[quote=urbanrealtor][quote=Allan from Fallbrook]
I don’t think the jump to Nazism is quite as big as you imagine, unfortunately. As Sinclair Lewis said in his 1935 novel “It Can’t Happen Here”: “When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross”.[/quote]
Yes dude.
Comparing Obama to Hitler is as cliche as it is stupid.
And it is a silly jump.
Granted you have said a few doozies (eg: “Vietnam was a good idea”, “we won Vietnam”, “the Chinese cannot be trusted”) but Obama to Hitler is a new one for you.
As with the other silly remarks, there is a grain of truth in it (he is, by definition, politically ambitious with an active agenda) but this is as inane as it is illustratively useless.
The difference with totalitarian regimes (as opposed to authoritarian, oligarchic, or democratic) is that they legislate what you think. Putting cctv cameras in public places does not even register on my paranoia radar. If you start postponing elections or listening to private conversations between citizens, that is different.[/quote]
Dan: I NEVER compared Obama to Hitler. Nor did I imply it. Rather, I said the slide to Nazism was not nearly as great as one might imagine. Nowhere in that statement am I saying Obama is Hitler, like Hitler, could be Hitler on every other Tuesday, etc.
The Germans in the 1930s were ripe for just the sort of demagoguery that Hitler employed, especially the references of Germany’s glorious past and invocations of Norse and Germanic myth to bolster the nascent nationalistic movement that would become the Nazi Party. My point here is that a group of intelligent, cultured, and religious people like the Germans were easily led into oblivion by an accomplished orator who knew how to employ icons, symbols and words (“truth to power”) to great effect.
Again, this is not to compare Obama to Hitler, or Obama to Mussolini or even Obama to FDR. It is to say, however, that circumstances are dire, people are afraid and there is a willingness, in times like these, to look for a savior or some sort of salvation. I would also argue, concurrently with that thought, that the US right now is rapidly trading liberty for security and deserving of neither. As a people, it alarms me tremendously how willing we are to blindly follow our leaders, be they Republicans or Democrats, down the primrose path. We get the leaders we deserve.
