My response to a friend who ridiculed the Hitler-Trump comparison

[Bucky]

A friend on facebook (yes, I'm still addicted) just posted:

Adolf Hitler was a hardened combat veteran who sat down in a prison cell and authored Mein Kampf all by himself. Donald Trump is a spoiled brat who would shit himself in a fox hole and who had to pay someone else to write The Art of The Deal for him. I expect Trump to be a shitty half ass president, but the liberal attempt to draw comparisons between these two men is neurotic.

My response:

This seems like an ad hominem argument. The knock on effects of a man with such a belligerent, petty, and litigious character having at his discretion the power of the Oval Office is hard to calculate. But this is not a question of what the man himself will do, but rather what the institutional power built up around the office that he holds will do in order to protect him.

Sure, the Trump as Hitler argument is superficial. Hitler was about power more than ego. Trump so far seems mostly motivated by the desire to use high office to line his pockets. If he's only corrupt, petulant, and inattentive to office, I'll agree that we as a nation have lucked out.

But just like they say in politics, the problem isn't the crime; it's the cover up--In Trump's administration the problem to worry about won't be the corruption, but what he does to silence his critics, which he has an established record of doing, or to distract the public from the negative PR. Will he be as bad on inconvenient reporters as a Putin or an Erdogan? Probably not, given the institutional and Constitutional protections American society has. But Trump's history and instincts are to do something: to use legal actions, to intimidate with whatever power he has at his disposal, to silence & bury whatever doesn't exalt and adulate him. As his management of his businesses and "charitable foundation: show, he is not one to comply with walls of separation between legal entities when his ego is on the line. And his ego seems to be always on the line.

He is not going to be a dictator, no, but he is already an autocrat.

What will a Trump leadership style be like when he's under siege for some dumb move (or from his inability to foresee or plan ahead for routine protections of public safety or liberty)? If he goes into bunker mode, the better analogy might be Richard Nixon. I'm just barely old enough to remember how the process of government (in a far less globally connected world) came to a grinding halt in the summer of 1974.

One area where I do think you could draw similarities to Hitler is in Trump's style of agitating and scapegoating working class resentments at convenient targets. His leadership style so far has depended on this sort of divisiveness. Hate crimes have increased since his election. When he possesses not just his own twitter account to poke at the beehive, but the full force of the White House communications office and a segment of the press willing to go along with him and Republican Party establishment at least partially dependent upon his whim and approval... how badly will we the people behave with a president who sees reckless scapegoating as his principal tool for winning public approval?

This comment is running too long to for me to get into the business about Trump not even agreeing with basic tenets of US global security policy and having already picked a beef with the US Intelligence community, based on his own obstinate ignorance.

But this isn't a prediction; it's a caveat. People who talk about Trump's coming "Reichstag fire" moment are exaggerating, of course. History doesn't make carbon copies and frankly Trump has surrounded himself with 3rd raters who couldn't plan a decent conspiracy even if they could dream one up--they are in the fullest sense reactionaries. But when the power of the imperial presidency is in the hands of an irresponsible, thin-skinned narcissist, there are pretty good odds that something terribly tragic and mostly preventable will happen.

Your thoughts, worries, and counter arguments welcomed.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

1. I think this is about right.

Another difference between Trump and Hitler is that Hitler had a specific vision (albeit an evil, scary one), and everything he did was aimed toward bringing it to fruition. Trump's slogan is "Make America Great Again" but that was only a campaign slogan; he doesn't really know or care what would make America "great." Hitler, in contrast, wasn't in it for the money. He very seriously wanted to make Germany the greatest; he knew how he wanted to do that and he used every means at his disposal to try to make his idea of a "great" Germany become real. Fortunately he failed.

Trump, in contrast, will simply squat like a toad in the Oval Office and make deals for his businesses. The reason he's dangerous is not only that he's completely ignorant about the workings of government, but that he is pathologically vengeful. He always has to win, regardless of the insignificance of the issue. If he feels offended or disrespected he will lash out and fling insults, probably via Twitter (which does not allow for nuance; but then, Trump hasn't got a clue about nuance). This does not bode at all well for international relations, especially with someone similarly deranged, like Kim Jung-Un. And what will happen if he figures out that Putin has been playing him?

[Bucky]

3. also... Hitler had a pet dog

rather than a sequence of pet wives

[annabanana]

2. k&r. . . . . . n/t