The Dead Raccoon That Is Trumpcare

What The Failure Of Trumpcare Can Tell Us About What’s To Come

I believe President Trump made the best of a bad situation in withdrawing his healthcare proposal. Admitting that he lost is not something that comes easily for Trump, but distancing himself from a sure-fire disaster is second nature.

We’re finally getting a sense of what the Trump Presidency is like. Make bold promises, offer the moon, and then rely on others to carry out the hard work once the deal is agreed to. The promise on the campaign trail was to immediately repeal Obamacare, and replace it with something much better. Clearly, Donald Trump had no idea what that something better was, but he figured somebody in the senate was smart enough that they had been busily preparing for the moment when they might have a chance to repeal the ACA and replace it.

He was wrong. He left things in the hands of Paul Ryan, who was confident, articulate, and absolutely out of touch with reality. Trumpcare was in fact Ryancare, and Ryancare might just as well have been called Randcare (Rand as in Ayn, not Paul). Ryan’s idea was that if you were poor or you were sick that people like you should not burden people like Ryan’s opportunity to get Lasik eye surgery.

Now I don’t consider our government to be much of a democracy, but there are limits to what any government can get away with. Even brutal dictators have to show some semblance of concern for the poor and unfortunate. Even Adolf Hitler had to disguise what he had planned for the untermenschen.

So Trump/Ryan/Rand care was dead in the water. Rule number one that astute politicians learn is not to stand next to a dead raccoon or people might associate you with the stink. Given that the dead raccoon is sitting on top of his head, Trump was unable to distance himself from it. Fortunately Obama had a stinky raccoon of his own, and Trump was savvy enough to put that in front of the public’s nose and point to it as the cause of the stench.

Now Obama’s raccoon wasn’t quite dead, but it never was a very healthy animal. It was the spawn of a most unlikely coupling. In fact, there is good reason to believe that it was Mitt Romney and not Barak Obama who was the biological father. It doesn’t matter, it bore the Obama name, and therefore President Trump could never let it live. You see, Donald Trump can never tolerate anything that has the name of another man. He’s like the sultan in 1,001 Nights, who takes a virgin bride each night and has them beheaded in the morning before they can cheat on him. The thought of other males in his domain is unacceptable Trump is the alpha-male and any other who challenges him must be eliminated.

So with Trumpcare dead, it was best to shift attention to Obamacare. Let’s put aside for a moment all these health care plans mean something to sick people and even well people who are afraid of needing healthcare someday, because Donald Trump never cared about that end of things. Trump cared about scoring points with the voters and Obamacare was a vulnerable program. Still is, especially since the Republicans have done nothing to nurture it and everything to wound it. Again, let’s not worry about those people who are actually in need, let’s worry about scoring political points.

Donald Trump will let Obama’s lame child live, all the while tripping it whenever it walks by, depriving it of food and scaring off those who would try to help it out. Let it shamble weakly towards its grave, the whole while taunting it and by extension any other male who would attempt to put their name to something that is rightfully Trump’s. That’s what alpha-males do.

But here we have exposed Donald Trump’s weakness: his unending need to feed his ego. Here should be the game plan of Democrats going forward, to rename every proposal the Republicans put forth from here on out. Donald Trump comes up with a tax proposal that would reduce taxes for the wealthiest Americans? Call it The Ryan Code. Instantly Trump will lose all desire to support it. A new war in the Middle East? Call it McCain’s war if you want peace. This must be done for every plan President Trump comes up with, every single one. Except Trumpcare. Leave that stinky thing firmly perched atop the president’s head.

P.S. The raccoon in the picture is not dead, it is only sleeping. I would never post a picture of a dead raccoon.

What Is The Deep State?

What is the Deep State?

It’s the power behind the wars we fight.

It’s what’s pushing the anti-Trump DNC to the right of Trump.

It’s what wants term limits so that no elected politicians can have enough tenure, name recognition, or power to challenge it.

It’s what pushes for limited terms for leaders in other countries as well, for the same reasons.

It’s what encourages Democrats and Republicans to fight over insignificant issues that never come close to harming the deep state.

They either own the media or work for the same people who own the media.

They sponsor think tanks that refute the truth, or at least muddy it and those who attempt to speak it. The truth is a weapon that can be used against them, and so they work constantly to make sure you are always left wondering if you can believe anything at all.

It is the driving force behind policy regardless of whether our president or congress is Republican or Democrat. The same people are working behind the scenes. The same people.

It is the voice that calls for small government while it increasingly taxes you more, driving the government deeper in debt to the institutions owned by the deep state, and growing the areas of government you have no say over.

It is the force that demands cheap labor from overseas to drive down wages even as it points to immigrants as the source of all problems.

It is the people presidents keep their promises to even if they have to break their promises to voters.

It is the people who make money from the weapons we make, the wars we fight, the loans guaranteed by the government, and the prisoners we incarcerate. To them, nothing is sacred. They have learned to sell you water by the bottle and it will only be a matter of time before they charge you for the air you breath.

Truth matters, Your Simplistic Beliefs Do Not

We are in a post-truth world. Why? Because truth is no longer a priority for us. We’ve become so used to accepting lies that we no longer have the capacity for discerning what is real and what is fake, what has merit and what is without substance.

We live in a world in which spin is in the very air we breathe. We are bombarded by advertisement nearly every waking moment, and advertisement has no interest in giving an honest or balanced perspective. Though I am probably wrong, I can’t help thinking television has more ads than content, each ad pushing an agenda, an agenda which is not the pursuit of truth. And the programming itself must not in any way countermand the essential ideas the ads are pushing or else the advertisers will withhold their business.

Turn off the television. You will still be surrounded by the distortions of those trying to affect the way you perceive the world. Use your cell phone to Google something and you will be subject to advertisement, though most times you won’t recognize it as such. While you may be annoyed by the delays caused by ads on YouTube, you likely won’t even notice them when on Facebook.

Take a drive and try to unwind. The radio is there to sell you something, and it’s not appealing to your desire for truth and reason. Turn the radio off, you still can’t avoid the billboards, even though you may not be consciously aware of them. You think you’re not affected but they wouldn’t spend billions of dollars for access to your mind if they weren’t confident of achieving the intended result. While not interested in truth, they are very alert and in tune when it comes to return on investment.

Lies, spin, and distraction are the building blocks of our culture. Money and power warp truth the same way time and space are bent by gravity.

Facts are no longer pieces we assemble in order to build a better picture of the truth but instead are stones that we can load into our slingshot and fling at others. The idea of a greater, knowable and understandable truth has become a foreign concept to us. Our political discussions are no longer between two sides earnestly attempting to get to the truth but cheap theatrics or gladiatorial combat.

Why? Is it because we are the first generation to come to grips with the cold hard truth that reality is unknowable? Have all previous attempts to understand the world we live in been vain attempts by more naïve and less worldly societies than our own? I guess the answer would be yes for those who don’t wish to do the hard work of winnowing their way closer to truth and a firmer grasp on our world. It is the easy answer, the kind that helps us avoid making difficult choices and being in control of our lives. It’s much easier to accept what is given us by the propaganda machine and the politicians bought by moneyed interests that don’t have your best interests at heart.

Do we search for truth when it comes to politics nowadays or do we look to be persuaded by those who are telling us what we want to hear? Because what we want to hear is not the truth but the lies. Republicans just want to hear about the lies of the Democrats, and the Democrats just want to hear about the lies of the Republicans. And if you’re like me, you see the lies of both. But nobody seems to see the truth when it is spoken. Nobody’s interested in it. Who could stand the idea that no matter what side you’re on you still need input from the other side, you still need to balance your point of view with one different from your own? Simplicity, that’s what we want, and the best way to achieve that is to allow some authority to tell us what to think.

You see, if you start listening and not only listening but really looking for the truth in what the other side has to say, then you have to start living in a more complex world. Because while we can reach more closely towards truth than we are now doing, we never actually arrive at it. Truth is something bigger than can ever be stuffed inside our tiny little skulls. To seek truth is to have to admit we don’t know everything, that sometimes we have to add a third option between the true and the false, a holding stage where we keep ideas until we have further evidence. We would need to accept ambiguity, and in accepting ambiguity, we would need to accept intellectual humility.

Fundamentalism is a much easier way of seeing the world. Choose a simplistic idea and make your every observation be colored by it. Facts then no longer sting when you are hit by them. You simply choose the ones you wish and dismiss as lies those that cause discomfort.

And that is the point where we are now at. One side is incapable of listening to the other side because if they do they might be inconvenienced. They might be taken out of their comfort zone, forced to confront unpleasant and complex ideas to which there are no easy answers.

We’ve been doing it for a while now. And once you start down that path, once you start veering from the truth in favor of ideology, you get further and further from the truth. And the further from the truth you are the more you depend on your simplistic ideology to keep you feeling secure. It’s a vicious cycle that never ends well. It’s the same sort of magical thinking that a drug addict uses. Slowly they cut ties with those who tell them they are living in denial. They seek the company of other drug addicts, those who won’t tell them their behavior is destructive. They build around them a protective bubble for safety.

But such protection is illusory and temporary. Without a widespread foundation a tower will surely fall. Similarly, belief systems established on a single viewpoint will also come crashing to the ground. Trying to base your understanding of life on one point of view is like trying to sit on a one-legged stool. You need balance, you need perspective. You need to weigh one point of view with another.

Our fundamentalism, at least the fundamentalism practiced by those in places of power in society today, is capitalism and an actual religious belief in the “magic of the free market” to provide all of humanity’s needs. This fundamentalism requires us to disregard all the other foundations upon which societies have been built throughout history. Responsibility to others, civic duty, religious principles, they are either dismissed altogether, given mere lip service, or else twisted into some freakish semblance of their true shape in order to have them fit into the dominant, simplistic paradigm.

On some level we see through the lies we are told. We yet retain some memories of and appreciation for the morals and viewpoints we once held, that have been held by any healthy family, clan, community or society on the ascent. On some level we know we are living a lie. But the fear that results from our uncertainty when what we feel is so completely at odds with what we are being told tends to stifle us, or else it leads to reacting to the dissonance in unhealthy ways. Denial. Anger. Avoidance.

It is time to abandon the simplistic ideologies that lead us further and further from reality. It is time to tear through the curtain that we have placed over the window so we don’t have to face the truth. It may be unpleasant but it is the only way that will lead us from the dungeon of delusion in which we’ve been living. One way or another the truth will eventually come crashing through our cocoon of fantasy we’ve been spinning, it is best we make the choice to emerge from it on our own. Only in that way can we achieve the metamorphosis necessary to rise and meet our future.

For Those Who Fight, The Warriors

Courage, bravery, loyalty, honor. These are the traits we look for and admire in a soldier. It is a soldier’s duty to fight when they are told, to obey orders unquestioningly.

These are traits to be respected not only in a soldier, but traits many of the rest of us aspire to, though few of us achieve or have the opportunity to achieve them. But even those who do not fight must exhibit a certain degree of bravery and loyalty, especially when it comes to protecting those who have sacrificed so much for us. Let me make for you a bit of a comparison and see if it doesn’t make sense.

It is the job of a boxer’s corner to be looking out for him, to give him what he needs and to protect him from his own courage if need be. A courageous boxer, the kind that we most admire, will look to take on any opponent. A boxer in the ring against a determined and skilled opponent is the epitome of courage. He knows that he has to dig deep and that he has to be willing to risk it all, perhaps even his life. Any boxer who’s been around for a while knows the risks involved. He knows about brain damage, Parkinson’s, the fact that all his efforts have very little chance of any real reward or glory. And yet the fighter fights on, driven by some deep pride and a need to show his true metal. Someone who has proven himself within the squared circle is a man without anything hidden in his character.

But all the courage a boxer has must be tempered by those in his corner, those who are on his team and whose job it is to look out for him. Theirs is the task of encouraging him when he needs to go the extra mile but their job also is to make sure his courage does not lead him to make bad decisions.

It’s an old story, the boxer who’s seen too many fights and gets used by those around him. Unscrupulous fight promoters and greedy managers send brave men into the ring when they have no business being there.

It’s the same thing with a soldier, really. There are those willing to put the soldier’s life on the line for their own personal gain. There are those who will ask everything of a fighter and when he’s given his all will turn his back on him while counting the profits they’ve made from a warrior’s sweat and blood. You see, as far as they’re concerned, there’s always another brave young man willing to take his place, desiring to prove his quality and his bravery. Courage and the desire to test one’s greatness are in no shortage in the human race, something for which we can all be thankful. But the willingness to profit off the labor and sacrifice of others is also deeply imbedded in the human race, something we must always be watchful of.

Lots of people who’ve never fought a round themselves make a lot of money on the fight game, leaving many of those who do the work penniless and broken for their efforts. It’s a sucker’s game but the fighter goes into it with the best of intentions. Most are noble people looking to better themselves, looking to take care of their family and loved ones.

I’ve been a fight fan all my life. I’ve seen guys show unbelievable strength in the ring, guys fighting for little more than pride. God help me, I’ve seen men die in the ring. And in some small way I can’t help feeling responsible for them.

I’ve cheered men on in a brutal sport. I’ve encouraged others to watch, hell, I’ve even wanted to be a fighter myself. Like so many others I wanted to know what I was made of, wanted to know if I could take the best the world or another man could throw at me.

But I’ve seen enough. I no longer feel good about asking others to step into the ring for my sake. I have come to feel personally responsible for a sport I believe does more harm than good. I won’t ask someone not to test their courage, because that is their decision to make. But I will not encourage the sport. I will not pay money to some ruthless promoter to make a fight happen. I’ve seen too many valiant warriors be allowed to push themselves beyond where they ever should have gone, who fought too many fights and received too much punishment. And while I salute their courage, I will no longer allow my own interests to overtake theirs. I will no longer bask in the reflected courage of another but will instead try to be brave in my own right, and for me that means to look out for their interests when others are trying to make a buck off of their sacrifices, to stand up and make a scene if necessary when brutality is nothing more than a money-making scheme.

The same with our fighting men and women. It’s easy to stand behind them as they walk off to battle. There is no bravery in that, no bravery in asking others to do what you will not. It is harder to stand in front, to put oneself in harm’s way between two opposing warriors about to prove their bravery while rich men get richer off them. And while I don’t ever expect to put an end to the fight business, I myself promise to stop watching war as a spectator sport. Because while I’ve never been a warrior myself, I do have some idea what it is like to feel the need to prove yourself in a game you wouldn’t have thought of on your own. I know to a degree the kind of life that leads people to want to prove themselves in ways that the wealthy and fortunate seldom choose. And while my courage in opposing the game will never equal those who partake in it, perhaps exhibiting some courage myself might lessen the need somewhat for courage in those who fight. We owe them that much. Because too often, while it takes a brave man to go to war, it merely requires a nation of cowards to send him.

The Other Side Of The Political Line

Nobody is entirely with the program. Even the most die-hard liberal or conservative has an issue or two where he disagrees with the platform. In fact, most of us are not to the extreme either way. And yet there is a line that runs between all of us, deciding which side we’re on.

You can agree with someone on 49% of issues and be on the opposite side of that line. You can disagree with someone on 49% of the issues and be on the same side that hates everyone on that other side of the line.

Think about it: libertarians see things very differently than the religious right does, but they’re both assigned a spot on the right end of the spectrum. Your typical Hillary Clinton supporter sees things very different from those who supported Bernie Sanders and yet the two are supposed to come together in the end to defeat whoever is chosen on the other side of the line that has been drawn. But the fact is the mainstream elements of both parties more closely align with each other on significant issues that both Libertarians and Greens oppose. When it comes to foreign intervention and marijuana legalization, the far ends of the political spectrum are in agreement against the middle.

The problem with choosing a side in politics is that you find yourself compelled to defend it. And since no side is perfect, since you yourself are unable to see all sides of an issue, you invariably end up defending the indefensible. When you do that, you give propaganda opportunities to your opponents, since they catch you saying what is simply not true. Also, it justifies (in their eyes) them doing the same, and a perpetual war is begun, all because of a line that has been drawn. All because we need to see an “us” and a “them”, but whatever line we draw is arbitrary.

No liberal or conservative identifies entirely along the party line. I know plenty of pro-union people who are also pro-gun. I know plenty of pro-life people who dislike guns. There is no “them”, there is only us. We are all different, and we all share a common humanity. We need to talk it out, not shout. We need to not be afraid of crossing that line, because it is merely illusory and arbitrary. We fight only because we love so deeply, not because we hate. What hate we end up feeling is merely love that is twisted. We must not stray from love, must not succumb to hate.

Let’s get back to percentages again. Many who vote on either side consider themselves perhaps 60% one way, and 40% the other. That means that a self-identifying liberal and a self-identifying conservative could potentially agree on 80% of issues and yet despise the other because of the label they choose to place upon themselves and others. Two self-identifying conservatives who agree with 60% of the platform, given different reasons for self-identifying conservative, could actually be in disagreement over 80% of the issues. Even someone who is 75% liberal will have a conservative counterpart somewhere who agrees with him on 50% or more of the issues.

But what’s even more concerning is that if the truth were to be known, the typical liberal and the typical conservative agree on many issues about which neither the Democratic nor Republican leadership care to discuss. Who among us believes gerrymandering is good for our democracy, especially since it leads to less competition for public offices? Because of gerrymandering, we have candidates who often run unopposed. And yet the justification for using it by one party is that the other one does it too.

Who amongst us believed it was a good idea to become embroiled in Syria until our political and media elite started to bang the drum for it? Or Libya, or Iraq, for that matter? And yet there are few who have been elected to federal positions willing to speak out against our involvement there.

How many of us thought it was a good idea to have private groups sponsoring international corporations write trade agreements, the details of which congressmen were not allowed to share with their constituents? And yet this was a bipartisan no-brainer until Donald Trump was willing to pick it up as an issue.

There are countless areas where agreement and discussion could lead to improvements in our nation. There is not a thing that partisan bickering will resolve. The bickering does serve a purpose, but not for the populace. The constant juvenile mudslinging serves to distract the citizens from the issues on which they agree and the monied interests do not. Unity of the masses is the single greatest threat a small minority who wishes to control a government can face. And so they back demagogues that do nothing but passionately speak their half-truths. They own the media which is socially liberal, economically conservative, and always pro-war. When they can’t prevent the truth from leaking out then they cover it with filth and dump it into a tub of lies. And because it is all so disgusting and we do not wish to crawl through it all to discover the truth, we find it convenient to blame the other side for all that is wrong with our country.

Our country will only have a government that is of the people, for the people and by the people when we are able to set aside our differences and not only work towards compromise but discover that what everyone wants is really not all that different no matter what side of the rather arbitrary line you are on. The alternative, the destructive combativeness we now witness, cannot be good for our country, though it may benefit the very few.

Things I'd Point Out To Gun Owners If I Wasn't Afraid Of Getting Shot

1.       In the 50's parents and the broader community raised the children. Now, children are raised by television, and television does not promote responsible gun use.

2.       I’ll take my chances with a mass shooter over armed teachers any day.

3.       I’m not against guns, I’m against bad reasoning and powerful lobbying groups. Okay, I’m afraid of guns too, but I respect that you feel the need to have one. I respect that it is part of the culture you grew up in. But the NRA is a group funded by gun manufacturers in order to increase sales. They’re like the sugar industry pushing their product on people who don’t really need it. They’re like an insurance agent pushing fear. They’re like the pharmaceutical lobby that’s looking to have everyone on drugs. The pharmaceutical industry. There’s one I’d like to see connected to mass shootings. How many of those people were on prescription meds?

4.       Don’t tell me more guns will lead to less gun violence. I’ve seen too many war movies to know that’s not true. Don’t tell me guns are part of a well-balanced breakfast or will make my teeth bright. Just tell me a gun makes you feel more secure, admit that a gun to you is like a woogie to a toddler. Admit that you want a gun because you feel afraid. And what are you afraid of? Unarmed people? No, you’re afraid of people with guns. Well so are the rest of us. Oh, I know, it’s the bad gun owners that are the problem, not the good guys. They’re there to protect us. Maybe if the good guys looked a little more like Pat Boone I’d feel less threatened. But it’s those Pat Boone looking types that are the ones to flip out in the end, aren’t they?

5.       If criminals can still murder without guns, why can’t good guys protect us without them?

6.       We both agree that it is not guns but nuts with guns that are the problem. Explain to me why you think the NRA isn't nuts.

7.       The answer to piranha attacks is more piranhas in the waters.

8.       The answer to drugs in schools is to give drugs to teachers.

9.       The problem is that sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference between the good guy with a gun and the crazy guy with a gun. For example, which one is Ted Nugent supposed to be? If he’s one of the good guys with a gun, what do the crazy ones look like? Honestly, you know how it is when you see a Middle Easterner, right? You don’t know which are part of the overwhelmingly peaceful majority and which are the crazies. Well that’s how gun owners look to non-gun owners. If you walk into a grocery store with a gun, that looks threatening to us, just like someone who dresses differently or has a different accent appears threatening to you, the difference being that nobody was ever killed by a Keffiyeh.

10.   I respect your right to gun ownership, I really do. Now please start acting like you respect my right to not own a gun and not be shot. I know you feel that the answer to not being shot is to own a gun but not everyone feels the way you do. Some people just don’t feel the need. Respect that. Because when it comes to me looking out for myself I feel the same way you do, I care about myself and my ability to choose what is best for me than I do what is best for you and what you think is right. And that means when it comes to my right not to get shot I really don’t care about what the Constitution says, much less your interpretation of it. You see, the Declaration Of Independence precedes the Constitution and it says I have a right to Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. My right to life is more important than your right to gun. It predates it by thousands of years. In The Bible, it was not only immoral to shoot someone, it was impossible. That is how God made us to be: gunless. Jesus told us that those who live by the sword would die by the sword. I think that applies to guns as well. Guns are contrary to God’s will, and it is time to beat them into plowshares.

11.   Even so, I do not begrudge you your guns even though I don’t use the things. After all, I have a few sins and vices of my own and I wouldn’t appreciate you trying to take away my right to drink a beer or two because you don’t imbibe. Of course, there are laws restricting my drinking and I understand that. I don’t take a beer into the grocery store with me, nor would I ever take one into a church or a library. Because I’m a responsible beer drinker just as you are a responsible gun owner.

12.   I watched Michael Moore’s Bowling for Columbine. That right there will have half of you totally dismissing anything I have to say, but hear me out for a moment. I didn’t think it was a great film, felt that in the end it really didn’t have an answer to the problems of gun violence. But perhaps that was a strength to it, not having easy answers. In one part of the movie he asks why Canada and the U.S. seem comparable in gun laws and ownership and yet the U.S has so much more gun violence. Here is one possible explanation: the NRA and the influence of money on politics. Show me an issue where money is spent and I will show you irrational, extremist views being voiced.

13.   I know tons of normal people with guns. But Ted Nugent? That would be like NORML getting Ozzie Osbourne to support their cause.

14.   The Second Amendment clearly states that every property-owning white male has the right to own a flintlock pistol or a muzzle loading musket.

15.   You don’t need a gun to not get shot, but You do need a gun to shoot someone else.

16.   Why didn’t our founding fathers insist on my right not to get shot? Maybe it was just part of the Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness thing. Maybe it was just assumed that my right not to get shot was important.

17.   It’s not that I’m more afraid of gun owners than my government, it’s just that I have more faith in my government to protect me from being shot than I trust gun owners to protect my other freedoms. Whatever government that would be formed by militias would be a nightmare, far worse than what we have now. The government worth having will not come through force but through non-violent and intelligent means.

18.   When you take up arms to oppose a tyrannical government, the government will send in robots with bombs to blow your ass up. They will send drones to take you out. Your guns will not protect you from the government, they will only serve to divide the public between gun owners and non-gun owners.

19.   You frighten us non-gun owners. I know you are absolutely right when you say that people kill people, not guns. But very often people who kill people do so with guns. I know people can kill people with knives too, and people openly carrying machetes scare me as well.

20.   I have just one question: how come all the shooting range targets are black?

21.   I do not fear being murdered by a gun owner. The odds are pretty slim. What I fear is being pummeled to death by the faulty arguments of the NRA.

22.   The pro-gun position will always have an advantage because guns are a product, and there is money to be made by promoting them. The anti-gun side will have no big money behind them, hence no big P.R. firms manipulating public opinion on their behalf. Ban the AR-15? Perish the thought when profits are at stake. I’m not saying they should be banned, I’m just saying the pro-gun lobby will never be as even-handed as I am. I don’t have a profit motive, they do. And they have the finances to spread their message far further than I can.

Germany And The Rise Of Hitler

Comparisons have been made of late between contemporary United States and the rise of Nazi Germany. As I am currently studying that era, I figured I would share remembrances from those who were actually there. I’m not trying to make a value judgment, just passing along quotes that somehow seem applicable to the times. All quotes are taken from How Democracy Failed, published in 1975, so no comparisons are attempted from the book’s author to today’s events.

“People knew that there was a sort of Hitler underground, that kids were being indoctrinated, that democratic teachers were getting fired, that the Nazis were better organized than the newspapers ever told us. And there was a quality of political anger.”

“Of course, hate didn’t really explode suddenly in 1930. Hate for Jews, for ‘traitors”, for the liberal press (which as the bearer of bad news was often regarded as the cause of all the disasters), and for politicians who seemed to promise a better life but couldn’t deliver even a few more jobs, had been smoldering in Germany ever since the end of World War I.”

“Students graduated from college into a world that had no place for them. After working hard to get into the university and then spending many years cramming for tough, ever-recurring competitive examinations, many of these students felt betrayed by their country, as did the thousands of shopkeepers whose businesses failed.”

“By reinforcing all the prejudices of the men whom life had apparently failed, telling them that their inability to find work, to lead a decent life, to support their families, was a planned plot by their old enemies, the liberals, the Jews and the scheming politicians, the Nazi party added thousands of new, fighting mad members to its ranks every month.”

“Few realized that the whole world, America included, was going through a depression. They thought that their country had been singled out for misery by “those foreigners”, who were, of course, becoming rich through Germany’s poverty.

On reading over German papers for the months of June, July, and August, it becomes obvious that the vast majority of political reporters, columnists and editors still considered Hitler and his band of conspicuous followers a very minor menace. There were about thirty daily papers in Berlin, and only those that were specifically oriented toward the Nazi party predicted any significant gains in Hitler’s parliamentary delegation.

Hitler attempted to be all things to all men. To a group of students he could appear as a moderate, rather mild politician. In public he preferred to be seen as a gentle man, who loved children and cared so much for animals that he became a vegetarian. His speeches were often so irrational that politicians flatly refused to take him seriously.

By 1933—still appearing to an objective observer to be an irrational, spiteful, rather unintelligent and uneducated little man—he had become one of the most powerful rulers in history. A lost war, a disastrous inflation, disorder and crime, and many lost German illusions had helped to put him in power. But so had some other rather special German problems: an educational system that emphasized obedience over independent thought; a series of orators who taught the public to distrust a free press; an overwhelming longing for order and stability, even at the expense of freedom and justice.

There were those who had always believed that freedom leads to license, that patriotism means an uncritical attitude toward the state, and finally, that the leadership of that state should not be subjected to public scrutiny.

Usually, the distrust produced indifference. Most Germans simply didn’t want to become involved. They considered all politicians as corrupt or corruptible, newspapers as biased, political speeches as empty promises…

Hilda, of course, didn’t understand that Hitler, himself, was well aware of the drama that the fights created, and that they got for him much needed free space in the press. Hitler was also aware of the distrust of politics and government by most Germans, like Hilda’s parents…

He (Hitler) had come to the simple conclusion that a speech would be remembered more vividly if accompanied by violence. He therefore welcomed violent interruptions, because they gave his bodyguards an excuse to wade through the crowd and engage in savage fighting.”

If the average German was disgusted with the fighting and chaos, Hitler was getting his name in the papers, and his followers were proud of him.

Early in his career, Hitler had learned that his audiences were not interested in closely reasoned ideas. What they liked was pounding repetition : the same attacks against the liberals, the Jews, the press and the pacifists, using the same frightening and passionate phrases, with the same promises of a great and bright future.

“One man, who looked like a student, asked at the meeting I attended why the Communists and the international bankers were working together,” a man who is now a banker reported. “That seemed like a fairly intelligent question to me, but one of Hitler’s guards just walked up to him and hit him in the mouth.”