I think there is an army of heavily armed tea partiers and white supremacists who would love to step into the role if they could be sure the police would not stand in their way. Trump could start them off by asking them to check on those rapist Mexicans and other unsavory immigrants - just to be sure nothing happens, of course.
But if there was someone smart pulling Trump’s strings I’d be more worried.
My answer to all of that is one of the most famous and powerful of the hundreds of corollaries to Murphy’s Law, which particular corollary has many variants but is generally stated as “never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity”.
One might restate it for the present purpose as “never underestimate the power of stupidity to wreak total havoc”.
In this case, the stupidity has the added impetus of callousness, greed, narcissism, bigotry, and misogyny. So I think the motto of the Trump campaign should be:
“Trump for president: what could possibly go wrong?”
That’s why President Trump would get us into a war. Not from deliberately invading someone, but by saying something to make Putin, say, think we were fine with him retaking the Baltic States.
Dumb things diplomats said helped start the Korean War and Iraq I.
There’s an interesting piece in the New Yorker that seems pertinent here. It’s about Frauke Petry, the leader of a new far-right German party called the AfD, for Alternative für Deutschland. Petry is educated and a qualified chemist; she is also a global warming denier, a fervent nationalist, and a bigot. She’s sort of like Donald Trump with a brain, but some of the similarities are quite startling. And the Nazi comparisons somehow don’t seem all that far-fetched here. Aiman Mazyek, the head of the Muslim Central Council, has publicly compared the AfD to the Nazis. “The AfD uses the refugee crisis to foment a propaganda of fear in the minds of its followers. Insults and daily Islamophobia have led to the desecration of houses of worship, and bullying in the streets.”
The article also cites a member of the executive board of the German Bundesbank who argued in a bestselling book published in 2010 that everything from high immigrant crime rates to low test scores among Muslims could be partly traced to genetic factors. But perhaps the most disturbing is the rise in violence against the recent influx of refugees:
According to an estimate by the German Interior Ministry, violence against foreigners increased by more than forty per cent last year. There were six hundred and sixty-five assaults on asylum shelters—an average of almost two a day—including fifty-five cases of arson, and there were more than a hundred attacks on individuals.
Thank you WolfPup. You explained what I meant much better than I was able to.
By saying the election will be rigged, Trump is sort of inviting an army of brownshirts to form, but there is no organization among them. And too many are old farts like me who would be reluctant to get involved.
“Better than Hitler” is clearing literally the lowest bar there is. If Trump is even 1% as bad as Hitler, that would be disastrous for the country and the world.
Like Obama’s “you can’t make a 90-degree turn in a cruise ship”?
Cuz that’s like, true.
I fear reformers from any part of the political spectrum, because they all see their tool as a sledgehammer.
20 years ago, during the other Clinton epoch, a few degrees left on the tiller might have sufficed. Today, even a 90 degree attempt might not be enough to avoid the iceberg.
I can try. Mind you, it’s far from certainty and admittedly highly unlikely, but…
- Trump is elected president (Yeah, I know… don’t fight the hypothetical.)
- He appoints people like Roger Ailes, Bannon, Coulter, Hannity, Giuliani, and various other deplorables to cabinet positions. Many of which he invents to fill out his ranks and insulate himself from critics.
- Rank and file republicans, either because of lack of courage or because they are opportunists, fall in line.
- Ultra conservative Supreme Court judges are pushed through congress and appointed.
- Civil rights of those opposed to Trump and his policies are methodically abridged.
- Government becomes authoritarian while regulatory branches of gov’t are shut down because, ‘wasteful!’.
- Generals who favour Trump are appointed to positions of command in the military.
- It all goes pear shaped for the opposition as more and more oppressive laws are passed and enforced while freedom of the press is methodically supressed.
- Panic in the streets.
- Cats sleeping with dogs.
- It all goes to 11.
Now, will rational and sober minds step in long before this happens and impeach Trump? One would certainly like to believe this to be true - balance of power, checks and balances and all. But how certain are you that will happen? Because if he wins, that means a majority of the electorate is in support of Trump and his policies and oppose any restraint measures that might be placed on him.
Nightmare scenario? Sure. But completely out of the question? You tell me.
History is always a matter of vectors. But breaking off the tiller won’t help, either. We got here slowly; we can only get onto some better course slowly.
It’s not that Trump literally is Hitler. It’s just that he’s the most like Hitler of any presidential candidate, at least, in my lifetime.
Plus, this year I’ve learned how fragile our democracy actually is. There are no checks on the President’s nuclear power, and nothing to enforce Supreme Court decisions on the Executive branch. And there are certain emergency powers already granted by Congress, a Congress that rules it quite difficult to pass anything.
What has saved us in the past is merely gentleman’s agreements, and Trump is about as far from a gentleman as possible. Plus an electorate that would not elect someone like him.
Finally, there’s just the fact that Trump is saying blatantly evil things and still getting support. I’ve never seen this happen. I’ve never seen anyone allowed to lie like he does, or spread hatred like he does. Usually people reject that. Hitler is about the only other example I can think of that most people have heard of.
Hitler got 36.8% of the vote in the last election that Germany held (vs. 53% for his opponent).
Trump is already around 40-43% support at this time.
Conservative judges tend to reign in the power of the federal government. If Trump wanted to pull a Hitler, why would he appoint them? Hitler increased centralized control over the economy, far from eliminating “wasteful” regulatory agencies.
Appoint judges who will agree with him, no matter what.
Eliminate agencies that he does not like. Increase funding for what he does like. Increase funding for “Law and Order” agencies. Create new ones if needed.
The list forgot some very important steps:
- Manufacture a “crisis” that your opponents have created/fomented
- Accuse your opponents of trying to destroy the country
- Use your new powers and your new “law and order” agencies to reign in/control/eliminate your opponents. For the good of the country.
At this point, it’s too late to go back.
Sounds pretty fantastical. The real world dangers to the long term strength of the USA are left wing economic ideas that drive corporations to move operations and profits overseas where regulatory burdens are much less onerous. This isn’t directly post WWII and the USA isn’t the only viable industrial power.
The biggest danger Trump promotes is the idea that the US ought to renegotiate debt.
Why is it necessary? Nobody can predict how it unfolds – the point is that there are very clear parallels.
Personally I am not as much frightened by Trump as I am by Trumpism, which I would loosely define or describe as a continuation of its precursor movements such as the Tea Party.
Even if we’re not becoming Nazi America, we could become post-Reconstruction America. We have a history, and an occasionally chaotic and violent one at that.
Trump isn’t an ideologue, but some of his followers are. He is giving the worst kinds of people a platform on which to speak and an opportunity to thrust toxic ideas into the mainstream of consciousness. This has many parallels to Nazi Germany even if we ultimately elect a president that goose steps.
We’re seeing the end of the post-WWII global world order. American / Western-led globalization is perceived increasingly as a failure. With global terrorism, global financial crises, refugee crises, and the loss of jobs in industrialized countries to those in poorer countries, people are understandably skeptical of the experts. In the eyes of many, the experts have failed - failed to distribute the benefits of globalism evenly as was promised. People are rebelling against the experts, in Germany, in Britain, in the United States. Elsewhere, people are increasingly doubtful that America can really protect them against neighboring adversaries. Japan is doubting. Korea is doubting. Eastern Europe doubts. SE Asia has doubts. Others doubt that the United States is a global partner. Russia doubted this a while ago. Turkey warms to Russia. The Philippines throws us shade. Pax Americana is crumbling, and in this light, I can understand Trump’s appeal. And I can’t say that Hillary Clinton necessarily has all the right answers. But I am reasonably confident that Donald Trump has all the wrong ones.
All the figures I have seen suggest that those planning to vote for Trump’s skew towards older voters, not Millenials.
FTR, and nothing personal, but I hate you. Just so we have that clear. 
Wrong. Göbbels would have used the ß.