Andrew Sullivan: This is very Weimar
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I for one agree with most of what Sullivan says.
The "extinction level event for liberal democracy" thing is a little extreme terminology-wise, but Trump has by now made it abundantly clear that he doesn't give a fuck about liberal democracy and the like. Just recently he was talking about how he'd step down in 20 years and about how the only possible explanation if he looses would be that there must have been election fraud.
I also agree with his stance on the American left. A good analysis of how they went completely nuts in a time when they should have provided a credible alternative.
As for the comparison to Weimar, I don't think the comparison is absurd. It's a little disappointing that the reactions in this forum have mostly been along the predictable tribal lines. If we'll get a major economic crisis - and I think we will -, tensions will rise even more. The political climate that enabled the transition from Weimar to Hitler is similar. But there are also some major differences. The US has better constitutional protection against tyrants (an "Ermächtigungsgesetz" would be way harder, division of power is mostly intact). There is no "Dolchstosslegende" and no scape goat like the Jews. And the economic situation isn't as bad yet. But still, it's not an absurd comparison.
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@Horace said in Andrew Sullivan: This is very Weimar:
point to the riots and say "this is Trump's America". Even jon buys into that tribal mantra. As ideas go, it is not a rational one.
Well, to be fair I use that phrase to point out the absurdity of Trump calling it ‘Biden’s America’.
Having said that, surely presidents will differ in where they fall on the (as W might put it) “uniter vs divider’ scale. Surely presidents differ in how they respond to widespread protests, from taking steps to lower the pressure on one hand to publicly antagonizing and threatening on the other.
Honestly I think people here say to themselves “but these rioters aren’t by and large Trump supporters” and from that facile comment completely absolve him from any causal role.
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@Klaus said in Andrew Sullivan: This is very Weimar:
and no scape goat like the Jews.
Don’t worry, that’s never far behind.
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@jon-nyc said in Andrew Sullivan: This is very Weimar:
@Horace said in Andrew Sullivan: This is very Weimar:
point to the riots and say "this is Trump's America". Even jon buys into that tribal mantra. As ideas go, it is not a rational one.
Well, to be fair I use that phrase to point out the absurdity of Trump calling it ‘Biden’s America’.
Having said that, surely presidents will differ in where they fall on the (as W might put it) “uniter vs divider’ scale. Surely presidents differ in how they respond to widespread protests, from taking steps to lower the pressure on one hand to publicly antagonizing and threatening on the other.
Honestly I think people here say to themselves “but these rioters aren’t by and large Trump supporters” and from that facile comment completely absolve him from any causal role.
I wonder if you guys hold Lukashenko blameless for the situation in Belarus since the protesters are very obviously not his people.
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@bachophile said in Andrew Sullivan: This is very Weimar:
@Klaus said in Andrew Sullivan: This is very Weimar:
and no scape goat like the Jews.
Don’t worry, that’s never far behind.
Right now it's white folks.
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@jon-nyc said in Andrew Sullivan: This is very Weimar:
@Horace said in Andrew Sullivan: This is very Weimar:
point to the riots and say "this is Trump's America". Even jon buys into that tribal mantra. As ideas go, it is not a rational one.
Well, to be fair I use that phrase to point out the absurdity of Trump calling it ‘Biden’s America’.
Having said that, surely presidents will differ in where they fall on the (as W might put it) “uniter vs divider’ scale. Surely presidents differ in how they respond to widespread protests, from taking steps to lower the pressure on one hand to publicly antagonizing and threatening on the other.
Honestly I think people here say to themselves “but these rioters aren’t by and large Trump supporters” and from that facile comment completely absolve him from any causal role.
OK, I'll go there with you. Show me how Trump has a causal role in the current situation. What has he done to cause or increase police brutality toward blacks? To diminish civil rights? To my eyes these riots and protests started before he even took office. If you want to say that it is because some people do not like Trump and don't want him to be president, fine. But it's not as far as I can see attributable to anything he has actually done.
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@jon-nyc said in Andrew Sullivan: This is very Weimar:
Honestly I think people here say to themselves “but these rioters aren’t by and large Trump supporters” and from that facile comment completely absolve him from any causal role.
What I say, and what I have said repeatedly, is that Trump-the-Great-Divider is an all time great self fulfilling prophecy. When one side of the aisle hates the guy a priori because of his human phenotype, the division is baked in. Everything else is retconning that division to be the fault of the guy with the repellent phenotype.
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Which presidential power should Trump wield to halt the cycle of white cop shoots black guy on video->everybody becomes as hysterically outraged as they can be because hysterical outrage is a virtue signal->rioting?
Which power could CNN wield? Which power could the democrat political leaders of the cities being rioted against wield? Who's wielding their power appropriately and nobly in this situation? To whom are we to look, other, of course, than people who miraculously are able to find fault with both sides? (Wow what an intellectual feat! So special!)
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@Mik said in Andrew Sullivan: This is very Weimar:
You said he had a causal role. Do you have anything to back that up other than you don't like him?
I didn’t mean literally the proximate cause of the initial protest, obviously that was the Floyd death. I mean that he personally as well as his actions and words were a key part of the very complex set of circumstances that has fueled their intensity and duration.
His divisiveness obviously played a role in the political tensions leading up to it (Horace agrees here with the causal chain, but assigns moral responsibility for his divisiveness to the outgroup).
But once they started you could think of myriad ways he could have dialed down the temperature or tried to give the protesters a voice. Heck, even inviting some of them to join a bipartisan group to make recommendations for municipal, state and federal rule changes. Presidents do that kind of thing all the time. It’s kind of what politics is. Instead he antagonized with words and deeds.
It just didn’t have to be this way.
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@jon-nyc said in Andrew Sullivan: This is very Weimar:
His divisiveness obviously played a role in the political tensions leading up to it (Horace agrees here with the causal chain, but assigns moral responsibility for his divisiveness to the outgroup).
And you simultaneously revel in the TDS orgy while taking no moral responsibility for it, because well of course good people hate Trump, I mean duh, it shouldn't need justification.
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Here’s what I’m not doing, largely because it’s impossible:
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laying out a specific causal chain from Trumps actions to the behavior of several million protesters and a few thousand rioters.
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claiming that I know what the mitigation effects would be for particular actions that trump could have taken
What I am doing is saying that
(1) his general divisiveness feeds this
(2) his words and deeds have served to fan the flames
(3). Different words and deeds could have cooled the flames or at least fanned them less
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jon, it's ok and par for the course that you actually have no interesting points to make here, and are really only attempting to establish the phenotype of a clear headed calm appraiser of the situation. We are all as impressed with it as you are. Now please feel free to go eat lunch.
