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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsGoing There with Donald Trump
How the hell do I know what I find incredible? a bemused philosopher asks in Tom Stoppards play Jumpers. Credibility is an expanding field and sheer disbelief hardly registers on the face before the head is nodding with all the wisdom of instant hindsight. This is a now familiar emotion, a recognizable expansion. The unimaginable happensDonald Trump, fool, oaf, and sociopathic liar, becomes the nominee of a major American political partyand within minutes what ought to be a shock beyond understanding becomes an event to savor, accept, and analyze. The desperate efforts to normalize the aberrant begin: hes actually a Rockefeller Republican with orange hair; he wasnt humiliated by President Obamas mockery at that dinner in 2011 but responded as a lovable, gregarious good guy; even his birtherism wasnt the vile racist sewage anyone could see it to behe was genuinely unsure about where exactly it was the President was born. Trump tells one wild ranting lie after another on Sunday-morning televisionwe are the most heavily taxed nation in the world; he always opposed the Iraq warand Chuck Todd cant do much more than nod and say Gotcha!
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Hitlers enablers in 1933yes, we should go there, instantly and often, not to blacken our political opponents but as a reminder that evil happens insidiously, and most often with people on the same side telling each other, Well, hes not so bad, not as bad as they are. We can control him. (Or, on the opposite side, Id rather have a radical who will make the establishment miserable than a moderate who will make people think it can all be worked out.) Trump is not Hitler. (Though replace Muslim with Jew in many of Trumps diktats and you will feel a little less complacent.) But the worst sometimes happens. If people of good will fail to act, and soon, it can happen here.
http://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/going-there-with-donald-trump?intcid=mod-most-popular
Iliyah
(25,111 posts)I'm fearful T-rump may emulate what went totally wrong during Hilter's rise and destruction.
But I'm very pleased that HRC will become #45.
ChoppinBroccoli
(3,784 posts)When I was met with outrage over the whole, "How DARE you compare Donald Drumpf to Hitler! They're NOTHING alike!" thing (right-wingers are great at feigned outrage--it helps put their opponents on their heels), I actually said, "Replace the word 'Muslim' with 'Jew' in Drumpf's speeches. If what you hear makes you uncomfortable, then you have to admit that there are similarities."
yellowcanine
(35,699 posts)I truly believe that. Our Democratic institutions will survive a Trump candidacy and would even survive a Trump Presidency although it would not be pretty - we would probably have to impeach the SOB and then we would be stuck with his VP - who might be just as bad or worse (Sarah Palin?)
safeinOhio
(32,675 posts)tattoo that says "Did Not Vote for Trump"
I'd get one.