The other day I referenced Sinclair Lewis’ book It Can’t Happen Here (which is available for free at Australia’s Project Gutenberg: It Can’t Happen Here by Sinclair Lewis), and todays main article at Cracked.com lets me know that I’m not the only person who sees something potentially ugly and sinister in Trump’s campaign.
This is a lot longer than most of what Cracked.com posts, but it makes a lot of good points, IMO. I’ll list the 5 points themselves and leave it to y’all to go read the explanations/evidentiary stuff over at the link if you’re interested in having a discussion about them.
#5. He Blames A Specific Group Of Immigrants For All Our Problems (And Promises To Eliminate Them From Our Society) #4. He’ll Sell His Hate As Hope For The Poorest Citizens In This Country #3. Don’t Think Concentration Camps, Just Think Prisons #2. Not Taking Him Seriously Makes Him More Dangerous #1. He Used To Keep A Copy Of Hitler’s Sequel To Mein Kampf By His Bed
Anyone else want to agree or disagree with the points made in the Cracked.com article?
I have been very disturbed by his popularity and the way his xenophobic and misogynistic rants seem to increase that popularity. His linking of populism and bigotry is especially disturbing.
His popularity shows that there is something very ugly in a large minority of our population. Of course, it’s not like we weren’t already aware of this ugliness, but seeing it highlighted like this, and in support of a party’s leading candidate, is scary.
I don’t think he can win a general election, however. I hope I’m not wrong about that.
Although Cartman’s campaign may mirror Hitler’s rise to power in some ways, it differs in about a million others, so it’s not exactly a meaningful article. Also, it ignores the fact that his lead is falling, and that most of his support comes largely from a mix of two groups: “Crazy uncle” types you’ve had to block on Facebook because they’ve been spelling Obama as O’Bummer since 2006, and people who only like Cartman because they’re so disgusted with everyone else.
Cartman’s current success is little more than a reflection of the naked contempt the Republican base has for career politicians, and given the sick-making gang of nutters, milquetoasts, and outright crooks running against him, I for one can hardly blame them. To a lesser extent, the current success of Bernie Sanders indicates a similar phenomenon is occurring on the left, with the important caveat that Bernie Sanders isn’t a lumbering, loudmouthed asshole.
P.S. - I’ve been having a lot of fun with Chrome’s ‘Word Replacer II’ plug-in recently. As the name implies, it takes certain words and replaces them with others of your choosing, and it does so seamlessly, all the way through the page. I’ve configured it to replace the words “Eric Cartman” with “Eric Cartman”. Give it a try and then re-read that Cracked article. It really gives it a whole new dimension. The best bit is that occasionally you’ll forget you’ve done it and it’ll take you by surprise and it’s just as funny as it was the first time.
Item #2 is the only one that applies. Teh Donald took advantage of those who dismissed him initially to reach his current position as the GOP frontrunner. Otherwise the concept is absurd, and even when applied to Trump it is still offensive.
The most significant difference, of course, is that Hitler was not elected President of Germany.
Hitler was the leader of a broadly popular political movement and took absolute power by raising a paramilitary force while at the same time having his party achieve a plurality in the Reichstag. With no party able to achieve an effective governing coalition he maneuvered his way into becoming Chancellor and then used sheer violence to silence the opposition. Hitler’s path to power was not through election or, really, legal.
Trump would be equivalent to Hitler in any meaningful sense only if he actually LOST the election next year but the Republicans were somehow to all become Trump loyalists, and then the Constitution were magically altered to make the new President far less powerful and he/she then appointed Trump “Chancellor of America” and all of a sudden he had a huge personal paramilitary force carrying out his odious doing.
The thing about It Can’t Happen Here is that it showed how a tyrant could take power in the USA, not in 1930s Europe.
President Buzz Windrip reminds me more of Huckabee than Trump, but lacks the Jesus-y stuff that Lewis didn’t see coming (even though he’d already written Elmer Gantry). “We’re the Bubbas, not the Bubble!” sounds a lot like the novel.
I hope to HELL you’re not wrong too ! I feel the same way it’s very disturbing
how wildly popular he is and 2 of my neighbors like the guy !:eek: Growing up Jewish I became aware of the ugliness in society .
I like to thanks the OP for posting this thread !
I think Trump’s appeal (such as it is and what there is of it) will fade; he simply doesn’t have the conviction or the ‘hysterical’ (for lack of a better word) popularity someone like Hitler or some of our home grown populists (see Long, Huey or Wallace, George for example). I don’t see women crying or men listening raptly to his every word. I don’t see the Brownshirts and bullyboys going round to intimidate folks and the Words of Trump (in several books) are hardly required reading by the loyal masses (I would wonder about thier literacy rate anyway).
Trump is like the old reference in Shakespeare; A fool who frets his hour upon the stage, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
Comparisons to Hitler does the battle against true evil no favors.
What a silly article-its only slightly less absurd than suggesting Bernie Sanders is American Hugo Chavez. Trump is simply the latest in a long and not entirely proud tradition of American populists which has existed in both left- and right-wing manifestations. Incidentally, while It Can’t Happen Here certainly is a good novel, it started the unfortunate misconception that Long was some sort of an American Mussolini when in reality he was a genuine left-winger who opposed FDR and the New Deal from the left more akin to Bernie Sanders than anyone else.
Comparisons with Hitler are rarely useful because they turn out to be hyperbolic and easily dismissed. And among the listed points, ISTM that #1 is likely purely apocryphal and irrelevant anyway.
That said, there are a couple of parallels that are instructive only in that they illustrate the ugliness of Trump’s campaign and agenda. Like Hitler, Trump is a demagogue. Like Hitler, part of his appeal is a fervent nationalism rooted in empty promises of restoring greatness from a position of perceived decline – Trump’s “Make America Great Again” is a strong parallel to “Deutschland über alles”, and most strikingly, the underlying message that there is a culpable subgroup – an identifiable “those people” – responsible for most of the problems.
But there the comparison ends. Trump is dangerous enough on his own terms and should be judged that way.
Wolfpup wrote: “Comparisons with Hitler are rarely useful because they turn out to be hyperbolic and easily dismissed.”
Right up to the moment when they’re not.
Anybody really think that there was some element in the German people that’s missing in us that allowed Hitler to rise there but wouldn’t work here? I don’t.