In Which I Transgress Godwin’s Law 3

3 comments

1. George Smith

   September 9, 2015 at 10:34 am

   You should be sick of Godwin’s Law. Everyone should. It’s long outlived its usefulness. Made by a computer nerd to shut up or put down other computer nerds trolling or being ridiculous on chat forums.

   The fact is you can take a lot away from study of histories of the Third Reich and its people and see shared traits and delusional ways of thinking in masses around the globe, the US not excluded. It doesn’t mean the US will have Dachaus or design a program to methodically exterminate entire races of undesirables and subjugated peoples. It does mean recognizing the country, and others, will roll their own authoritarian nightmares, develop their own unique takes on racial scapegoating and what needs to be done, and is done, to other people, in ways that has a psychology not dissimilar to that found among the citizens of Nazi Germany.

    
2. George Smith

   September 9, 2015 at 10:37 am

   Which is another way of saying, if you want to make a bleak joke of it, “We thank Gauleiter Christie and his suggestion from the GOP Bund.”

    
3. Frank

   September 9, 2015 at 3:52 pm

   Godwin’s law, like most cliches, contains a nugget of truth. It’s that nugget that made it a cliche.

   It does mean recognizing the country, and others, will roll their own authoritarian nightmares, develop their own unique takes on racial scapegoating . . .

   Which is precisely the point. The implications of contemporary Republicanism are most chilling and, really, it doesn’t matter which road you take to hell, the destination is still hellish.

   As Churchill is supposed to have said (probably apocryphally). “The United States will have fascism, but will call it anti-fascism.”

   I do think that the gatekeepers of our media are lax in reporting not at all the implications of what those who aspire to the Republican nomination consider “legitimate policy positions.”