Germany was 1/3 Catholic. Hitler closed the Catholic newspapers and schools.
Given that today is Labor Day in the United States, I should also mention that Hitler went after the 9 percent of the population who were union members:
Like this?
Trump Is Wiping Out Unions. Why Are They So Quiet?
… President Trump is the most ruthlessly antilabor president since before the Great Depression.
If the labor movement does not fight harder than it has since Mr. Trump regained the presidency, its future will be dire.
Mr. Trump and his administration have unilaterally stripped collective bargaining rights from hundreds of thousands of federal workers. At the Department of Veterans Affairs alone, 400,000 workers, or 2.8 percent of America’s unionized workers, have lost their collective bargaining rights because of an executive order that will eventually affect more than one million federal workers. Mr. Trump ushered in Labor Day weekend on Thursday by continuing his assault of federal unions, adding the Patent Office, NASA and the National Weather Service to his list of targeted agencies.
…
Re the last post, they are blaming the unions for what is Trump’s fault.
Here’s an example of why federal unions aren’t specifically attacking the Teamsters:
Teamsters Stand in Solidarity with AFGE, NFFE in Protesting Proposed OPM Shutdown
As for the suggestion that there be a union march on Washington, I’m thinking there will be one at some point. And it won’t bring back any unions. What will have an impact is if SCOTUS reverses Trump’s cancellation of the union contracts. In the absence of that, on federal unions, Trump succeeded.
Robert Reich said something to the same effect as the OP recently.
This short phrase made me audibly laugh. Well done.
Thank you! 
Yes, I think this sentiment is becoming more prominent.
I think we’re about to see a bus try to maintain freeway speed with two axles and no wheels.
Yep.
Thus far everything, outrageous as it’s been, has been either just this side of the law, or over it and pulled back by the courts. And the Trump administration has largely respected that.
But I feel like we’re going to see some sort of situation where he’s going to go over a line, the courts are going to check it, and he’s going to say “No”, and then Congress, the People, and the Judicial system are going to make it stick.
I think that’s the thing- as long as he stays just this side of the law, or pulls back when checked by the courts, the vast majority of people look at it as the political equivalent of a drag show, and think “the system’s working- he pulls back when the courts say to”.
^I’d be with you, but I don’t think he’s going to last much longer physically. I think Vance will be a totally different animal. It’s unpredictable, but I think a lot of the crazy will go away (he wants to be loved, and he wants to be reelected). I need to make a new thread about that soon, cuz El Trumpo is fading fast. Faster than a lot of people think (and many are not thinking at all).
Maybe it’s the continuing hopium that many of us have and the experience of continuing failure when the hopes not only never realize but instead shite keeps getting markedly worse.
^With respect to Trump’s health, I think the hopium is a matter of degree. He looks like he could die tomorrow, but maybe he’ll hang on; maybe he’ll even get better through what they’re doing to him. The cognitive decline, however, can’t get better, and dude is slipping hard.
Many employers subscribe to the stereotype that all immigrants are illegal. There is a difference though. They actually like it that way. They can exploit the fear of being deported to get away with low pay and dangerous working conditions. There can be advantages to having an underclass.
What we should worry about is if Couchboy decides to stand up and throw the Felon under bus number 25th on the senility issue. If he could do it right, he would be seen as strong and decisive, and he will ram hard on the core of the P2025 agenda, possibly in ways that will be worse that the scattershot work of Felonius Caucus.
Republicans do not think Trump is senile. If Vance was to suggest this, he wouldn’t even split his party. His party would be united against him.
If the 25th amendment were ever used to removed a president against his or her will, the veep risks being seen as self-interested. Therefore, the VP could not lead the effort to obtain a cabinet majority against the president. The push, in this case, would have to come from solidly MAGA cabinet members such as Pam Bondi and Pete Hegseth. And they have no interest in being seen to have destroyed their leader.
So, good news! There’s no need to worry about Vance throwing Trump under the bus. Trump is the one who throws his cabinet under the bus, and not the other way around:
Trump breaks from RFK on vaccines: “Pure and simple, they work”
I think that without the weird MAGA cult of personality and fervor backing him, Vance will have a much more normal relationship with Congress than Trump does. I have a feeling that there are a lot of congresspeople who haven’t really liked this being subservient to Trump.
In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if they check him early and hard just to show him what branch wears the pants. And that’s with the GOP in control; if the Democrats manage to get control of at least one house, then they’re definitely not going to toe that line.
I’m not thinking Trump’s going to keel over dead in the next six months, but he does seem to have hit that point that extremely elderly people tend to hit where the wheels start seriously wobbling, and threatening to fly off, if they’re not actually flying off already. He’s not going to be able to keep up the Presidential pace if he’s as decrepit as he seems to be; he’s either going to have to delegate, or get forced out. I don’t see him resigning to retire, a-la Pope Benedict.
What worries me is that he’s surrounded himself with spectacularly incompetent and sycophantic Cabinet members, and Congress seems to be running scared from him. So it’s going to take some sort of ridiculously incompetent flame-out on his part, and whether that takes the form of doing something crazy, or just being dangerously negligent, I don’t know.
We’re in that era where the old people are living together and everything seems ok, until something bad happens, and you realize that it was all held together by duct tape and bailing wire, and that they weren’t anywhere near competent to take care of themelves or live independently.
In DJT’s worldview, retiring, backing down, stepping down, abdicating, etc., are all losing moves and what losers do.
The only way he might retire is if someone could convince him that
stepping down = “winning”
Anyone who can do that IMHO is deserving of a Nobel prize.
From Paul Krugman’s Substack today:
Donald Trump did learn something during his 1st term. He learned never to hire anyone who shows the least shred of integrity. … Now he knows to only hire people who are corrupt, bigoted, dishonest, or all three.
Who says Donnie is incapable of learning anything?
Well, yeah, he learns like a crafty dog learns. He doesn’t really think ahead and plan for the future, except insofar as what lets him achieve his immediate goals.
I’m worried because when whatever dire incompetence event goes down that will get Trump removed, clowns like Hegseth, Bondi, Patel, and Noem are going to be holding the reins, and not a one of them is worth a shit. Vance at least seems competent, if largely an asshole and sycophant.
I largely agree with this, but I also wonder if Vance is competent enough to remove the current assholes who hold Cabinet positions.
I’d say yes, if it were politically convenient for him. I can see him for instance replacing some of those more prone to random embarassing outbursts with others who are full on rightwing P2025ers but can at least come across as Serious People.
I’d love to see Vance clean house when and if he takes office, but I’m not sure if he’ll have the political capital to do that right out of the gate.