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phantom power

(25,966 posts)
Fri Sep 21, 2012, 12:11 PM Sep 2012

"You want to know what can go to hell? Godwin's Law."

I'd like to take some exception with one issue: I, personally, think you can say "what about the drones?" without tripping over false equivalency. One of the reasons the GOP went off the rails over the last 30 years is that the Dems kept following them to the right. I don't know how to fix that, if it isn't by putting some pressure on the Dems, because really they don't differentiate themselves from Republicans enough on many issues. What about the drones?

You want to know what can go to hell? Godwin's Law.

Anyone who looked honestly at the National Socialist German Workers' Party and then said "to hell with the Weimar Republic" was guilty of the same kind of purity trolling. It's the same thing. It's the same thing not because the modern GOP is about to round up all the homosexuals or gypsies or mental incompetents and blast them with Zyklon B. It's because the modern GOP is xenophobic, hyper-nationalistic, in constant search of scapegoats, and intent on embroiling us in ill-considered wars. They are a party that is obsessed with fecundity, that is obsessed with the racial purity of the country, that is completely in bed with the corporate industrialists that fund them. They have spent the last two years working on two projects with unremitting tenacity: forcing unwanted probes up women's vaginas and disenfranchising blacks and Latinos.

At this point, I don't care if it is supposed to be impermissible to talk about Nazis in American politics. Mitt Romney's campaign is built around nothing if not the Big Lie. The president ended the work requirement for welfare, cut Medicare benefits to pay for Obamacare, and went on a global Apology Tour in 2009. Half the country is on the government dole, and minorities are sucking the lifeblood out of the nation's economy. Homosexuals caused 9/11 and Katrina and undermined the battle-readiness of our troops. Climate change doesn't exist and evolution is a myth. Man once co-existed with dinosaurs.

At some point, you have to stop pretending that the modern GOP isn't using about 95% of Josef Goebbel's playbook and take a stand. You don't just stand above it all and say, "but what about the drones?" You don't get to do that. This is an extremely dangerous ideology that we are dealing with that is daily doing everything it can to make Americans hate each other and everyone in the world who isn't an American.

http://www.boomantribune.com/story/2012/9/21/105225/435
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nichomachus

(12,754 posts)
2. And the media help
Fri Sep 21, 2012, 12:25 PM
Sep 2012

There was a great graphic on DU a while back that showed the lineup of every Fox News show for a single day -- a very pretty graphic -- and it showed how every single show plugged at least several, if not all, of the same five talking points -- all lies or distortion. Those five talking points were repeated over and over and over and over, from morning to night. Even if someone weren't really listening to the shows, but mere'y had it on in the background -- as my family does -- by nightfall, those lies and distortions would have been firmly implanted in their brains. Goebbels would have been envious.

PS, if someone has the link to that graphic, I'd appreciate it.

nxylas

(6,440 posts)
9. Were thay the same 5 talking points that were contained in that morning's Red State Briefing?
Fri Sep 21, 2012, 01:36 PM
Sep 2012

Also the same 5 talking points that were repeated on the Rush Limbaugh Show, the New York Post, the Washington Times, Breitbart.com...? I believe the Red State Briefing is the ultimate origin, after it leaves GOP headquarters of course.

freshwest

(53,661 posts)
3. +1,000. It looks and talks like a duck. It doesn't have to goose step, too.
Fri Sep 21, 2012, 12:29 PM
Sep 2012

History repeats or runs in cycles because of entrophy. We're measured in the present by what we learned from the last time this occurred. Let's make the right choices this time, without WW3 to decide it for us. That's what the GOP wants. Thanks very much for posting this.

FredStembottom

(2,928 posts)
4. One head. 2 ideas.
Fri Sep 21, 2012, 12:30 PM
Sep 2012

It's possible to hold 2 ideas inside one head.
So, what about the drones ..... that would be even more insidious in the hands of Republicans?

(Thank you phantom power for making that distinction at the top.)

librechik

(30,663 posts)
5. so very true. And anyone who tries to suppress this kind of speech, and pretend facts are nonsense
Fri Sep 21, 2012, 12:38 PM
Sep 2012

IMO, is a Nazi.

PATRICK

(12,227 posts)
8. History has left out
Fri Sep 21, 2012, 01:01 PM
Sep 2012

a numerically small but extremely significant part of the problem. When all that gets talked about is the political triumphs and military disasters of those readily influenced by the big money "visionaries" neither the politics nor the war situation can be won or reformed.

The influence of bankers, financiers and industrialists maybe for hundreds of years but certainly since a century or two can really define the mindset and goals behind most of what is driven to be wrong about this world. Take the trajectory of the Bush family alone. One a war profiteer to BOTH SIDES in the slaughterhouse of WWI. Prescott Bush a supporter of eugenics(a popular "cure" for social problems by various elites) works to literally overthrow FDR in a military coup, funds Hitler well into the war. Finally gets hand slapped and money from death camps temporarily taken away. Becomes distinguished senator in the childishly meager history books. Not just those signatory offenses but a general plan for the world and their privileged place within it.

Simple power and greed finds a vice corrupted destructive ideology, not just the rubes and suckers who can manipulated by some exciting version of the same. The more punished German rich families come back to revive "conservatism" and "nationalism" throughout Europe in the service of some warped idea of greater "globalization". The types and the results of such mega vision vices never change. Very often neither have the legacy dynasties. The people and tactics they use to divide and conquer can shift with names, ethnic or religious identity but not real life moral foundations.

People who have flaws of pride, hate and ignorance dividing them are the ever potential suckers, semi-empowered legionaries of some new Empire or other. Those responsible, the puppeteers very often escape the labels, the consequences and the downfall of these descents.

Nazi is an insult. It means crazy, loser, arrogant monster, hater. Not all such are currently defeated or in full power. The label is a just epithet for those so dedicated for this pretty predictable mission. Those on top usually escape the focus while heated division keeps roiling the masses.

The GOP is without a doubt an empty fraud. Its suckers are dazzled by all the glamor of evil. They don't even expect jobs or financial reward anymore. Dumber than usual until they actually get hungry enough, maybe. No way should it be a viable party by the numbers in a democracy no matter its arguments. Open fraud and corruption is a transparent mask of unreason they all wear with demonic burbling pride.

The masses who want to keep voting for the GOP as some status quo respectable conservatism? A more forgivable poorly informed ignorance and selfishness? Or are they crazier than the self besotted wizards too long entitled to show any discretion, skill or reason?

A reasonable person would think it easy to sell sun tan lotion, at least, in a nudist colony. Not in America under its current misrule.

nichomachus

(12,754 posts)
12. If I wanted to act like a Nazi
Fri Sep 21, 2012, 02:08 PM
Sep 2012

The first thing I would do is to convince millions of people that it was wrong to say I was acting like a Nazi.

Just as if I wanted to engage in a conspiracy, I would first try to convince everyone that anyone who pointed out my conspiracy was a "crazy conspiracy theorist in a tin foil hat." That one's had great success.

FiveGoodMen

(20,018 posts)
14. That one's had great success, indeed!
Fri Sep 21, 2012, 02:35 PM
Sep 2012

Amazing how many Americans believe there's no such thing as planning a crime.

Pyrzqxgl

(1,356 posts)
16. The GOP (particularly the Tea Party folk) sure are awful similar to the Nazi's
Fri Sep 21, 2012, 02:53 PM
Sep 2012

especially during the fading years of the Weimar Republic. If it walks like a goose and talks like a goose, well then just
maybe it is a goose.

truth2power

(8,219 posts)
17. It isn't impermissable to talk about the Nazis. Only on some sites. There are places on the internet
Fri Sep 21, 2012, 03:00 PM
Sep 2012

where people have been aware of Fascism in America for some time now.

Lot of places where they see the reality.

Phlem

(6,323 posts)
18. as with
Fri Sep 21, 2012, 03:00 PM
Sep 2012

the fucking republicans lurking on this site who use this rule to prop themselves by somehow being privy to some arbitrary nonsense like the Godwin rule to some how show their intellect. It's a fucking cop out for the lazy minded.

-p

wtmusic

(39,166 posts)
19. Exactly - the drones are an extremely dangerous ideology
Fri Sep 21, 2012, 03:15 PM
Sep 2012

- especially if you happen to live in Northern Pakistan.

To dimiss that is to merely swap one flavor of hypernationalism for another.

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