And as usual, some acute comments from DUers who see the truth and are appalled by it -- of course! -- they saw it a long time ago!
The seemingly uncontested continuation along the Path to Tyranny that this maladministration had planned from the start is so exasperating, so maddening, that we're all gonna be bald from pulling our hair out unless we can see some genuine ACTION among the governed against the criminal thugs in the White House.
But I have a slightly different take on things at this point. I have, in fact, grown so frustrated at what keeps right on happening and so bitterly, rabidly ANGRY at * himself for his arrogance and now even outraged at HIS anger -- as if he has a
right to be mad at US, that I am no longer watching or listening to his speeches. I've kept up, however; I know what he's been saying, catch small bits of them at times -- and usually the parts I'm interested in seeing because at least the compliant "news" networks are airing clips that show his "animation" and "fiery deliveries."
Which means they're playing (repeatedly, which is good)
exactly the parts of his speeches that will help move a few more of those who once trusted * more firmly into the opposing camp. Too many still don't get it, don't see what's right in front of their eyes, I understand that. But at least many of the "facts of the matter" of what * is trying to do, seeking to openly and literally CHANGE THE LAWS so he can keep on with what he's doing LEGALLY, are still getting out to those of us who continue to need all the info we can get.
As I'm researching and composing my upcoming OP on comparisons of * to Hitler, I've learned just how that maniac thug in the 1930's managed to push things as far as he did and consolidate his power -- even though early on there WERE many who saw what a nutcase he was, believed him dangerous to Germany and Germans, and actually did try to stop him, to eliminate him, to keep some balance in their government and in the halls of power.
Many Germans who had quite a bit of authority in the early thirties (such as the S.A.'s leader, General Rohm) were not going to allow Adolph to have everything his way, including owning ALL the power in the country. The way Hitler overcame their objections was to get the Gestapo formed, geared up and ready, along with the S.S. and a couple of other groups, to "handle" anyone like Rohm who could possibly give him trouble as he rose to power.
So what happened? How did Hitler do it?
It's all about the Gestapo.The Gestapo answered to no civil or military authority
except Hitler. In the early 30's he provided them with the weapons and the authority to override and overrule anyone who opposed him -- and to dispose of them. Sometimes secretly, sometimes not so secretly but covering his tracks with lies that Goebbels had ready to send to the news outlets immediately. Hitler caused events such as the Reichstag burning and the border attacks by his operatives disguised as Poles, that appeared to be others attacking Germany and
immediately blamed it on others -- against whom he then insisted Germany must go to war.
Because Hitler was cunning enough to build his power base up very high
before he tried to "go too far," he was able to eat away at the strength and popularity of any groups or individuals who stood up against him until eventually
there WAS no one left to stand up against him. None with the power to succeed, anyway.
He was a madman, but he was extremely cunning and he had street savvy -- as did many of the thugs he utilized to assist him along his way.
There was a point somewhere in the mid- to late-1930's when several entities within Germany tried desperately to put a stop to Hitler's rise to power. He was patient, and he made use of the brilliant knack for propaganda provided to him by Goebbels and others
to make sure the public sentiment was not lagging behind as he made his big moves. His timing was always perfect, and that is truly the key to his success, in many respects. It was a repeated pattern.
And here's the singular point of emphasis, IMO:
Hitler NEVER moved ahead of or strayed away from his approval ratings! He was too smart to do that. He knew it could all backfire on him if he did, and he'd lose then -- not just ground but EVERYTHING he'd "worked" to get.
I believe what we have right now is a
narrow window during which we can truly turn things around in America.
I have hoped we were reaching this tipping point before, over the Plame outing, the Abu Graib horrors, several other times, but the public wasn't quite ready yet. Not quite tired enough of enduring this insanity yet. And although some of them live in FEAR as Hitler -- oops, I mean * -- wants them to,
they weren't fearing the right source of threat to America and to them personally. * had already tricked them into fearing the wrong people! Which is how he has gained all his power....
A lot of people have remained confused and almost frozen in place after 9/11. But now things have hit home a lot more here in America, a lot longer I mean, since 9/11. People are hurting in many ways due to *'s policies and actions. Even many of those who once trusted this criminal coward are deciding they've been betrayed and used, and I think even they MAY just be ready to stand up and speak out -- before it really IS too late.
And hopefully their change of mind IS indeed in time.
Hopefully their fear of * is now surpassing their fear of "terraists" whom they've seen little of for five years. They haven't even HEARD much about them except from this administration, fundie preachers, and the compliant media who act as the thugs' mouthpieces way too often.
* is now going too far, even in the eyes of those who would LIKE to keep supporting him and believing in him, is what I'm thinking. He's been exposed, YES; so he's angry and showing his lunatic rage until it's hard for anyone to keep saying they understand what he's doing, how he's behaving, and why it is, why HE is,
good for us! How can a leader who is foaming at the mouth in his speeches and wanting to CHANGE THE LAWS so he can TORTURE PEOPLE
possibly be "good for us"?
We're at that critical juncture now where if someone or some group or even just a collective outpouring from the public can just manage to stand up effectively to this would-be dictator in America and say, "This far you have gone, but no farther," then the rest of the country will line up behind that individual or that group or that collective voice and
keep the pressure on the administration, not giving in to this obvious tricksterism of
changing the laws of our nation. Hitler wanted to do a lot of illegal things in Germany in the early 30's, so he set out to change the laws there, too, rescinding some completely, modifying others, and for certain seeing that NEW laws were put in place that would keep him beyond prosecution and removal.
But he did it with more patience and cunning than * and his backers have done.Hitler was
ready BEFORE he tried to "go too far" and say outrageous things and do abominable things that no one would stand for, and he managed to GET THOSE LAWS CHANGED. * isn't ready, he's impatient and pushing too hard too soon. Too much of what he's already done is blowing up in his face. Hitler didn't make that mistake, he got the laws changed FIRST. Thereafter, he was unstoppable -- until he ran into a strong young nation which had not been fully tested in a leadership role in the world yet ... a nation without the war machine to compete with him (but with the capability to build one pronto and get it moving) ... a nation of people who'd been largely isolationist until Hitler's axis partner, Japan, pushed us too far at Pearl Harbor and woke the sleeping giant, filling it with a powerful rage.
Everything came together then to
bring Americans TOGETHER to fight true evil in the world, even if we had some selfishly motivated people in some circles doing it for the wrong reasons. The United States DID pretty much make the difference in the early 40's and turn the tide against Hitler, leading to his demise -- his and all his thugs' (except, regrettably, those we then hired to work for us).
I don't think it's gonna be pretty here in America, the last stand that has to happen next. But I believe we may finally be witnessing the "Decider" forcing his own downfall by trying to be too bold too soon as he shows his temper and his desperation, trying to exert pressure to GET THE LAWS CHANGED.
The pressure he and his mouthpieces are applying isn't working, is what I'm seeing. His "fiery" speeches to the American public are not working, either. People are pissed; people are suffering from what he's already done, in a thousand ways and more. People are sick and tired of this sorry excuse for a leader making our country and its people both a laughingstock and a despised superpower. Can't think of any combination more suitable to drawing in enough people to finally MATTER.
So, finally, instead of being merely "angry one more time," and having only my friends at DU to express my concerns to, THIS time I'm angry but honestly HOPEFUL TOO. Hopeful that we can talk with other Americans we normally might not be able to agree with, and join hands with them to STOP THE MONSTER squatting in OUR white House. Stop him BEFORE he gets the laws changed like he wants them.
The torture debate is what I think will ultimately bring this situation to pass, so for that reason and that reason alone I'm glad to see the torture debate taking center stage. This is where folks of good conscience and of any political stripe you can imagine must surely draw the line.
I posted the following in an earlier thread but it was near the end of the lifespan of that thread, so I doubt many people had the chance to see it. I offer it again here (and will probably put it in the OP I keep talking about posting re * compared to Hitler) for anyone who wants to see how a very intelligent and conscientious German citizen named William Shirer saw Hitler finagling and tricking his way to power described it at the time.
It's an excerpt from the diary of the man whose later work,
Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, has commanded respect for a long time now.
Copied from this Website:
http://www.datasync.com/~davidg59/shirer.html~~~~~~~~
We who have been so close to this German scene, who have seen with our own eyes the tramping Nazi boots over Europe and heard with our own ears Hitler's hysterical tirades of hate, have found it difficult to keep a sense of historical perspective. I suppose the reasons why Germany has embarked on a career of unbridled conquest go deeper than the mere fact, all-important though it is, that a small band of unprincipled, tough gangsters have seized control of this land, corrupted its whole people, and driven it on its present course. The roots go deeper, I admit, though whether the plant would have flowered as it has without Hitler, I seriously doubt.
One root is the strange, contradictory character of the German people. It is not correct to say, as many of our liberals at home have said, that Nazism is a form of rule and life unnatural to the German people and forced upon them against their wish by a few fanatical derelicts of the last war. It is true that the Nazi Party never polled a majority vote in Germany in a free election, though it came very close. But for the last 3 or 4 years the Nazi regime has expressed something very deep in the German nature and in that respect it has been representative of the people it rules. The Germans as a people lack the balance achieved, say, by the Greeks, the Romans, the French, the British and the Americans. They are continually torn by inner contradictions which make them uncertain, unsatisfied, frustrated, and which force them from one extreme to the other. The Weimar Republic was so extreme in its liberal democracy that the Germans couldn't work it. And now they have turned to the extremes of tyranny because democracy and liberalism forced them to live as individuals, to think and make decisions as free men, and in the chaos of the 20th Century, this was too much of a strain for them. Almost joyfully, almost masochistically, they have turned to an authoritarianism which releases them from the strain of individual decisions and choice and thought and allows them what to a German is a luxury - letting someone else make the decisions and take the risks, in return for which they gladly give their own obedience. The average German craves security. He likes to live in a groove. And he will give up his independence and freedom - at least at this stage of his development - if his rulers provide this.
The German has 2 characters. As an individual, he will give his rationed bread to feed the squirrels in the Tiergarten on a Sunday morning. He can be a kind and considerate person. But as a unit in the Germanic mass he can persecute Jews, torture and murder his fellow men in concentration camps, massacre women and children by bombing and bombardment, overrun without the slightest justification the lands of other peoples, cut them down if they protest and enslave them. It must also be noted down that Hitler's frenzy for bloody conquest is by no means exclusive to him in Germany. The urge to expansion, the hunger for land and space, for what Germans call Lebensraum, has lain long in the soul of the people. Some of Germany's best minds have expressed it in their writings, Fichte, Hegel, Nietzche and Treitschke fired the German people with it in the last century. But our century has not lacked for successors. Karl Haushofer has poured books from his presses dinning into the ears of the Germans the maxim that if their nation is to be great and lasting, it must have more Lebensraum. Books of his such as Macht und Erde (Power and Earth) and Weltpolitik von Heute (World Politics fo Today) have profoundly influenced not only the Nazi leaders but a great mass of people. So has Hans Grimm's Volk ohne Raum (People without Space), a novel which has sold nearly a half-million copies in this country despite its length of some thousand pages. And so has Moeller van den Bruck's The Third Reich, written 11 years before Hitler founded the Third Reich.
All these writings emphasized that Germany was entitled by the laws of history and nature to a space more adequate to its mission in life. That this space would have to be taken from others, mostly from Slavs who had settled on it when the Germans themselves were little more than rough tribesmen, made no difference. It is this basic feeling in almost all Germans that the "lesser breed" of Europeans are not entitled to absolute rights of their own, to a piece of land to till and live on, to the very towns and cities they have built up with their own sweat and toil, if a German covets them, which is in part responsible for the present state of Europe.
It is the evil genius of Adolf Hitler that has aroused this basic feeling and given tangible expression. It is due to this remarkable and terrifying man alone that the German dream now stands a fair chance of coming true. First Germans and then the world grossly underestimated him. It was a appalling error, as first the Germans and now the world are finding out. Today so far as the vast majority of his fellow countrymen are concerned, he has reached a pinnacle never before achieved by a German ruler. He has become - even before his death - a myth, a legend, almost a god, with that quality of divinity which the Japanese people ascribe to their Emperor. To many Germans, he is a figure remote, unreal, hardly human. For them he has become infallible. They say, as many peoples down through history have said of their respective gods: "He is always right."
~~~~~~~~~~~~
I do believe we have an opportunity here, folks, and that it's going to provide that narrow window I spoke of in my opening paragraphs.
We can't blow it! We MUST make the sheeple see and see right now and admit the truth of what they don't WANT to see ... and hope they'll recognize what it is they should REALLY BE FEARING.
And it ain't LIBERALS....
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