Is Trump Hitler? No. But
the GOP Establishment Members Are His Enablers
By
Leonard Zwelling
http://www.cnn.com/2016/06/11/politics/meg-whitman-donald-trump-hitler-mussolini-hewlett-packard/index.html
There is a lot of loose talk around Donald Trump. Of course,
he is the master of loose talk, so perhaps this is no surprise. The most
concerning meme is that Trump is really Hitler and will turn this country into
a police state if elected. Normally I would discount such nonsense, but it is
fairly frequently expressed nowadays. But that doesn’t give it validity.
The US in 2016 is not where Germany was in 1933. It is not
impoverished by war and thus very susceptible to the notion that a paper hangar
from Austria will be the solution to society’s ills. We shall see whether a
real estate developer from New York is the people’s choice, but America is also
far more heterogeneous than was Nazi Germany. But there is a strain among the
Republican leaders and the GOP rank-and-file that because of who Trump is and
HOW he says things, he will get America on the right track. Of course, nothing
is further from the truth, which is what Hillary Clinton is counting on.
Nonetheless,
there is crowd violence that surrounds Trump even engendering a recent
assassination attempt that was stopped in its tracks. The Gestapo-like
atmosphere in which he moves, and the racist rants for which he refuses to
apologize, are very concerning in a candidate for the Presidency of the
greatest nation on earth. Despite what Trump thinks of our country not being
great, it is! We don’t need him to make us great again. We are great right now.
Evidence? We tolerate him.
Andrew
Rosenthal posted a piece on the NY Times
web site about Trump’s racism and his coddling by the GOP leadership because he
is the presumptive nominee. This is pretty much the way Hitler came to power as
those who could stop him didn’t and assumed it would all blow over. Lots of
people who looked askance in benevolent tolerance in Germany died in
concentration camps.
Whether
or not Donald Trump is the re-incarnation of Adolph Hitler is irrelevant. He is
an evil, self-centered, narcissist who is a bully, a bigot and a misogynist. He
wants to wall off America from the world and looks at the world as our enemy.
It is not. Are other nations as self-serving as he would be as our leader? Yes,
they are. That doesn’t mean we as Americans stoop to the level of these states.
We are still, in Lincoln’s words, “the last best hope on earth.”
Donald
Trump is unworthy of consideration as the possible leader of the free world. I
don’t care how much you don’t like Hillary Clinton (and there is a lot not to
like), no one has compared her to a dictator. She doesn’t have a religious test
to allow people into the US. She doesn’t want to build a wall along our
borders. She doesn’t make fun of men, women, minorities, or the disabled.
That
every single member of the GOP hierarchy is not renouncing Trump as a candidate
and working on a way to replace him on the top of the ticket is blasphemy and
should preclude their continued leadership of the GOP. Paul Ryan admits Trump
is a racist and then backs him anyway. Give me a break. Mitch McConnell is
still sticking with Trump as “better than Hillary Clinton.” Really? Brent
Scowcroft and Richard Armitage disagree.
This
is the problem with the GOP that gave us Trump in the first place. They are
inept and unprincipled. When Democrats raise taxes, that’s consistent with
Democratic dogma. When Republicans do it, and run up deficits and get us into
two wars, that is antithetical to Republican dogma. So, of course the coarse
are rushing to Trump. They tried McConnell and Ryan and Bush and Cruz and they
all came up short.
Why
not try Trump?
Why
not?
I
think I have listed the reasons above.
Whether
he is Hitler or not, he certainly should not be President of the United States
and that his party doesn’t make sure of this is shameful, but not half as
shameful as their display of cowardice on June 21 watching four Senate
proposals to control guns go down to defeat.
It
should have come as no surprise that Rep. John Lewis, a veteran of the civil
rights movement, led House Democrats in a sit-in today to promote common gun
laws.
I
thought the place was crazy when I worked on the Hill. It isn’t getting any
saner.
