Reply #13: I hope not, too

[UncleSepp]

I see it as well. The cultural climate here is not different from Weimar, I don't think. If the Democratic and Republican parties both fall apart, or if we can't get effective government, I think things will become much worse. I don't see us in America being any different from the Germany that saw politics degenerate into open war in the streets, and I see us becoming polarized in much the same way.

This is not for you, because you know this already. This is my sad little rant. Veterans and the families and widows of veterans have told me about that polarization. It isn't that there weren't moderate parties, that there weren't the center-left and center-right parties: it isn't that those parties didn't also have their political fighting wings to take on the SA and the Communists, or that their members were not brave or tough or dedicated. The problem is that it's damned near impossible to rally moderates to the barricades. Who wants to lift up high the banner of sensibility? Who wants to take a beating or dish one out for the principle that political change ought to come about by peaceful and orderly means?

The core threat to democracy in a polarizing situation like ours isn't what either pole is thinking. It's what both poles are thinking, and that's that the people gravitating to the other pole are a bunch of dangerous morons who don't deserve a vote and who can't be swayed from their wrongheaded ideas by any argument anyway. The idea of allowing such dangerous morons to have a say becomes ridiculous. It's simply too risky to let the people decide, because those evil people with their evil ideas get a vote also. What if they win? Clearly, our side is in the right, but for some reason - treachery on their part, no doubt - they keep winning, keep poisoning the culture, keep making it seem like their stupid minority opinions are actually the opinion of The People, when no doubt, we are the ones who really represent The People. The people need to wake the hell up to the truth, and we've got it. If we can just get our people in power, and make the media tell the truth instead of the lies the other side is making them tell, and make the schools teach the truth instead of the garbage the other side wants them to spew, we'll be okay.

Words like that are the death rattle of democracy. Those are the thoughts that lead to dictatorship and oppression, whatever the political stripe of the person who is thinking them. I fear those ideas are common now in all corners of the political surface. If there were a Reichsbanner for the USA, I think I'd have to go join it; it would be better to fail at something noble but doomed, than to succeed at something evil.