means respecting them enough to demand that they understand the consequences of their actions. Explaining away or excusing the actions of others isnt your job. Vienna in the first decades of the 20th century was a city inflamed with a desire to better understand the motives, hidden or otherwise, that move people to action. Freud and Kafka, Elias Canetti and Karl Kraus, Stefan Zweig and Franz Werfelthese were the eminences who crowded the same cafés Siegfried and his musician friends most likely frequented. But while these beautiful minds struggled to understand the world around them, the world around them was consumed by simpler and more vicious appetites. Dont waste any time, then, trying to understand: Then as now, many were amused by the demagogue and moved by his vile vision. Some have perfectly reasonable explanations for their decisions, while others have little to go on but incoherent rage. It doesnt matter. Voters are all adults, and all have made their choices, and it is now you who must brace for impact. Whether you choose to forgive those, friends and strangers alike, who cast their votes so deplorably is a matter of personal choice, and none but the most imperious among us would advocate a categorical rejection of millions based on their electoral actions, no matter how irresponsible and dim. So while you make these personal calculations, remember that what matters now isnt analysis: Its survival.
Which leads me to the third principle, the one hardest to grasp: Refuse to accept whats going on as the new normal. Not now, not ever. In the months and years to come, decisions will be made that may strike you as perfectly sound, appointments announced that are inspired, and policies enacted you may even like. Friends and pundits will reach out to you and, invoking nuance, urge you to admit that theres really nothing to fear, that things are more complex, that nothing is ever black or white. Its a perfectly sound argument, of course, but its also dead wrong: This isnt about policy or appointments or even about outcomes. This isnt a political contestits a moral crisis.
SNIP
Hekate
(90,793 posts)Deleted my next line as much too dark.
Listen to the old Jews, the old Germans, and the old Japanese Americans.
And Maya Angelou: When someone tells you who they are, believe them.
dhill926
(16,355 posts)pbmus
(12,422 posts)NightWatcher
(39,343 posts)I hope the Dems in congress don't try to deal but obstruct at every turn.
pnwmom
(108,994 posts)had a different thought:
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/18/opinion/the-right-way-to-resist-trump.html
Five years ago, I warned about the risk of a Donald J. Trump presidency. Most people laughed. They thought it inconceivable.
I was not particularly prescient; I come from Italy, and I had already seen this movie, starring Silvio Berlusconi, who led the Italian government as prime minister for a total of nine years between 1994 and 2011. I knew how it could unfold.
Now that Mr. Trump has been elected president, the Berlusconi parallel could offer an important lesson in how to avoid transforming a razor-thin victory into a two-decade affair. If you think presidential term limits and Mr. Trumps age could save the country from that fate, think again. His tenure could easily turn into a Trump dynasty.
Mr. Berlusconi was able to govern Italy for as long as he did mostly thanks to the incompetence of his opposition. It was so rabidly obsessed with his personality that any substantive political debate disappeared; it focused only on personal attacks, the effect of which was to increase Mr. Berlusconis popularity. His secret was an ability to set off a Pavlovian reaction among his leftist opponents, which engendered instantaneous sympathy in most moderate voters. Mr. Trump is no different.
SNIP
Dark n Stormy Knight
(9,771 posts)that Trump will turn out to be worse than the dictator the RW myth machine pretended Obama was and those morons believed.
After 8 years of them screaming about "tyrany" they elected a guy who bragged about the tyrannical things he planned to do with his presidency!
CaliforniaPeggy
(149,701 posts)If we follow these, then the outlook might not look as bad ..........eventually.
Paladin
(28,272 posts)gordianot
(15,245 posts)Not alt-right but fascism based on fear.
lunatica
(53,410 posts)Don't think someone who's spiel is raging hatred, revenge, and hunger for power have a better angel who will emerge. It. Will. Not. Happen... Ever.
Believe what they say.
mainer
(12,029 posts)Everyone should share this.
duffyduff
(3,251 posts)People who say Democrats must "reach out" to them don't even understand that their mindset is ingrained from very early in life, reinforced and cemented through hate radio and Fox "news." They don't want to change, they refuse to see reality, and we need to cut these dudes loose and let them wither away.
They are sexist and racist filth. I don't give a shit if they are hurting economically. I quit caring about them when they could have voted for their economic self-interest thirty years ago instead of kissing up to Reagan and Bush I. There is no excuse for any of them to be voting for somebody like Trump. There are NO "reasonable" reasons for these idiots to vote for Trump. None. Just bigoted assholery.
At bottom, they are willfully stupid. You can't fix them.
smirkymonkey
(63,221 posts)They will hate until the hate destroys them from the inside. I could give a flying fuck about their problems. They created them all by themselves.
uponit7771
(90,364 posts)Dark n Stormy Knight
(9,771 posts)The parallels are real, important and frightening. Ignoring them is foolish.
Not sure I will even bother to read the rest of the article due to this glaring analytical failure.