Paul Revere by Cyrus Dallin, North End, Boston

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Friday, September 30, 2016

"Hitler," An Ascent From "Dunderhead" to Demagogue -- A Review

UPDATE BELOW


Here's a review by NYTimes's Michiko Kakutani  of a new biography by historian Volker Ullrich on Adolf Hitler:



Be very afraid.



Via Digby's blog:

Mr. Ullrich, like other biographers, provides vivid insight into some factors that helped turn a “Munich rabble-rouser” — regarded by many as a self-obsessed “clown” with a strangely “scattershot, impulsive style” — into “the lord and master of the German Reich.” 

 • Hitler was often described as an egomaniac who “only loved himself” — a narcissist with a taste for self-dramatization and what Mr. Ullrich calls a “characteristic fondness for superlatives.” His manic speeches and penchant for taking all-or-nothing risks raised questions about his capacity for self-control, even his sanity. But Mr. Ullrich underscores Hitler’s shrewdness as a politician — with a “keen eye for the strengths and weaknesses of other people” and an ability to “instantaneously analyze and exploit situations.” 

 • Hitler was known, among colleagues, for a “bottomless mendacity” that would later be magnified by a slick propaganda machine that used the latest technology (radio, gramophone records, film) to spread his message. A former finance minister wrote that Hitler “was so thoroughly untruthful that he could no longer recognize the difference between lies and truth” and editors of one edition of “Mein Kampf” described it as a “swamp of lies, distortions, innuendoes, half-truths and real facts.”


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Meanwhile Donnie The WATB whined about why he did so poorly at the debate:

IT WAS SOMEBODY ELSE'S FAULT!  WAAAAH! WAAAH! WAAAH!

Just after the debate, Trump stated that Lester Holt did a good job, later Trump said Holt did a C or a C- job. Now that everyone knows Trump was a disaster, Trump is blaming everyone but himself, saying the process is rigged.  What a prissy little crybaby. Trump did a poor job because: 

1) He knows next to nothing about our government and how it works, and 


2) He tried to bluff and bully his way through a very serious debate and was bested by Hillary Clinton.


Here's the WATB in his own crybaby words:


“During the debate the other night, I had to put up with the anchor and fight the anchor all the time on everything I said,” Trump said at a campaign rally in New Hampshire. “What a rigged deal. I tell you we’re in such a rigged system. It is terrible. What’s going on in this country is so sad.”


WAAAH!  WAAAH!  WAAAH!



TRUMP:  WATB!



UPDATE:

USAToday, for the first time, published an editorial urging Americans to reject Trump, saying he is temperamentally unfit to be POTUS and calling him a "serial liar."

TRUMP IS A SERIAL LIAR AND TEMPERAMENTALLY UNFIT TO BE PRESIDENT!


9 comments:

Shaw Kenawe said...

From Politico:

"For many insiders, Clinton’s good week was driven more by Trump's demeanor and behavior in the days after the debate — which included re-litigating his 19-year-old comments about the then-Miss Universe’s weight gain —as what happened on the stage at Hofstra University. [...]

“The debate helped to stop the hemorrhaging in the Clinton campaign's messaging and management when Trump went off-script and went back to the Trump of the primary debates,” said a Wisconsin Republican. “Clinton should send him a thank-you note.” [...]

“Any inroads Trump had made with suburban women is now gone after that debate,” said an Ohio Republican. “Also, I have to imagine the African-American community is getting more energized after his birther answer.”


Thank you Donnie!

Shaw Kenawe said...



I'm no Charles Krauthammer fan, but what he wrote about Trump in the following is spot on:

via PM Carpenter: "Charles Krauthammer, distills Trump's wretched campaign to its knuckledragging essence: "Things are bad and [Clinton's] been around for 30 years. You like bad? Stick with her. You want change? I’m your man." That 40-some-odd percent of the American electorate would embrace both the message's crudeness and the crook hustling it suggests just how close to the lightly scratched surface the people's intellectual corruption is.*"

Go read any of the usual rabid right wing blogs to see how shamelessly they've prostituted themselves to Trump and the perversion they believe is "conservatism."

They've sold their souls to the Devil.

Infidel753 said...

Well, Trump really was betrayed by his bad microphone.

Seriously, the chant Sieg heil! at the old Nazi rallies translates as "Hail victory!" A bit of the same mentality as Trump's obsession with "winning", perhaps.

Kevin Robbins said...

I'm sure in the next debate, Trump is going to blame the town hall audience for being losers or plants or whatever.

This election must be very painful for people like Krauthammer. Good!

Shaw Kenawe said...

One of the far right's favorite conservative columnists, Charles Krauthammer, calls Trump supporters "intellectually corrupt." His words not mine.

And who can argue with him when the man the GOP chose to be their standard bearer -- the next POTUS, has spent the last 24 hours sending out tweets about an ex-beauty queen and her supposed sex tapes. This is real. I'm not making this up!

Donald Trump is so base, so utterly uninterested in anything that isn't about him or his perceived omnipotence in all things, that he doesn't see that this absurd obsession with Machado makes him look like a third-rate Jerry Springer contestant. And that's being kind.

Who has ever, in his or her lifetime, witnessed such a witless, cringe-inducing performance by a man who seeks the US presidency? His very existence in electoral politics has cheapened our country and all that its promise has stood for. He's a cesspool of egotistical vengefulness and seedy demagoguery.

If this is who the TeaPublicans are supporting, then Krauthammer is being kind when he calls Trump's followers "intellectually corrupt."

E. Rosewater said...

the fact that he's even in the race and only a few points behind shows you have an epidemic of mental illness.

trump is senile and his sycophants don't have the courage to tell him.

Shaw Kenawe said...

E. Rosewater, I'm afraid you're correct. There's no other explanation for Trump's rise in the polls. His supporters are as daft as he is.

Les Carpenter said...

So what your saying is near half the electorate is senile?

Les Carpenter said...

you're...