A word of explanation from the latest "firebrand"

[DivinBreuvage]

The thread was locked before I could get back to it, so I hope it will be okay if I post a few words of explanation here because I would like to soothe any hurt feelings I may have caused.

If you got worked up by my post, please go back and read the first two paragraphs, specifically:

1) I did NOT say Bush was worse than Hitler. The government of North Korea made that statement. I linked to the DU thread that discusses it.

2) I explicitly said, in what seems to me to be clear English: obviously the idea that Hitler is "better" than anyone is an absurdity and not meant to be taken seriously.

My intention was to post a not-so-serious counterpoint to the "Bush is Hitler" or "Bush is worse than Hitler" posts that proliferate here on DU (I admit I've played that game a bit myself). I honestly didn't think the post would be so inflammatory, because I thought I made it clear that the idea I was expressing was, and I quote, not meant to be taken seriously. I'm still reflecting on whether my mistake was in not being clear enough or in simply saying something that can't be said.

Françoise

[Media_Lies_Daily]

1. The problem as I see it is that quite a few DU posters are...

...starting to take the comparison between the Squatter-in-Chief and Hitler VERY seriously. I include myself in that faction.

If we give you the benefit of the doubt, maybe you honestly didn't understand what was going on from the earlier comparisons being made on DU. Maybet, as you stated, you were just trying to be humorous.

If we don't give you the benefit of the doubt, then you come across as an agent provocateur trying to stir things up. After all, your previous post was locked for being inflammatory.

Hitler became Chancellor of Germany in 1933, and didn't invade Poland until 1939, six years later. He also didn't enact the Final Solution for another seven to eight years.

IMHO, Lil' Lord Faunteroy has been the head of the NeoCon Junta for only three years, and just hasn't had enough time to be worse than Hitler. Give him time...he's off to a fine start.

My dad is a WWII vet who was a nosegunner on a B24 that flew out of a base in Italy over targets in Germany, Austria, Romania, and Poland. After the war, he went back to school, got his degree, and become a football coach and history teacher for the next 50 years. He told me a few months ago that the very form of government he fought against in WWII has taken over the United States. Dad's not a very happy camper these days. That's one of the many reasons that I have a real problem thinking of Hitler and Bunnypants in humorous terms.

[DivinBreuvage]

2. Thanks for responding, Media_Lies_Daily

I do understand why people make the comparisons. I am in fact well read in the history of the Third Reich, and, as you correctly point out, there are indeed substantial similarities between the two. I also agree that the possibility of things getting much worse before they will get better deserves serious consideration, particularly if the people in power continue to meet with the same weak and ineffectual opposition as hitherto.

However, history should also enable us to keep a sense of perspective, rather than reflexively applying the most dramatic and horrifying example of the past thousand years to whatever we dislike in the present. The "Hitler" tag gets slapped on everything from seat beat laws to Bill Clinton; Grover Norquist once infamously compared taxing the wealthy to the Holocaust. These cheap, kneejerk comparisons do nothing in the long run but dilute the impact of the original historical example with no corresponding benefit to the present.

I'd argue that the Bush administration bears as much resemblance to the American government of the 1920s-early 1930s or the late 1840s-1850s as it does to the Hitler regime; and though neither of those periods was corrected in America without violence, suffering, and war, neither of those periods at its worst came near to equalling the criminality of the Nazi empire. That certainly doesn't mean that concentration camps and genocide will never come to America, it just means that they're not predestined.

Incidentally, reasoning that I'm an agent provocateur because my thread was locked seems to me somewhat akin to calling Huckleberry Finn a racist book because certain words appear in it. Not that I'm comparing my writing to Mark Twain's, but I think that sometimes readers let a chance to make a display of righteous indignation run away with a little of their common sense.

Françoise

[hlthe2b]

3. Thanks for posting that follow-up, Freedomfrog...

It is a tough area, but your explanation about the post is quite helpful (perhaps reassuring). I do regret that when some DUers call for all of us to take a breath before pushing ahead with what is acknowledged to be extreme discussion, that some mistake this as a call to censorship. To me, what Bush has already done is bad enough... we don't need to project the most extrme worst case scenario; just work to ensure the public knows what he has done to date and ensure that he has no chance to "get worse."

[DivinBreuvage]

4. Thank you, hlthe2b...

I spent a lot of time in bed last night thinking it over, and still feel chastened and depressed about the whole thing. I think the firestorm would have been largely avoided if I'd been more circumspect in the wording of the title, because the 10 contrasts themselves were statements of historical fact, not opinion or interpretation. I didn't stop to consider that so many people would read the title and get so worked up by it that they'd then ignore the entire body of the post. It was a valuable lesson for me, and I genuinely mean that.

Francoise

[buycitgo]

5. you need to take things a bit less seriously

I have no problem with comparisons like that, and I think your facility with words is admirable.

look what's happened in less than three years! It took Hitler a lot longer than that to consolidate as much power as Bush has.

that said, ther ARE important differences:

When Adolf Hitler took office in early 1933, there were over 6 million Germans out of work; in 1935, that number was already well under 3 million, dropping to under 1 million by the end of 1936. German industrial production soared in Hitler's early years; after steep declines from 1930-1932, Hitler's state-interventionist policies, combined with tax incentives, reversed that trend, so that by 1935, German production roared past its previous record peak in 1929.

Under President Bush, the American unemployment rate has rocketed more than 50%, and layoffs continue to mount. The US economy entered a recession within months after Bush's inauguration, reversing a decade of economic boom. Industrial production is falling, and skewed tax breaks that favored the wealthy have opened a gaping deficit, siphoning money away from both capital investment and state spending, both of which are sorely needed. In short, under Bush, America's economy has entered a free-fall.

Probably the most fundamental difference between them was that Hitler was a completely self-made man. He came out of poverty and rose to the top with no help from his father. It's a classic rags-to-death-camps story, the stuff legends are made of. Bush, on the other hand, bumbled and boozed his way into riches and power purely through the guiding hand of his father and his father's oil friends, a hand he's only dimly aware of. George Bush Jr. suffers from the sort of genetic degeneration that eventually doomed the aristocrats of Europe, such as the Hapsburgs and the Romanovs; in the Bush family, W clearly has the droopy eyes and blank expression of an inbred son with recessive genes.

........There's more. Hitler was the first to unify Europe under a common currency and single foreign policy, inspiring the European Union of today; Bush's unilateralism has split the international coalition, causing annoying arguments among trekkers at youth hostels the world over. Hitler was a captivating speaker, inspiring throngs of Germans to lift their right arms at a 45-degree angle; Bush has difficulty remembering each and every tiny little syllable, causing American intellectuals to curl the right sides of their mouths into what is known as a “sneer.”

In war, their differences are even sharper. When no one attacked Germany, Germany would attack and destroy them. When Saudi Arabia attacked the United States and slaughtered 3,000 people in the worst defeat in US history, Bush helped to shuttle the bin Laden family out of America while deferentially referring to the Saudis as “our friends.” Hitler introduced the blitzkrieg; Bush introduced the strongly-worded UN resolution. Hitler believed in astrology; Bush believes in Southern Baptism. Hitler liked to plan invasions; Bush likes golf.

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