A Government led by the least qualified and/or most unprincipled citizen in the country, which the dictionary defines as a Kakistocracy!
Or a Government led by a man with over 40 years of experience and a man who truly respects and cares about All Americans and the future of our country.
Personally I judge people by their character. If everyone else did the same it’s obvious which person should be at the helm!
Trump has the capacity to be every bit as cruelly deranged as Hitler IMO. The evidence of his cruelty is everywhere, every day. His followers love it. That's what's scary - he's given permission for every Republican to be cruel and merciless.
Thank you for this wonderful article, it really makes me think. But I wonder what Putin's part in all of this is... how much control he and the Russian Oligarchs have over the Republican Party? We are not like pre war Germany but something else created by the Russians perhaps? The more they can degrade Democracy the better it is for them so they can do what they want in the world.
Thank you for this. It would be wise to publish this on every available public media page. Regular folks, who don't usually think in terms of history, need to read this!!
Thank you, Professor, for the history lesson. One would think that in this Age of Information, we would be less likely to repeat the mistakes of the past, but one would be ludicrously wrong to believe that. We seem incapable of assimilating this knowledge into our decision-making. Look at Russia...a country that can't keep itself from autocracy or oligarchy, or Hungary, which has forgotten what inspired them to fight for in 1956, not so long ago. The USA keeps repeating its mistake of electing ruinous Republicans to the White House every cycle, picking a Democrat to clean up the mess, and then voting for another GOP moron who has no idea how to govern a diverse democracy.
Does a former President NOT return to ordinary citizen status? He can take home to use as he pleases classified documents to study, sell, trade? Are those official acts of a FORMER President? So they (trump, MAGA, just trot out challenges to DOJ and USA and play the system to delay accountability for as long as possible? Until trump can Steal the election and absolve himself of all his sins and crimes? Hello! HELLO! Authoritarians have played this game before! We can LEARN from history!
STOP!! STOP!! STOP!! This death by a thousand cuts is killing us! ESG (Extremely Stable Genius) disregards the rules everybody else endures. Somebody has got to say NO! No More! No more delay, No more distraction, No more deception.
I'm exhausted from the endless torrent of lies, delays, misinformation, and distracting from accountability? HOLD TRUMP ACCOUNTABLE. DO IT NOW!
Cut funding to IRS. How shall the government collect REVENUE to conduct its business???? We just strangle the government to WHAT END? More freedom? To include freedom to steal and lie and not be held accountable for our behavior?
Where are the Responsible Republicans? Where is the leadership? Oh, right. They are complicit in this game! It's all about power. The ends justify the means.
Trump and his cronies are following Hitler’s playbook, in addition to Putin’s. I would say that’s double trouble. The people Trump has surrounded himself with, or his puppet master has surrounded him with, are extremely dangerous and without any conscience. I have a dreadful fear that battling them with our slow as molasses court system is just pushing us over the cliff. Whether or not Trump wins or loses the 2024 election, he’ll be much more dangerous than the January 6th fiasco. I believe a good question to ask oneself, is will we flee or stay and experience that brutality. Is it actually possible to halt it now?
Thank you for impressing on me the sheer rapidity of Democracy being extinquished and simultaneously replaced with a violent and ruthless Dictatorship. It's something that we must remember to communicate to anyone and everyone to implore us to rise up to the urgency of our peril.
True, we aren't Weimar. We weren't far off, in the Dubya Bush administration, to which the voter backlash, and his impressive speeches and demeanor was the antidote, for a time. The hatred from racist/white supremacists, combined with seditious interference with the 2016 election, by right-wing extremists the likes of Paul Manafort, Roger Stone, Steve Bannon, Mike Flynn, and the whole spineless squad of defeated GOP primary lot of blame/praisers handed the country to Trump. That was far more a "fixed" election than was 2020. Trump must be stopped. We may not yet be nazified, but who's to say there aren't even worse developments possible, if we don't kick out the jams?
I haven't read any of those books, but in 2017 I read Timothy Snyder's, On Tyranny. The process is the same be it Germany then or America now. Nothing new is happening in America today. Your check list has been happening for a long time. Our institutions have been permeated. The bulk of the work has already been done. You're right Dr Reich, if Trump is elected change will come with lightning speed. We are in the midst of a change much grander than democracy or autocracy. Capitalism,
democracy, oligarchy, and autocracy have left civilization in a failed state. Monotheism has failed as a god. We are an artist standing before a blank canvas. We are being asked for imagination and living that painful state. Once that image is on the canvas we will wonder where it came from. The Greeks said it came from a visitation from a muse. The monotheist will claim God brought it to us. Freud will claim the unconscious and cocaine. Others will call the image "art." While we perceive destruction and polarization, we are simultaneously creating a new image, a new painting, and we have no idea what it will look like. It's work!
I don’t understand why you think Trump isn’t as demented as Hitler and why you don’t think a civil war is likely. If Trump gains power and attempts to shut down democracy, would the blue states tolerate that? What happens if Trump declares a state of emergency and tried to deploy troops and supporters to bring those states back into line?
I really appreciate the essay. Also relevant is that, like Trump, Hitler claimed to be religious (in his case, Catholic) and to have God on his side and the side of his followers ("Gott mit uns.") It was another example of what William Hazlitt said: “The garb of religion is the best cloak for power.”
I usually find your comments very helpful but in this case I think you are being naive. There is a huge faction in this country that would like nothing better than to follow Trump's every wish. I suspect that we have our terrible education system to thank that likely few of them have ever learned about the Weimar or have the perspective do what Hitler did. We're also very fortunate that Trump is so incompetent and frankly is probably dementing. Look at the recent picture in the Times.
Here are our choices this November:
A Government led by the least qualified and/or most unprincipled citizen in the country, which the dictionary defines as a Kakistocracy!
Or a Government led by a man with over 40 years of experience and a man who truly respects and cares about All Americans and the future of our country.
Personally I judge people by their character. If everyone else did the same it’s obvious which person should be at the helm!
Trump has the capacity to be every bit as cruelly deranged as Hitler IMO. The evidence of his cruelty is everywhere, every day. His followers love it. That's what's scary - he's given permission for every Republican to be cruel and merciless.
Thank you for this wonderful article, it really makes me think. But I wonder what Putin's part in all of this is... how much control he and the Russian Oligarchs have over the Republican Party? We are not like pre war Germany but something else created by the Russians perhaps? The more they can degrade Democracy the better it is for them so they can do what they want in the world.
Thank you for this. It would be wise to publish this on every available public media page. Regular folks, who don't usually think in terms of history, need to read this!!
Thank you, Professor, for the history lesson. One would think that in this Age of Information, we would be less likely to repeat the mistakes of the past, but one would be ludicrously wrong to believe that. We seem incapable of assimilating this knowledge into our decision-making. Look at Russia...a country that can't keep itself from autocracy or oligarchy, or Hungary, which has forgotten what inspired them to fight for in 1956, not so long ago. The USA keeps repeating its mistake of electing ruinous Republicans to the White House every cycle, picking a Democrat to clean up the mess, and then voting for another GOP moron who has no idea how to govern a diverse democracy.
More questions than anything...
Does a former President NOT return to ordinary citizen status? He can take home to use as he pleases classified documents to study, sell, trade? Are those official acts of a FORMER President? So they (trump, MAGA, just trot out challenges to DOJ and USA and play the system to delay accountability for as long as possible? Until trump can Steal the election and absolve himself of all his sins and crimes? Hello! HELLO! Authoritarians have played this game before! We can LEARN from history!
STOP!! STOP!! STOP!! This death by a thousand cuts is killing us! ESG (Extremely Stable Genius) disregards the rules everybody else endures. Somebody has got to say NO! No More! No more delay, No more distraction, No more deception.
I'm exhausted from the endless torrent of lies, delays, misinformation, and distracting from accountability? HOLD TRUMP ACCOUNTABLE. DO IT NOW!
Cut funding to IRS. How shall the government collect REVENUE to conduct its business???? We just strangle the government to WHAT END? More freedom? To include freedom to steal and lie and not be held accountable for our behavior?
Where are the Responsible Republicans? Where is the leadership? Oh, right. They are complicit in this game! It's all about power. The ends justify the means.
Trump and his cronies are following Hitler’s playbook, in addition to Putin’s. I would say that’s double trouble. The people Trump has surrounded himself with, or his puppet master has surrounded him with, are extremely dangerous and without any conscience. I have a dreadful fear that battling them with our slow as molasses court system is just pushing us over the cliff. Whether or not Trump wins or loses the 2024 election, he’ll be much more dangerous than the January 6th fiasco. I believe a good question to ask oneself, is will we flee or stay and experience that brutality. Is it actually possible to halt it now?
It looks like Project 2025 and Agenda 47 got their blueprint from...Nazi Germany.
This is going to be a fun election year /s
Thank you for impressing on me the sheer rapidity of Democracy being extinquished and simultaneously replaced with a violent and ruthless Dictatorship. It's something that we must remember to communicate to anyone and everyone to implore us to rise up to the urgency of our peril.
True, we aren't Weimar. We weren't far off, in the Dubya Bush administration, to which the voter backlash, and his impressive speeches and demeanor was the antidote, for a time. The hatred from racist/white supremacists, combined with seditious interference with the 2016 election, by right-wing extremists the likes of Paul Manafort, Roger Stone, Steve Bannon, Mike Flynn, and the whole spineless squad of defeated GOP primary lot of blame/praisers handed the country to Trump. That was far more a "fixed" election than was 2020. Trump must be stopped. We may not yet be nazified, but who's to say there aren't even worse developments possible, if we don't kick out the jams?
Thanks for today's Substack; it is much appreciated and valuable! We'll share the news and sources with friends, both Democrat and Republican.
thank you for the book list, Professor Reich. as an avid reader myself, i've added these to my must read book list.
I haven't read any of those books, but in 2017 I read Timothy Snyder's, On Tyranny. The process is the same be it Germany then or America now. Nothing new is happening in America today. Your check list has been happening for a long time. Our institutions have been permeated. The bulk of the work has already been done. You're right Dr Reich, if Trump is elected change will come with lightning speed. We are in the midst of a change much grander than democracy or autocracy. Capitalism,
democracy, oligarchy, and autocracy have left civilization in a failed state. Monotheism has failed as a god. We are an artist standing before a blank canvas. We are being asked for imagination and living that painful state. Once that image is on the canvas we will wonder where it came from. The Greeks said it came from a visitation from a muse. The monotheist will claim God brought it to us. Freud will claim the unconscious and cocaine. Others will call the image "art." While we perceive destruction and polarization, we are simultaneously creating a new image, a new painting, and we have no idea what it will look like. It's work!
I don’t understand why you think Trump isn’t as demented as Hitler and why you don’t think a civil war is likely. If Trump gains power and attempts to shut down democracy, would the blue states tolerate that? What happens if Trump declares a state of emergency and tried to deploy troops and supporters to bring those states back into line?
I really appreciate the essay. Also relevant is that, like Trump, Hitler claimed to be religious (in his case, Catholic) and to have God on his side and the side of his followers ("Gott mit uns.") It was another example of what William Hazlitt said: “The garb of religion is the best cloak for power.”
I usually find your comments very helpful but in this case I think you are being naive. There is a huge faction in this country that would like nothing better than to follow Trump's every wish. I suspect that we have our terrible education system to thank that likely few of them have ever learned about the Weimar or have the perspective do what Hitler did. We're also very fortunate that Trump is so incompetent and frankly is probably dementing. Look at the recent picture in the Times.