American Politics the 2016 edition

The T wrote: there was a reason Hitler could be appointed by Hindenburg : the NSDAP was the largest party in Germany. That is being DEMOCRATICALLY ELECTED

That's tricky. They were a strong minority party -- ~30% -- prior to taking over. Over the course of more or less one year, 1933, they went from that to an essentially totalitarian one-party state. Democratically elected, perhaps, but not majority favored. Their takeover was largely political.

Gamemako wrote: The T wrote: there was a reason Hitler could be appointed by Hindenburg : the NSDAP was the largest party in Germany. That is being DEMOCRATICALLY ELECTED That's tricky. They were a strong minority party -- ~30% -- prior to taking over. Over the course of more or less one year, 1933, they went from that to an essentially totalitarian one-party state. Democratically elected, perhaps, but not majority favored. Their takeover was largely political.

only 5 weeks after Hitler came into power there was a new election in which the Nazis won 43.9% of the votes (a gain of 10.8%). the second most votes went to the Social Democrats (18.3%), third most to the Zentrum (Center, 12.3%),  the rest to other parties. and since the other parties quarreled with each other instead of joining to fight the NSDAP the Nazis de facto had the majority.

of course the political systems of the USA and the Weimar Republic are by no means the same, so the situation in the USA today is definitely different from the situation in Germany 1933. I will nevertheless remain in my mixed Ovid / Cato mode, so: ceterum censeo principiis obsta


Edited by BaldJean - January 29 2017 at 09:15

npjnpj wrote: Political and very corrupt. No paralleles to today, thank goodness.

Again, the Ermächitgungsgesetz would be unconstitutional here. If there is to be a minority takeover of government, they need to either convince a congressional majority in both houses and most state legislatures to change the constitution, or to outright ignore the judiciary with the support of congress and not of most states (for which military intervention would be required to force capitulation), or somehow take over from the executive and ninja impeachment. Either way, the pathways are more difficult here.

@Tillerman88: Sorry, but I've tried to understand what you were saying, but even with a dictionary and thesaurus I'm not getting very far. Could you possibly rephrase that? I'd like to know what you have to say.

+1

npjnpj wrote: @Tillerman88: Sorry, but I've tried to understand what you were saying, but even with a dictionary and thesaurus I'm not getting very far. Could you possibly rephrase that? I'd like to know what you have to say.

Edited by Tillerman88 - January 29 2017 at 10:04

lazland wrote: The T wrote: Haven't even read all posts, just need to say: whoever you are, if you support or justify the Muslim ban, you are disgusting to me. I have not done either, Teo, so I hope I remain undisgusting to you I was merely pointing out the folly of comparing Trump to Hitler. It is ridiculous, sorry.

on Jan 26th Hitler decreed the "Deutsches Beamtengesetz" (German civil-service law) which forced German civil servants to be loyal to the NSDAP. is it just a coincidence that exactly (and I mean exactly) 80 years later Donald Trump replaces hundreds of top civil servants with people who are loyal to him? the method may be different, the result is the same.

mark that it is by no means standard procedure that a new government replaces civil servants. the bureaucracy is usually kept intact, simply because it works. clumsily at times, but it works.

ceterum censeo principiis obsta

As big as this immigration/refugee thing is, I can't help wondering if it might not also be a distraction from something even bigger brewing. It's becoming a smoke screen that's dwarfing everything else. Anyway, we'll see.

It seems as if the Democrats are now planning some legislation to disable the immigration ban executive order. They can, of course, only do this with some of the republicans' help.

This will be extremely interesting in the way that it's going to show how Trump will handle his detractors (or would that be traitors?). I'm sure this is going to lead to some cleansing of the republican camp. Perhaps he'll have them thrown in jail on Trumped-Up charges (sorry, I just couldn't resist that one).

Apart from this: the muslim ban is supposed to stay in place for 90 days. Does that mean that Trump is of the opinion that the ISIS problem will be solved by then? Or is there just going to be an extension? Perhaps Donald Trump is Skynet personified

And has no one though of letting the refugees in and having them build the Mexican wall? They can live in guarded concentration camps all along the border, and the border patrol can hold target practise on the children and orphans. No, that would be just too harsh. Perhaps they can find some additional Mexican puppies and kittens.


Edited by npjnpj - January 29 2017 at 14:00

Atavachron wrote: Hats off to Steve (laz) for having the courage and presence of mind to say what he perceives instead of getting caught-up in the socio-politics of the moment, and to continue his level-headed discourse after being called ugly things.   Facts are very volatile and uncomfortable things to point out.

I must have missed all of these "ugly thing" that Steve is being accused of.

I think Steve is right in that the Nazi comparison is a little "long".  On the other hand we certainly do need to be very vigilant about Trump.  While we shouldn't oppose everything he does just because we may be on "the other team" (like Republicans did with Obama), we certainly need to speak out (at the very least!) when we see something wrong.  No, Trump is not (yet?) Hitler.  But we don't want things to even come close to getting that far.