The Comparison ...

[docmercer--banned]

Through A Glass Darkly
[size=+3]An Interpretation of Bush's Character
[/size][size=+1]By John Chuckman
5-27-3

[/size]
<TABLE height=43 cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 width=596 border=0><TBODY><TR><TD vAlign=top width="100%" height=42><DL><DT>[size=+1]While I find those images on the Internet of a blunt little mustache digitally-scribbled onto President Bush's upper lip feeble and unhelpful, still, there are parts of Bush's character and behavior that strikingly resemble at least one major biographer's interpretation of Hitler. Ian Kershaw's two-volume life of Hitler puts great emphasis on his being a driving high-stakes gambler - with innate, animal-cunning about human psychology, few gifts of statesmanship or strategy, and little systematic learning - attributing most of his success and all of his failure to his compulsive quality.[/size] <DT> <DT>[size=+1]When, for example, Bush waged his ferocious post-election pursuit of legitimacy through threats and court actions, finally securing appointment to office by America's Supreme Court, it resembled the way Hitler, never actually elected, worked ferociously behind the scenes and on the streets at a time of great political instability to secure appointment as Chancellor by President von Hindenburg.[/size] <DT> <DT>[size=+1]Several observers have commented that Bush's recent stunt of flying to the deck of an aircraft carrier in order to make a televised speech might well have been copied directly from Hitler's flight to the gigantic Nuremberg rally, his plane dramatically circling in descent towards a million people gathered in barbarian tribute, his purpose being to make a filmed speech. Whether Bush's crowd consciously followed the script set down by Hitler nearly seventy years ago matters less than that the thinking is so similar, with the manipulation of dramatic, militaristic props for propaganda being identical.[/size] <DT> <DT>[size=+1]Bush never goes anywhere where his stage crew has not first assembled giant flags as background. He always wears a sizeable American-flag pin on his lapel. This kind of totemic, obsessive use of flags was absolutely characteristic of Hitler.[/size] <DT> <DT>[size=+1]Hitler was a troubled, difficult person, but there is no evidence of any genuine insanity or psychosis (see Dr. Fritz Redlich's excellent study, "Hitler, Diagnosis of a Destructive Prophet"). It is precisely this fact that made him, and makes those like him, all the more dangerous. It is easy to dismiss a genuine lunatic.[/size] <DT> <DT>[size=+1]Given any circumstances other than those of the unique and troubled period in which he embraced German politics, Hitler would have been an utter failure, likely to be laughed off the stage with his sputtering, eye-bulging speech and fantasy claims. He had never, except for extremely brief and intermittent times, before entering politics in the revolutionary ruin that was post-war Germany, made an honest living.[/size] <DT> <DT>[size=+1]There is a close parallel here with Bush. Except when friends of his powerful father made attractive, low-risk, undemanding opportunities available to him, young Bush was a failure. He demonstrated no business acumen, no academic application, and he did a lot of aimless drifting, much like Hitler's time in Vienna before the First World War. There are totally unexplained periods in Bush's early adult life, an extraordinary thing for an American national public figure.[/size] <DT> <DT>[size=+1]Even as governor of Texas, Bush showed no skill other than the kind of animal cunning one associates with some of the nation's shabbiest politics. Many do not realize that the office of governor of Texas, despite sounding important, is a relatively weak office, so the people putting Bush forward at the time took a small risk of his doing any serious damage.[/size] <DT> <DT>[size=+1]Bush was not a national figure when he was put up for the Republican presidential nomination. Yet, suddenly, he appeared on the national stage, pockets bulging with $77 million in campaign contributions, an amount that could render even Kermit the Frog a formidable opponent in America's phony, advertising- and marketing-drenched politics. Of course, as quickly as these funds were depleted, they were topped up again.[/size] <DT> <DT>[size=+1]The support of German industrialists was an important part of Hitler's being able to sustain his slow rise to power. Many of these business people thought they would heavily profit from the success of the odd, theatrical little man they bankrolled. The one absolute certainty was that Germany under Hitler would rearm, massively and quickly, with lots of profitable contracts coming available. Bush's measures for defense and security after 9/11, almost instantly swelled to tumor-like masses, offer an unprecedented opportunity for well-positioned people to make new fortunes.[/size] <DT> <DT>[size=+1]Bush's apparent ability to be charming face-to-face has been publicized by insiders wishing to humanize his public image. Well, that is a characteristic Hitler possessed in abundance: on the one hand, he could intimidate people with fits of horrifying anger, and yet, as many attested, he could be utterly charming. He could order wholesale murder and yet have a gracious, polite tea with his hardworking secretaries.[/size] <DT> <DT>[size=+1]Of course, the sense of charm assumed you did not have to spend great periods of time with Hitler as did the captive members of his immediate party entourage. For them, Hitler was reduced to a boring, repetitive self-proclaimed expert on everything who insisted on discussing everything, endlessly. One can only imagine the tedious conversations of a Bush comfortable with his cronies over a charred cow down in Crawford. We actually got an unintended glimpse of this private world when the BBC "accidentally" ran some television shots of Bush before a big speech sharing the kind of gestures and comments to smiling flunkies one might expect from a small-town, grade-school basketball coach.[/size] <DT> <DT>[size=+1]Bush has demonstrated his capacity for vicious anger a number of times, despite his handlers working very hard to hide this from the public. His response to the nomination challenge of John McCain was manic. His response to the rightful and fitting challenges of France or Germany to his Iraqi policies has been ugly, with pathetic factotum, Colin Powell, given the job of announcing various gibes, slights, and threats in the aftermath (Harry Belafonte's description of Powell, I regret to say, has proved devastatingly accurate).[/size] <DT> <DT>[size=+1]The closest parallel to Hitler's behavior was in Bush's approach to Iraq. It is clear that he was determined - despite all facts contrary to his claims, despite the heroic efforts of weapons inspectors, despite the voice of most of the world's diplomatic community, and despite demonstrations by millions - to invade Iraq. The litany of false and even irrelevant claims made over and over combined with his lack of shame or embarrassment when found out time and again, closely mimics a behavior pattern of Hitler who more or less invented the "big lie" technique.[/size] <DT> <DT>[size=+1]Even more closely resembling Hitler was Bush's insane rush towards a huge, high-stakes gamble on quick success in Iraq. He displayed not an ounce of statesmanship. It mattered not at all that he put the UN, NATO, and the EU through a crisis and embarrassed longstanding allies to get what he wanted. Had the invasion bogged down into bloody street-fights and large numbers of Americans been killed, Bush could not have survived the political results. This was the purest obsessive, go-for-broke gamble.[/size] <DT> <DT>[size=+1]What we witnessed leading up to the invasion bore uncanny similarities to the Munich crisis of 1938, but not the ones so many American commentators point to about a weak-willed Chamberlain appeasing a brutal dictator. People seem to forget Bush was making the threats, not Hussein.[/size] <DT> <DT>[size=+1]Hitler was going to invade the Czechs, and that was that, but he was willing to toy with war-weary Western statesmen, to gain a bit of time or psychological advantage, and to appear open to argument before hurling his divisions over the border. So, too, Bush paused in invading Iraq, allowing Western statesmen to argue their case a bit and make various proposals, but he never listened to them, only hoping he might gain a few more allies, a shred of legitimacy, or a bit of psychological advantage.[/size] <DT> <DT>[size=+1]This provides a very good example of how we do not learn from history. We are most of us always looking for exactly the same lesson from a vaguely similar historical situation, much as generals are said always prepared to fight the last war. But history, as has been accurately observed, is a flowing river which is not the same when touched a second time. Current events are never quite parallel with those of an earlier time despite superficial similarities. However, human character, patterns of behavior, and human interactions are things that may be profitably studied, being constant enough to make valid comparisons over time.[/size] <DT> <DT>[size=+1]Here, too, is an example of how history can be manipulated to abuse political opponents. Critics on the left, in opposing the invasion of Iraq, have been accused of supporting a dictator. This is nonsense, of course, but like many bits of propaganda that become lodged into day-to-day understanding through endless repetition on television and in newspapers, it is nevertheless a powerful nonsense.[/size] <DT> <DT>[size=+1]Too many people do not understand that the preponderance of forces in Germany before the Second World War were for peace. Hitler sometimes spoke of peace eloquently, but, as we now know, he had a rather odd definition of the word. When it looked like Germany was on the brink of war, great waves of despair went through Germany. All the bands and panoply of Nazi propaganda could not cover up people's sullen reaction displayed even under dictatorship.[/size] <DT> <DT>[size=+1]But when Hitler quickly defeated Poland and then quickly defeated France, the mood in Germany immediately changed. Hitler had achieved a relatively bloodless victory of stunning proportions. He became a hero, a national savior. And so with Bush's massive, high-tech assault on pathetic little Iraq. Anti-war feelings and demonstrations did not rise so suddenly at the start of the much greater conflict in Vietnam, but with a quick, safe victory (safe for Americans, that is), Bush has become something of a shining figure. So much so, that at a recent dinner, a single dinner, Bush raised $18 million in campaign funds.[/size] <DT> <DT>[size=+1]Hitler's manipulation of the idea of peace is paralleled in Bush's manipulation of the idea of justice. Both are complete distortions. Bush's genuine feeling for justice was perhaps best captured during the election campaign with his smug, joking response to a question about a soul on death row in Texas. For those with acute perceptions, still not dulled on a steady diet of synthetic emotions and cardboard ideas from television and Hollywood, there could be no surer sign of how potentially dangerous this man is.[/size] <DT> <DT> <DT>[size=+1]Comment[/size] <DT> <DT>[size=+1]From Michael Shore - Isreal[/size] <DT>[size=+1]m3636s@netvision.net.il[/size] <DT>[size=+1]5-27-3[/size] <DT> <DT>[size=+1]The Bushes funded Hitler in WW ll and made a huge "bloody" fortune. They're just following the same Hitler/Nazi model that they already tested and used in WW ll.[/size] <DT> <DT>[size=+1]The main troubling thing in this whole scenario is that Hitler didn't have thousands of missles with nuclear warheads. BUSH DOES!!! And he already has declared that he is ready to use them.[/size] <DT> <DT>[size=+1]An ex-alcoholic?, cocaine freak, FAKE born again Christian with thousands of nuclear warheads is now in the White House. Good luck America and the world.[/size] <DT> <DT>[size=+1]When is everyone going to wake up and stop the Bushes and their perverted gang of killers and thieves???[/size] <DT> <DT>[size=+1]Michael Shore[/size] <DT>[size=+1][/size] <DT>[size=+1][/size] <DT>[size=+1][/size] <DT>[size=+1]Comment[/size][size=+1][/size] <DT>[size=+1][/size] <DT>[size=+1]From Robert[/size] <DT>[size=+1]5-30-3[/size] <DT>[size=+1][/size] <DT>[size=+1]There has been a lot said lately about how similar George Bush is to Adolph Hitler. But really there are many differences.[/size] <DT>[size=+1][/size] <DT>[size=+1]1. Hitler had a moustache. Bush does not.[/size] <DT>[size=+1][/size] <DT>[size=+1]2. Hitler's military record was of a high quality. Bush's military record suggests incompetence, irresponsibility, and political intervention by his father to prevent adverse action being taken against him due to numerous violations of military procedures and duties.[/size] <DT>[size=+1][/size] <DT>[size=+1]3. Hitler was sentenced to prison but should not have been. Bush should have been sentenced to prison but was not.[/size] <DT>[size=+1][/size] <DT>[size=+1]4. Hitler wrote a bookthat sold ten million copies during his lifetime, which has never gone out of print, and which millions of people still read today. Bush has not yet written anything remarkable or memorable.[/size] <DT>[size=+1][/size] <DT>[size=+1]5. Hitler never accepted payment for serving in office. Bush receives a large salary as President. Both men were about equally rich.[/size] <DT>[size=+1][/size] <DT>[size=+1]6. Hitler was never known to slight the rights of German citizens. Bush, at a public appearance asked a member of the audience -who had pointed out the unpopularity of one of Bush's policies- replied, "Who cares what you think?"[/size] <DT>[size=+1][/size] <DT>[size=+1]7. Hitler was not in favor of using the resources of the citizens of his own nation to support the survival and success of a people whose activities and stated desires would disrupt or destroy his nation and its native people. Bush surrounds himself with people whose central purpose is the survival and success of Israel, and he supports and enacts their ideas and actions with willing compliance.[/size] <DT>[size=+1][/size] <DT>[size=+1]8. Hitler worked to correct an injustice that had been committed against the people of his nation in a previous war. Bush misrepresented facts in order to fight an unjustifiable war against a defenseless people who had done nothing against him, or against US citizens.[/size] <DT>[size=+1][/size] <DT>[size=+1]9. Hitler was in favor of his people improving their genetic stock by means of making intentional breeding choices. Bush does not believe there is any necessity for white people to survive as a genetic group.[/size] <DT>[size=+1][/size] <DT>[size=+1]10. Regardless of whether you believe the actions of Hitler were right or wrong, his actions required substantial courage, self-discipline, and determination. The actions Bush has taken are those which are easiest and politically most expedient to his own selfish purpose, and to the financial interests of his friends.[/size] <DT> <DT>[size=+1]

[/size]</DT></DL></TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>

 

[docmercer--banned]

1. Like Hitler, President Bush was not elected by a majority, but was forced to engage in political maneuvering in order to gain office.

2. Like Hitler, Bush began to curtail civil liberties in response to a well-publicized national outrage, in Hitler's case the Reichstag fire, in Bush's case the 9-11 catastrophe.

3. Like Hitler, Bush went on to pursue a reckless ultra-nationalist foreign policy without the mandate of the electorate.

4. Like Hitler, Bush has accordingly improved his popularity ratings, especially with veterans and conservative Republicans, by mounting an aggressive public relations campaign against foreign enemies. Just as Hitler cited international communism to justify Germany's military buildup, Bush uses Al Qaeda and the Axis of Evil to justify our current military buildup.

5. Like Hitler, Bush promotes militarism while in the midst of a major economic recession (or depression). He uses war preparations to help subsidize defense industries (Halliburton, Bechtel, etc.) and presumably the rest of the economy on a trickle-down basis.

6. Like Hitler, Bush glorifies patriotism to stir up public support. He treats our nation's unique historic destiny almost as a religious cause sanctioned by God.

7. Like Hitler, Bush quickly makes and breaks diplomatic ties, and he makes generous promises that he soon abandons, as in the case of Mexico, Russia, Afghanistan, and even New York City.

8. Like Hitler, Bush envisages a future world order that guarantees his own nation's hegemonic supremacy rather than cooperative harmony under the authority of the United Nations (or League of Nations). He is willing to break the U.N. Charter in promoting this end.



9. Like Hitler, Bush scraps international treaties, most notably the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, the Biological Weapons Convention, the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, the Convention on the Prohibition of Land Mines, the Chemical Weapons Convention, the Kyoto Global Warming Accord, and the International Criminal Court.



10. Like Hitler, Bush depends on an axis of collaborative allies, which he describes as a "coalition of the willing," to give the impression of having a broad popular alliance. These include the U.K. as compared to Mussolini's Italy, and Spain and Bulgaria as compared to, well, Spain and Bulgaria, both of which were aligned with Germany during the thirties and World War II.



11. Like Hitler, Bush possesses a war machine much bigger and more effective than the military capabilities of other nations. Today, Bush depends on a "defense" budget roughly equivalent to the combined military expenditures of the rest of the world.



12. Like Hitler, Bush is willing to invade other nations despite the opposition of the U.N. (League of Nations). He also has no qualms about bribing, bullying and insulting its members, even tapping their telephone lines.



13. Like Hitler, Bush pursues war without cutting back on the peacetime economy. He actually seeks to reduce taxes while conducting an expensive invasion and occupation of an "undesirable" nation.



14. Like Hitler, Bush launches unilateral invasions on a supposedly preemptive basis. Just as Hitler convinced the German public to think of Poland as a threat to Germany in 1939, Bush wants Americans to think of Iraq as a "potential" threat to our national security.



15. Like Hitler, Bush is willing to inflict high levels of bloodshed, with many thousands of casualties anticipated in Iraq, especially since the city of Baghdad--with a population of between 5 and 6 million--will be a primary target.



16. Like Hitler, Bush depends on a military strategy that features a "shock and awe" blitzkrieg beginning with devastating air strikes, then an invasion led by heavy armor columns.



17. Like Hitler, Bush is perfectly willing to sacrifice life as part of his official duty, as indicated by his unique record as a governor of Texas who was reluctant to commute death sentences.



18. Like Hitler Bush began warfare on a single front (Al Qaeda quartered in Afghanistan), but then expanded it to a second front with Iraq, only to be confronted with North Korea as a potential third front. Much the same thing happened when Hitler expanded German military operations from Spain to Poland and France, then was distracted by Yugoslavia before invading the USSR in 1941.



19. Like Hitler, Bush has no qualms about imposing "regime change" by installing Quisling-style client governments reinforced by full-scale military occupation under a military governor.



20. Like Hitler, Bush curtails civil liberties and depends on detention centers (i.e. concentration camps) such as Guantanamo Bay.



21. Like Hitler, Bush repeats lies often enough that they come to be accepted as the truth. Bush and his spokesmen argue, for example that every measure has been taken to avoid war (hardly true), that an invasion of Iraq will diminish (not intensify) the terrorist threat to the world, and that the U.S. is staging an invasion because the risks of inaction would be greater (not less). All of this is highly debatable. They likewise argue that Iraq is linked with Al Qaeda (which has yet to be proven), and that nothing whatsoever has been achieved by U.N. inspectors to warrant the postponement of U.S. war plans (which simply isn't true). They insist that Iraq hides numerous weapons it does not possess as well

as can be determined by U.N. inspectors, and they refuse to acknowledge the total absence of any nuclear weapons program in Iraq since the late nineties. As perhaps to be expected, they indignantly accuse everybody else of deception and evasiveness.



22. Like Hitler, Bush incessantly finds new excuses to justify war—from Iraq's WMD threat to the elimination of Saddam Hussein, to his supposed Al Qaeda connection, to the creation of democracy in the Middle East as a model for neighboring states, and back again to the WMD threat. As soon as one excuse for war is challenged, Bush shifts to another, but only to shift back again at another time.



23. Like Hitler Bush and his cohorts exaggerate ruthlessness by their enemies in order to justify their own. Just as Hitler cited the threat of communist violence to justify even greater violence on the part of Germany, the Bush team justifies a full-scale invasion of Iraq by emphasizing Saddam Hussein's crimes against humanity that were for the most part committed when Iraq was a client-ally of the U.S., supplied with both advisors and materiel (poison gas included) by our own government.



24. Like Hitler, Bush's Messianic ambition to bring about America's hegemonic dominance in the world makes him perhaps the most dangerous President in our nation's history, a rogue chief executive capable of waging any number of illegal preemptive wars.



25. Like Hitler, Bush has become so obsessed with his vision of a Manichaean conflict between good (U.S. patriotism) and evil (the anti-patriotic "other") that for many in contact with the White House he is beginning to seem as if he has lost touch with reality.



26. Like Hitler, Bush takes pleasure in the mythology of frontier justice. As a youth Hitler read and memorized the western novels of Karl May, and Bush retains into his maturity his fascination with simplistic cowboy values. He also exaggerates a cowboy twang despite his elitist education at Andover, Yale and Harvard.



27. Like Hitler, Bush misconstrues evolutionary theory, in Hitler's case by treating the Aryan race as being superior, in Bush's case by rejecting science for fundamentalist creationism.

 

[stucco43]

Only time will see how this plays out...

There is one big difference between G.W. and Hitler....The nuclear bomb!

 

[Redneckman]

Stinko, let's see, Hitler killed what, 7 million Jews? And that puts him on a par with the President? And you wonder why nobody takes you seriously on these pages. Doc, nothing you say surprises me, but somehow I thought stinko had some hope.

 

[blueedwards]

you guys are unbelievable. i can understand you not agreeing with bush's policies and even really disliking the man but, when you compare him to hitler...you lose all credibility.

 

[Hobbes]

1. LOL

2. Love to see a detailed comparison of the two "regimes".

3. Hmmm, most polls I saw supported the invasion of Iraq when it happened. Maybe I missed something...

4. Except in this case, Al Qaeda had actually attacked America...

5. Oops, haven't been recessing for quite a while now

6. Sure, whatever, God forbid a President invoke patriotism before an international conflict.

7. Examples pleeeeeeeeeeeeeze

8. Bush doesn't want to be the Prez who officially announces the U.S. will be subservient to the U.N...for shame!!!

9. He did it out of spite, the BASTARD

10. No real point made here, so no point in constructing a response...

11. Wow, so silly, Germany in WWII is not remotely comparable to the US now, and yet Germany tried to conquer Europe. WE SHOULD TRY AND CONQUER EUROPE, after all, there is no United States military to oppose us...VICTORY IS MINE (Family Guy reference there). We could at least take over Canada and Mexico, know what I mean ???

12. Huh!?!? The UN didn't exist in the 1930's, and the League of Nations was a joke. As far a tapping Iraqi phone lines, THE HORROR!?!?!

13. Germany became a WAR economy, the U.S. will never be so as long as they are not trying to conquer Europe or the Middle East, etc. Get a grip, there is a big difference between world war and invading a couple of countries with negligible ability or will to fight.

14. Important that you define "unilateral", seems to be some confusion there. And yes, Bush believed that Hussein was a "potential threat" to the U.S. Silly boy...

15. Yeah, Bush is willing to inflict thousands of deaths in another country to prevent thousands of death in the U.S., BASTARD!!!!!!! IMPEACH HIM NOW!!!!!!

16. Seriously, this "point" is retarded. It is the equivalent of saying Phil Jackson executed a plan allowing Michael Jordan to "score" alot so that the Bulls would win. UPDATE: Countries try and win wars they engage in.

17. Bush never ORDERED someone to be killed, he enforced the laws of his state. Hitler ordered the annihilation of ethnic groups and alota folks he didn't like, millions is the number we are talking about here. Bush allows some likely murderers to be executed, Hitler attempts to eliminate ethnic groups, the comparisons are almost eerie, no?

18. Bush is clearly pursuing world domination, this point will be re-inforced when he actually tries to do it, say by invading a third country...

19. Hmmmm, is it possible that any GOV elected in Iraq could be less belligerent than the one Iraq just had...

20. Right, there are a few hundred Arabic folks in Guantanamo who are likely enemy combatants, it is JUST LIKE the concentration camps that killed all those JEWS and such...

21. Bush and Hitler are equivalent liars, does ANY REASONABLE PERSON DEBATE THIS POINT?!?!

22. Word to the wise, pretty much everyone was publicly for the removal of Saddam Hussein, that is of course until the U.S. and company attacked. Then we learned that a bunch of countries actually supported the brutal dictator, but STILL, PRE-HOSTILITIES, EVERYONE wanted Hussein gone, EVEN most Iraqis. The fact that some high level officials were making a pretty buck off of Iraq makes them look bad, not the U.S...

23. Communism is responsible for more deaths than any other political system of the 20th century. Anyone who warned against the dangers of Communism was correct, even if they killed millions like Hitler. Facism and Communism are closely related, they are both are deadly to human liberty (and life).

BUT, the U.S. is responsible for supporting despotic regimes, there can be no argument here. 'Nother argument...Hopefully the recent actions in Iraq and Afghanistan indicate a shift in U.S. policy...

24. BLAH, stupid **** not worth responding to...

25. I am not quite sure what this means, but then I am not much for book learnin' and such.

26. See response to #24

27. I actually agree with idea that Bush eschews science for religion, but the idea that he could ever embrace a Hitlerian concept of religion and humanity is obviously absurd.

With all this said, I am not a big Bush fan. But if you read this crap and believe it, you are too stupid to vote...

 

[Ego74]

you guys are unbelievable. i can understand you not agreeing with bush's policies and even really disliking the man but, when you compare him to hitler...you lose all credibility.

It's an everyday thing in this forum Blue. Kinda like the Rubber Room, except nobody gets banned for this kinda crap.

 

[stucco43]

I guess alot of these poster just dont get it....In the short time Bush has been in office he has killed a great number of people. Like it or not the facts are over 100,000 Iraq's are dead how many afghans? What he did in Falluja right after the election was a war crime and people still dont get it. Go ahead and view Ron Paul's (R) Tx column and see where we are headed. Within 2 years there will be a national card. What happens when a country starts on the road to war. We havent stopped and were not going to. You can expect more of these policys to start effecting the average American. Oh i almost forgot the murder,torture, and rape of prisoners of war. Except they are no longer prisoners of war and dont have to follow the Geneva Convention. Americans have gladly given up there rights. property ownership, and now all his economic policies are going to come home to roost.

 

[docmercer--banned]

Blue:

You seem to be an intelligent man ... Bush is a lunatic and is leading the sheep to slaughter

Bush and Hitler: both members of the Satantic cult known as Skull & Bones ... that is fact and a fact the Bushies hate since they actually think Bush is all moral and a God fearing Man

 

[SENDITIN]

I just love when Doc Mullah and Stupido continue to post the Hitler stuff. It shows the depth to which the lunatic liberal wing of the Democratic party has sunk. They are imploding and it's a thrill to watch. Keep it coming boys and girls. In the meantime we'll keep looking for a second shooter behind the grassy knoll.

 

[Redneckman]

Hobbes takes you apart, Doc, and all you can do is spew more Bush Hitler nonsesnse. How pathetic.

 

[docmercer--banned]

Bush & Hitler ... both members of the Satantic cult known as the Skull & Bones ... the German branch if The Thule Society

Bushies .. wake up and smell the coffee ... Bush is an evil corrupt man whose "Image" was spun by Rove to the pt that Bushies would flock to the polls to get this "Moral" scumbag into office

The facts are there ... sorry, no way to get around it and Bush is about as "Reborn" as Michael Moore is skinny

 

[kayaman+]

The similarities are interesting, but of course there are two major differences. First of all hitler's paranoia and insanity made him inherently evil, while dumbya is primarily an inept puppet. The second of course is that hitler was an extremely intelligent person.

 

[docmercer--banned]

Published on Tuesday, February 22, 2005 by CommonDreams.org
When Democracy Failed - 2005
The Warnings of History
by Thom Hartmann
http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0222-22.htm

[font=Arial, Helvetica]
It started when the government, in the midst of an economic crisis, received reports of an imminent terrorist attack. A foreign ideologue had launched feeble attacks on a few sites, but the media largely ignored his relatively small efforts. The intelligence services knew, however, that the odds were he would eventually succeed. (Historians are still arguing whether or not rogue elements in the intelligence service helped the terrorist. Some, like Sefton Delmer - a London Daily Express reporter on the scene - say they certainly did not, while others, like William Shirer, suggest they did.)

But the warnings of investigators were ignored at the highest levels, in part because the government was distracted; the man who claimed to be the nation's leader had not been elected by a majority vote and the majority of citizens claimed he had no right to the powers he coveted.

He was a simpleton, some said, a cartoon character of a man who saw things in black-and-white terms and didn't have the intellect to understand the subtleties of running a nation in a complex and internationalist world.

His coarse use of language - reflecting his political roots in a southernmost state - and his simplistic and often-inflammatory nationalistic rhetoric offended the aristocrats, foreign leaders, and the well-educated elite in the government and media. And, as a young man, he'd joined a secret society with an occult-sounding name and bizarre initiation rituals that involved skulls and human bones.

Nonetheless, he knew the terrorist was going to strike (although he didn't know where or when), and he had already considered his response. When an aide brought him word that the nation's most prestigious building was ablaze, he verified it was the terrorist who had struck and then rushed to the scene and called a press conference.

"You are now witnessing the beginning of a great epoch in history," he proclaimed, standing in front of the burned-out building, surrounded by national media. "This fire," he said, his voice trembling with emotion, "is the beginning." He used the occasion - "a sign from God," he called it - to declare an all-out war on terrorism and its ideological sponsors, a people, he said, who traced their origins to the Middle East and found motivation for their evil deeds in their religion.

Two weeks later, the first detention center for terrorists was built in Oranianberg to hold the first suspected allies of the infamous terrorist. In a national outburst of patriotism, the leader's flag was everywhere, even printed large in newspapers suitable for window display.

Within four weeks of the terrorist attack, the nation's now-popular leader had pushed through legislation - in the name of combating terrorism and fighting the philosophy he said spawned it - that suspended constitutional guarantees of free speech, privacy, and habeas corpus. Police could now intercept mail and wiretap phones; suspected terrorists could be imprisoned without specific charges and without access to their lawyers; police could sneak into people's homes without warrants if the cases involved terrorism.

To get his patriotic "Decree on the Protection of People and State" passed over the objections of concerned legislators and civil libertarians, he agreed to put a 4-year sunset provision on it: if the national emergency provoked by the terrorist attack was over by then, the freedoms and rights would be returned to the people, and the police agencies would be re-restrained. Legislators would later say they hadn't had time to read the bill before voting on it.

Immediately after passage of the anti-terrorism act, his federal police agencies stepped up their program of arresting suspicious persons and holding them without access to lawyers or courts. In the first year only a few hundred were interred, and those who objected were largely ignored by the mainstream press, which was afraid to offend and thus lose access to a leader with such high popularity ratings. Citizens who protested the leader in public - and there were many - quickly found themselves confronting the newly empowered police's batons, gas, and jail cells, or fenced off in protest zones safely out of earshot of the leader's public speeches. (In the meantime, he was taking almost daily lessons in public speaking, learning to control his tonality, gestures, and facial expressions. He became a very competent orator.)

Within the first months after that terrorist attack, at the suggestion of a political advisor, he brought a formerly obscure word into common usage. He wanted to stir a "racial pride" among his countrymen, so, instead of referring to the nation by its name, he began to refer to it as "The Homeland," a phrase publicly promoted in the introduction to a 1934 speech recorded in Leni Riefenstahl's famous propaganda movie "Triumph Of The Will." As hoped, people's hearts swelled with pride, and the beginning of an us-versus-them mentality was sewn. Our land was "the" homeland, citizens thought: all others were simply foreign lands. We are the "true people," he suggested, the only ones worthy of our nation's concern; if bombs fall on others, or human rights are violated in other nations and it makes our lives better, it's of little concern to us.

Playing on this new implicitly racial nationalism, and exploiting a disagreement with the French over his increasing militarism, he argued that any international body that didn't act first and foremost in the best interest of his own nation was neither relevant nor useful. He thus withdrew his country from the League Of Nations in October, 1933, and then negotiated a separate naval armaments agreement with Anthony Eden of The United Kingdom to create a worldwide military ruling elite.

His propaganda minister orchestrated a campaign to ensure the people that he was a deeply religious man and that his motivations were rooted in Christianity. He even proclaimed the need for a revival of the Christian faith across his nation, what he called a "New Christianity." Every man in his rapidly growing army wore a belt buckle that declared "Gott Mit Uns" - God Is With Us - and most of them fervently believed it was true.

Within a year of the terrorist attack, the nation's leader determined that the various local police and federal agencies around the nation were lacking the clear communication and overall coordinated administration necessary to deal with the terrorist threat facing the nation, particularly those citizens who were of Middle Eastern ancestry and thus probably terrorist and communist sympathizers, and various troublesome "intellectuals" and "liberals." He proposed a single new national agency to protect the security of the homeland, consolidating the actions of dozens of previously independent police, border, and investigative agencies under a single leader.

He appointed one of his most trusted associates to be leader of this new agency, the Central Security Office for the homeland, and gave it a role in the government equal to the other major departments.

His assistant who dealt with the press noted that, since the terrorist attack, "Radio and press are at out disposal." Those voices questioning the legitimacy of their nation's leader, or raising questions about his checkered past, had by now faded from the public's recollection as his central security office began advertising a program encouraging people to phone in tips about suspicious neighbors. This program was so successful that the names of some of the people "denounced" were soon being broadcast on radio stations. Those denounced often included opposition politicians and news reporters who dared speak out - a favorite target of his regime and the media he now controlled through intimidation and ownership by corporate allies.

To consolidate his power, he concluded that government alone wasn't enough. He reached out to industry and forged an alliance, bringing former executives of the nation's largest corporations into high government positions. A flood of government money poured into corporate coffers to fight the war against the Middle Eastern ancestry terrorists lurking within the homeland, and to prepare for wars overseas. He encouraged large corporations friendly to him to acquire media outlets and other industrial concerns across the nation, particularly those previously owned by suspicious people of Middle Eastern ancestry. He built powerful alliances with industry; one corporate ally got the lucrative contract worth millions to build the first large-scale detention center for enemies of the state. Soon more would follow. Industry flourished.

He also reached out to the churches, declaring that the nation had clear Christian roots, that any nation that didn't openly support religion was morally bankrupt, and that his administration would openly and proudly provide both moral and financial support to initiatives based on faith to provide social services.

In this, he was reaching back to his own embrace of Christianity, which he noted in an April 12, 1922 speech:

[/font]

<DL><DD>"My feeling as a Christian points me to my Lord and Savior as a fighter. It points me to the man who once in loneliness, surrounded only by a few followers ... was greatest not as a sufferer but as a fighter.

<DD>"In boundless love as a Christian and as a man I read through the passage which tells us how the Lord at last rose in His might and seized the scourge to drive out of the Temple the brood of vipers and adders...

<DD>"As a Christian ... I have the duty to be a fighter for truth and justice..."

</I></DD></DL>When he later survived an assassination attempt, he said, "Now I am completely content. The fact that I left the Burgerbraukeller earlier than usual is a corroboration of Providence's intention to let me reach my goal."

Many government functions started with prayer. Every school day started with prayer and every child heard the wonders of Christianity and - especially - the Ten Commandments in school. The leader even ended many of his speeches with a prayer, as he did in a February 20, 1938 speech before Parliament:


<DL><DD>"In this hour I would ask of the Lord God only this: that, as in the past, so in the years to come He would give His blessing to our work and our action, to our judgment and our resolution, that He will safeguard us from all false pride and from all cowardly servility, that He may grant us to find the straight path which His Providence has ordained for the German people, and that He may ever give us the courage to do the right, never to falter, never to yield before any violence, before any danger."

</I></DD></DL>But after an interval of peace following the terrorist attack, voices of dissent again arose within and without the government. Students had started an active program opposing him (later known as the White Rose Society), and leaders of nearby nations were speaking out against his bellicose rhetoric. He needed a diversion, something to direct people away from the corporate cronyism being exposed in his own government, questions of his possibly illegitimate rise to power, his corruption of religious leaders, and the oft-voiced concerns of civil libertarians about the people being held in detention without due process or access to attorneys or family.

With his number two man - a master at manipulating the media - he began a campaign to convince the people of the nation that a small, limited war was necessary. Another nation was harboring many of the suspicious Middle Eastern people, and even though its connection with the terrorist who had set afire the nation's most important building was tenuous at best, it held resources their nation badly needed if they were to have room to live and maintain their prosperity.

He called a press conference and publicly delivered an ultimatum to the leader of the other nation, provoking an international uproar. He claimed the right to strike preemptively in self-defense, and nations across Europe - at first - denounced him for it, pointing out that it was a doctrine only claimed in the past by nations seeking worldwide empire, like Caesar's Rome or Alexander's Greece.

It took a few months, and intense international debate and lobbying with European nations, but, after he personally met with the leader of the United Kingdom, finally a deal was struck. After the military action began, Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain told the nervous British people that giving in to this leader's new first-strike doctrine would bring "peace for our time." Thus Hitler annexed Austria in a lightning move, riding a wave of popular support as leaders so often do in times of war. The Austrian government was unseated and replaced by a new leadership friendly to Germany, and German corporations began to take over Austrian resources.

In a speech responding to critics of the invasion, Hitler said, "Certain foreign newspapers have said that we fell on Austria with brutal methods. I can only say; even in death they cannot stop lying. I have in the course of my political struggle won much love from my people, but when I crossed the former frontier [into Austria] there met me such a stream of love as I have never experienced. Not as tyrants have we come, but as liberators."

To deal with those who dissented from his policies, at the advice of his politically savvy advisors, he and his handmaidens in the press began a campaign to equate him and his policies with patriotism and the nation itself. National unity was essential, they said, to ensure that the terrorists or their sponsors didn't think they'd succeeded in splitting the nation or weakening its will.

Rather than the government being run by multiple parties in a pluralistic, democratic fashion, one single party sought total control. Emulating a technique also used by Stalin, but as ancient as Rome, the Party used the power of its influence on the government to take over all government functions, hand out government favors, and reward Party contributors with government positions and contracts.

In times of war, they said, there could be only "one people, one nation, and one commander-in-chief" ("Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Fuhrer"), and so his advocates in the media began a nationwide campaign charging that critics of his policies were attacking the nation itself. You were either with us, or you were with the terrorists.

It was a simplistic perspective, but that was what would work, he was told by his Propaganda Minister, Joseph Goebbels: "The most brilliant propagandist technique will yield no success unless one fundamental principle is borne in mind constantly - it must confine itself to a few points and repeat them over and over."

Those questioning him were labeled "anti-German" or "not good Germans," and it was suggested they were aiding the enemies of the state by failing in the patriotic necessity of supporting the nation's valiant men in uniform. It was one of his most effective ways to stifle dissent and pit wage-earning people (from whom most of the army came) against the "intellectuals and liberals" who were critical of his policies.

Another technique was to "manufacture news," through the use of paid shills posing as reporters, seducing real reporters with promises of access to the leader in exchange for favorable coverage, and thinly veiled threats to those who exposed his lies. As his Propaganda Minister said, "It is the absolute right of the State to supervise the formation of public opinion."

Nonetheless, once the "small war" annexation of Austria was successfully and quickly completed, and peace returned, voices of opposition were again raised in the Homeland. The almost-daily release of news bulletins about the dangers of terrorist communist cells wasn't enough to rouse the populace and totally suppress dissent. A full-out war was necessary to divert public attention from the growing rumbles within the country about disappearing dissidents; violence against liberals, Jews, and union leaders; and the epidemic of crony capitalism that was producing empires of wealth in the corporate sector but threatening the middle class's way of life.

A year later, to the week, Hitler invaded Czechoslovakia.

In the months after that, he claimed that Poland had weapons of mass destruction (poison gas) and was supporting terrorists against Germany. Those who doubted that Poland represented a threat were shouted down or branded as ignorant. Elections were rigged, run by party hacks. Only loyal Party members were given passes for admission to public events with the leader, so there would never be a single newsreel of a heckler, and no doubt in the minds of the people that the leader enjoyed vast support.

And his support did grow, as Propaganda Minister Goebbels' dictum bore fruit:


<DL><DD>"If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State."

</I></DD></DL>Within a few months Poland, too, was invaded in a "defensive, pre-emptive" action. The nation was now fully at war, and all internal dissent was suppressed in the name of national security; it was the end of Germany's first experiment with democracy.

As we conclude this review of history, there are a few milestones worth remembering.

February 27, 2005, is the 72nd anniversary of Dutch terrorist Marinus van der Lubbe's successful firebombing of the German Parliament (Reichstag) building, the terrorist act that catapulted Hitler to legitimacy and reshaped the German constitution. By the time of his successful and brief action to seize Austria, in which almost no German blood was shed, Hitler was the most beloved and popular leader in the history of his nation. Hailed around the world, he was later Time magazine's "Man Of The Year."

Most Americans remember his office for the security of the homeland, known as the Reichssicherheitshauptamt and its SchutzStaffel, simply by its most famous agency's initials: the SS.

We also remember that the Germans developed a new form of highly violent warfare they named "lightning war" or blitzkrieg, which, while generating devastating civilian losses, also produced a highly desirable "shock and awe" among the nation's leadership according to the authors of the 1996 book "Shock And Awe" published by the National Defense University Press.

Reflecting on that time, The American Heritage Dictionary (Houghton Mifflin Company, 1983) left us this definition of the form of government the German democracy had become through Hitler's close alliance with the largest German corporations and his policy of using religion and war as tools to keep power: "fas-cism </B>(fâsh'iz'em) n. A system of government that exercises a dictatorship of the extreme right, typically through the merging of state and business leadership, together with belligerent nationalism."

Today, as we face financial and political crises, it's useful to remember that the ravages of the Great Depression hit Germany and the United States alike. Through the 1930s, however, Hitler and Roosevelt chose very different courses to bring their nations back to power and prosperity.

Germany's response was to use government to empower corporations and reward the society's richest individuals, privatize much of the commons, stifle dissent, strip people of constitutional rights, bust up unions, and create an illusion of prosperity through government debt and continual and ever-expanding war spending.

America passed minimum wage laws to raise the middle class, enforced anti-trust laws to diminish the power of corporations, increased taxes on corporations and the wealthiest individuals, created Social Security, and became the employer of last resort through programs to build national infrastructure, promote the arts, and replant forests.

To the extent that our Constitution is still intact, the choice is again ours.

From ThomHartmann on this, the 70th anniversary of the Reichstag Fire : TODAY - February 27th - is the 72nd anniversary, but the corporate media most likely won't cover it. The generation that experienced this history firsthand is now largely dead, and only a few of us dare hear their ghosts.

"If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State."
</I>J. Goebbels


Thom Hartmann (www.thomhartmann.com) lived and worked in Germany during the 1980s, is the Project Censored Award-winning, best-selling author of over a dozen books, and is the host of a nationally syndicated daily progressive talk radio program. This article, in slightly altered form, was first published in 2003 by CommonDreams.org and is now also a chapter in Thom's book What Would Jefferson Do?, published in 2004 by Random House/Harmony.

 

[Ego74]

Blue:

You seem to be an intelligent man ... Bush is a lunatic and is leading the sheep to slaughter

Bush and Hitler: both members of the Satantic cult known as Skull & Bones ... that is fact and a fact the Bushies hate since they actually think Bush is all moral and a God fearing Man

wasn't the "evil" John F Kerry also part of that Satanistic cult??? hmmm

 

[Hobbes]

stucco, your recent reference to Ron Paul leads me to believe you are a libertarian, if not disregard. Pre-9/11 I was right with you on many issues. But now, things have changed. We are in the ****, so to speak. We have to deal with the situation that confronts us, and not respond with unrealizable solutions...we also have to be willing to acknowledge our mistakes...


Hobbes

 

[stucco43]

"Our Mistakes" these arent my mistakes I would have never chosen this course of action....The only mistake that has been made was choosing to go down this path...it is blantly obvious that this has been planned ever since 1998 and its all going to the agendas over all plan.....throwout common sense and there you go!!!!

 

[one9]

You make a lot of good points Doc...I don't agree with the racial aspects, however. There is no time or place for that...move on.