"As I paused the DVR control and examined the faces of those Trumpie groupies, I compared them with the separate stills from one of Hitler's rallies captured by his Third Reich filmographer Leni Reifenstahl, on a separate TV set. What struck me was the similarity. These yahoos were literally drowned in a hate fest, just as Hitler's groupies were. Who would have believed 50 years ago that America could have mutated to this point to unleash such political deviants upon us?" - December 23, 2015 post, after Trump had conducted a political rally leading up to the 2016 general election.
Historian Michael Beschloss, in an interview last Sunday on
the Showtime series The Circus (about U.S. politics) gave perhaps the most potent take on our present
situation. In his answer to Mark
McKinnon on why Americans see things so starkly now - he ticked off 4 major
events in the last 25 years: 1) The 9/11 attacks, 2) the 2008 financial crisis
and recession that followed, 3) the election of a demagogue (Donald Trump) in
2016 and the real threat of re-electing that same demagogue in 2024 - who has
already vowed to "conduct a presidential dictatorship."
Beschloss went on to say "We've been warned and if
we don't take it seriously, that's on us."
Sadly, too many Americans aren't taking it seriously if recent
Marquette university polls are any guide, which show Trump besting Biden by
almost 2 to 1 margins in the economy, inflation, governance and defense.
This is the same traitor who said back in 2020 he didn't respect soldiers who
were killed in wars, and he didn't want to be photographed with disabled vets
as it "conveyed a bad image".
Recent polling shows that Biden and Trump both have a solid base of support within their parties and are neck-and-neck with each other. But 14% of voters say they dislike both of the leading candidates, according to a PBS NewsHour/NPR/Marist poll. That data also shows that 17% of voters would vote for a third-party candidate over either Biden or Trump. This is nuts.
Beyond this, we know right now (WSJ, Oct. 14, p. A17, op-ed):
Joe Biden trails Donald Trump in many polls, despite the twice-impeached former president’s indictments and increasingly erratic behavior
So why are Americans' brains so badly derailed? It may be because they've already mutated into sheeple or human sheep. Or they are at least ripe for the picking - shearing because they believe Trump displays more energy (hence less age) than Biden. With the lack of any critical thinking component, such as I highlighted in Bill Maher's recent babbling to get Biden out of the race, i.e.
5 Reasons Bill Maher Proved He's A World -Class Moron..
these misguided voters are well on the way to handing the nation over to another demagogue like the good Germans did with Hitler in 1933. Now a bit of history:
In Paris shortly before V-E Day in 1945 an Army General asked author Gertrude Stein how to maintain peace and freedom. Stein’s advice: Don’t become sheep. Stein had watched the tidal wave of authoritarianism wash over Germany and then flood Europe in the 1930s and 1940s. She observed how the Nazis cultivated a docile group of followers by harnessing the written word. The tide and accuracy of information were manipulated to stimulate a singular ideological mindset. Through repetition, misinformation became familiar. And once familiar, malleable minds yielded to the ideas they had been steeped in.
To achieve this herd mentality, mass media was transformed into a vehicle of thought control. Germany’s own newspapers were the first laboratory for mental conditioning. To force publishers into submission, Germany passed the 1933 Editorial Control Law, which required newspapers to print stories the Nazi government selected and to coat them with a heavy varnish of propaganda. Non-compliance resulted in a visit from the Gestapo. Writers had two options: Obey or quit. Most needed a paycheck, and so they held their noses and followed the law. Practically overnight, all publications began to feed the public a steady diet of propaganda cloaked as news. The absence of debate, disagreement and a variety of viewpoints made the refrains seem absolute.
While Hitler and the Nazis used laws and compulsions to ensure Germans were confined to a single view now we are doing it to ourselves. Today, our media choices are turning us into the sheep Stein warned against. Under these circumstances way too many have saturated themselves with a singular perilous belief: that Joe Biden is way too old to run for president so shouldn’t be voted for. And so the lone bulwark against Trump’s authoritarianism is dissed and diminished based on accepting media distortions. Or a comedian's deranged grabs for attention when he even pointed out Trump has become more "Hitlery".
And this toxic propaganda has metastasized over the last half year, giving Trump a definite edge - wherein too many see his feral-rat-demonic nature as somehow being less aged than Biden.
Like Nazi Germany too, we are seeing the mass banning of books, as another adjunct to the pumping of propaganda. Thus, in the U.S. of 2o23, like Germany of 1933, books have been deemed harmful and removed from shelves in school libraries because the content is deemed antagonistic to the authoritarians who then remove the ideas from circulation. See e.g.
Archival Photos Remind Us That Book Burning Launched Third Reich's Savagery In 1930s
Book bans, the persecution of authors and ceremonial book burnings enabled the Nazis to manipulate public opinion and turn the Weimar Germans into sheep, thereby setting the stage for the mass genocide of the Holocaust – by which time there was no one left to protest. As my late German friend Kurt Braun put it, during one discussion when we last saw him in 1985:
Hitler believed that Jewish ideas, which he associated with Karl Marx, were like toxic rubbish. He believed they had to be exterminated first which then also led to the extermination of bodies in his 'final solution'
A recent Washington Post-ABC News poll found that 29 percent of Americans believe that President Biden was not legitimately elected, a total composed of those who think there is solid evidence of fraud (22 percent) and those who think there isn’t (7 percent). I don’t know which is worse: believing there to be evidence of fraud when even the Trump campaign can’t find any or asserting the election was stolen even though you know there’s no proof.
Unlike critical thinking, which is in critical short supply these days, facile belief defies logic. It is an emotional commitment that one makes to a given claimed certainty that requires no proof, truth or evidence. Thus, according to polls, millions have already made this commitment in their belief that Trump is more fit to be president than Biden.
What can save us from the impending destruction of our nation which Trump has openly vowed if he's elected? Only his decease before Nov. 5, 2024. Whether by cardiac failure (from eating too many cheeseburgers), or a Covid 19 infection, or I don't know - some unforeseen mishap. Yes, it's terrible to ruminate on this shit for a supposed fellow human, but to most of us without blinders Trump doesn't make that cut. Hence, we can argue his demise would be a positive for more citizens than not, as I already have argued, e.g.
Skewering The Moral Mush Of Sasha Mudd: "Trump Is A Human With Dignity"
But let's get real here, the chances of any untoward events finishing off Traitor Trump for us are slim and none. Nope, it's all on us - the voters- again, like it or not. And right now - even as I write this - his lackey lawyers are pulling out all the stops to get his trials delayed - until - get this, after he's elected. And he may well succeed given three of his picks now sit on the Supreme Court. But it's been clear for some time for those with eyes to see, that the U.S. justice system simply isn't equipped or designed to handle a renegade and arch-criminal like Donald Trump. Hell, this fucker has used delays and postponements the past 40 years to play the justice system like an Arkansas fiddle. So why stop now, especially when it's worked?
And let's not kid ourselves that Trump has also played the media, as I've pointed out in a previous post:
How A form Of Mass Psychosis Infected The Audience At The CNN Town Hall Wednesday Night
Only recently we beheld NBC's new 'Meet The Press' host Kristen Welker being totally overpowered by Trump and unable to execute even one critical question. Her greatest liability was as a professional journalist in failing to anticipate what Trump would predictably say and being prepared to follow up. Kristen got soundly steamrolled by an expert media manipulator and allowed Trump to spew a steam of provably false assertions. This reminiscent of the performance of CNN's Kaitlan Collins in May, and MSNBC's Katy Tur (during the 2016 campaign) i.e.
In the latter case, Katy was taken to "the Donald's" woodshed and viewers were left poorer for it. One observation in the wake of all these mishaps, is that media journalists need to look beyond the "great question" to deeper insights. Also they tend to overestimate the power of their great question. This is why so many U.S. politicians are having their way with reporters and news anchors today which they never would have had with CBS' Walter Cronkite. Cronkite knew he had to be super-prepared so was never caught flat footed like today's juniors who seem chronically lesser versed in interview dynamics than the pols they interview.
What can help today's young media 'guns' to best get their acts together to take on a manipulative maggot like Trump? Experts in journalism cite better fact-checking overall, an item that clearly could have helped Kaitlan Taylor in her CNN interview with Trump back in May. The media experts especially emphasize that fact-checking needs to be a less haphazard and vastly more relentless feature of political coverage.
All the media experts, in a recent LA Times confab, also reached a consensus that:
i) Chronic liars, manipulators and even demagogues like Trump cannot be ignored or barred from media interest, interaction, interviews etc.
(ii) But journalists, especially in the electronic media, need to do much more to prepare themselves for any interactions, and not reduce the public to bystanders. This means going beyond the usual polls and quaint midwestern diner interviews.
(iii) The public also must be accountable for how it receives, organizes and processes information. That means critical thinking as well as self-reflection must enter the picture so voting preferences are not based merely on passing emotions or "feelings". That includes not being distracted by peripheral hubbub and keeping an eye on the prize - in this case ensuring the orange Traitor does not gain power again - assuming he doesn't croak.
Intense? Hardline? You damned well better believe it because I do not want to see this nation become another failed authoritarian, fascist state. More people than ever are being uprooted worldwide, the United Nations says, with war refugees fleeing Ukraine and Syria, more than 7.7 million Venezuelans escaping economic calamity, and large numbers of Africans crossing the Mediterranean in rickety boats.
I do not want millions more Americans added to the list of global refugees, so I want Americans to get their heads on straight before next year's election. It is Joe Biden or freakin' bust!
Excerpt:
Last month, as congressional Republicans devolved into endless chaos and the political world finally accepted that Donald Trump would almost certainly be the GOP presidential nominee in 2024, Joe Biden's campaign decided it would highlight the fact that the president and the Democrats continue to do their jobs professionally and behave like leaders. They called this the "split-screen" strategy, and according to press reports they sent out talking points and daily memos to illustrate the contrast between the steady leadership of the Biden administration and the constant turmoil on the Republican side.
For instance, while the president was addressing the U.N. in September and walking the picket line with striking auto workers, Republicans in the House were squabbling over a defense spending bill they couldn't pass and preparing to oust their own speaker of the House because a handful of members had a personal grudge against him. Donald Trump was whining about all the legal problems he's faces and ranting about Republican officials he deems to be disloyal. The contrasts have only gotten starker since then.
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