Last week I reread Shirer's 'Rise and Fall of the Third Reich'. Comparing Trump

[First Speaker]

29. Acknowledging that America in 2016 is not Germany in 1933...

...I'm still appalled by how much *is* similar. Germany's defeat in World War One is an event of a totally different order than the USA's Mideast fiascoes--but still, the shadow of military disaster does darken our country. The Great Depression isn't comparable to the Great Recession, and we are slowly coming out of the latter--but many people don't believe this, and our middle class is hollowed out. Unscrupulous demagogues attacked every institution of Weimar, especially, of course, the Communists and Nazis. We have no comparable institution on the Left remotely like the Communist Party, and that's the biggest difference between the two countries. But years, decades, of the Fox "news" network? It's pure Goebbels, and I say this as one who once studied Nazi propaganda techniques in some detail. Their hatred of "liberals" is just as great as the Nazis' hatred of the Jews, and I do not say that lightly. And, to be fair(?)--Hitler was unique, sui generis. There never was, or shall be, anyone quite like him. Trump personally is more like McCarthy, a cheap demagogue/clown who's riding a wave of dissatisfaction and hate. But given all this, he could still do immense damage to America's liberal democracy. A Peron-style banana republic is certainly possible, if not full-blown Nazi tyranny. And that would be bad enough...